Panel Discussion:

Information Ethics and Philosophy of Information: Emerging Landscapes?

Introduction by May Thorseth, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Programme for Applied Ethics, NTNU.

My point of departure is a more theoretical interest in possible foundations of a practical ethics for various disciplines, in particular information ethics / technological disciplines, but others, as well. This interest is directly linked to parts of my profession, which is to run the Programme for Applied Ethics at my university.

This kind of interest might be seen as complementary to what might be called a profession ethics approach, i. e., practical ethics for various disciplines engaged in computing technologies. One example of this kind of approach is developing technological tools for certain purposes, for instance within medicine / bioethics or others. At Carnegie Mellon, this kind of approach is carried out by Robert Cavalier, in co-operation with others, in his work on developing tools for deliberative polls (the PICOLA project).

On this background I would like to raise a question relating to a certain tension between professional ethics as a specialist branch on the one hand, and applied ethics as a genuinely interdisciplinary field of research on the other.

Let me just briefly sketch how we conceive of applied ethics – information ethics among others – in our Programme for Applied Ethics at NTNU. It is reflected in the way we build ethical competence in different disciplines. We get together people from the basic, foundational ethical disciplines – primarily philosophy – and various other specialist disciplines: psychology, informatics, medicine, media, political theory etc.

The idea is that we need the two kinds of competence, i. e., foundational ethics and specialist professional competence in order to carry out applied ethics. The generation of problems does in other words need two different kinds of competence – double competence.

There are two ways in which this double competence might be achieved: either to start from philosophy and ethics, and then proceed to some specialist branch (biology, medicine, business or others), or to start from a professional specialist field end then go ahead with foundational ethical studies. This way of conceiving of and developing applied ethics was also the basis for the National Ethics Programme that was run by the Norwegian Research Council for 10 years (1991 – 2001). One of the main purposes was to develop ethical competence through doctoral courses particularly addressing the different specialist branches (biology, business, law etc.).

At NTNU our Programme for Applied Ethics continues along the same lines. In addition to developing people’s competence in applied ethics, we also believe that we are developing both fields further. Foundational ethics profits from raising the problems within the specialist branches themselves, and the professional specialist disciplines are enriched by focussing on ethical dilemmas that are better formulated in co-operation with professional ethicists.

What has been said above gives a direction as to how the role of information ethics should be carried out: first of all, it should be developed in close co-operation between philosophers / ethicists and the field in which the problems are generated. This model is different from the picture of the philosophers / ethicists conceived of as a moral technologist whose role would simply be to give professionals in other disciplines and branches ethical tools, or to tell them how their problems should be solved by professional ethicists.

To sum up: information ethics might perhaps best be looked upon as a further development of communication theory and ethics in philosophy – its most important task being to develop and to discuss ethical issues and dilemmas that originate in the interdisciplinary context of philosophers and specialist professionals in other disciplines.

[Back to CAP04: What is Information Ethics?]