INTRODUCTION
Intercultural
Information
Ethics (IIE) can be defined in a narrow or in a broad sense. In a
narrow sense
it focuses on the impact of information and communication technology
(ICT) on
different cultures as well as on how specific issues are understood
from
different cultural traditions. In a broad sense it deals not only with
intercultural issues raised by ICT but by other media as well allowing
a large
historical comparative view. IIE explores these issues under
descriptive and
normative perspectives. Such comparative studies can be done either at
a
concrete or ontic level or at the level of ontological or structural
presuppositions.
The
international debate
on information ethics started with the “First International Congress on
Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects of Digital Information” organized
by
UNESCO in 1997. Subsequent UN conferences culminated in the World
Summit on the
Information Society. The academic debate on intercultural issues of ICT
takes
place in the biennial conferences on “Cultural attitudes towards
technology and
communication” organized by Charles Ess and Fay Sudweeks since 1998.
But
intercultural issues are also raised in the ETHICOMP conferences
organized by
Simon Rogerson since 1995, the conferences on “Ethics of Electronic
Information
in the 21st Century” at the University of Memphis since 1997, and the
CEPE
conferences (Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry) since 1997. The
first
international symposium dealing explicitly with intercultural
information
ethics was organized by the International Center for Information Ethics
entitled
“Localizing the Internet. Ethical Issues in Intercultural Perspective.”
It took
place in Karlsruhe (Germany) in 2004.
As far as I
know, my introductory paper
to this symposium was the first paper addressing the question of
Intercultural
Information Ethics already in its title. The proceedings were published
in the
“International Review of Information Ethics”. A selection of papers was
published as a book in 2007 (Capurro et al. 2007). The Oxford Uehiro
Centre for
Practical Ethics organized an international conference, entitled
“Information
Ethics: Agents, Artefacts and New Cultural Perspectives” that took
place in
2005 at St Cross College Oxford. This conference addressed cultural
questions
of the globalization of information processes and flows, particularly
“whether
information ethics in a global sense may be biased in favour of Western
values
and interests and whether far-eastern cultures may provide new
perspectives and
heuristics for a successful development of the information society.”
(Floridi/Savulescu 2006, 155). Soraj Hongladarom and Charles Ess have
edited a
book with the title “Information Technology Ethics: Cultural
Perspectives”
(Hongladarom/Ess 2007). The book puts together a selection of
contributions on
what Western and non-Western intellectual traditions have to say on
various
issues in information ethics, as well as theoretical debates offering
proposals
for new synthesis between Western and Eastern traditions.
In the
following, I
present an overview on IIE as discussed in some of these sources. The
first
part of the paper deals with the foundational debate in moral
philosophy in
general as well as with IIE in particular. The second part addresses
the
question of privacy from an IIE
perspective.
I. THE FOUNDATIONAL DEBATE
1. On the Sources of
Morality
There is a
classic debate
in moral philosophy between cognitivism and non-cognitivism with regard
to the
truth-value of moral claims. This distinction presupposes that human
emotions
have no cognitive value and vice versa, that human cognition has a
truth-value
if and only if it is free of emotions. This is, I believe, a wrong
alternative
since there is no emotion-free cognition and emotions have a cognitive
value as
demonstrated by neurobiologist Antonio Damasio (1994).
One
classical answer to the question
of the foundation of morality is that moral claims relate to the basic
moral
principle “do no harm, help where you can”. I believe that even if we
can give
good reasons for such a fundamental moral principle the knowledge of
such
reasons is not enough to move the will in order to do (or not) the
good. Is
there a foundation for this principle?
