The Ethics of InformationLuciano Floridi develops an original ethical framework for dealing with the new challenges posed by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICTs have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, health care, industrial production and business, social relations, and conflicts. They have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and on contemporary ethical debates. Privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, and pornography online are only some of the pressing issues that characterise the ethical discourse in the information society. They are the subject of Information Ethics (IE), the new philosophical area of research that investigates the ethical impact of ICTs on human life and society. Since the seventies, IE has been a standard topic in many curricula. In recent years, there has been a flourishing of new university courses, international conferences, workshops, professional organizations, specialized periodicals and research centres. However, investigations have so far been largely influenced by professional and technical approaches, addressing mainly legal, social, cultural and technological problems. This book is the first philosophical monograph entirely and exclusively dedicated to it. Floridi lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for IE. He does so systematically, by pursuing three goals: a) a metatheoretical goal: it describes what IE is, its problems, approaches and methods; b) an introductory goal: it helps the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to computer ethics; c) an analytic goal: it answers several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of the ethical implications of ICTs. Although entirely independent of The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Floridi's previous book, The Ethics of Information complements it as new work on the foundations of the philosophy of information. |
Contents
Chapter 1 Ethics after the information revolution | 1 |
Chapter 2 What is information ethics? | 19 |
Chapter 3 The method of abstraction | 29 |
Chapter 4 Information ethics as environmental ethics | 53 |
Chapter 5 Information ethics and the foundationalist debate | 86 |
Chapter 6 The intrinsic value of the infosphere | 102 |
Chapter 7 The morality of artificial agents | 134 |
Chapter 8 The constructionist values of homo poieticus | 161 |
Chapter 12 The ontological interpretation of informational privacy | 228 |
Chapter 13 Distributed morality | 261 |
Chapter 14 Information business ethics | 277 |
Chapter 15 Global information ethics | 292 |
Chapter 16 In defence of information ethics | 306 |
Conclusion | 329 |
Epilogue | 331 |
334 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adopted Alice Alice’s analysis anthropocentric approach argue artificial agents attributes autonomous axiology become behaviour biocentric Chapter computer ethics concept concerns consider construction constructionism constructionist context Copenhagen Consensus deontologism depending digital ICTs distributed morality entropy environment environmental ethics epistemic ethical discourse evaluation evil example Floridi global hence human ICTs IE’s individual information ethics information society informational entities informational privacy informationally infosphere interactions interface interpretation intrinsic value Kant Kantian level of abstraction logical macroethics mation matter means metaphysical entropy moral action moral agents moral respect moral value multi-agent system nature objection observables one’s ontic ontocentric ontological friction patient patient-oriented personal identity perspective philosophical philosophy of information position possible presence principle qualify question re-ontologizing reader reality reasonable requires role Section semantic sense social space specific telepresence theory understanding unique virtual virtue ethics