10 Global information and computer ethics
10.1 Introduction
Information and Computing Ethics (ICE), as made clear in the diverse chapters included in this volume, address a range of
ethical and political issues raised by the development and diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs),
such as privacy, intellectual property and copyright, freedom of speech, pornography and violence in computer games. However,
while ICTs and our first efforts to come to grips with their ethical impact were long the province of ‘the West’, ICTs are
no longer technologies exclusive to developed countries. Rather, ICTs have spread around the world at a staggering rate, both
in the form of ‘traditional’ ICTs, such as desktop and laptop computers, and the networks that connect them, and in the form
of ‘smart phones’, i.e., mobile phones with ever-increasing computing power and ever-increasing bandwidth connection with
the Internet and the World Wide Web. Along with these technologies come additional applications (e.g., online shopping and
financial transactions) and capabilities (e.g., GPS devices and chips in mobile phones that allow for easy navigation – as
well as ‘participatory surveillance’ (Albrechtslund 2008)) that increasingly pervade and redefine our lives. Such devices and applications dramatically expand the reach and powers
of ICTs around the globe, especially in developing countries.
This means that ICE is forced to confront a range of novel ethical issues and contexts occasioned by the global diffusion
of ICTs. They are novel because, first, these issues and contexts do not characteristically emerge in conjunction with the
use of ICTs within the ethical and cultural traditions of ‘the West’. And second, because our efforts to come to grips with
the ethical matters evoked by ICTs must take on board the recognition that these matters are analysed and resolved in often
radically diverse ways by people around the globe, as our frameworks for ethical analysis and resolution are shaped by often
radically diverse cultures. This is to say that such core matters as what counts as ‘privacy’, intellectual ‘property’, ‘pornography’
and so forth are in large measure dependent upon culturally specific views, beliefs, practices and traditions. As we will see, a key challenge for a global ICE is thus how to foster the development of diverse ICEs – i.e., ICEs that incorporate and preserve the norms, ethical traditions, beliefs and practices of a given culture – while at the same time fostering a shared ICE that ‘works’ across the globe. In other words, globally diffused ICTs perforce make us all citizens of the world (cosmo-politans), and our interactions with one another require a global, not simply a local ICE.
In this chapter, we introduce and explore these matters in the following way. In Section 10.2, we take up three of the issues distinctively evoked by globally diffused ICTs – (1) the digital divide, (2) online global
citizenship and (3) global deliberation and democratization. In Section 10.3, we will explore ethical pluralism as a primary framework within which we may take up a global range of diverse ethical frameworks and decision-making traditions
used to analyse and reflect upon characteristic issues of ICE. In the course of the analysis we will use the core issue of
privacy as our primary example.
10.2 Global issues
The history of ICE is discussed in this volume in the contribution by Terry Bynum. Here, it suffices to recall that ICE has
emerged in the West over the past six decades, beginning with the work of Norbert Wiener (1948), as primarily the concern of a handful of computer scientists and interested philosophers. Most importantly for our purposes,
a number of philosophers rightly predicted in the 1990s that ICE would become a mainstream component of applied ethics and
philosophy – not only in the developed world, but around the world. Indeed, less than a decade into the twenty-first century,
ICTs now connect over 1.463+ billion people around the globe, the equivalent of more than one fifth of the world's population
(21.9%) (Internet World Stats 2008).
This dramatic diffusion of ICTs beyond their territories of origin leads to a number of pressing ethical concerns, beginning
with the Digital Divide. For, despite the utopian visions of 1990s pundits (and their contemporary counterparts), ‘wiring
the world’ (e.g., PBS 1998) with computers and networks has not, as once hoped, led to greater equality either within nations or between them with regard
to access to and usability of ICTs.
10.2.1 Digital divide
Proponents of globalization argue that, as trade and markets expand, greater economic prosperity will follow. In terms of
overall impacts, they are quite correct (Marber 2005). But a central problem that follows in the train of this increased economic activity is that the disparities between the
rich and the poor continue to grow, not shrink. The old phrase, ‘the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor’, remains a cruel
truth about globalization – and this is the case not only within countries, but also between countries (Beitz 2001, p. 106).
ICTs are intimately interwoven with globalization. Along with (until recently) relatively inexpensive transportation costs,
ICTs are a primary driver of globalization as they make possible trade, financial transactions and the relocation of labour
into lower-cost labour markets (e.g., Friedmann 2005). A key problem here, however, is that this global diffusion tends to benefit a small elite; these benefits, moreover, do
not always ‘trickle down’. Consider for example how computer scientists and programmers in India have become ever more well-to-do
as ICTs allow them to sell their skills to companies around the globe – but at a considerably lower cost than, say, a programmer
or computer scientist in the United States and Europe. At the same time, this outflow of money and capital into India means
the (roughly) equivalent loss of jobs and salaries in Europe and the US. And while a growing number of highly skilled and
well-trained Indian professionals certainly benefit, by and large, these benefits remain restricted to a very small group
of people, and thereby tend to increase the disparities between the urban rich and the rural poor within India (e.g., Ghemawat
2007).
