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CEPE 2011
Crossing Borders: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural relations
It’s the principles, stupid! Why we shall try to find general principles
in intercultural information ethics and not stop with cultural
particularities
Karsten Weber
University Opole, Poland / TU Berlin, Germany / BTU Cottbus, Germany
kweber@cs.tu-berlin.de, karsten.weber@tu-berlin.de
Abstract
In a recent paper (Weber 2010) I tried to challenge the very idea that ethics as
well as social and political philosophy must incorporate social particularities like
gender, religion, culture, and the like on the theoretical level. Of course, this description of my challenge is much too rough because in this simplistic form it is
obviously false. Therefore, in what follows, I shall try to clarify what I exactly
would like to challenge concerning what I think is currently the mainstream discourse in intercultural information ethics. After that, I shall argue that we must try
to seek out the ethical principles behind culturally determined concepts like privacy. At the end of my paper I shall draw some conclusions concerning the compatibility of social and moral norms and values in different cultures.
Mainstream Intercultural Information Ethics
Carol Gilligan’s seminal work “In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and
Women’s Development” published in 1982 ignited an most important and still
ongoing debate about the question whether gender is an essential (moral) category which has to be taken into consideration in debates concerning justice; for
sure, Gilligan’s book is one of the most significant and, simultaneously, controversial contributions to the feminist discourse. Now, it can be no surprise that this
discourse had its impact on debates concerning information and communication
technology (ICT) in general and information ethics in particular, too. One can find
many scholars stressing that, for instance, gender is key to the understanding
how people use the Internet (e.g. Allen 2000; Sheehan 1999). And one also can
find a lot of publications emphasizing that computer ethics or information ethics
must take gender and feminist approaches into consideration (e.g. Froehlich
2004). One of these publications is Alison Adam’s paper “Computer Ethics in a
Different Voice” (2001) which obviously is titled with reference to Gilligan’s book.
It carried on the feminist discourse concerning ethics with regard to the use of
computers or, more general, information and communication technology (ICT).
But gender is not the only category that is supposed to be essential for an intercultural information ethics. Within the information ethics community one can observe a mainstream discussion stressing that social and cultural particularities,
traditions, religious customs, and the like are most important if an intercultural
information ethics is at stake. As already mentioned (see Weber 2010), the argumentation seems to go roughly like this:
Several (comparative) studies have shown that different cultures react in different
ways to the social impacts of information and communication technology. People
try to adapt to the challenges of ICT by applying culturally determined norms and
values. One source of these norms and values is the locally dominant religion, an-
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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843144
CEPE 2011
Crossing Borders: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural relations
other one local tradition, and a third one culturally defined philosophy. From the
most obvious fact that religions, traditions, and philosophies are diverse, that they
include quite different norms and values, and that they demand for very different
kinds of behavior the conclusion is drawn that an intercultural information ethics
must take those differences into account.
Indeed, such social and cultural particularities are essential in information ethics
and therefore of course in intercultural information ethics since it is them we
would like to understand, explain, and – in cases of conflicts – resolve. There are
many examples of papers which deal with social and cultural particularities, traditions, religious customs, and the like. For instance, Makoto Nakada and Takanori
Tamuras excellent paper concerning “Japanese Conceptions of Privacy” (2005)
describes cultural determined norms and values and their impact to Japanese
people’s everyday behavior. But since Nakada and Tamura refer to religious beliefs and metaphysical assumptions to explain individual behavior they do social
psychology, not ethics. Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said with regard to
Yao-Huai Lü’s (2005) interesting article concerning Chinese attitudes to privacy
as well as Masahiko Mizutani, James Dorsey, and James H. Moor’s (2004) informing essay regarding Japanese people’s understanding of privacy, or Krisana
Kitiyadisai’s (2005) instructing work on privacy rights and protection in Thailand.
Probably, there are a lot more papers of this kind in the context of ethics as well
as in other scholarly contexts (e.g. McDougall 2001). Of course, particularly for
westerners such studies and papers are most informing since knowledge concerning non-western cultures in general as well as culturally determined attitudes,
behavior, traditions, formal and informal regulations, and laws in other than European or North-American countries in particular yet isn’t widespread.
