|
and Rafael Capurro |
|
See the article by Siddharth Venkataramkrishnan: Online privacy: a fraught philosophical debate. In The Financial Times May 2021 (pdf) |
| Could you talk to some of the key
differences between Japanese and Western conceptions of the self, and
how they
impact privacy? My thoughts on this issue go back to
a long-standing dialogue with my Japanese colleague Makoto Nakada
(Tsukuba
University) that started fifteen years ago. [1] One key difference
between
Japanese and Western conceptions of the self concerns the concept of
"denial of the self " (Musi) in the Buddhist tradition. The
individual self is not only nothing substantial but it is associated
with
selfishness. Being the ground of suffering it should not be protected
but
eventually annihilated reaching the nirvana. In the Christian
tradition, the
self is an immortal soul. In the Kantian as well as in the secular
humanistic
tradition humans represent humanity in their individuality having
"dignity" and not a "value." According to Thai philosopher
Soraj Hongladarom, although "from the ultimate perspective of a Buddha,
privacy makes no sense whatsoever" it does make sense to cultivate
compassion with regard to all living beings. [2] This key difference
concerning the status of the self although it impacts privacy with
regard to its
philosophical foundation does not necessarily hinder a common
perspective about
its legal protection. Western secularized and naturalized
societies are still rooted in a two-fold perspective, namely the world
of
sensory experience and the world of sensible experience, or the
physical and
the meta-physical, having impact on the protection of individual
privacy as
being essential for the conception of freedom, autonomy and a free
society.
Japanese dwell also in a two-fold world, namely the world of
traditional
morality (Seken) and the morality imported from the Western
world (Shakai).
But on a deeper level, Japanese dwell also in a world they call Ikai
which is
"the aspect of the world from which evils, disasters,
crimes, and impurity" arise. [3] This means that the
concept of privacy has different meanings according to the perspective
from
which, for instance, a homicide is being reported. Beyond this
three-fold view
on privacy, Japanese make also a difference between 'public' (Ohyake)
and 'private' (Watakusi). Ohyake referred to "the
imperial
court, the government, the nation, society, as well as to making things
open and
to being impartial" and today to the "governmental", while Watakusi
means "partial, secret, and selfish." [4] The word 'privacy' in the
form of puraibashii is a loan word in Japanese. According to
Nakada and
Tamura, there are two 'axes' that define public/private issues in
Japan, namely
the puraibashii axis and the Ohyake / Watakusi
axis, both
being intermixed. All this has impact in the way Japanese people view
their
privacy on the Internet no less than in the way(s) the press reports
(or not)
on 'private' issues and on the legal framework as well. Western
conceptions of
the self and of privacy open different ways of conceptual and practical
dialogue with the Japanese ones. [1] See
R. Capurro: Privacy. An
intercultural perspective. In: Ethics and Information Technology, March
2005,
7, 37-47. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-005-4407-4.
For an
overview see my "Intercultural aspects of digitally mediated whoness,
privacy and freedom" dealing with the Far East (Japan,
Thailand,
China), Latin America and Africa.
In: Rafael Capurro, Michael Eldred, Daniel Nagel: Digital Whoness.
Identity,
Privacy and Freedom in the Cyberworld. Berlin: De Gruyter 2013,
211-234. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110320428/html [4] ibid.
p. 32. |
| How have discussions of
intercultural ideas of ethics in the digital sphere changed over time -
is it
fair to say that there is a greater understanding across the board of
these
challenges?
UNESCO has been dealing with
international and intercultural aspects of information technology since
twenty
five years. [5] The academic problematization of intercultural issues
of information
ethics or
IIE (Intercultural Information Ethics) goes back to an international
conference
organized by the International Center of Information Ethics (ICIE) that
was
held at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (Germany) in 2004.
[6]
The International Review
of Information Ethics (IRIE), the journal of the ICIE created in 2004
was
devoted from its very beginning to an intercultural dialogue in the
field. [7] Both, ICIE and IRIE,
created by myself in 1999 and 2004, moved in 2020 from Germany to the
University of Alberta (Canada) being now under the leadership of the
Canadian
Information Scientist Jared Bielby. Mr Bielby and the Australian
Information
Scientist Matthew Kelly edited the book Information Cultures in the
Digital
Age. A Festschrift in Honor of Rafael Capurro (Wiesbaden:
Springer 2016)
with several contributions dealing with IIE. Since the Karlsruhe conference the
field has grown very quickly with a lot of publications and symposia.