The digital divide further points towards other, perhaps more fundamental divisions, sometimes put in terms of ‘the information rich’ vs. ‘the information poor’ (Britz 2007). This contrast emphasizes that access to the nearly unlimited amounts of information made available through ICTs makes all
the difference in terms of (further) developing one's own resources and capabilities. So, for example, Deborah Wheeler (2006) has documented how women in traditional Middle Eastern villages, once given access to ICTs, are able to develop small businesses
that exploit the Internet for advertising, finding lower-cost materials, and so forth. The example highlights a further element
of the digital divide, which Bourdieu called ‘social capital’ (1977). In order to take these sorts of advantages of ICTs, people must not only have access to the technologies but also have
the multiple skills required to make effective use of them, beginning with literacy. This social capital, in turn, is not
equally distributed – especially in many developing countries. The consequence is, again, that those who already enjoy a given
level of social capital are able to build on that capital to their advantage through increased access to ICTs, while those
poor in social capital will not.
To be sure, there are important initiatives and exceptions to these trends, inspired in part, for example, through the growing
use of ‘Free/Libre and Open Source Software’ (FLOSS). The development of interfaces for non-literate populations, including indigenous peoples, will also help overcome some of the barriers between the information rich and poor (Dyson, Hendriks and
Grant 2007). Finally, as Internet-enabled mobile phones continue their dramatic expansion in the developing world, they will almost certainly help
the poor jump past (‘leapfrog’) ICT use and access in the form of traditional computers, and, perhaps, help diffuse the benefits of
ICTs somewhat more evenly.
The digital divide opens up a range of critical ethical questions. For example, what obligations, if any, do the ‘information rich’ citizens and governments of developed countries have towards the information poor – beginning with those
within their own countries, as well as towards those in developing countries? (Canellopoulou-Bottis and Himma 2008) And if the information rich do have some sort of obligation to help the information poor, what forms of assistance are ethically
justified? For example, a major initiative has been launched to ensure that all schools in Africa (550,000+) will have Internet access by the year 2020 (Farrell, Isaacs and Trucano 2007). But building the network infrastructure and providing the computers necessary to make this happen will utterly depend upon
the generosity of such companies as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems and Microsoft. Once these networks are in place, however, it increasingly becomes the responsibility
of the recipients of these technologies to pay for their continued use and maintenance. It is not at all clear that many of
the African schools and countries will be able to do so; and insofar as they are able to do so, this will mean financial flows
out of Africa back to the already well-to-do developed countries. Many in Africa – for whom the memories of Western colonization
and exploitation are quite fresh and clear – are hence critical of such projects, as they run the risk of repeating such exploitation
and colonization, now via ICTs.
10.2.2 Online global citizenship
Despite the harsh realities of the digital divide, as noted above, ICTs now allow more than one fifth of the world's population
to communicate cross-culturally. Studies indicate that the majority of users send and receive information (whether in the
form of emails, browsing web pages, shopping, etc.) within their national borders or within shared linguistic communities
(Ghemawat 2007). At the same time, however, anyone's web pages and emails may in principle cross cultural boundaries, whether intentionally
or inadvertently. This means that, like it or not, our access and use of ICTs increasingly makes us citizens of the world
– cosmo-politans.
Insofar as more and more of us do cross borders online, we are confronted with the range of ethical issues humans have faced
throughout their history of cross-cultural exchanges and interactions. Some of these are obvious, beginning with the importance
of showing respect for the cultural values, norms, practices and beliefs of others, partly because these make up a given cultural identity. One's right
to the recognition and preservation of one's own cultural identity is a hallmark human right in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Universal Human Rights (1948). Yet our cross-cultural interactions online, at least in their current versions, hide or fail to transmit the full reality of the other. This is especially true when we
communicate with those who have limited bandwidth access to the Internet – i.e., primarily those in developing countries.
In these interactions, we usually have access to one another primarily (if not exclusively) via text; this textual access
may be complemented with sound and pictures, but these are usually very limited in quality and detail. In contrast with our
real-world, embodied, face-to-face engagements with other human beings in different cultures our online engagements present
us with an Other who is largely disembodied, abstract, ‘virtual’. It is hence much easier in the online context to assume
that this ‘thin’ Other is simply another version of ourselves – i.e., to assume that her values, beliefs, practices, etc.
are more or less identical to our own. This assumption has a name: ethnocentrism is precisely the view that the values, beliefs, practices, etc. of our own people (ethnos) are the same for all people. The serious difficulty is that such ethnocentrism almost always leads to a two-fold response
to the Other. Either we, in effect, remake the Other in our own image – at the extreme, we insist on the assimilation of the
Other to our own ways and values: this is the root of cultural imperialism. Or, insofar as the Other fails to fit our presumptions
of what counts as human, we may feel justified in exploiting – or even destroying – the Other for our own benefit. The ugly examples of this second
consequence include slavery, colonization and genocide. So, our online global citizenship, as it re-presents to us a thin
concept of the Other, makes it easier to fall prey to the twin dangers of cultural imperialism and exploitation. It is a commonplace
in ethics that greater vulnerabilities require greater care. In this case, because the online environment makes both us and
others more vulnerable to the risks of imperialism and exploitation, we have a greater ethical obligation to be aware of these
risks and to develop strategies to avoid them.
