What is Information Ethics?
Microsoft Research Laboratory - PhD students summer school 2006
Cambridge
6 July, 2006
Luciano Floridi
Dipartimento di Scienze Filosofiche
Università degli Studi di Bari
Faculty of Philosophy &
IEG – Computing Laboratory
University of Oxford
luciano.floridi@philosophy.oxford.ac.uk
www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/
Summary
First part
The roots of Computer Ethics (CE)
CE problems, interpretation and approaches
Information Ethics as the Foundation of CE
Second part
Standard vs. Non-standard Moral Theories
The Role of Information in Ethics
Modelling moral action informationally
Extending the class of moral agents
Extending the class of moral patients
Four basic principles of Information Ethics
Applications of Information Ethics
Half a century of issues: from Wiener to IE
The evolution of the information (or rather) data-based
society causes ethical problems.
Norbert Wiener (father of cybernetics), in the late 1940s and
early 1950s, was the first to predict and work on such
problems.
“Computer ethics” coined by Walter Maner in the mid 1970s,
to refer to the field of research that studies ethical
problems “aggravated, transformed or created by
computer technology”.
Later, it became clear that what matters is not the specific
technology (computers, mobiles, ICTs in general) but the
raw material manipulated by it, data/information. So in
the late 1990s several researchers, especially our group
in Oxford, started working on “information ethics” (IE).
What sort of ethical problems?
1940s/50s (mainframes): (speculative) Robots and humans
(Bentham’s Panopticon and Orwell’s Big Brother, are not
digital/computational).
1970s/80s (PCs):
PAPA (privacy, accuracy, intellectual
property and access), viruses (vandalism).
1990s (Internet): “the triple A”: availability, accessibility and
accuracy; piracy; digital divide; infoglut; safety, reliability
and trustworthiness of complex systems; hacking
(vandalism); freedom of expression and censorship;
pornography, monitoring and surveillance.
2000 (Infosphere): security and secrecy; propaganda;
identity theft.
Add: military, health-related, social, political and religious
interpretations (and anthropological, and psychological...).
What kind of interpretation? The Policy Vacuum
Policy Vacuum: technological changes have outpaced
ethical developments, bringing about unanticipated
problems that have caused a “policy vacuum” filled by
CE (Moor, 1985), which has initially surfaced from
practical concerns arising in the information society.
Rational decisions have to be taken, technical,
educational and ethical problems must be solved,
legislation needs to be adopted, codes of ethics are to
be formulated and enforced.
A
combination of empirical evidence and logical
arguments seems to provide the most obvious and
promising means to achieve such pressing goals.
How innovative should the approach be?
Which approach? (aka the Uniqueness Debate)
The “no resolution” Approach. CE problems represent unsolvable dilemma and
CE is itself a pointless exercise, having no conceptual foundation. (Parker
1981).
The Professional Approach. CE is just a professional ethics. Social
responsibility of computer professionals. Development of a professionalethics approach (Gotterbarn 1991, 1992).
The Radical Approach. CE is a Unique Discipline that deals with absolutely
unique issues, in need of a completely new approach (Mason 1986,
Maner 1996, 1999).
The Conservative Approach. CE is only an Applied Ethics. Classic macroethics
(e.g. Consequentialism, Deontologism, Virtue Ethics, Contractualism)
might need to be adapted, enriched and extended, but they have all the
conceptual resources required to deal with CE questions successfully and
satisfactorily. ICT merely transform old ethical problems. (Johnson 1999).
The Innovative Approach. Information Ethics as the Foundation of CE (Floridi
1999, 2004). According to IE, standard macroethics are insufficient. ICT,
by transforming in a profound way the context in which moral issues arise,
not only adds interesting new dimensions to old problems, but leads us to
rethink, methodologically, the very grounds on which our ethical positions
are based.
An Innovative Approach: Information Ethics
Information Ethics is the theoretical foundation of applied
Computer Ethics.
IE is an expansion of environmental ethics towards
1) a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which now includes
also non-human (artificial) and non-individual (distributed)
entities; and
2) a less biologically biased concept of patient as a ‘centre of
ethical worth’, which now includes not only human life or
simply life, but any form of existence.
3) a conception of environment that includes both natural and
artificial (synthetic, man-made) eco-systems.
IE is therefore
• non-standard
• patient-oriented, not agent-oriented
• environmental, non-anthropocentric but ontocentric, and based
on the concepts of informational object/infosphere/entropy
rather than life/ecosystem/pain.
Standard vs. non-standard Theories of As and Ps
Moral situations involve
agents and patients.
A
P
Let us define:
1) the class A of moral
agents as the class of all
entities
that
can
in
principle
qualify
as
sources of moral action,
and
Standard view, e.g. Kant
A=P
A
2) the class P of moral
patients as the class of all
entities
that
can
in
principle
qualify
as
receivers of moral action.
Ethical
theories
can
interpret
the
relation
between
those
two
classes in 5 ways
Non-Standard view
e.g. Environmentalism
P
secularism
P
A
Standard view +
Supernatural Agents
A
P
Non-standard view +
Supernatural Agents
A Step Back: the Role of Information in Ethics
Towards a minimal common denominator among agents
and patients.
Suppose that
1) A is interested in pursuing whatever she considers her
best course of action, given her predicament;
2) A’s evaluations and actions have some (to be left
unspecified) moral value;
then
3) A uses some information (information as a resource) to
generate some other information (information as a
product) and in so doing affect her informational
environment (information as target).
Where is the agent?
