Global Information Ethics

1. What do you think about the future of Brazilian or Latin American activities on information ethics; its task or your expectation?

When I had the privilege to co-organize the first Brazilian symposium on Information Ethics that took place in 2010 in João Pessoa (Paraíba), I could not imagine what followed in the next fifteen years in this field in Brazilian universities and research institutions such as Ibict (Brazilian institute of information in science and technology, Perfil-i) that you can find documented at http://www.capurro.de/home_port.html.

In fact, my colleagues from Ibict, namely, Prof. Marco Schneider and Prof. Arthur Bezerra, to mention just two of them, have taken the lead of the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) that is now hosted by Ibict.

They are at the core of what I call The School of Rio, i.e., a group of critical intellectuals engaged theoretically and practically in transforming their country in a place free of information exclusions, which is also the case in many Latin American countries. The task of information ethics has to be reinvented according to the specific challenges of this region.

iKrítika: estudos críticos em informação

(ebook)

Arthur Coelho Bezerra, Marco Schneider,
Ricardo M. Pimenta, Gustavo S. Saldanha
2020

https://www.garamond.com.br/loja/ikritika-ebook

"This book brings together contributions on a critical information theory for the past 50 years, relating it to its history since the 19th century and its roots in modernity. Within a broad framework that encompasses theories and authors such as Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Lukács, Frankfurt School, Bourdieu, Foucault, Žižek, as well as the classics of librarianship and information and communication, the guiding thread of these texts is social and critical thinking. That is, it is thinking of information theory as inseparable from an interpretation and practice of social, economic and political processes of communicational and informational processes in the face of structural transformations of oppression, control, surveillance and discrimination that has historically appeared since the middle of the 20th century in relation to digital technologies."

4to. Encuentro ICIE (International Center for Information Ethics) América Latina y el Caribe
y 1er. Simposio uruguayo de ética de la información y la comunicación.

Montevideo, Universidad de la República,
Facultad de Información y Comunicación,
9-11 October 2023

https://fic.edu.uy/node/4351

2. Prof. Charles Ess (US) discussed intercultural information ethics based on Confucianism while you based on Taoism. Why did you focus on Taoism instead of Confucianism?

At the first International Conference on China's Information Ethics that took place at Renmin University of China, Beijing, in 2010 I presented a paper based in key insights by French sinologist Francois Jullien. Let me quote the following:

It is still an open question whether the renaissance of Confucianism in China today will lead to an information society shaped by this kind of ethics and morality. Since some ten years or so the ideal of a “harmonious society” has been officially announced in contrast to the concept of class struggle (Siemons 2006). The model of a Confucian information society and the predominance of indirect speech serving the power seem to be opposed to the Western model that gives individual freedom the highest value. While libertarian information society tends towards atomization and eventually to chaos, the Confucian model might grow stiff and end suffocated. Confucius wants to regulate social communication with the help of morality the most useful instrument being censorship. In the “Far West” the opposite form of blockage seems to endanger societal development, namely information overload for individuals and corporations as well as some forms of general and open struggle.

A possible way out of both models can be found in the taoist view of indirect speech. At the beginning of Laozi’s “Daodejing” it is said:

“A dao that can be defined.

Is not the eternal dao,

Concepts that can be conceived,

Are not eternal concepts” (Laozi, 2002 , Ch. 1, 1-4)

The Chinese thinker does not separate reality in two different levels as the Greeks did. The “dao” refers indirectly to the beginning of a process of becoming and growing. In contrast to the Aristotelian model, the goal (‘telos’) of this process is not the realization or fulfilment of potentiality (‘dynamis’) but the passing on itself that is in permanent danger of solidifying.
Source: http://www.capurro.de/china_infoethics2010.html

I think that these ideas might give you a hint on the different approaches to Information Ethics between Charles Ess and myself. It would be, I think, small-minded to build an opposition between them.
In a contribution for The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics, ed. Kenneth E. Himma & Herman T. Tavani (New Jersey 2008, 639-665), I analyzed our approaches in dialogue with Toru Nishigaki in this way:

I. The Foundational Debate

1. On the Sources of Morality
(...)
Morality is not founded on independent facts about the world but arises spontaneously (sponte sua) from (Greek: hothen) the awareness and respect for the abyssal facticity and uniqueness of the world itself and human existence which are the invaluable and theoretically nonprovable truth-values on which all moral claims rest. (Lévinas, 1968). Beliefs, institutions, and practices of cultures give a long term stability to such claims and make them obvious. Cultural frameworks are not conceived as closed worlds but as grounded in common affective human experiences of sharing a finite existence in a common world. In other words, the ontic differences between human cultures are refractions of the common world awareness. Every effort to determine the nature of this awareness gives rise to different experiences and interpretations. We speak of multicultural ethics in case we juxtapose such interpretations instead of comparing them. The opposite is a monocultural view that conceives itself as the only valid one. Human reason is genuinely plural with regard to common tentative transcultural expressions of this common ground such as the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” whose principles are subject to permanent scrutiny and intercultural interpretation and, being linguistic utterances, build the necessary but not sufficient condition for moving the will of, say, the member states of the United Nations to put it into practice (Ladd, 1985).

2. On the Foundations of IIE

a) Charles Ess

Charles Ess’ “global information ethics” seeks to avoid imperialistic homogenization while simultaneously preserving the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples (Ess, 2006). He analyzes the connections of such an ethical pluralism between contemporary Western ethics and Confucian thought. Both traditions invoke notions of resonance and harmony to articulate pluralistic structures of connection alongside irreducible differences. Ess explores such a pros hen pluralism in Eastern and Western conceptions of privacy and data privacy protection. This kind of pluralism is the opposite to a purely modus vivendi pluralism that leaves tensions and conflicts unresolved and giving thus rise to a cycle of violence. Another more robust form of pluralism presupposes a shared set of ethical norms and standards but without overcoming deep contradictions. An even stronger form of pluralism does not search identity but only some kind of coherence or, as Ess suggests, complementarity between two irreducible different entities. The problem with this position is that it still asks for some kind of unity between irreducible positions. In order to make this goal plausible and somehow rational one must show where the possible focus that allows complementary lies. Otherwise I see a contradiction between irreducibility and complementarity. This is a similar problem as the one raised by Thomas Kuhn concerning the question of the incommensurability of scientific theories arising from a paradigm change through scientific revolutions (Kuhn, 1962). Ess’ concepts of resonance, or complementarity raise the Aristotelian question of equivocity, analogy and univocity. I think that irreducible positions cannot be logically reduced to some kind of complementarity but it may be a deeper experimental source of unity such as the one I suggested at the beginning that is beyond the sphere of ontic or, to put it in Kantian terms, categorial oppositions. Kant’s solution was the presupposition of a nouomenal world that manifests itself practically through the categorical imperative. I believe that the facticity and uniqueness of the world and human life offers an empirical hothen dimension if not for overcoming categorial differences at least for a dialogue on cognitive-emotive fundamental experiences of our common being in the world (Eldred 2006).

b) Toru Nishigaki

In his contribution on information ethics in Japan, Toru Nishigaki makes a difference between the search of ethical norms in the context of new information technologies (IT) on the one hand, and the changes “on our views of human beings and society” becoming “necessary to accompany the emergence of the information society” on the other hand (Nishigaki, 2006, p. 237). Such changes concern, for instance, the Western idea of a “coherent self” being questioned by information processing in robots. Although this change may lead from a Western perspective to nihilism, Buddhist philosophy teaches that there is no such a thing as a “coherent self” ethics having to do with compassion as well as with the relationship between the individual and the community, instead, as with the preservation of a “coherent self,” the key ethical question being how our communities are changing instead how far the “self” is endangered. As Nishigaki remarks: “It is possible to say, therefore, that in a sense the West now stands in need of Eastern ethics, while the East stands in need of Western ethics.” Nishigaki stresses at the same time that there is no “easy bridge” between IT and Eastern philosophy. IT as looked from a cultural standpoint “has a strong affinity with the Judeo-Christian pursuit for a universal interpretation of sacred texts.” Although we in the West look for some kind of unchanged meaning of terms, such as in Charles Ess' pros hen search for shared values and a tolerant or benevolent view on judgment diversity, the Zen master is eager to exercise himself in his disciple “by doing away with universal or conventional interpretations of the meanings of words” (Nishigaki 2006, p. 238). In other words, the Buddhist stance teaches us, Westerners another strategy beyond the controversy between monism and pluralism, by way of a different kind of practice from the Socratic dialogue. Nishigaki points to the controversy in the West between cognitive science and its view of cognition as a “representation” of the “outer world” and the view shared by our everyday experience as well as, for instance, phenomenology. Biologist Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis offers an alternative based on the Buddhist view on cognition as “a history of actions performed by a subject in the world” being then not representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven mind but “enactment” of such a history in the world (Nishigaki, 2006, p. 239). Nishigaki calls “ethical norms” the code or “behaviour pattern” as perceived by a social system’s observer. I would prefer to speak here of “moral norms” and reserve the concept of ethics for the reflection of such an observer on the factual norm. This is no less than the Aristotelian distinction between "ethos" and "techne ethike" or between morality and ethics. This terminological and conceptual difference has been proposed, for instance, by sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1990), being also broadly used in Western ethics.The undifferentiated use of these terms, as is mostly the case in everyday life, might lead to an uncritical approach of the role of ethics as observer-dependent reflection, which is the standpoint addressed by Nishigaki’s “fundamental informatics.” From this perspective, the conflict raised by globalization does not consist in the universal application of Western ethics but of Western morality. The universal application of Western ethics means that the discussion on morality would take place only on the basis of Western conceptual schemes. This is exactly what intercultural information ethics questions, understood as a permanent process of reflection and "translation," intend to avoid. For a comprehensive view of this East/West dialogue see Nishigaki and Takenouchi (Eds.) The Thought of Information Ethics. Communis 05 (in Japanese) Tokyo, 2007.
(...)
Source: http://www.capurro.de/himma.html