According to
Karl Baier
(2006), basic moods through which the uniqueness of the world and the
finitude
of our existence become manifest, are a transcultural experience common
to all
human beings. They concern our awareness of the common world. It is on
the
basis of the mood of anxiety, for instance, that we are aware of death
and
finitude or in the mood of “being born” in which we feel ourselves open
for new
possibilities of being. According to Heidegger (1987, 228ff) fear is a
mood in
which one is afraid about something fearsome, while anxiety, in
contrast, faces
us with our being-in-the-world itself. Wittgenstein describes his “key
experience” (“mein Erlebnis par excellence”) in the "Lecture on
Ethics" with the following words:
“This experience, in case
I have it, can be described most properly, I believe, with the words I
am
amazed about the existence of the world. Then I tend to use
formulations like these
ones: 'How strange that something exists at all' or 'How strange that
the world
exists'". (Wittgenstein 1989, 14, my translation)
According to
Wittgenstein
we have really no appropriate expression for this experience – other
than the
existence of language itself. On December 30, 1929 he writes:
“I can imagine what
Heidegger means with being and anxiety. Human beings have the tendency
to run
against the boundaries of language. Think for instance about the
astonishment
that something at all exists. […] Ethics is this run against the
boundaries of
language.” (Wittgenstein 1984, 68, my translation)
In other
words, the primum
movens of moral actions lies in the call coming from the uniqueness of
the
world and the finitude of human existence that are disclosed through
moods. According
to Heidegger we are “indebted” or “guilty” towards the calling of the
world, in
the various senses of the word “guilty” such as ‘having debts to
someone’ or
‘being responsible for’ (Heidegger 1987, 325ff) We are primordially
“guilty” in
the sense that we are indebted to the “there” of our existence, between
birth
and death. Our existence is basically “care” of our given and limited
possibilities that manifest themselves within the framework of the
uniqueness of
the world and human existence.
Morality
arises from (Greek:
“hothen”) the awareness and respect for both the uniqueness of the
world itself
and human existence which are the invaluable and theoretically non
provable
truth-values on which all moral claims rest. The moral imperative is
the call
for care of our lives in a common world. It is a categorical imperative
as we
cannot not take care of our lives but it allows at the same time
different interpretations
that we accumulate as individuals as well as societies building a
dynamic
cultural memory. In saying this I am not providing a sufficient reason
for doing
the good just because any linguistic utterance would be insufficient
without
the experience of the call itself to which a theory can only point to
without
being able to give a foundation in which case the phenomenon of the
call would
be negated as originating such utterance.
Our
being-in-the-world is
the ‘first call’ or primum movens of our will. This provides, I
believe, a universal
non-metaphysical frame of reference for different experiences and
ethical
theories. Buddhism, for instance,
experiences the world in all its transitoriness in a mood of sadness
and
happiness being also deeply moved by suffering. This mood grasps the
world in a
specific way. There is something common to all human beings in the
basic moods
but at the same time there are specific moods at the beginning of human
cultures, such as astonishment (“thaumazein”) in the Greek experience
of the
world. Karl Baier points to the danger of building stereotypes
particularly
when dealing with the differences between East and West with regard,
for
instance, to the search for harmony as an apparently typical and unique
mood of
Asian cultures or the opposition between collectivity and individuality
(Baier
2006). As there are no absolute differences between cultures there are
also no
exclusive moods. Experiences such as nausea, pangs of moral conscience
or the
‘great doubt’ are common to Japanese Buddhism and modern Western
nihilism. A future
intercultural philosophy should look for textual basis from literature,
art,
religion and everyday culture paying attention to complex phenomena and
to the
interaction between moods and understanding. If there is a danger of
building
stereotypes, there is also one of overlooking not only concrete or
ontic but
also structural or ontological differences by claiming a single world
culture
that mostly reflects the interests and global life style of a small
portion of
humanity.
Let me know
review briefly
some of the foundational theories of Intercultural Information Ethics.
2. On the Foundation 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 ("towards one") 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 deeply
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.
