Langford II: Ethics and Justification in a Digital Age

One way to look at the Computers and Human Values syllabus is to see units that focus on epistemology (i.e. questions about knowledge), politics (i.e. questions aboutgovernment and society), and ethics (i.e. questions about morals). Put this way, a clever person might argue that all questions are questions of epistemology or politics or ethics, but such a person could probably take such an argument apart as well. So what, if anything, is unique to the domain of ethics? Consider the following questions:

1. What is the difference between suicide and "assisted" suicide?

2. What is the difference between assisted suicide and murder?

3. What is the difference between murder in civilian society and killing in wartime?

In different answers to these questions one can hear the different strains of epistemology, politics and ethics. It also becomes clear that whatever ethics is "really about", it is concerned with justification of decisions/conclusions rather than the decisions/conclusions themselves -- this is one way to see the distinction between ethics and "morality".

One reason to bother with these philosophical distinctions and reflections, is to see how a question like the following can inspire answers that seem at cross-purposes with each other, and to figure out what is/isn't important about the question and its possible answers:

• What is the difference between downloading the new Andras Schiff recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations from the Internet, without paying for it, and taking the compact disc with the same recording from a store with paying for it?

In the final part of CS009, we'll be concerned with questions, problems and issues of justification raised by the widespread introduction (some would say permeation) of information and computer technologies in contemporary life. Two questions we'll consider throughout this part of the course are:

• Does the widespread use of digital technology expand or shrink or leave unaffected the domain of ethics?
• (How) Does the presence of digital technology influence how we justify ethical claims or judgements?

Do you think the works by Moravec, Arendt, Hayles, Cherny, Lippmann, and/or Sunstein offer affirmative answers to either of these questions?

Langford's "Introduction", Beckett's "Internet Technology" and Weckert's "What is New or Unique About Internet Activities?"

We'll discuss the first three chapters in Langford's Internet Ethics, beginning with Beckett's chapter. A few questions:

• What technical aspects of the Beckett's descriptions did you find confusing?
• If you were to add a comment to the "Comments" section of chapter 2, what would it be?
• Of the various areas of controversy raised in chapter 3 (i.e. globalization, anonymity, interactivity, etc.), which did you think was most important ethically? politically?

Finally, one of the themes that ran through the last unit of the course was how technology can promote/discourage certain behaviors or attitudes. The first comment (from Russia) to chapter 3 suggests that the use of "can" removes a good deal of the force of claims about technology and values. Do you believe there are cases in which the use of computers not only "could" promote certain behaviors and attitudes, but basically compel such behaviors and attitudes?

For Thursday: Read chapters 4-6 in Internet Ethics. Final versions of the second paper are due by the end of the day on Friday.

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