A particular set of these dangers is facilitated by the technologies themselves. For one may assume that ICTs are just tools,
that they are somehow neutral in terms of important cultural values. This assumption is called technological instrumentalism (Shrader-Frechette and Westra 1997). It is powerfully countered in two important ways. First, many philosophers as well as designers of technologies increasingly
recognize a view called the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT). This view argues that technologies embed and foster the values of their designers
– values that vary from culture to culture (e.g., Bijker and Law 1992). Second, there is now an extensive body of evidence with regard to ICTs and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) that make
clear that, indeed, ICTs embed and foster the cultural values and communicative preferences of their designers. So, for example, especially the CMC technologies available in the 1990s relied almost entirely on text; such a
technology thereby favours what communication theorists describe as Low Context/High Content communication styles – styles that emphasize explicit and direct forms of communication (high content, with comparatively less attention to the contexts of communication including
relative social status, for example). By contrast, many cultures and societies – including Arabic, Asian, African and indigenous
peoples – utilize a High Context/ Low Content communication style. Here the emphasis is much more on indirect forms of communication
such as body distance, eye contact (and lack thereof), gesture, etc. – i.e., forms of communication not easily carried via
text-centred CMC. Enthusiasm for wiring the world via Western-designed ICTs favouring Low Context/High Content communication
styles may work to impose the communication style of one set of peoples and cultures upon another. Our use of such ICTs may
risk functioning as a tacit but powerful form of cultural imperialism, as we insist that others move from their own High Context/Low
Content communication style to our own Low Context/High Content style (Ess 2006b).
As global citizens, then, we are ethically obliged to develop a greater awareness of the cultures and communicative preferences
of the multiple Others we can now engage with online. Like the cosmopolitans of the ancient world and the Western Renaissance,
we must learn and respect the values, practices, beliefs, communication styles and languages of ‘the Other’. Failure to do so threatens to turn us instead into cultural tourists or cultural consumers – those who regard other
cultures as largely commodities to be consumed for their own enjoyment, rather than to be understood and respected for their
own sake. More dramatically, failure to do so threatens to make us complicit in forms of computer-mediated imperialism and
colonization (Ess 2006b). Happily, globalization via ICTs brings with it far more positive possibilities as well, as we are about to see.
10.2.3 Global deliberation and democratization
Before examining democratic deliberation in detail, we must first note that such deliberation requires a plurality of voices. There is yet another aspect of plurality that is embedded in the very idea of deliberative democracy.
This is pluralism as a contrast to both relativism and fundamentalism. The contrast to relativism is that judgements are not
considered to be legitimate only relative to some particular framework. This is because pluralism also requires that the framework
itself be justified. Whereas a moral relativist cannot claim that her own position is true beyond the particular context,
we want moral pluralism to hold some, but not all positions to be equally valid or true. In an epistemological sense, relativism
is not a consistent position; in a moral sense, it obstructs the claim that democracy ought to be preferred to fundamentalism
(Thorseth 2007). In order to maintain pluralism as an ideal of modern (multicultural) societies, it is a requirement that we not only understand
but also undertake substantive judgements of public opinions. Without getting into this huge debate topic here, we shall confine ourselves to pointing out the importance of making judgements
about particular opposing norms and values, rather than tolerating them by leaving them alone. The potential dialogue with
others, which is basic to deliberative democracy and enlarged way of thinking, may serve as an ideal of the kind of judgement
that moral pluralism requires. We will further see, in the next section, that these notions of pluralism and judgement play central roles in the development of an emerging global Information and
Computer Ethics.
Here we focus on the communicative dimension of globalization, more particularly as displayed in the contemporary debates
on global deliberation and deliberative democracy. A basic idea of deliberation is free and open communication, based on ‘the
unforced force of the better argument’ (Habermas 1983, 1990, 1993). According to John Dryzek (2001), deliberation is a mode of communication making deliberators amenable to changing judgements, views and preferences during
the course of interactions. The core idea of democratic deliberation is to contribute to a better-informed public. Deliberative
democrats, along with so-called ‘difference democrats’, share this basic ideal. Whereas most deliberative democrats exclude some modes of communication, in
particular rhetoric, difference democrats hold that rhetoric is a basic means of persuasion in deliberation. Allowing for different modes
of communication implies that deliberation becomes more easily accessible to disempowered people in particular, they hold.
Thus, a wider range of people may participate in public deliberation (Gutman and Thompson 1996, Young 2000). Across the internal differences between these theories, both deliberative and difference democrats share the basic ideal
of recognizing a plurality of opinions in democratic deliberation. The dispute between them is about the extent to which different
communicative styles actually do contribute to open and unforced argumentation in the public domain. An important question
in our context is to what extent the Internet might facilitate global deliberation.
