Introduction

During the summer I participated in an Ethics Workshop with other faculty at Cortland to explore better ways to investigate ethical issues in our courses. PWR 209: Writing in the Digital Age is a course that can raise a broad array of ethical issues from ones specific to the web and networked communication to more general ethical questions related to technology, progress, and globalization. These issues include

• intellectual property, authorship, and copyright
• privacy
• access and literacy
• changing nature of work
• political action (e.g. smart mobs)

Ethical questions are particularly significant in this course as developing technologies and cultural practices related to networked communications, media, and information are continually opening new kinds of knowledge, new possibilities for interaction, new kinds of communities, and so on. Hence, we are regularly confronted by a fundamental ethical question: what should we be doing?

Meta-ethical Questions

Ethical questions are rarely easy to answer. However, generally when we answer them, we do so based upon ideas of what we believe it means to be human and how we understand the knowledge we have about the world. Though this is an oversimplification, philosophers refer to these ideas as ontological (the study of being) and epistemological (the study of knowledge) respectively. For example, typically we imagine ourselves to be free-willed individuals (an ontological state) with the capacity to develop a rational understanding of the world (an epistemology). These two elements are integral to convetional ethics, as ethical arguments are generally logical/rational in their formulation and presuppose that their audience has the free will to choose to take the action proposed in the argument. As such a basic argument might say

1. A good education requires honest work.
2. Academic dishonesty makes honest work impossible.
3. Students should desire a good education.
4. Therefore, students should avoid academic dishonesty.

Now of course one can argue with these statements (maybe you do, maybe you don't). The point though is that the argument is logical: if you accept the statements, they lead logically to the conclusion. And the argument presumes that students have the free will to choose whether or not to engage in academic dishonesty. 

Furthermore, the underlying arguments for why a someone should hold a certain value (e.g., why a student should desire a good education) also hinge of rationality and free will. One approach is termed teleological and focuses on the ends (that is, on the results) of a decision. Basically this means arguing that someone should do something because good things will result (e.g. all things being equal, honesty produces the best results). The other main approach is termed deontological and focuses on inherent states (e.g. honesty is an inherently good trait). This means arguing someone should do something because it is a good or responsible action, even if the ends do not turn out as we hoped. In short, teleology focuses on ends, and deontology focuses on intentions.

Despite this difference, both rely on free will and rationality. Teleology requires there to be a predicatable chain of causes and events that lead to a desirable end. Deontology requires rationality in its justification of values. Again, both arguments would expect that individuals can make free choices.

Ethical Problems in the Digital Age

In the digital age, however, we are faced with a different set of ontological and epistemological contexts. We face important problems in the fundamental assumptions made about individuals in ethical systems, including rationality and free will. It would be inaccurate to say these problems were caused by technology but developments in science and technology have had significant implications for how we understand ourselves. We will explore some of these issues during the course of the semester, but here's the important thing you need to understand right now.

Depending on how one articulates the ontological and espistemological conditions of the digital age, one will devise different ethical systems, values, and practices. Though free will and rationality are not useful concepts in the digital age, one will require a theory of agency (how actions occur) and a theory of cognition (how thoughts are produced/information is processed).

As we will discuss this semester, the digital age offers us a variety of ways to see agency and cognition as networked phenomena. As such we will need to consider ethics as an emergent quality of networks rather than as a rational result of individual thought. This will offer us a starting point in trying to resolve the particular ethical problems of a networked culture.