There are
pitfalls of prima
facie convergences, analogies and family resemblances that may be
oversimplified by a pros hen
strategy. In many cases we should try to
dig into
deeper layers in order to understand where these claims originate or
simply
accept the limits of human theoretical reason by celebrating the
richness of
human experience. As Kei Hiruta rightly stresses (Hiruta 2006), it is
not clear
what the points of shared ethical agreements are and how this call for
unity
fits with a call for diversity concerning the judgements of such
ethical perspectives.
According to Hiruta, the advocates of ethical pluralism would like to
avoid the
untolerable, such as child pornography in the Internet, working on the
basis of
a pragmatic problem-solving strategy leading to “points of agreement”
or
“responses” on the basis of Socratic dialogue. Socratic dialogue is
based on
the spirit of parrhesia or
“direct speech” which is a key feature of
Western
philosophy (Capurro 2006a).
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
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, 237). Such changes concern, for instance, the
Western
idea of a “coherent self” being questioned by information processing in
robots.
While 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 2006, 238).
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.”
While 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, 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 than 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.
c) Terrell Ward Bynum
‘The’
information society
is and has always been culturally fragmented into different information
societies.
Consequently, what is morally good for one information society may be
considered as less appropriate in another one. Terrell Ward Bynum
advocates,
borrowing insights from Aristotle, Norbert Wiener, and James Moor, for
a
“flourishing ethics” which means that “the overall purpose of a human
life is
to flourish as a person” according to the basic principles of freedom,
equality
and benevolence and the principle of minimum infringement of freedom
(Bynum
2006). If the goal is to maximize the opportunities of all humans to
exercise
their autonomy – a conception of human existence that is culturally
grounded in
Western social philosophy – Bynum rightly follows that “many different
cultures,
with a wide diversity of customs, religions, languages and practices,
can
provide a conductive context for human flourishing” (Bynum 2006, 163).
In other
words, Wiener’s principles provide a foundation for a non-relativistic
global
ethics that is friendly to cultural diversity. Bynum widens the scope
of this
human-centered ethics into a “general theory of Flourishing Ethics”
which
includes the question of delegation of responsibility to ‘artificial
agents’
and the consequent need for ethical rules for such agents. Although
Bynum
welcomes different ethical traditions, he is well aware that some of
them would
not be compatible with “General Flourishing Ethics”.
d) Bernd Frohmann
Following
Michel Foucault
and Gilles Deleuze, Bernd Frohmann proposes a philosophical
interrogation of
the local effects of the Internet through three main concepts, namely
effect,
locality, and ethics (Frohmann 2007). He discusses the relationships
between
the global and the local or, more specifically, between the flows of
capital,
information, technology, and organizational interaction by pointing to
the
similarities and difference of today’s “space of flow” (Manuel
Castells) with
some of its predecessors for instance in England’s global empire.
According to
Frohmann, “ethical action consists in a ’mode of subjectivation’ not
eclipsed
by the will to truth’s drive to knowledge, transcendence, and
universality. A
philosophical ethos seeks contingencies and singularities rather than
universal
determinants, which block the aim of getting ‘free of oneself’”
(Frohmann 2007,
64-65). This is a plea for a kind of Intercultural Information Ethics
that
focuses on a careful situational analysis starting with the local
conditions
which does not mean mono-cultural chauvinism but critical appraisal of
the
way(s) computers control societies and the strategies people can
develop in
order to becoming “digitally imperceptible.” Frohmann asks for
strategies of
“escaping” the Internet rather than “localizing” it as far as it can
become a
local instrument of oppression.
e) Rafael Capurro
In today’s
information
society we form ourselves and our selves mainly through digital media.