10.2.4 A broadened way of thinking in public deliberation
Difference democrats have claimed that the mode of communication in deliberation may presuppose an ideal of mainstream rational
argumentation that often tends to exclude the language of the underprivileged. The same argument does, however, apply to any
mode of communication that might turn out to work against inclusion and to build new hierarchies. Habermas’ ideal of the unforced
force of the better argument only works as intended if all individuals involved share an equal communicative competence. Hence,
storytelling and testimony might be even as excluding as dispassionate and reasoned talk. All communication in terms set by
the powerful will advantage those who are best able to articulate their opinions. Thus, any kind of communication may entail
coercion. This is why we need additional criteria for identifying what mode of communication and way of thinking are suitable for democratic deliberation. Except for excluding in deliberation any kind
of communication that works coercively, another test mentioned by Dryzek (2001, p. 68) is the requirement to connect the particular (story, testimony) to a universal appeal. This implies transcending
private subjective conditions, a requirement that may be linked to Kant's conception of reflective judgement, as we shall see below.
The main point of deliberation is to make people judge their own and other people's opinions critically. First and foremost,
changes of opinions or preferences should be the outcome of better-qualified opinions, as compared to the quality of opinions
ahead of deliberation. Embedded in the idea of deliberation is the anticipation of a pluralism in terms of a plurality of voices. Both Rawls and Bohman have emphasized the importance of people agreeing for different reasons, i.e. overlapping
consensus (Rawls 1993, Bohman 1996). The importance of pluralism is also clearly stated by A. Phillips (1995, p. 151) when she holds that deliberation matters only because there is difference.
In order for an opinion to qualify as a public and not only private opinion, it is important to address a universal audience.
This is an explicit aim of democratic deliberation. Public recognition by way of transcending the purely private and subjective
condition is basic to the Kantian notion of reflective judgement or a broadened way of thinking (Kant 1952). Reflective judgement is about empirical contingencies – e.g. political opinions – for which validity is gained through
reflection of something particular as opposed to subsuming something under universal laws. This is a mode of thinking that
Kant initially explores in the aesthetic domain, whereas Hannah Arendt (1968) and Seyla Benhabib (1992) have extended it to the political and moral faculties (Thorseth 2008). Kant's broadened way of thinking is a mode of thinking that transcends local and private conditions. The method described
by Kant is contained in his concept of sensus communis. This is a public sense and a critical faculty that takes account of the mode of representation in everyone else, thereby
avoiding the illusion that private personal conditions are taken as objective. This is accomplished by weighing the judgement
with the possible judgements of others, and by putting ourselves in the position of everyone else, abstracting from the limitations
that contingently affect our estimate (Kant 1952, § 40). What interests us here is how this public use of reason, described by Kant, captures an essential point of deliberation:
in order to address a universal audience to gain validity of opinions we have to transcend the limitations set by private
and contingent conditions.
Kant's enlarged mode of thinking is about how to stimulate the imaginative powers in people in order to transcend the purely
private subjective conditions of empirical contingencies. And ICTs may improve our imaginative capacity to put ourselves in
the position of everyone else (Thorseth 2008).
10.2.5 Deliberation by way of new technology
Ideally, the outcome of deliberation is change of preferences due to possibilities of viewing matters from the position of
everyone else. This implies an empirical challenge to make it feasible for people to be informed about other people's positions.
What is at stake is not so much to have knowledge of as many opinions as possible; rather, it is giving people access to the
outcome of deliberative processes. We are faced with what John Dewey (1927) called ‘the problem of the public’: the lack of shared experiences, signs and symbols which he takes to be the Babel of our time (Dewey
1927, p. 142). The main reason for our Babel is the political complexity that requires both a better-informed public but also
a need for policy makers to become better informed of the experiences of the public. According to Dewey ‘the essential need. . .is
the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. This is the problem of the public’ (Dewey 1927, p. 208). The problem of the public is revitalized due to ICTs as they offer both solutions but also new challenges to this
much older philosophical problem of conditions for public debate.
One way of dealing with the problem of the public is to establish procedures for deliberation, in order to inform both the
public and policy makers of opinions that are based on an enlarged way of thinking. The essential issue is that legitimacy
of opinions through deliberation has gained validity in the public domain. The transcendence of private subjective conditions
is obtained because the opinion addresses a universal audience. James Fishkin has suggested a method for such deliberative
processes online, and several trials have been carried out (Fishkin 1997, Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). The suggested model is labelled online deliberative polling, the aim being to contribute to better-informed democracy. Briefly, the method is first to poll
a representative sample of some targeted issue, e.g. on health care and education. After the first baseline poll, members
of the sample are invited to gather in some place in order to discuss the issues together with competing experts and politicians.
After the deliberation, the sample group is again asked the original question. The resulting changes of opinions represent
the conclusion the public would reach if they had the opportunity to become better informed and more engaged in the issue.
The positive results of these experiments is that people tend to have less extreme, more complex and better argued opinions
of the issues after deliberative polling (Elgesem 2005). Another important observation is that there is no sign of more consensus among the participants after deliberative polling,
but no sign of more polarization either (Fishkin 1997). What the experiment shows is that deliberation might be very well suited for improvement of people's opinions (Thorseth
2006).