3. What do you think is important to understand Nelson Mandela as an information ethicist as a result of study on the African information ethics?

In his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" Nelson Mandela calls himself a "freedom fighter". Freedom with regard to what? To Apartheid, of course, i.e., to the racial segregation that excluded the majority black population from social and political life. At the core of this segregation was information Apartheid. The "freedom fighter" was, in fact, a freedom of information fighter.

I quote from the draft of my introduction to "Nelson Mandela. A Reader on Information Ethics" edited by Coetzee Bester, Johannes Britz, Rafael Capurro and Rachel Fischer, published by the ICIE in 2021, where it is available free of charge https://www.i-c-i-e.org/publications

The idea to write this essay on Nelson Mandela arose during the International Policy Dialogue on IFAP (Information for all Programme, UNESCO) Priority Areas focused on BRICS organized by UNESCO and the Department of Information Science, African Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE) at the University of Pretoria in collaboration with UNESCO and representatives of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) held in Cape Town on July 4-6, 2018 (Capurro 2020). During the meeting a speech by Frederik Willem de Klerk as well as a visit to Robben Island took place. In the aftermath both events made evident to me that particularly Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom as well as his letters and speeches (Mandela 2003, 2010) deal with IFAP topics such as information for development, information literacy, information preservation, information accessibility, and multilingualism. Mandela's life and his reflection upon particularly in his autobiography is an example of how freedom of information that is at the core of a free society can take place in heterotopian spaces (Wikipedia: Heterotopia). A jail is such a heterotopian space, but also a whole country ruled by Apartheid.

Mandela spent 27 years in jail, 18 of them in Robben Island (1964-1982), prisoner number 466/64, in a cell measuring 8 feet (2.4 m) by 7 feet (2.1 m). A heterotopian space within another one. He imagined his country as a place in which the rule of law, freedom of speech, and social justice are the common basis for all South Africans. Mandela describes his experience in Robben Island in a letter to Winnie Mandela dated 16 November 1970 as follows:

You looked much better than I expected, but far from what you were when we last met in Dec. '68. The cumulative effect of a thousand and one strains was clearly visible. As I walked back to the jail after the interview, I was preoccupied with the fear that now that you have to live alone for 12 hours in the night, loneliness and anxiety might worsen your condition. This fear still haunts me.

Incidentally, on my way down to the visiting rooms on Nov. 7, I managed to see the boat on which you came as it steamed gracefully to harbour, beautiful in its bright colours. Even at a distance it looked a real prisoners' friend, and I became more anxious as it approached. You know why! I saw it again as it sailed back to the mainland. This time the picture was altogether different. Though it still retained its brightness, the beauty I had seen only a few hours before was gone. Now it looked grotesque and quite unfriendly. As it drifted slowly away with you, I felt all alone in the world and the books that fill my cell, which have kept me company all these years, seemed mute and unresponsive. Have I seen my darling for the last time, it is a question that kept recurring. (Mandela 2010, 187; Dixon 2013)