The
power of digital networks does not lead necessarily to slavery and
oppression
but also to reciprocity and mutual obligation. Globalisation gives rise
to the
question of what does locally matter. Cyberspace vanishes into the
diversity of
complex real/virtual space-time connections of all kinds which are not
any more
separable from everyday life and its materiality. The boundaries of
language
against which we are driven appear now as the boundaries of digital
networks
which not only pervade but accelerate all relationships between humans
as well
as between all kinds of natural phenomena and artificial things
Following Michael Walzer
(1994) and Soraj Hongladarom (2001) I conceive moral arguments as
“thick” or
“thin” regarding whether they are contextualized or not but I question
the view
that there is no third alternative between mono- and meta-cultural
ethical
claims (Capurro 2007). A purely meta-cultural information ethics
remains
abstract if it is not inter-culturally reflected. The task of
Intercultural
Information Ethics is to intertwin “thick” and “think” ethical
arguments in the
information field. The analysis by Michel Foucault on the Western
tradition of parrhesia
or ‘direct speech’ shows that it as a special trait of Western moral
behaviour
and democratic practice in contrast to the importance of ‘indirect
speech’ in
Eastern traditions (Foucault 1983). We should developed this difference
for
instance with regard to Confucian and Daoist thought and their
relevance for
the development of information societies
in Asia. In resonance to Charles Ess’ concept of an ethical pros hen
(“towards
one”) that looks for a pluralist interpretation and application of
shared
ethical norms (Ess 2006), I argue in favor of a hothen (“from which”)
approach
that turns the attention to the question of the source(s) of ethical
norms
including the multiple cognitive-emotional experience of such
source(s). The
task of IIE is not only to describe them, but to open the endless task
of translation between them. As Susan
Sontag
suggests (Sontag 2004), the task of the translator can be seen as an
ethical
task if we conceive it as the experience of the otherness of other
languages
that moves us to transform our mother tongue – including the
terminologies used
by different philosophic schools – instead of just preserving it from
foreign
or heretic influences.
What is the
concrete
impact of information and communication technologies on different
cultures and
particularly on their moral foundations?
II. PRIVACY FROM AN IIE
PERSPECTIVE
Let us take
a look at the
privacy issue as an example of how specific ethics issues are
understood from
different cultural traditions, namely, Chinese, Thai and Japanese
cultures. Privacy
is a key question as it deals with basic conceptions of the human
person.
Intercultural dialogue is the antidote to the danger of getting “lost
in
translation” that arises from a mono-logical discourse aiming at
reducing all
differences to the own language.
a) China
Lü
Yao-Huai analyzes the
privacy experience of today’s ordinary Chinese people (Lü 2005).
According to
Lü there is a transformation of contemporary Chinese consciousness
of privacy
starting with economic and political reforms since 1980. This cultural
and
moral change concerns mainly three aspects:
1)
Individual freedom is
not any more a taboo topic. A conversation partner can refuse to answer
a
question on the plea that “this is my privacy.”
2) There is
also a
tendency not to interfere with what ones perceives to be the privacy of
the
other.
3) The
common Chinese
concept of privacy Yinsi (“shameful secret”) has been expanded to
include all
personal information whether shameful or not that people do
not want others
to know.
With the
rise of the
Internet in the 1990s the question of data privacy emerged in China.
Lü
provides an overview of the legal framework of Chinese data protection
and
discusses the following ethical principles:
1) the
principle of
respect,
2) the
principle of
informed consent,
3) the
principle of
equilibrium (between the safety of personal privacy and the safety of
society),
and
4) the
principle of
social rectification.
The last two
principles
take society as the higher value. Lü questions the claim that
privacy remains a
foreign concept for many Chinese people. He argues that in rural areas,
following the tradition of collectivism, people are more interested in
other
people’s lives than in the cities. Chinese papers published so far on
information ethics dealing with privacy interpret it as an instrumental
instead
as an intrinsic good. Chinese researchers argue that privacy protection
has a
function with regard to social order. Although many Chinese still think
that
there is no right to privacy within the family, a survey among the
young
generation shows the opposite interest. Lü foresees a strong
influence of
Western views on privacy without Chinese traditional culture becoming
fully
Westernized in this regard (Lü 2007).