Technologically, it is no doubt feasible to design set-ups and websites such that people can easily encounter opposing and
different views. In principle, it seems to be possible to use ICTs, at least partly, to deal with the problem of the public: to inform people of a plurality
of opinions that have been improved through deliberative processes. Cass Sunstein's worries about group polarization seem
manageable (2001). However, in natural surroundings we know far too little about another problem discussed by Sunstein, i.e.
the problem of filtering. Put briefly, most people will visit web pages that they are particularly interested in, and thereby meet like-minded
people, for instance from a particular political party. The argument pool that is offered might be too limited. The worst
scenario is that people start designing their own ‘Daily Me’, i.e. newspapers where they can read about only what they have
chosen themselves. Rather than being better informed about a plurality of different views, everyone would only read their
own version of a limited range of topics.
In the US, a very interesting web-based deliberative polling project has been created, the Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly (PICOLA) which has been developed by Robert Cavalier.1 It takes its point of departure in the theory of deliberative polling as developed by Fishkin. PICOLA is primarily a tool
for carrying out deliberative polling in online contexts. One objective is to create the next generation of Computer-Mediated Communication tools for online structured dialogue and deliberation. An audio/video synchronous environment
is complemented with a multimedia asynchronous environment. A general gateway (the PICOLA) contains access to these communication
environments as well as registration areas, background information and surveys (polls). The PICOLA user interface allows for
a dynamic multimedia participant environment. On the server side, secure user authentication and data storage/retrieval are
provided. Real-time audio conferencing and certain peer-to-peer features are implemented using a Flash Communication Server.
Mobile PICOLA extends the synchronous conversation module and the survey module. The former provides a true ‘anytime/anywhere’
capability to the deliberative poll; the latter allows for real-time data input and analysis. And with real-time data gathering,
it becomes possible to display the results of a deliberative poll at the end of the deliberation day, thereby allowing stakeholders
and others present to see and discuss the results as those results are being displayed. The interface relations made possible
by this technology are of vital importance to the deliberative process, as it allows for synchronous conversation in real
time. Thus, it appears to come very close to offline interface communication.
This project demonstrates the feasibility of arranging for online deliberation at a trans-national level. Perhaps it would
be possible also to arrange for it on a global scale. One immediate limitation would probably be that only democratic countries would be likely to consent to
it.
Several other reports on online deliberation are discussed by Coleman and Gøtze (2001/2004). Some of their examples are drawn from experiments of deliberation between local politicians and their electors. Even if
a deliberative mode and structure of communication is obtained throughout the trial, there is a decline in deliberation as
soon as the period of the trial has ended. Besides, the scope of the experiments discussed is of limited or local scope, and
thus they are not comparable to a global level of communication.
There are as yet no conclusive answers as to whether online deliberative polling can deal with the real problem of the public, namely how to achieve the aim of a better informed public. What is really at stake is how to make people
overcome the limitations that contingently affect their judgements. In order to avoid the problem of filtering there is a need for a plurality of voices and modes of communication: cool and impassionate, emotional use of rhetoric and storytelling just to mention a few of those discussed by deliberative and difference democrats. People's access
to such a plurality may be enhanced through new information technologies, in particular the Internet. However, there are as yet serious limitations as well, most importantly because of shortage of democratic states
on a global scale, and the digital divide. The potential of ICTs to contribute to worldwide deliberative democracy can only
be realized if there is a political consensus to make the new technology contribute in this way. An immediate objection is
that such consensus is itself a contested matter, especially as freedom of speech is a pivotal and intrinsic democratic ideal. Thus, there seems to be an opposition between freedom of speech
and a plurality of opinions safeguarding democracy on the one hand, and the need to control the democratic process through
arranged deliberation in order to protect those very same values on the other. A way of resolving this dilemma is to consider
democratic procedures beyond dispute and not at the same level as, for instance, religious or political outlooks. Rather,
democratic procedures are a guarantor of possible disputes about opinions and outlooks.
There are obvious limitations to using the Internet for deliberative democratic purposes, but there is another way in which
new technology might contribute to broadening people's minds beyond experimental deliberative projects. Keeping in mind the
importance of access to possible though not necessarily real worlds, we still know very little about the impact virtual worlds may have in shaping people's opinions. Given the central role of imagination and the visual in Kant's notion of sensus communis and a broadened way of thinking, it seems probable that experiences in Second Life, for example, are conceived as real experiences
that visitors have. Further, there is no reason why the experiences in virtual worlds should have less impact on people's
opinions compared to real-life experiences. Acting in such virtual worlds might prove to be a method of broadening people's
minds and enabling them to envisage possible scenarios that are not realised in the ‘real’, i.e. offline world. As yet it remains to research in further
depth and width in which ways the virtuality of new technology might contribute to better informed publics realising the ideals
embedded in deliberative democracy.
10.3 Global ethics
10.3.1 Global perspectives on privacy: from relativism to pluralism?
Various forms of ethical pluralism emerge across the history of Western philosophy – beginning with what Ess has called Plato's
interpretive pluralism as developed primarily in The Republic (Ess and Thorseth 2006, Ess 2006a). Briefly, as the analogy of the line 509d–511e makes especially clear, a single norm – e.g., justice, beauty, or the Good
as such – allows for multiple interpretations and applications in diverse contexts and settings. That is, every ethical situation
arises within a specific context, one defined by a field of particularities. To apply a general norm – e.g., the well-being
or harmony of the community – to one such context requires a specific interpretation or application; the same norm, applied
to a different context defined by a different set of particularities, may require a very different interpretation or understanding.
