Re: [Fis] ON INFORMATION ETHICS

Dear Perdo,
dear all,

first of all: sorry!, that I did not comment on your last email, but I
got ill on the last weekend - and spent the rest of the week catching up
my work.

To start at your end point:

I think there is a close connection between the discussion on "arts and
meaning" and infoethics, since humans use information technologies to
create meaning. So, there is also a close connection between culture and
information technologies - and thus informationethics.

When we take a look at the "culture", at least the European culture is
closely connected to an information technology called "book". We can
still see this every time, when people try to make the point, that >new<
technologies threaten culture, because they question the importance of
"books" (and other quality types of print media).

Books have been important tools to create "cultures", since they are
seen as a tool to promote and distribute important ideas as well as
establish these ideas within one culture. But they are also ambivalent
because books can also be seen as a tool of discipline, which i. e. ask
people to value certain kinds of information more than over. There are
also a lot of myths connected to the information technology called
"book", i. E. the myth that there has to be a "author", that is: a
creative individual. These myths also make it difficult - even today -
to accept, that "books" may a. o. also been seen as tools, which create
networks, in which information is communicated not only from one author
to her/his audience, but are tools for distributed information work. So,
when we take a close look at the information technology "book" we should
not think of the "work of authors", but we should also see the
collective effort to create true and/or meaningful texts (and pictures)
which includes (at least) critic on published text, the reworking of
texts, the strategies of publishers, who decide, which book is to be
published etc. pp.

This brings me to the point >new technologies<: When I start doing
information ethics, I did start with the idea that >new technologies<
might generate >new problems< with need to be reflected within ethics,
which might lead to the finding, that we need new concepts in ethics.
This view did change after I started my research on the history of media
and the history of ethics, where I found that a lot of problems we face
today in the field of "information ethics" were not new at all.

In this time the book of Michael Giesecke (Von den Mythen der Buchkultur
zu den Visionen der Informationsgesellschaft, 2002 -
http://www.mythen-der-buchkultur.de/) turned out to helpful, since
Giesecke explains "information society" as a term as self-description.
So, the most important thing in the discussion on the "information
society" (which might be in need for a new ethos) might be the fact,
that we describe our own society as an "information society" (or do
agree on the vision of a "information society") and do regard
"information" as an independent good equal to matter and energy. Thus we
would like to state the difference between our present society and other
societies (as you know: "culture" is used to state and describe
differences between cultures - as Dirk Baecker puts it -, so maybe
"society" is the wrong term). One of the problems on the discussion of
the (coming) "information society" might be, that we focus to much on
the >new< technologies while regarding the old >information
technologies< as almost >natural< (in the sense that we do not regard
them as technologies as all).

Now, technologies do not only rely on the the hardware and software
involved but also on the people using it. This is at least a lesson
learned from the problem of technology transfer, which fails, when the
people who we would like to use this technology will not use it, because
of cultural or ethical "restraints". (Please note, that in some cases,
"we" are the people, others would like to use certain forms of technology.)

So, using (certain forms) of (information) technology may be regarded as
a topic of ethics. And if we take a look at some classical philosophical
texts (i. E. Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten) we will see, that even before
defining ourself as members of a (coming) information society,
philosophers did write on "how to use information (technologies)" in the
field of Ethics. (Some examples discussed by Kant are the use of war
propaganda - which he rejects -, privacy and confidentiality, censorship
etc.) From this we can see, that the so called >new< problems are not
that new (even if they may have become more important to us).

In my option the quest for information ethics can be seen to find a tool
which enables us to reflect on media again, which include the new as
well as the old information technologies, and ask ourself what it is,
which has really changed. To reflect on the old media seems to me also
important to understand the problems we have when discussing topics of
information ethics with members of other cultures, since it shows that
some of the topics we regard as evident are not easy to communicate to
members of other cultures. "Privacy" is a good example for this. And
discussing this issues through different cultures is important, because
we are talking on technologies used world wide, by people with very
different cultural and social backgrounds. This is becoming an important
issue, when it comes to the "ethical design" of information
technologies, because we should be aware of the fact, that our "Ethics"
might not been seen as the only way of ethical thinking. I do not think
that relativism is an option, but if the think of technologies, which
are designed to protect certain values (like "Privacy"), we have to take
in account, that these values may be regarded as products of the so
called "western tradition" (and that they are not evident to members of
other cultures).

These are some of the more practical aspects of information ethics.
There are also other problems, like how information technologies shape
our understanding of "information" (and vice versa) or how ITC changed
our way we define ourself as human beings - which we may discuss later.