b) Thailand
Krisana
Kitiyadisai
explores the changes of the concept of privacy in Thai culture, based
on
collectivism and non-confrontation (Kitiyadisai 2005). ‘Being private’
applies
in traditional Thailand to the space shared by family members. The lack
of a
Thai word for privacy is due, according to Kitiyadisai, to the feudal
heritage
of Thai society with a system of hierarchical ranking, politeness
protocols and
patronage. Strong relationships are based on the principle of
non-confrontation
avoiding the disastrous results of ‘losing-face’ (‘siar-na’) instead of
face-saving (‘koo-na’). According to Kitiyadisai, “the combination of
privacy
as ‘private affairs’ (‘rueng-suan-tua’) and the right of
‘non-interference’ works
in support of ‘saving face’” (Kitiyadisai 2005, 18). These values are
similar
to Confucian values of “ancestor reverence, respect for ‘face’,
responsibility,
loyalty, modesty and humility” (Kitiyadisai 2005, 24). According to
Buddhism,
human rights are not intrinsic to human individuals but they are
necessary for
conducting a virtuous human existence. Kitiyadisai provides an overview
of the
data protection legislation in Thailand. She stresses the ongoing
tensions
between “imported liberal democratic values” and “traditional Thai
values.”
Soraj
Hongladarom
describes a grave challenge to the privacy of Thai citizens
(Hongladarom 2007). The Thai government
plans to introduce a
digital national identification card in a country with no specific law
protecting personal information. The threat of political misuse raises
the
question on the nature of privacy and its justification. Hongladarom
explores
this question from the perspective of two famous Budhhist sages, namely
Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 AD), founder of the Mahahāyāna Buddhism, and
Nagasena (c.
150 BC). He writes: “The reason I believe the Buddhist perspective is
important
in this area is that Buddhism has a very interesting claim to make
about the
self and the individual on whose concept the whole idea of privacy
depends” (Hongladarom
2007, 109)
The
fact that Buddhism rejects the individual self does not mean that it
rejects
privacy. In order to understand this counterintuitive argument
Hongladarom
distinguishes between the absolute and conventional level of assertion.
From an
absolute point there is no distinction between subject and object. If
there is
no inherently existing self then privacy is grounded on the
conventional idea
that it is necessary for democracy which means that privacy has an
instrumental
instead of an intrinsic or core value. But, according to Hongladarom,
the
distinction between instrinsic and instrumental values has an insecure
foundation as all values rest on our attachment to them. According to
Nagasena,
the conventional self exists in conventional reality and is shown to be
a mere
illusion after analysis in terms of the “ultimate truth.” Hongladarom
parallels
Nagarjuna’s distinction between “conventional truth” and “ultimate
truth” with
Kant’s distinction between a “phenomenal” and a “noumenal” realm. But
in
contrast to Kant there is no “I” providing a transcendental unity of
apperception. Privacy as used in everyday life, is not denied in
Buddhism. It
is in fact justified as an instrument for the purpose of living
harmoniously
according to democratic ideals. But “from the ultimate perspective of a
Buddha,
privacy just makes no sense whatsoever” (Hongladarom 2007, 120).
Violations of
privacy are based on the three “mental defilements” (kleshas), namely
greed,
anger, and delusion, the antidote being to cultivate love and
compassion. He
writes: “Compassion naturally arises from this realization when one
realizes
that other beings are no different from oneself. All want to get rid of
suffering, and all do want happiness. The benefit of this realization
for information
ethics is that compassion is the key that determines the value of an
action”
(Hongladarom 2007, 120). Compassion is, I would say, the “basic mood”
of
Buddhist experience of the uniqueness of the world and our existence of
which
we have nolens volens to take care.
c) Japan
Similar
tensions can be
found in Japan as Makoto Nakada and Takanori Tamura analyze in a paper
that was
originally conceived as a dialogue with them and myself published in
the same
volume of “Ethics and Information Technology” (Nakada/Tamura 2005;
Capurro 2005).