Every word of this letter is worth being meditated. The incoming boat bringing Winnie back after two years of separation looks like "a real prisoners' friend" while the boat leaving Robben Island "looked grotesque and quite unfriendly." The difference between the incoming and the leaving boat corresponds to the difference between the heterotopian space in which Mandela is living and the 'normal' Apartheid world in which she lives. The separation from Winnie lets him feel "alone in the world" disconnected from any social experience where not even the surrogate of social life that books can be what they are, i.e. a written expression of human conversation. They "seemed mute and unresponsive." Books cannot speak or give an answer to a question if they are not seen as belonging implicitly or explicitly to social life. This experience of meeting and separating from each other is a limit experience concerning all what is excluded in a jail, within another heterotopian space, the Apartheid state.

In a letter to Winnie dated 1 February 1975 Mandela writes that the cell as the place where he feels as "alone in the world" can be experienced as a place where the human self can perceive himself as sharing a common world. How is this change of perspective possible? It is possible because, as Aristotle puts it, "the psyche is in a way all beings" (he psyche ta onta pos esti panta) (Aristotle 1974, De Anima III 431b21). Mandela writes:

Incidentally, you may find that the cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search realistically and regularly the process of your mind and feelings. In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education. There are, of course, important in measuring one's success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert themselves mainly to achieve all these. But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others – qualities which are within easy reach of every soul – are the foundation of one's spiritual life. Development in matters of this nature is inconceivable without serious introspection, without knowing yourself, your weaknesses and mistakes. At least, if for nothing else, the cell gives you the opportunity to look daily into your entire conduct, to overcome the bad and develop whatever is good in you. Regular meditation, say about 15 minutes a day before you turn in, can be very fruitful in this regard. You may find it difficult at first to pinpoint the negative features in your life, but the 10th attempt may yield rich rewards. Never forget that a saint is a sinner who keeps on trying. (Mandela 2010, 211-212)

Mandela's cell becomes "incidentally" the place where his soul has the opportunity to reflect about being "in a way all beings" (Aristotle). In a letter dated 25 February 1987, five years after leaving Robben Island, he writes to Frieda Matthews, married to Professor Zachariah Keodirelang (Z K) Matthews (1901-1968), academic, politician and anti-apartheid activist, member of the ANC:

A visit to a prisoner always has significance difficult to put into words. Routine is the supreme law of a prison in almost every country of the world, and every day is for all practical purposes like the day before: the same surroundings, same faces, same dialogue, same odour, walls rising to the skies, and the ever-present feeling that outside the prison gates there is an exciting world to which you have no access. A visit from your beloved ones, from friends and even from strangers is always an unforgettable occasion, when that frustrating monotony is broken and the entire world is literally ushered into the cell. (Mandela 2010, 150)

The world that "literally ushered into the cell" was brought by each visitor, their souls being "in a way all beings" (Aristotle). The visitors made manifest to him the difference between the heterotopian space of the jail and the "exiting world to which you have no access." This difference was the source for Mandela's becoming a freedom fighter. In an unpublished autobiographical manuscript written in prison he states:

I am also aware that massive efforts have been made here and abroad for my release and that of other political prisoners, a campaign which has given us much inspiration and shown us that we have hundreds of thousands of friends. Next to my wife's affection and that of the family as a whole, few things have inspired me more that the knowledge that in spite of all that the enemy is doing to isolate and discredit us people everywhere never forget us. But we know the enemy very well – they would like to release us from a position of strength and not of weakness and this is an opportunity they have missed forever. However inspiring it is to know that our friends are insisting on our release, a realistic approach clearly shows that we must rule out completely the possibility that such a demand will succeed. But I am highly optimistic, even behind prison walls I can see the heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon, that however wrong our calculations have been and whatever difficulties we still must face, that in my lifetime I shall step out into the sunshine, walk with firm feet because that event will be brought by the strength of my organisation and the sheer determination of our people. (Mandela 2010, 243-244)

Mandela can see the common world "even behind prison walls" as an open natural and human world of "heavy clouds and the blue sky over the horizon" that he shares, despite living in prison, with all his friends, his family, his organisation and his people. Being a prisoner but knowing that he is a free man aiming at living in a free society is the ethical foundation of Mandela's life and work as a "freedom fighter." It enables him not only to fight for freedom and to reflect upon it becoming a fighter committed to live according to his maxims and to render himself accountability about his deeds and aspirations.

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