For example, the well-being or harmony of the community in the harsh environment of Inuit peoples may justify a form of assisted suicide for elderly family members no longer able to contribute to the material
well-being of the community. Such assisted suicide in developed countries, however, can be seen as a violation of the general
norm of community well-being: materially supporting the continued existence of elderly persons does not, as in the case of
the Inuit, directly threaten the society's material basis. Developed countries can afford to sustain those persons who can
no longer contribute materially to society. And the wisdom and experience of the elders, in turn, can contribute to the well-being
and harmony of the community in distinctive ways. The key point is that while assisted suicide is appropriate in the Inuit
community, and rejected as abhorrent in developed societies, both practices represent simply different interpretations or
applications of a shared norm, where these differences are required by the distinctive contexts and particular conditions
of two very diverse societies.
Hence, apparently different ethical responses – e.g., either among diverse individuals or across cultures – do not necessarily imply ethical relativism, i.e., the lack of any shared norms or values. On the contrary, these differences may simply reflect how the field of particularities,
which constitute a specific context and thereby define the ethical issues we face, require us to interpret or apply a general norm in a highly distinctive way, one that makes the general norm applicable to a specific
context.
Moreover, the ability to discern how to apply general norms to distinctively different contexts – along with the still more
fundamental ability to discern which general norms or values indeed apply to a distinctive field of particularities – is associated,
both by Plato and by Aristotle, to phronesis, a particular sort of practical wisdom or judgement that cannot be reduced to purely deductive or algorithmic approaches
to ethical decision-making. Phronesis allows us to negotiate and manoeuvre between often complex and conflicting norms and claims. Indeed, Plato's image of the
pilot (cybernetes) as the analogue or symbol of the ethical person in the Republic suggests that phronesis is not always solely a matter of a logos, of reason or argument:
a first-rate pilot [cybernetes] or physician, for example, feels [] the difference between the impossibilities and possibilities in his art and attempts the one and lets the others go; and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error.
Here, (literally, to ‘feel through’) suggests that it is not simply our mind that is at work in these moments
of judgement: in addition, we engage the capacity, we might say, of an embodied being to sense or feel her way through – a
capacity based in part on rational calculation and in part on long experience. We will return to this theme in the comments
below on Susan Stuart's recent work on enactivism.
(literally, to ‘feel through’) suggests that it is not simply our mind that is at work in these moments
of judgement: in addition, we engage the capacity, we might say, of an embodied being to sense or feel her way through – a
capacity based in part on rational calculation and in part on long experience. We will return to this theme in the comments
below on Susan Stuart's recent work on enactivism.
Versions of such pluralism have been developed in the Western tradition, beginning with Aristotle, whose ‘focal’ (pros hen) equivocals further highlight the role of phronesis or practical wisdom and judgement in discerning how general norms apply to the particularities of a given situation (Ess
2006a, 2007). Within the Christian tradition, Aquinas famously adapts Aristotle to Christian frameworks – and elaborates on Aristotle's notion of phronesis. Given the possibility of more than one understanding or application of a general principle, especially vis-à-vis often very
different contexts, Aquinas explicitly justifies a pluralism that acknowledges that shared general principles may be interpreted
or applied in diverse ways, depending upon particular contexts – an application again dependent upon the peculiar facility
of judgement (Summa Theologiae, 1–2, q. 94, a. 4 responsio, cited in Haldane 2003, p. 91). More contemporary theory has proposed various forms of pluralism and incorporated these into political philosophy
(e.g., Taylor 2002) as well as into ICE, beginning with the work of Larry Hinman (2004, 2008), Terrell Ward Bynum (2000a, 2001, 2006b), and, as we shall see in more detail, Luciano Floridi (2006a, forthcoming, b.).
10.3.2 Pluralism: West and East
But first, we must observe that such pluralism and its affiliated emphasis on the central role of judgement are not restricted
to the Western tradition. On the contrary, such pluralism is an important element of Islam (Eickelman 2003) and Confucian thought (Chan 2003). In addition, notions of harmony and resonance likewise emerge in both Western and Eastern traditions as still further ways to express the distinctive ‘unity-alongside-difference’
that defines pluralism. So, for example, harmony is a goal of politics both for Aristotle and Confucian thought (Elberfeld 2002). Such harmony does not mean some sort of universal norm is applied heavy-handedly in exactly the same way in every situation,
regardless of crucial differences. On the contrary, harmony is understood as relationship of unity that simultaneously preserves
and fosters the irreducible differences defining specific members and classes of a community.
This means, then, that ethical pluralism not only provides us with a way of understanding how a single norm may – via the
reflection and application of judgement – apply in very different contexts in very different ways – including, as we are about to see, with regard to notions of
privacy in diverse Western cultures (i.e., United States and the European Union). Such pluralism also appears to function
in praxis with regard to emerging conceptions of privacy across the East–West divide. Insofar as very similar understandings of pluralism,
judgement and harmony are found in both Western and Eastern traditions, these three elements suggest themselves as potentially
universal constituents of a global ICE that may conjoin shared norms and elements with the irreducible differences defining
diverse cultures.
