Kenneth Einar Himma

The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics

Foreword ( Deborah G. Johnson ). Preface. Contributors. Introduction ( Kenneth Einar Himma and Herman T. Tavani ). PART I: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS. 1. Foundations of Information Ethics ( Luciano Floridi ). 2. Milestones in the History of Information Ethics ( Terrell Ward Bynum ). 3. Moral Methodology and Information Technology ( Jeroen van den Hoven ). 4. Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems ( Batya Friedman, Peter H. Kahn, and Alan Borning ). PART II: THEORETICAL ISSUES AFFECTING PROPERTY, PRIVACY, ANONYMITY, AND SECURITY. 5. Personality-Based, Rule Utilitarian, and Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property ( Adam D. Moore). 6. Informational Privacy: Concepts, Theories, and Controversies ( Herman T. Tavani ). 7. Online Anonymity ( Kathleen A. Wallace ). 8. Ethical Issues Involving Computer Security: Hacking, Hacktivism, and Counterhacking ( Kenneth Einar Himma ). PART III: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS . 9. Information Ethics and the Library Profession ( Kay Mathiesen and Don Fallis ). 10. Ethical Interest in Free and Open Source Software ( Frances S. Grodzin sky and Marty J. Wolf ). 11. Internet Research Ethics: The Field and its Critical Issues ( Elizabeth A. Buchanan and Charles Ess ). 12. Health Information Technology: Challenges in Ethics, Science, and Uncertainty ( Kenneth W. Goodman ). 13. Ethical Issues of Information and Business ( Bernd Carsten Stahl ). PART IV: RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES AND RISK ASSESSMENT . 14. Responsibilities for Information on the Internet ( Anton Vedder ). 15. Virtual Reality and Computer Simulation ( Philip Brey ). 16. Genetic Information: Epistemological and Ethical Issues ( Antonio Marturano ). 17. The Ethics of Cyber Conflict ( Dorothy E. Denning ). 18. A Practical Mechanism for Ethical Risk Assessment - A SoDIS Inspection ( Don Gotterbarn, Tony Clear, and Choon-Tuck Kwan ). PART V: REGULATORY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES . 19. Regulation and Governance on the Internet ( John Weckert and Yeslam Al-Saggaf ). 20. Information Overload ( David M. Levy ). 21. Email Spam ( Keith W. Miller and James H. Moor ). 22. The Matter of Plagiarism: What, Why, and If ( John Snapper ). 23. Intellectual Property: Legal and Moral Challenges of Online File Sharing ( Richard A. Spinello ). PART VI: ACCESS AND EQUITY ISSUES . 24. Censorship and Access to Information ( Kay Mathiesen). 25. The Gender Agenda in Computer Ethics ( Alison Adam ). 26. The Digital Divide: Perspective for the Future ( Maria Canellopoulou-Botti and Kenneth Einar Himma ). 27. Intercultural Information Ethics ( Rafael Capurro ). Index.

Artificial agency, consciousness, and the criteria for moral agency: what properties must an artificial agent have to be a moral agent?

In this essay, I describe and explain the standard accounts of agency, natural agency, artificial agency, and moral agency, as well as articulate what are widely taken to be the criteria for moral agency, supporting the contention that this is the standard account with citations from such widely used and respected professional resources as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I then flesh out the implications of some of these well-settled theories with respect to the prerequisites that an ICT must satisfy in order to count as a moral agent accountable for its behavior. I argue that each of the various elements of the necessary conditions for moral agency presupposes consciousness, i.e., the capacity for inner subjective experience like that of pain or, as Nagel puts it, the possession of an internal something-of-which-it is-is-to-be-like. I ultimately conclude that the issue of whether artificial moral agency is possible depends on the issue of whether it is possible for ICTs to be conscious.

The concept of information overload: A preliminary step in understanding the nature of a harmful information-related condition

The amount of content, both on and offline, to which people in reasonably affluent nations have access has increased to the point that it has raised concerns that we are now suffering from a harmful condition of ‹information overload.’ Although the phrase is being used more frequently, the concept is not yet well understood – beyond expressing the rather basic idea of having access to more information than is good for us. This essay attempts to provide a philosophical explication of the concept of information overload and is therefore what philosophers call ‹conceptual analysis’ – a task that, along with normative ethical analysis, is distinctive to Anglo-American style analytic philosophy. I will begin with an analysis of the atomic concepts expressed by the terms ‹information’ and ‹overload’ and then attempt to give a philosophical explanation of the concept of information overload that more precisely identifies exactly what the condition amounts to.

There's something about Mary: The moral value of things qua information objects

Abstract.Luciano Floridi argues that every existing entity is deserving of at least minimal moral respect in virtue of having intrinsic value qua “information object.” In this essay, I attempt a comprehensive assessment of this important view as well as the arguments Floridi offers in support of it. I conclude both that the arguments are insufficient and that the thesis itself is substantively implausible from the standpoint of ordinary intuitions.