The proceedings
of the Karlsruhe symposium were published in 2007. [8] The discussions
on IIE
have diversified not only with regard to different issues and fields of
application, such as roboethics or ethics of algorithms, [9] but also
concerning the
growing interest in different parts of the world such as Africa, Latin
America
and India on these issues. [10] The ICIE has organized
several international meetings particularly in (South-)Africa under the
patronage of UNESCO starting in 2007 with the first Pan-African
Conference on
Information Ethics co-organized by the University of Pretoria, the
University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA) and the ICIE, held in Pretoria 5-7
February 2007. [11] A special highlight was
the creation of the African Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics
(ACEIE)
at the University of Pretoria in 2012 under the leadership of Dr.
Coetzee
Bester organizing regularly pan-african symposia in different African
countries
as well as workshops and seminars, including online publications. [12]
IBICT
(Instituto
Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia),
which is linked to the
Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, has been
active for
more than twenty years promoting information ethics in Brazil. [13] The
Latin America &
The Caribbean Chapter of the ICIE is headed by Marco Schneider, Arthur
Bezerra
and Cordel Green, researchers at IBICT as well as in several Brazilian
universities. Schneider directs the research group Perfil-i
(Perspectivas
Filosóficas em Informação) out of IBICT in
partnership with Rafael Capurro and
Arthur Bezerra. Bezerra
directs the research group Escritos (Estudos Críticos em
Informação, Tecnologia
e Organização Social), with the participation of
Schneider. The International Society for Ethics
and IT (INSEIT) organizes together with the International
Association for Computing and Philosophy
(IACAP) the CEPE (Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry) conferences
since
2000, [14] the next one on "The
Philosophy and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence" 5-9 July 2021 in
cooperation with the University of Hamburg. [15] Charles Ess has organized
conferences on "Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and
Communication" (CATaC) since 1998. [16] Coming back to your question: How
have discussions of intercultural ideas of ethics in the digital sphere
changed
over time - is it fair to say that there is a greater understanding
across the
board of these challenges? Yes, the discussions on IIE have changed
over time
and the plethora of meetings, publications and creation of centres all
over the
world provide enough evidence that there is a greater understanding not
only
within the academia but also having large impact on society at large
through
the mediation of social media and particularly through a growing
number of
zoom meetings open to a larger audience. [5]
See recently:
International Policy Dialogue on IFAP Priority Areas in the
BRICS
Countries organized by the African Centre of Excellence for Information
Ethics
(ACEIE) held in Cape Town, South Africa, July 4-8, 2018 as well as
the
International Conference on Access to Information in Time of
Crisis - The
UNESCO Information For All Programme Priorities and The
COVID-19
Pandemic, 26-28 August, 2020 organized by India Centre of
Excellence for
Information Ethics (ICEIE), Centre for Digital Learning, Training
and
Resources (CDLTR), University of Hyderabad (India); African Centre of
Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE), University of Pretoria
(South
Africa); Russian National IFAP Committee, Interregional Library
Cooperation
Centre (Russian Federation); UNESCO Chair on Language Policies for
Multilingualism, University of Santa Catarina (Brazil). My contribution
to this
debate: On biological and informational pandemias. http://www.capurro.de/pandemias_engl.html [6]
International ICIE Symposium 2004:
Localizing the Internet. Ethical Issues
in Intercultural Perspective, 4-6 October, 2004: http://www.capurro.de/ICIE2004Symposium.html.
See: https://www.i-c-i-e.org/icie-history [8]
Rafael Capurro, Johannes
Frühbauer, Thomas Hausmanninger (Eds.): Localizing the
Internet. Ethical
Aspects in Intercultural Perspective. Munich: Fink 2007. See also the
comprehensive book by Soraj Hongladarom and Charles Ess (eds.):
Information
Technology Ethics. Cultural Perspectives. Hershey, London, Melbourne,
Singapore:
Idea Group Reference 2007. [9] See R.
Capurro: Intercultural Roboethics for a Robot Age. In: Makoto
Nakada,
Rafael Capurro and Koetsu Sato (Eds.): Critical Review of Information
Ethics
and Roboethics in East and West. Master's and Doctoral Program in
International
and Advanced Japanese Studies, Research Group for "Ethics and
Technology
in the Information Era", University of Tsukuba 2017 (ISSN 2432-5414),
13-18; R. Capurro: Enculturating Algorithms. In: Nanoethics (2019)
1-7 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-019-00340-9 [11]
The proceedings were
published in the International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE):
https://informationethics.ca/index.php/irie/issue/view/2 [12] https://www.up.ac.za/african-centre-of-excellence-for-information-ethics.