The Quest for Principles
However, it is not necessary to compare such obviously very different countries
like, for instance, France and Thailand to realize that they differ much in terms of
culture. For example, James Q. Whitman shows impressively that the American
and European conception of privacy is in fact quite different and that these differences will not disappear (Whitman 2004: 1221):
“In truth, there is little reason to suppose that Americans will be persuaded to think
of their world of values in a European way any time soon; American law simply
does not endorse the general norm of personal dignity found in Europe. Nor is
there any greater hope that Europeans will embrace the American ideal; the law of
Europe does not recognize many of the antistatist concerns that Americans seem
to take for granted.”
He continues by saying that (ibid.)
“[o]f course we are all free to plead for a different kind of law—in Europe or in the
United States. But pleading for privacy as such is not the way to do it. There is no
such thing as privacy as such. The battle, if it is to be fought, will have to be fought
over more fundamental values than that.”
All parts of this citation are important for the challenge of the mainstream discourse in intercultural information ethics. Some of the above mentioned papers
might be understood as their authors are seeking something that in German
would be called “Wesen”; in English maybe “essence” would catch the meaning
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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843144
CEPE 2011
Crossing Borders: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural relations
of this German philosophical term. Particularly those scholars dealing with privacy seem to look after the essence of privacy that all culturally determined attitudes to privacy have in common. But “[t]here is no such thing as privacy as
such”. Or, to put it in other way: We seek privacy not for itself, but to realize
something else. Whitman (2004) mentions that in the European tradition the function of privacy is to protect human dignity while in American tradition its purpose
is to protect liberty. In the past, many scholars argued in a similar way, at least
with regard to the American tradition, for instance Alan F. Westin (1967) in his
book “Privacy and Freedom”, Charles Fried (1968) in “Privacy”, or, in more recent
times, Beate Rössler (2001) in “Der Wert des Privaten”. Even the conception of
privacy as property, as in Lessig (2002) or Volkman (2003), echoes the interrelation of privacy and liberty, if one takes statements like Alice Tay’s (1978: 10) into
account:
“Property is that which a man has the right to use and enjoy without interference; it
is what it makes him as a person and guarantees his independence and security.”
Now, if one takes a closer look into the respective literature, one certainly will find
Robert C. Post’s essay “Three Concepts of Privacy” (2001: 2087) in which he
writes:
“The first [conception of privacy, KW] connects privacy to the creation of knowledge; the second connects privacy to dignity; and the third connects privacy to
freedom. I shall argue that the first concept should not be understood as a question
of privacy; that the second is a helpful way of apprehending privacy, but that it
should focus our attention primarily upon forms of social structure; and that the
third is best conceived as an argument for liberal limitations on government regulation.”
This is what I mean when I am talking about principles concealed behind culturally determined concepts like privacy. However, these three principles which Post
presumes might be not enough if one takes non-western cultures into account.
Therefore, I would like to stress that the most important task in intercultural information ethics is not merely to describe, for instance, those traditions, religious
beliefs, social customs, and the like that shape the respective attitude to privacy
in a particular culture but to identify the social and moral values this particular
understanding of privacy shall help to realize. Furthermore, I would like to claim
that only by accomplishing this task it would be possible to decide whether certain cultures are compatible with regard to essential social and moral norms and
values. If one follows Whitman, even the American and European conceptions of
privacy are incompatible since they base on very different principles, liberty on
the one side and dignity on the other. It might happen – and I would like to add:
very often – that in other cultures the concept of privacy bases, for instance, on
social control, religious salvation, or even something else totally alien to western
people.
Final remarks
Therefore, until we might find some of these basic principles mentioned above
pragmatic rules like codes of conduct, best practices, and the like might be all we
get to resolve and prevent conflicts. However, this cannot be the core of an intercultural information ethics (cf. Wong 2009). In case of persistent and intractable
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CEPE 2011
Crossing Borders: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural relations
incompatibilities of social and moral norms and values, economics might be our
last resort. That does not necessarily implicate that human behavior fully can be
explained by economic theory (although I would stick to that idea). Rather, it
means that people can evaluate the economic worth of their particular understanding of, for example, privacy to decide whether they shall interact with people
belonging to another culture on the basis of their terms of trade. Yet, this would
be the issue of another paper.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Frank Pallas and Max Ulbricht for discussions and important hints
concerning privacy.
References
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