A Step Forward: the Role of Information in Ethics
A
info-product
info-target
info-resource
infosphere
Infosphere (from “biosphere”)
denotes the whole informational
environment constituted by all
informational entities (thus
including informational agents
as well), their properties,
interactions, processes and
mutual relations.
A
info-product
info-target
The agent is informationally
embodied and
informationally embedded
in the infosphere.
Where is the patient?
info-resource
infosphere
The informational Model of Moral Action
(Set of) 1./2. Objects (Agent - Patient)
4. Shell (Subjective Info-frame encapsulation)
4
activates
A1
5
5
information
process
affects
2
P
3
6
7
5. Factual information
7. Infosphere
3. Message
6. Envelope
(Moral Situation)
A Model of Moral Action based on OOA
Moral action = information process
a variably interactive process
(series of messages M)
p may interactively
respond to M with changes
and/or other messages,
depending on how M is
interpreted by p’s methods
a p M (a, p)
initiated by a set of
one or more sources,
the agent a
that brings about a
transformation of states
directly affecting a set of
one or more destinations,
the patient (re-agent) p
Informational Entities
Moral action = information process a p M (a, p)
Informational objects
(in the object-oriented analysis paradigm (OOA) sense)
Stimuli
Actions
agent
interaction
messages
Operations
Functions
Procedure
patient
methods
data structures constituting the nature of the entity in question (state of
the object, its unique identity, and attributes)
Information Ethics: Agents and Patients
Information Ethics is an expansion of environmental ethics
towards
1) a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which now
includes also non-human (artificial) and non-individual
(distributed) entities; and
2) a less biologically biased concept of patient as a
‘centre of ethical worth’, which now includes not only
human life or simply life, but any form of existence.
What is an agent? An Effective Characterization
a) A is an agent if and only if A is
a.1) Interactive: A and its environment (can) act upon each other.
a.2) Autonomous: A is able to change state without direct response
to interaction, but can perform internal transitions to change its
state. This provides A with a certain degree of complexity and
decoupled-ness from its environment.
a.3) Adaptable: A's interactions (can) change the transition rules by
which it changes state. This property ensures that A might learn its
own mode of operation in a way which depends critically on its
experience.
b) An agent is said to be a moral agent if and only if it is capable of
morally qualifiable action.
c) An action is said to be morally qualifiable if and only if
it can cause moral good or evil.
Conclusion: Artificial Agents can satisfy all these conditions
therefore they can be moral agents.
Information Ethics: Agents and Patients
Information Ethics is an expansion of environmental ethics
towards
1) a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which now
includes also non-human (artificial) and non-individual
(distributed) entities; and
2) a less biologically biased concept of patient as a
‘centre of ethical worth’, which now includes not only
human life or simply life, but any form of existence.
IE and the moral value of informational objects
History: a tale of progressive moral inclusions, from the
Athenian citizens, to animals to the Infosphere.
Question: what is the lowest possible common set of
attributes
which
characterises
something
as
intrinsically valuable and an object of respect, and
without which something would rightly be considered
intrinsically worthless or even positively unworthy and
therefore rightly disrespectable in itself?
Answer: the minimal condition of possibility of an
object’s least intrinsic worthiness is its abstract nature
as an informational entity.
Conclusion: all entities, interpreted as clusters of
information, have a minimal moral worth qua
informational objects, that deserves to be respected.
Information Ethics as Environmental Ethics
IE develops a patient-oriented ethics.
The “patient” may be not only a human being or any form of
life, but any form of being, that is, any informational object.
Information as such, rather than just life in general, is raised
to the role of the universal patient of any action.
The ethical question asked by IE is: “What is good for an
informational entity and the infosphere in general?”
Answer = a minimalist theory of desert: all informational
objects are in principle worth of ethical consideration.
The duty of a moral agent is evaluated also in terms of
contribution to the growth and welfare of the infosphere.
Any process, action or event that negatively affects the
whole infosphere - not just an information entity –
impoverishes it and hence it is an instance of evil.
Four Principles of Information Ethics
IE determines what is morally right or wrong, what ought to
be done, what the duties, the “oughts” and the “ought nots”
of a moral agent are, by means of four basic principles:
0.entropy ought not to be caused in the infosphere (null law)
1.entropy ought to be prevented in the infosphere
2.entropy ought to be removed from the infosphere
3.the welfare of the infosphere ought to be promoted by
extending it, improving it and enriching it.
The principles are listed in order of increasing moral value.
They clarify, in very broad terms, what it means to live as a
responsible and caring agent in the infosphere.
Conclusion: the Roots and the Leaves
Is Information Ethics applicable?
Conceptual problems are the roots,
applied problems are the leaves
of the same tree. None of the
two can do without the other.
IE has been applied in:
game design (Sicart)
distributed system control and escience (Turilli)
digital divide (Floridi)
tragedy of the digital commons and
P2P systems (Greco, Floridi)
Privacy (Turilli, Floridi)
Still a lot of exciting work to be
done.
Applied solutions
without deep
conceptual roots are
brittle.
Conceptual solutions
without ultimately
applicable outcomes
are sterile.
What is Information Ethics?
Microsoft Research Laboratory - PhD students summer school 2006
Cambridge
6 July, 2006
luciano.floridi@philosophy.oxford.ac.uk
www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/
Luciano Floridi
Dipartimento di Scienze Filosofiche
Università degli Studi di Bari
Faculty of Philosophy &
IEG – Computing Laboratory
University of Oxford
Acknowledgements: many thanks to
- Fabien Petitcolas
- Sarah Cater
- Microsoft Research Laboratory