May Thorseth

Reflective judgment and enlarged thinking online

This paper deals with forms of communication aiming at a better informed public or publics. The main idea is that democratic societies are dependent on toleration of a plurality of publics, and simultaneously there is a need for communication between the different publics. The ethos underlying this assumption is that democracy requires a transcendence of subjective conditions in order for the public(s) to gain legitimacy and recognition of opinions. Validity of opinions presupposes a public aspect that is available through communication. More specifically, the validity in question is obtained through its claim on universality – i.e. the transcendence of purely private subjective conditions. This kind of validity is found in reflective judgment or enlarged thinking, as displayed in Kant’s third critique. In the last part of the paper it is discussed how new information technologies and the internet may contribute positively to facilitate modes of communication that are associated with the particularity at work in reflective thinking. Storytelling technologies and virtual realities are of particular interest in envisaging how this might work.

Kant and information ethics

We begin with our reasons for seeking to bring Kant to bear on contemporary information and computing ethics (ICE). We highlight what each contributor to this special issue draws from Kant and then applies to contemporary matters in ICE. We conclude with a summary of what these chapters individually and collectively tell us about Kant’s continuing relevance to these contemporary matters – specifically, with regard to the issues of building trust online and regulating the Internet; how far discourse contributing to deliberative democracy online may include storytelling and appeals to the emotions; and whether or not search engine algorithms should be made public. We further highlight how certain chapters – especially as they incorporate more recent philosophical traditions such as phenomenology and cognitive psychology – develop a Kantian approach (or at least one that is both inspired by while simultaneously transforming Kant) to ethical issues in ICE, including the ethical implications of the on-going blurring of the border between the real and the virtual; designing software in light of distributed ethical responsibility; and trust-building in e-Science collaborations.

Worldwide deliberation and public use of reason online

The aim of this paper is threefold: (i) to trace the idea of deliberation back in the history of philosophy and establish the link to the Kantian concept of public reason; (ii) to pave the way for rhetoric as a constituent part of public deliberation; (iii) to undertake an applied ethical approach to worldwide deliberation online. The two former aims are treated in part one of the paper, whereas the applied analysis is undertaken in part two. One important task is to demonstrate in what ways the internet as a new and powerful venue for deliberation both challenges the old theories of public deliberation, and also points in the direction of certain revisions of our basic ideas about deliberation.

Neither relativism nor imperialism: Theories and practices for a global information ethics

We highlight the important lessons our contributors present in our collective project of fostering dialogues both between applied ethics and computer science and between cultures. These include: critical reflexivity; procedural (partly Habermasian) approaches to establishing such central norms as “emancipation”; the importance of local actors in using ICTs both for global management and in development projects – especially as these contribute the trust essential for the social context of use of new technologies; and pluralistic approaches that preserve local cultural differences alongside shared norms. May Thorseth then contextualizes our work vis-a-vis broader philosophical discussions of deliberation and democracy.

On Tolerance and Fictitious Publics

The purpose of this paper is to identify what is here called ‘fictitious public’. This is contrasted to Kant’s concept of public use of reason. One fundamental criterion of public use of reason is publicizability. This criterion involves addressing a universal audience, i.e. the willingness to expose contested arguments to public scrutiny. Making something available on the Internet may or may not be publicizable in this sense. On this background the case of Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto in connection with the terrorist act of July 22 in 2011 in Norway serves as a key case of the analysis. It is argued that fictitious opposes real in a sense that is different from virtual; whether the addressing is done in a real, offline or virtual, online context is not decisive of its being worthy of tolerance, as opposed to fictitious use of public reason. The important question to ask is whether the use of reason is threatening to the public. The background problem being examined here is the problem of the public. By raising this old problem in our era of digital transition it is here argued that the new technological environments is a precondition for the kind of Manifesto that Breivik has published online.

May Thorseth: Commentary of the Manifesto

The information abundance and the primacy of interactions over entities is particularly important in dealing with the problem of the public, i.e. the question of how to make the public well informed. The importance of being well informed relates to issues like how to fight intolerance and fundamentalism in particular. Besides, the problem of the public is about education: what foci and what kind of methodologies to apply in teaching younger generations to broaden their perspectives? As an example, a common exercise for school children is to use the Internet to collect information for assignments. As yet, the teaching staff often seems to lack the relevant competencies for guiding their students.