The
ACEIE is now part of the ICIE as its African Chapter: https://www.i-c-i-e.org/chapters. [15] https://www.inf.uni-hamburg.de/en/inst/ab/eit/cepe-iacap2021.html |
| How difficult is it to reconcile
Western centric platform design with a multitude of different ideas
around
privacy? Societies, having different moral and
legal traditions, approach the issue of privacy from specific
perspectives
and needs as the example of Japan shows. At the same time the growing
academic
dialogue on IIE makes possible if not to 'reconcile' at least to open
paths of
thought that make possible to cross over from one culture to the other,
cultures themselves being a dynamic result of several forms of
hybridizations
over centuries. Even if there might be issues, like the example of the
self
shows, that remain basically different, this does not mean that the
frameworks
upon which they are based are incommensurable to one another. The task
of
translation is a core issue of IIE and makes possible to understand
each other
by making differences explicit. The 'reconciliation' at the theoretical
level
does not aim at producing some kind of 'Western centric platform' with
different ideas about privacy converging integrated into it, which
would be a kind
of Western cultural colonialism. Even the creation of different kinds
of
international declarations such as the UDHR and many others also in the
information ethics field, such as the Tshwane Declaration on
Information Ethics
in Africa from 2007 [17] and the Hyderabad Declaration from 2021, [18]
are examples of unity in
diversity particularly concerning practical goals under the umbrella of
basic
principles and values but without necessarily a deeper understanding of
such
principles and values from a philosophical perspective. In other words,
'reconciliation' is a concept with different meanings according to the
context
in which it is used. Moral and legal systems can be understood as a
kind of
symbolic immune systems that protect a society from dangers coming from
outside
the system. But if immune systems, as in the case of biological ones,
are not
able to evolve naturally or artificially (such as with a vaccine) they
turn
into a death cage. In other words, morality needs a critical reflection
which
is called ethics in order to evolve. Ethics is, like any other
scientific
field, a never ending process. It is important not to confuse the
object of
reflection with reflection itself. [19] [17] Tshwane
Declaration.
[18] http://cdltr.uohyd.ac.in/international-conference-on-ai-dw/ [19] See: John Ladd (1985). The Quest for a Code of Professional Ethics: An Intellectual and Moral Confusion. In: D.G. Johnson, J.W. Snapper (Eds.): Ethical Issues in the Use of Computers. Belmont, CA, 8-13. |
| Is it possible to move from a
dialogue to a merging of differing visions of privacy? I think that what the development of
the last twenty years shows is not some kind of unified vision of
privacy
neither at the theoretical nor at the practical level, but a growing
concern
for respecting different concepts and traditions of privacy while being
aware
that at the practical level there should be a consensus on the way(s)
how to
deal internationally with issues of cyber crime and cyber security that
concern
not only society at large but also the personal lives of individuals
locally
and globally. I think that we need some kind of international agreement
as in
the case of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea or the
Convention on the International Civil Aviation that does not need to be
based
on a merging of different visions of privacy, but on a consensus that
whatever
the basic cultural differences concerning privacy and publicness might
be, all
partners have a common interest in the protection of the safety and
security of
the citizens as well as on formal mechanisms for dealing with
controversial
issues. Even this minimum on moral consensus might sound utopian in a
world in
which wars between states and criminal deeds of all kinds in the
internet or by
using it as a medium has become an unwritten norm of action with
growing bad
consequences at all levels of society. Declarations are a first step
but they
need some kind of legal status as well as the provision that actions
against
the principles stated and agreed upon will be prosecuted. |
| What are the risks around digital
balkanisation when it comes to national regulation driven by
different approaches to core concepts such as privacy?
This vision is not only the opposite
of
digital balkanization but also the opposite of some kind of regulation
driven
by the power of a state or group of states as well as by IT dinosaurs
for whom
human communication is a potential endless source for capital building
beyond
the needs of the people and particularly of those that cannot express
such
needs because they have no digital voice to do it. Such dinosaurs
disguise
their ambitions with ethics committees within their companies or
financing ethics institutes (more and more on AI and Ethics) in public
universities. With quasi-religious proclamations about their goal 'to
make the planet
a
better
place' they are in fact a powerful incentive for balkanisation which
turns
into a
form of resilience that hinder their will to power.
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