As an initial example, consider the matter of individual privacy and data privacy protection laws as understood and developed
in the United States and the European Union. On the one hand, both domains share a characteristically modern, Western assumption
– that the individual person exists as a primary reality and, especially as capable of rational choice and autonomy, deserves at least a minimal set of
rights, including a right to privacy. Such a conception of the individual qua rationally autonomous and rights-holder is foundational to modern conceptions and justifications of liberal democracies:
such states exist to protect the rights of such persons, their legitimate powers resting upon the free consent of the governed (so Thomas Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence). On this basis, finally, individual privacy in the Information Age translates into rights of data privacy protection. Especially
as our lives depend more and more upon the transmission of information central to our identities and functions as persons,
consumers, citizens, etc., there is a correlative need to protect our privacy by way of protecting our data (e.g., Floridi
2006a, Tavani 2007, Burk 2007).
So far, so good. But these shared conceptions have nonetheless issued in quite different data privacy protection regimes in
the US, on the one hand, and the EU, on the other. As refracted through the more utilitarian and business-friendly lenses
of US culture, the shared value of the individual and the need for data privacy protection have issued in a patchwork of laws: a few Federal laws define privacy rights in the areas of medical and financial information – leaving more rigorous protection
of individual data privacy up to states and individuals, e.g., as individuals may ‘opt-out’ of certain data-gathering schemes.
By contrast, the EU Data Privacy Protection acts are based on a much more strongly deontological insistence that individual
privacy is a right requiring rigorous protection by the state. So the Directives define what counts as personal and sensitive
information, e.g., not simply name and address, but also regarding health status, religious and philosophical beliefs, trade
union membership and sexual identity, and require that individuals be notified when such information is collected about them.
Individuals further have the right to review and, if necessary, correct information collected about them. In particular, as
Dan Burk points out, the EU laws work exactly opposite to the US emphasis on individuals ‘opting out’ – i.e., leaving data privacy protection to individual initiative. By contrast,
EU laws give individuals the right to consent – i.e., they must first ‘opt-in’ by agreeing to the collection and processing of their personal information (Burk 2007, p. 98). In these ways, the contrasts between US and EU data privacy protection laws represent a pluralism. Again, the US and EU appear to agree upon basic conceptions of the person and individual rights; but each domain interprets
and applies these shared norms in sometimes very different ways, as reflecting the specific contexts of their distinctive
cultural traditions (cf. Michelfelder 2001, Riedenburg 2000).
A similar pluralism can further be discerned between East and West – despite far stronger differences in their initial starting
points. That is, Confucian and Buddhist thought, as shaping the norms and practices of countries such as Thailand, Japan and China (among others),
understand the person first of all as a relational being, in contrast with modern Western emphases on the person as primarily an individual or isolate. Indeed, Buddhism in
its various forms begins with the insistence that the self is an illusion – and a pernicious one at that, insofar as the ego-illusion
is the source of desire, and desire is the source of our discontent: hence, contentment or Enlightenment will come only through
the overcoming of the ego-illusion. Not surprisingly, then, these cultures – until influenced by the West – have had no conception
or tradition of individual privacy as a positive good. On the contrary, what Westerners might think of as individual privacy
is regarded as a negative – e.g., in the Chinese concept of Yinsi (i.e., a ‘shameful secret’ or ‘hidden, bad things’, Lü 2005, p. 14).
Despite these radically different starting points, countries such as China, Japan and Thailand have developed laws that afford their citizens at least some degree of data privacy protection (Lü
2005, Nakada and Tamura 2005, Hongladarom 2007). Their motivations for doing so are largely economic rather than, as in the case of Western countries, rooted in understandings of the individual and individual rights as foundational
to democratic polities. This thus instantiates the notion of overlapping consensus as developed by Rawls and Bohman, as we
saw above. But this again illustrates a pluralism – one all the more striking as it now stretches across even greater philosophical and ethical divides. That is, alongside
the intractable differences between Western and Eastern conceptions of the individual we see some convergence on shared notions
of data privacy protections. To paraphrase Aristotle: data privacy protection is said in many different ways – ways that reflect,
in this instance, the profound cultural differences at work in developing and applying some form of data privacy protection.
Nonetheless, these differences do not forbid the establishment of data privacy protections that are at least similar and mutually
recognizable – if not, to some degree at least, identical (i.e., with regard to the protection of financial information such
as credit card numbers: see Ess 2006a, 2007 for further discussion).