One important aspect regarding "ethics" which has changed since the time
of Kant (to stay with the example) is the status of "Ethics as Science
of Morality". Till the beginning of the 20th Century - at least in
Germany - "Ethics" was indeed regarded as a scientific activity, which
a. O. was expected to design the fundamental rules and concepts of the
society. (We can see this from the sad fact, that in the 19th Century
jews and catholics could not become professors in philosophy in Germany,
because they were regared as not being loyal to the German king and
society.) Today, we do no longer regard "Ethics" (and "Philosophy") as a
discipline which is in charge to lay down the fundamental concepts of
society - which leads to a question, I would like to ask to the members
of the list:

- What is the role of "Ethics" today? (And what role ought "Ethics" be
allowed play?)

Can we still regard it as "Science of Morality"? Or is Ethics an old
fashioned dinosaur, which we should allow to die, since today we have
better ways to do research on "Morality" (like psychology or neuro-science)?

Or is the task of Ethics to remind us to the fact, that there are
"irreducible" residues of the common good which have not been detected
by those other formal grids (as stated in the email by Pedro Marijuan)?
If this is the case, may "art" not be the better in fulfilling this task?

With best regards,
Michael Nagenborg

Pedro Marijuan schrieb:
> Dear All,
>
> Should we keep discussing the Prolegomena on info & ethics or should
> we jump into the concrete questions about the contemporary revolution
> of info technologies? Apologies for being focused again in the former,
> hopefully it will help to produce more interesting answers about the
> latter...
>
> If ethics is related to a collective dimension of an individual's
> "fitness" (within a complex society), and if we suppose that fitness
> itself is amenable to formal/informational treatments (or will be in a
> foreseeable future), it seems difficult not to conclude on some form
> of informational reductionism on ethics. However, I feel in a strong
> disagreement with that apparent reductionist conclusion derived from
> my own responses to the opening text. So, let me backtrack.
>
> In a complex society, any individual's action may be subject to
> scrutiny on very different grounds: say as immoral, unprofitable
> (non-economic), unjust, unethical... The "moral" ground is usually
> understood as very close to the core of human condition, related to
> human nature itself (that "zoe" pointed out by Rafael), and then
> understood slightly different from the classical view in philosophy.
> Religions have been the traditional providers of the moral sense in
> almost every society: eg, the very clear ruling in the Ten
> Commandments of Christianity. Going to the "economic" ground, it is
> highly regimented and abstract, wrapped in strict accounting
> procedures (curiously related to the historical origins of numbers,
> algebra, symmetry...) and purports a high level of formal abstraction,
> notwithstanding its apparent immediateness. Then the "legal system"
> appears as another grid, formally structured too, which attempts to
> make a procedural "map" of almost any human action, particularly in
> the situations amenable to conflict.
>
> Ethics would be different. Ethics implies the realization that none of
> the previous grids to map human action has fulfilled its mission
> globally, in achieving a "total" vision of the social behavior of the
> person. Some concrete actions of a person may be moral, profitable,
> and legal---but they may not be ethical after all. In bioethics (or in
> info ethics) we might point out very concrete, contemporary cases.
>
> Ethics means that the formal schemes of other disciplinary realms have
> failed (either economic, legal, or moral---well, "moral", as least in
> the common sense I have taken it, representing the proto-group
> acceptable behavior for collective survival, is not necessarily formal
> after all, but quite often it has little to say relating a complex
> social setting). Overall those regimentations of behavior would have
> failed to provide sufficient convergence or "closure" on the social
> interests. Actually any human community becomes too complicated and
> variable to yield its "secrets" to any bureaucratic, economic, legal,
> scientific, etc. formulae --am following J.C. Scott, 1998.
>
> Ethics, then, would explore the "irreducible" residues of the common
> good which have not been detected by those other formal grids. Ethics
> explores particularly the new phenomena, the new techs, the new
> problems, the new achievements, as they impinge on the social
> fabric... those very events that will be a matter of legislation and
> economic ruling in a pretty near future. But, how could ethics achieve
> its focus on the unfocussed matters? How would social collectives
> dramatize those new strange, unruled, conflicting events? Drama,
> poetry, music... would they be a good social tool in order to feel the
> unknown, to visualize it, to anticipate it? I think so.
>
> We are lead again to that discussion on "meaning and art" ... where I
> subscribe a good portion of Lauri's dictum weeks ago: "arts are
> technologies of ethics". Maybe it could be said differently, but the
> exploration direction looks intriguing.
>
> best wishes
>
> Pedro
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>

-- 
Dr. phil. Michael Nagenborg
R�ppurrer Str. 116
D-76137 Karlsruhe
Tel. +49(0)721 3545955
Fax +49(0)721 3545956
www.michaelnagenborg.de
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