Foundational issues in information ethics

Purpose – Information ethics, as is well known, has emerged as an independent area of ethical and philosophical inquiry. There are a number of academic journals that are devoted entirely to the numerous ethical issues that arise in connection with the new information communication technologies; these issues include a host of intellectual property, information privacy, and security issues of concern to librarians and other information professionals. In addition, there are a number of major international conferences devoted to information ethics every year. It would hardly be overstating the matter to say that information ethics is as “hot” an area of theoretical inquiry as medical ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on these and related issues.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a review of relevant information ethics literature together with the authors assessment of the arguments.Findings – There are issues that are more abstract and basic than the substantive issues...

The intercultural ethics agenda from the point of view of a moral objectivist

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to attempt to resolve some unclarity about the nature and character of intercultural information ethics (IIE).Design/methodology/approach – By survey of some of the relevant literature, the paper identifies and explains the distinctive projects of IIE. In addition, to facilitate the achievement of these projects, the paper attempts to identify the most fruitful metaphysical and meta‐ethical assumptions about truth and moral truth. In particular, to identify and determine which of objectivist theories of truth and morality or intersubjectivist theories of truth and morality provides a better theoretical foundation for IIE.Findings – Two projects are identified: a descriptive project and a normative project. It is argued that moral objectivism provides a better foundation for the normative (project than moral intersubjectivism (or, as it is sometimes called, normative cultural relativism) in the sense that objectivism provides a more solid ground for the principle grou...

Substance and Method in Conceptual Jurisprudence and Legal Theory

This is a comprehensive review of Jules L. Colemans The Practice of Principle: In Defence of a Pragmatist Approach to Legal Theory. Though Coleman is principally concerned to defend a methodology for conceptual analysis, he addresses a number of substantive issues along the way, including issues in the theories of law, adjudication, and torts, and his analysis represents the state of the art on each of these issues. Althogh The Practice of Principle breaks significant ground on nearly every issue it touches, I argue that there are problems with many of his substantive and mehtodological claims about conceptual jurisprudence and legal theory-- both with respect to his views about the theory of law and with respect to his views about the theory of torts.

On the Definition of Unconscionable Racial and Sexual Slurs

Approximately 10 years ago, Merriam-Webster came under attack for the way it treated certain slurs in its dictionary. Of particular concern was that Merriam-Webster defined the word “nigger” as “black person” and “member of any dark-skinned race.” Although the dictionary warns that the word is profoundly offensive, the NAACP understandably objected to this entry as being racist. Merriam-Webster continues to define “nigger” as “black person,” and so do many other dictionaries. In this essay, I argue that these definitions implicitly endorse racist and heterosexist claims. Just as the definition of “bachelor” as “unmarried male” implies that it is conceptually impossible for there to be an unmarried male who isn’t also a bachelor, defining “nigger” as “black person” implies that it is conceptually impossible for there to be a black person who isn’t also a nigger. Since these reprehensible claims constitute the very foundation for racist views, these dictionaries must revise its definitions of these terms to avoid committing itself to such views.

Political online communities in Saudi Arabia: the major players

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the major players operating on Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia online community, which is by far the most widely spread political online community in Saudi Arabia receiving 20 million page views per month.Design/methodology/approach – In addition to using “focused” silent observation to observe Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia over a period of three months (May‐July 2007) and thematic content analysis to examine 2,000 topics (and their replies) posted to Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia during the period of May‐June 2007, semi‐structured interviews were conducted (in Arabic) with 15 key informants to report their perceptions regarding Islamic fundamentalists, extremists and liberals, etc. on their forum.Findings – The results of this study indicate that there are three main players operating in Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia: Islamic fundamentalists, extremists, and liberals. Islamic fundamentalists who are the vast majority on this community use the forum as a medium to promote their image and defend their ...

The Rule of Recognition and the U.S. Constitution

H.L.A. Hart famously proposed that law in every full-blown legal system derives from a “rule of recognition”: an ultimate criterion of legal validity accepted as such by officials. This claim is central to modern analytical jurisprudence. Subsequent work has either elaborated and refined Hart’s claim, or challenged it (as with Dworkin’s scholarship).U.S. constitutional theorists have generally paid little attention to Hart’s view or the debates about it. And analytical jurisprudents have discussed the view without much reference to the actual features of legal practice in the United States.This book, with chapters by leading constitutional theorists and jurisprudents, seeks to systematically examine the applicability of the “rule of recognition” model to the U.S. legal system – seeking both to illuminate questions of constitutional theory, and to use the U.S. system as a “test bed” for Hart’s claims. A multitude of topics are addressed, including: the legal status of extratextual sources of fundamental U.S. law; debates about interpretive methods, e.g., originalism versus nonoriginalism; judicial supremacy; the legitimacy of constitutional precedent; “popular constitutionalism”; whether the rule-of-recognition model should allow for a multiplicity of such rules; whether the rule of recognition is duty-imposing or power-conferring; the connection between fundamental law and social practice; and the role of shared plans in constituting a legal system. Contributors include: Matthew Adler, Larry Alexander, Mitchell Berman, Michael Dorf, Richard Fallon, Michael Steven Green, Kent Greenawalt, Kenneth Einar Himma, Stephen Perry, Frederick Schauer, Scott Shapiro, Jeremy Waldron, and Wil Waluchow.