It is a pity that the constraints of Western monologic academic culture
did not
allow the publication of this dialogue. According to Nakada and Tamura,
Japanese people live in a three-fold world, namely Shakai or the world
influenced by Western values, Seken or the traditional and indigenous
worldview, and Ikai which is a world from evils, disasters and crime
seem to
emerge. On the basis of the analysis of the way an homicide was
portrayed in
the quality newspaper Asahi Shimbum, Nakada and Tamura show the
ambiguities of
the concept of privacy in modern Japan. They write: “while the
standpoint of Shakai
would consider publishing personal information about the Tutiura murder
victims
to be an invasion of privacy and violation of human rights, from the
standpoint
of the traditional values and beliefs of Seken, this publication at the
same
time functions as a warning against the breakdown of moral and ethics –
an
breakdown, finally, that is rooted in Ikai as the domain of such
betrayal”
(Nakada/Tamura 2005, 28). Living in three worlds creates a kind of
discontinuous identity that is very different from Western metaphysical
dichotomies. One main difference concerns the question of ‘denial of
self’ (Musi)
which seems to be one of the most important Buddhist values for the
majority of
Japanese people. This view is the opposite to the idea of Western
subjectivity
from which we, Westerners, derive the concepts and ‘intrinsic values’
of
autonomy and privacy.
CONCLUSION
IIE is an
emerging
discipline. The present debate shows a variety of foundational
perspectives as
well as a preference for the narrow view that focuses IIE on ICT.
Consequently
comparative studies with other media and epochs are mostly not being
considered
so far. With regard to IIE issues in today’s information societies,
there are a
lot of cultures and regions that have not been analyzed so far. Privacy
as well
as online communities, governmentality, gender issues, mobile phones,
health
care, and, last but not least, the digital divide are on the agenda.
New issues
such as blogs, wikis and “Second Life” are arising. We have to deepen
the
foundational debate on the sources of morality. According to Michel
Foucault,
ethics can be understood as the “problematization” of morality.
Intercultural
Information Ethics has a critical task to achieve when it compares
information
moralities. This concerns the ontological or structural as well as the
ontic or
empirical levels of analysis. One important issue in this regard is the
question
of the universality of values vs. the locality of cultures and vice
versa which
is related to the problem of their homogenization or hybridization.
Wonil Rhee a
curator of
the exhibition “Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves” at the Center for
Art and
Media (Karlsruhe, Germany) writes in his introduction “The creative
time of
thermocline. Conflicts between and Becomings of different Time-spaces”:
“'Thermocline', the theme
of the exhibition, means a layer in a large body of water where warm
and cold currents
meet to cause a sudden change of water temperature. As a metaphor, this
natural
phenomenon, that is, the collision between huge currents in the deep
ocean
symbolizes the encounter between West and non-West, Europe and Asia,
and the
world and Asia primarily and secondarily, the change of water
temperature as
the outcome of the physical collision represents a multi-layered system
of
meaning about the comprehensive change of history, culture, and
topographical
map, that is, the 'change-conversion of reality'. As if shedding light
on the
'Thermocline' phenomenon occurring in the depth of the ocean, the
exhibition
aims to explain the acculturation and collision between globalism and
localism,
the discord and conflict between tradition and modernity, the collision
and
coexistence between high and low culture and so on, which all have run
through
the waves of dynamic upheaval of modern and contemporary history and
contemporary art, with the understandings of the over-all tendencies of
the
infiltrations, currents, chasms and absorptions of philosophical,
humanist
thoughts.” (Rhee 2007)
Thermocline
is, I think,
a wonderful metaphor for the issues addressed by IIE. We are looking
for a
thermocline of information ethics.
Acknowledgements:
The
author thanks Kenneth Einar Himma (Seattle Pacific University, USA) and
Herman
T. Tavani (Rivier College, USA) for their critical comments on the
original long
version of this paper published in: Kenneth Einar Himma and Herman T.
Tavani (Eds.) Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. New Jersey:
Wiley, 2008, 639-665.
BIBILIOGRAPHY
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