10.3.3 Ethical pluralism in global ICE: contemporary developments
In addition to these sorts of pluralistic convergences between East and West with regard to privacy, we can further note a
similar convergence at a still more fundamental level – namely, with regard to the basic understandings of the nature of the
person. On the one hand, in the face of the initial contrasts we have seen between Western and Eastern views of the person and thus of privacy, Soraj Hongladarom, a Thai philosopher with interests in both Buddhist and Western thought, has pointed
out that this initial contrast is not as black-and-white as it may first appear. Admittedly, modern Western philosophy – especially
as exemplified by Descartes and Kant – has stressed the autonomous self as a kind of primary reality. Again, this seems completely at odds with
especially Buddhist insistence that the self is a pernicious illusion, such that only by overcoming this illusion can we hope
to find true contentment. At the same time, however, Hongladarom points out that modern Western thought includes more communitarian
elements, beginning with Hegel, that help offset and complement the emphasis on the individual. By the same token, Hongladarom
describes a Buddhist conception of the self as an empirical self – one that, from an absolute or Enlightened standpoint will
be regarded as ultimately illusory. Nonetheless, from a relative perspective, such an empirical self retains a certain level
of reality and importance – enough, he thinks, to fund a Buddhist insistence on individual privacy, in sharp contrast with the traditional Thai insistence on privacy only in familiar or collective terms (2007).
The upshot is again a pluralism. Hongladarom's Buddhist empirical self more closely resonates with modern Western conceptions;
but they remain irreducibly different insofar as the empirical self remains a relative reality, vis-à-vis the presumptively
absolute reality of the modern Western self. At the same time, as Hongladarom argues on the basis of a Buddhist empirical
self for both privacy rights and democratic polity, he points to norms and ideals now shared between the modern West and Thailand.
Clearly, these shared norms and ideals are refracted through the lenses of two very diverse cultural and philosophical traditions,
resulting in two distinctive interpretations or applications of shared understandings of individual privacy and democratic
polity.
As a final example – one that parallels Hongladarom's notion of a Buddhist empirical self – we can note that, from the Western
side, Susan Stuart has made especially clear how a number of sharp distinctions characteristic of Kant's thought – starting with a hard boundary between (individual) mind and body – are now being re-thought in light of more
recent developments in our understanding of how human beings, as embodied, come to know and navigate their world (2008).
This re-thinking (under the name of enactivism) moves us from the person as an autonomous but isolated rationality (the approach of cognitivism) towards an understanding
of the person as a mind-body whose knowledge and navigation of the world is only as physically enmeshed with situation and
context.
This is reminiscent, in the first place, of the conception of the person in Plato and Aristotle – and of the phronesis that only an embodied being can practise after long experience. It is further in keeping with a broader turn in Western ethics
towards more relational understandings – e.g., ethics as a matter of sustaining ‘webs of relationships’ in feminist ethics; ecological emphases on sustaining eco-systems as likewise made up of species interwoven
and interdependent upon one another; and Floridi's ‘information ecology’ that consciously models his ontocentric ethics on an ecological model of interconnected and interdependent
wholes. At the same time, these transformations move our Western conceptions of the self closer to – or, we might say, in
still closer resonance or harmony with – the relational conceptions of the self at work in Confucian thought, African thought (Paterson 2007), and elsewhere.
At the same time, however, Stuart's account of the person remains distinctively Western. Such a person, especially as interconnected
with the physical world around her, is presumed to be real in a final sense. This concept, as emphasizing relationship as definitive of the person, thereby moves us closer towards
many non-Western accounts. It remains irreducibly different from (even) Hongladarom's account of the person, according to
which the empirical self – as the closest analogue to Stuart's enactive self – enjoys ontological significance in at least a relative way. But within the larger Buddhist framework, this
empirical self remains comparatively less real than Stuart's enactive person – reflecting thereby the irreducible differences
between these Western and Buddhist ontologies. It is also clear that these two concepts of persons thereby stand as yet another
example of pluralism – one in which a basic notion of the human being in all of her capacities and engagements with the world
is refracted through two irreducibly different cultural lenses.
10.4 Concluding remarks
We hope to have clarified a number of ways in which the global diffusion of ICTs raises a wide array of new ethical challenges.
Such challenges help to reiterate the central importance of ethical pluralism, as a meta-ethical strategy both within and
beyond the borders of Western ethical traditions and an ICE first developed within Western frameworks. Not all of the challenges
of a global ICE will be resolved through pluralism. Most obviously, the digital divide remains a profoundly intractable difficulty, and it is certain that there will be specific ethical issues on
the global scale that will simply continue to divide us, e.g., freedom of expression in diverse regimes, diverse understandings
of copyright and Intellectual Property, and so forth. Nonetheless, as Mary Midgley reminds us, ‘Morally as well as physically,
there is only one world, and we all have to live in it’ ([1981] 1996, p. 119). ICTs and globalization only reiterate and amplify
Midgley's point, as they facilitate our ever-increasing interconnectedness with one another. Developing a global ICE is not
an option, but an urgent necessity. Our history of cultural hybridizations, especially as these involve notions of pluralism,
harmony and resonance, the success of democratic deliberation online, and the emergence of a pluralistic approach to privacy
and personhood in contemporary ICE provide reasons for optimism towards that development. However daunting the challenges,
we clearly will not know how far we may succeed until we try.
1 Visit Cavalier's homepage at www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/faculty-cavalier.php. More information about the PICOLA project is
accessible at http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/picola/index.html
2 Following standard practice among Plato scholars, page references are to the Stephanus volume and page number.