Information ethics: On the philosophical foundation ofcomputer ethics

  • Authors:
  • Luciano Floridi

  • Affiliations:
  • Wolfson College, OX2 6UD, Oxford, UK/ www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi. E-mail: luciano.floridi@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

  • Venue:
  • Ethics and Information Technology
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics‘ (CE) philosophicalstatus is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannoteasily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to straintheir conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundationas an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophicalfoundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of’’environmental‘‘ ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is goodfor an information entity and the infosphere in general? This isthe ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by aminimalist theory of deseerts: IE argues that there is somethingmore elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being,understood as information, and entropy, and that any informationentity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim,which deserves recognition and should help to regulate theimplementation of any information process involving it. IE canprovide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insightand adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but alsothe whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethicaldiscourse.