Information ethics Luciano Floridi

Information ethics Luciano Floridi

5.1 Introduction: in search of a unified approach to information ethics

In recent years, Information Ethics (IE) has come to mean different things to different researchers working in a variety of disciplines, including computer ethics, business ethics, medical ethics, computer science, the philosophy of information, social epistemology and library and information science. This is not surprising. Perhaps this Babel was always going to be inevitable, given the novelty of the field and the multifarious nature of the concept of information itself and of its related phenomena. It is, however, unfortunate, for it has generated some confusion about the specific nature and scope of IE. The problem, however, is not irremediable, for a unified approach can help to explain and relate the main senses in which IE has been discussed in the literature. The approach is best introduced schematically and by focusing our attention on a moral agent A.

Suppose A is interested in pursuing whatever she considers her best course of action, given her predicament. We shall assume that A’s evaluations and actions have some moral value, but no specific value needs to be introduced. Intuitively, A can use some information (information as a resource) to gen- erate some other information (information as a product) and in so doing affect her informational environment (information as target). Now, since the appearance of the first works in the eighties (for an early review see Smith 1996), Information Ethics has been claimed to be the study of moral issues arising from one or another of these three distinct ‘information arrows’ (see Figure 5.1). This, in turn, has paved the way to a fruitless compartmental- ization and false dilemmas, with researchers either ignoring the wider scope of IE, or arguing as if only one ‘arrow’ and its corresponding microethics (that is a practical, field-dependent, applied and professional ethics) provided the right approach to IE. The limits of such narrowly constructed interpreta- tions of IE become evident once we look at each ‘informational arrow’ more closely.

5.1.1 Information-as-a-resource Ethics

Consider first the crucial role played by information as a resource for A’s moral evaluations and actions. Moral evaluations and actions have an epis- temic component, since A may be expected to proceed ‘to the best of her information’, that is, A may be expected to avail herself of whatever infor- mation she can muster, in order to reach (better) conclusions about what can and ought to be done in some given circumstances.

Socrates already argued that a moral agent is naturally interested in gaining as much valuable information as the circumstances require, and that a well- informed agent is more likely to do the right thing. The ensuing ‘ethical intellectualism’ analyses evil and morally wrong behaviour as the outcome of deficient information. Conversely, A’s moral responsibility tends to be directly proportional to A’s degree of information: any decrease in the latter usually corresponds to a decrease in the former. This is the sense in which information occurs in the guise of judicial evidence. It is also the sense in which one speaks of A’s informed decision, informed consent or well-informed participation. In Christian ethics, even the worst sins can be forgiven in the light of the sinner’s insufficient information, as a counterfactual evaluation is possible: had A been properly informed A would have acted differently and hence would not have sinned (Luke 23:44). In a secular context, Oedipus and Macbeth remind us how the (inadvertent) mismanagement of informational resources may have tragic consequences.

From a ‘resource’ perspective, it seems that the machinery of moral thinking and behaviour needs information, and quite a lot of it, to function properly. However, even within the limited scope adopted by an analysis based solely on information as a resource, care should be exercised lest all ethical discourse is reduced to the nuances of higher quantity, quality and intelligibility of informational resources. The more the better is not the only, nor always the best, rule of thumb. For the (sometimes explicit and conscious) withdrawal of information can often make a significant difference. A may need to lack (or intentionally preclude herself from accessing) some information in order to achieve morally desirable goals, such as protecting anonymity, enhancing fair treatment or implementing unbiased evaluation. Famously, Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’ exploits precisely this aspect of information-as-a-resource in order to develop an impartial approach to justice (Rawls 1999). Being informed is not always a blessing and might sometimes be morally wrong or dangerous.

Whether the (quantitative and qualitative) presence or the (total) absence of information-as-a-resource is in question, it is obvious that there is a perfectly reasonable sense in which Information Ethics may be described as the study of the moral issues arising from ‘the triple A’: availability, accessibility and accuracy of informational resources, independently of their format, kind and physical support. Rawls’ position has already been mentioned. Other examples of issues in IE, understood as an Information-as-resource Ethics, are the so- called digital divide, the problem of infoglut, and the analysis of the reliability and trustworthiness of information sources (Floridi 1995). Indeed, one may recognize in this approach to Information Ethics a position broadly defended by van den Hoven (1995) and more recently by Mathiesen (2004), who criti- cizes Floridi (1999b) and is in turn criticized by Mather (2005). Whereas van den Hoven purports to present his approach to IE as an enriching perspective contributing to the debate, Mathiesen means to present her view, restricted to the informational needs and states of the moral agent, as the only correct interpretation of IE. Her position is thus undermined by the problems affecting any microethical interpretation of IE, as Mather well argues.

5.1.2 Information-as-a-product Ethics

A second, but closely related sense in which information plays an important moral role is as a product of A’s moral evaluations and actions. A is not only an information consumer but also an information producer, who may be subject to constraints while being able to take advantage of opportunities. Both constraints and opportunities call for an ethical analysis. Thus, IE, under- stood as Information-as-a-product Ethics, may cover moral issues arising, for example, in the context of accountability, liability, libel legislation, testimony, plagiarism, advertising, propaganda, misinformation, and more generally of pragmatic rules of communication a` la Grice. Kant’s analysis of the immoral- ity of lying is one of the best known case-studies in the philosophical liter- ature concerning this kind of Information Ethics. The boy crying wolf, Iago misleading Othello, or Cassandra and Laocoon, pointlessly warning the Trojans against the Greeks’ wooden horse, remind us how the ineffective management of informational products may have tragic consequences.

5.1.3  Information-as-a-target Ethics

3. Independently of A’s information input (info-resource) and output (info- product), there is a third sense in which information may be subject to ethical analysis, namely when A’s moral evaluations and actions affect the infor- mational environment. Think, for example, of A’s respect for, or breach of, someone’s information privacy or confidentiality. Hacking, understood as the unauthorized access to a (usually computerized) information system, is another good example. It is not uncommon to mistake it for a problem to be discussed within the conceptual frame of an ethics of informational resources. This mis- classification allows the hacker to defend his position by arguing that no use (let alone misuse) of the accessed information has been made. Yet hack- ing, properly understood, is a form of breach of privacy. What is in question is not what A does with the information, which has been accessed without authorization, but what it means for an informational environment to be accessed by A without authorization. So the analysis of hacking belongs to an Info-target Ethics. Other issues here include security, vandalism (from the burning of libraries and books to the dissemination of viruses), piracy, intel- lectual property, open source, freedom of expression, censorship, filtering and contents control. Mill’s analysis ‘Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion’ is a classic of IE interpreted as Information-as-a-target Ethics. Juliet, simu- lating her death, and Hamlet, re-enacting his father’s homicide, show how the risky management of one’s informational environment may have tragic consequences.

   5.1.4  The limits of any microethical approach to Information Ethics

4. At the end of this overview, it seems that the RPT model, summarized in

   Figure 5.1, may help one to get some initial orientation in the multiplicity of issues belonging to different interpretations of Information Ethics. The model is also useful to explain why any technology which radically modifies the ‘life of information’ is going to have profound implications for any moral agent. ICT (information and communication technologies), by radically changing the informational context in which moral issues arise, not only add interesting new dimensions to old problems, but lead us to rethink, methodologically, the very grounds on which our ethical positions are based.

   At the same time, the model rectifies the excessive emphasis placed on specific technologies (this happens most notably in computer ethics), by concentrating on the more fundamental phenomenon of information in all its variety and long tradition. This was Wiener’s position (see Chapter 2) and I have argued (Floridi 1999b, Floridi and Sanders 2002) that the various dif- ficulties encountered in the philosophical foundations of computer ethics are connected to the fact that the latter has not yet been recognized as primarily an environmental ethics whose main concern is (or should be) the ecological management and well-being of the infosphere.

   Despite these advantages, however, the model can still be criticized for being inadequate, for two reasons.

   On the one hand, the model is still too simplistic. Arguably, several impor- tant issues belong mainly but not only to the analysis of just one ‘infor- mational arrow’. A few examples well illustrate the problem: someone’s testi- mony (e.g. Iago’s) is someone else’s trustworthy information (i.e. Othello’s); A’s responsibility may be determined by the information A holds (‘apostle’ means ‘messenger’ in Greek), but it may also concern the information A issues (e.g. Judas’ kiss); censorship affects A both as a user and as a producer of information; misinformation (i.e., the deliberate production and distribution of misleading, false contents) is an ethical problem that concerns all three ‘informational arrows’; freedom of speech also affects the availability of offen- sive content (e.g. child pornography, violent content and socially, politically or religiously disrespectful statements) that might be morally questionable and should not circulate.

   On the other hand, the model is insufficiently inclusive. There are many important issues that cannot easily be placed on the map at all, for they really emerge from, or supervene upon, the interactions among the ‘informa- tional arrows’. Two significant examples may suffice: the ‘panopticon’ or ‘big brother’, that is, the problem of monitoring and controlling anything that might concern A; and the debate about information ownership (including copyright and patents legislation), which affects both users and producers while shaping their informational environment.

   So the criticism is fair. The RPT model is indeed inadequate. Yet why it is inadequate is a different matter. The tripartite analysis just provided is unsatisfactory, despite its partial usefulness, precisely because any interpre- tation of Information Ethics based on only one of the ‘informational arrows’ is bound to be too reductive. As the examples mentioned above emphasize, supporters of narrowly constructed interpretations of Information Ethics as a microethics are faced with the problem of being unable to cope with a wide variety of relevant issues, which remain either uncovered or inexplicable. In other words, the model shows that idiosyncratic versions of IE, which priv- ilege only some limited aspects of the information cycle, are unsatisfactory. We should not use the model to attempt to pigeonhole problems neatly, which is impossible. We should rather exploit it as a useful scheme to be superseded, in view of a more encompassing approach to IE as a macroethics, that is, as a theoretical, field-independent, applicable ethics. Philosophers will recognize here a Wittgensteinian ladder.

   In order to climb on, and then throw away, any narrowly constructed con- ception of Information Ethics, a more encompassing approach to IE needs to

   (i) bring together the three ‘informational arrows’;
   (ii) consider the whole information-cycle (including creation, elaboration,

   distribution, storage, protection, usage and possible destruction); and (iii) analyse informationally all entities involved (including the moral agent A) and their changes, actions and interactions, by treating them not apart from, but as part of the informational environment, or info- sphere, to which they belong as informational systems themselves (see

   Figure 5.2).

   Whereas steps (i) and (ii) do not pose particular problems and may be shared by other approaches to IE, step (iii) is crucial but requires a shift in the concep- tion of ‘information’. Instead of limiting the analysis to (veridical) semantic contents – as any narrower interpretation of IE as a microethics inevitably does – an ecological approach to Information Ethics looks at information from an object-oriented perspective and treats it as an entity. In other words, we move from a (broadly constructed) epistemological conception of Information Ethics to one which is typically ontological.

   A simple analogy may help introduce this new perspective.1 Imagine looking at the whole Universe from a chemical perspective. Every entity and process will satisfy a certain chemical description. An agent A, for example, will be between 45% and 75% water. Now consider an informational perspective.

The same entities will be described as clusters of data, that is, as informa- tional objects. More precisely, A (like any other entity) will be a discrete, self-contained, encapsulated package containing

1. (i)  the appropriate data structures which constitute the nature of the entity in question, that is, the state of the object, its unique identity and its attributes; and

2. (ii)  a collection of operations, functions, or procedures which are activated by various interactions or stimuli (that is, messages received from other objects or changes within itself) and correspondingly define how the object behaves or reacts to them.

From this perspective, informational systems as such, rather than just living systems in general, are raised to the role of agents and patients of any action, with environmental processes, changes and interactions equally described informationally.

Understanding the nature of IE ontologically rather than epistemologically modifies the interpretation of the scope of IE. Not only can an ecological IE gain a global view of the whole life-cycle of information, thus overcoming the limits of other microethical approaches, but it can also claim a role as a macroethics, that is, as an ethics that concerns the whole realm of reality. This is what we shall see in the next section.

 Information Ethics as a macroethics

This section provides a quick and accessible overview of Information Ethics understood as a macroethics (henceforth simply Information Ethics). For rea- sons of space, no attempt will be made to summarize the specific arguments, relevant evidence and detailed analyses required to flesh out the ecological approach to IE. Nor will its many philosophical implications be unfolded. The goal is rather to provide a general flavour of the theory. The hope is that the reader interested in knowing more about IE might be enticed to read more about it by following the references.

This section consists of five questions and answers that introduce IE. Section 5.3 consists of six objections and replies that, it is to be hoped, will dispel some common misunderstandings concerning IE.

What is IE?

IE is an ontocentric, patient-oriented, ecological macroethics (Floridi 1999b). An intuitive way to unpack this answer is by comparing IE to other environ- mental approaches.

Biocentric ethics usually grounds its analysis of the moral standing of bio- entities and eco-systems on the intrinsic worthiness of life and the intrinsically negative value of suffering. It seeks to develop a patient-oriented ethics in which the ‘patient’ may be not only a human being, but also any form of life. Indeed, Land Ethics extends the concept of patient to any component of the environment, thus coming close to the approach defended by Information Ethics. Any form of life is deemed to enjoy some essential proprieties or moral interests that deserve and demand to be respected, at least minimally if not absolutely, that is, in a possibly overridable sense, when contrasted to other interests. So biocentric ethics argues that the nature and well-being of the patient of any action constitute (at least partly) its moral standing and that the latter makes important claims on the interacting agent, claims that in principle ought to contribute to the guidance of the agent’s ethical decisions and the constraint of the agent’s moral behaviour. The ‘receiver’ of the action is placed at the core of the ethical discourse, as a centre of moral concern, while the ‘transmitter’ of any moral action is moved to its periphery.

Substitute now ‘life’ with ‘existence’ and it should become clear what IE amounts to. IE is an ecological ethics that replaces biocentrism with ontocen- trism. IE suggests that there is something even more elemental than life, namely being – that is, the existence and flourishing of all entities and their global environment – and something more fundamental than suffering, namely entropy. The latter is most emphatically not the physicists’ concept of thermodynamic entropy. Entropy here refers to any kind of destruction or cor- ruption of informational objects (mind, not of information), that is, any form of impoverishment of being, including nothingness, to phrase it more meta- physically. More specifically, destruction is to be understood as the complete annihilation of the object in question, which ceases to exist; compare this to the process of ‘erasing’ an entity irrevocably. Corruption is to be understood as a form of pollution or depletion of some of the properties of the object, which ceases to exist as that object and begins to exist as a different object minus the properties that have been corrupted or eliminated. This may be compared to a process degrading the integrity of the object in question.

IE then provides a common vocabulary to understand the whole realm of being through an informational perspective. IE holds that being/information has an intrinsic worthiness. It substantiates this position by recognizing that any informational entity has a Spinozian right to persist in its own status, and a constructionist right to flourish, i.e. to improve and enrich its existence and essence. As a consequence of such ‘rights’, IE evaluates the duty of any moral agent in terms of contribution to the growth of the infosphere (see Sections 5.2.4 and 5.2.5) and any process, action or event that negatively affects the whole infosphere – not just an informational entity – as an increase in its level of entropy and hence as an instance of evil (Floridi and Sanders 1999, Floridi and Sanders 2001, Floridi 2003).

In IE, the ethical discourse concerns any entity, understood informationally, that is, not only all persons, their cultivation, well-being and social interac- tions, not only animals, plants and their proper natural life, but also anything that exists, from paintings and books to stars and stones; anything that may or will exist, like future generations; and anything that was but is no more, like our ancestors or old civilizations. Indeed, according to IE, even ideal, intan- gible or intellectual objects can have a minimal degree of moral value, no matter how humble, and so be entitled to some respect. UNESCO, for example, recognizes this in its protection of ‘masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity’ by attributing them an intrinsic worth.

IE is impartial and universal because it brings to ultimate completion the process of enlargement of the concept of what may count as a centre of a (no matter how minimal) moral claim, which now includes every instance of being understood informationally (see Section 5.2.3), no matter whether physically implemented or not. In this respect, IE holds that every entity, as an expression of being, has a dignity, constituted by its mode of existence and essence (the collection of all the elementary proprieties that constitute it for what it is), which deserves to be respected (at least in a minimal and overridable sense) and hence places moral claims on the interacting agent and ought to contribute to the constraint and guidance of his ethical decisions and behaviour. This ontological equality principle means that any form of reality (any instance of information/being), simply for the fact of being what it is, enjoys a minimal, initial, overridable, equal right to exist and develop in a way which is appropriate to its nature. In the history of philosophy, this is a view that can already be found advocated by Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophers.

The conscious recognition of the ontological equality principle presupposes a disinterested judgement of the moral situation from an objective perspective, i.e. a perspective which is as non-anthropocentric as possible. Moral behaviour is less likely without this epistemic virtue. The application of the ontological equality principle is achieved whenever actions are impartial, universal and ‘caring’.

The crucial importance of the radical change in ontological perspective cannot be overestimated. Bioethics and Environmental Ethics fail to achieve a level of complete impartiality because they are still biased against what is inanimate, lifeless, intangible or abstract (even Land Ethics is biased against technology and artefacts, for example). From their perspective, only what is intuitively alive deserves to be considered as a proper centre of moral claims, no matter how minimal, so a whole Universe escapes their attention. Now, this is precisely the fundamental limit overcome by IE, which further lowers the minimal condition that needs to be satisfied, in order to qualify as a centre of moral concern, to the common factor shared by any entity, namely its informational state. And since any form of being is in any case also a coherent body of information, to say that IE is infocentric is tantamount to interpreting it, correctly, as an ontocentric theory.

What counts as a moral agent, according to IE?

A moral agent is an interactive, autonomous and adaptable transition system that can perform morally qualifiable actions (Floridi and Sanders 2004). As usual, the definition requires some explanations.

First, we need to understand what a transition system is. Let us agree that a system is characterized by the properties it satisfies, once a given perspective is made explicit. We are interested in systems that change, which means that some of those properties change value. A changing system has its evolution captured by the values of its attributes. Thus, an entity can be thought of as having states, determined by the value of the properties that hold at any instant of its evolution. For then any change in the entity corresponds to a state change and vice versa. This conceptual approach allows us to view any entity as having states. Each change corresponds to a transition from one state to another. Note that a transition may be non-deterministic, since the transition might lead from a given initial state to one of several possible subsequent states. According to this view, the entity becomes a transition system.

A transition system is interactive when the system and its environment (can) act upon each other. Typical examples include input or output of a value, or simultaneous engagement of an action by both agent and patient – for example, gravitational force between bodies. An interactive transition system is autonomous when the system is able to change state without direct response to interaction, that is, it can perform internal transitions to change its state. So an agent must have at least two states. This property imbues an agent with a certain degree of complexity and independence from its environment. Finally, an interactive transition system is adaptable when the system’s interactions (can) change the transition rules by which it changes state. This property ensures that an agent might be viewed as learning its own mode of operation in a way which depends critically on its experience.

All we need to understand now is the meaning of ‘morally qualifiable action’. Very simply, an action qualifies as moral if it can cause moral good or evil. Note that this interpretation is neither consequentialist nor intentionalist in nature. We are neither affirming nor denying that the specific evaluation of the morality of the agent might depend on the specific outcome of the agent’s actions or on the agent’s original intentions or principles.

With all the definitions in place, it becomes possible to understand why, according to IE, artificial agents (not just digital agents but also social agents such as companies, parties, or hybrid systems formed by humans and machines, or technologically augmented humans) count as moral agents that are morally accountable for their actions (more on the distinction between responsibility and accountability presently).

The enlargement of the class of moral agents by IE brings several advan- tages. Normally, an entity is considered a moral agent only if

(i) it is an individual agent and
(ii) it is human-based, in the sense that it is either human or at least reducible

to an identifiable aggregation of human beings, who remain the only morally responsible sources of action, like ghosts in the legal machine.

Regarding (i), limiting the ethical discourse to individual agents hinders the development of a satisfactory investigation of distributed morality, a macro- scopic and growing phenomenon of global moral actions and collective responsibilities, resulting from the ‘invisible hand’ of systemic interactions among several agents at a local level.

And as far as (ii) is concerned, insisting on the necessarily human-based nature of the agent means undermining the possibility of understanding another major transformation in the ethical field, the appearance of artifi- cial agents that are sufficiently informed, ‘smart’, autonomous and able to perform morally relevant actions independently of the humans who created them, causing ‘artificial good’ and ‘artificial evil’ (Floridi and Sanders 1999, Floridi and Sanders 2001).

Of course, accepting that artificial agents may be moral agents is not devoid of problems. We have seen that morality is usually predicated upon responsi- bility. So it is often argued that artificial agents cannot be considered moral agents because they are not morally responsible for their actions, since holding them responsible would be a conceptual mistake (see Floridi and Sanders 2004 for a more detailed discussion of the following arguments). The point raised by the objection is that agents are moral agents only if they are responsible in the sense of being prescriptively assessable in principle. An agent x is a moral agent only if x can in principle be put on trial.

The immediate impression is that the ‘lack of responsibility’ objection is merely confusing the identification of x as a moral agent with the evaluationof x as a morally responsible agent. Surely, the counter-argument goes, there is a difference between being able to say who or what is the moral source or cause of (and hence accountable for) the moral action in question, and being able to evaluate, prescriptively, whether and how far the moral source so identified is also morally responsible for that action, and hence deserves to be praised or blamed, and in some cases rewarded or punished accordingly.

Well, that immediate impression is indeed wrong. There is no confusion. Equating identification and evaluation is actually a short cut. The objection is saying that identity (as a moral agent) without responsibility (as a moral agent) is empty, so we may as well save ourselves the bother of all these distinctions and speak only of morally responsible agents and moral agents as co-referential descriptions. But here lies the real mistake. For we can now see that the objection has finally shown its fundamental presupposition, viz., that we should reduce all prescriptive discourse to responsibility analysis. Yet this is an unacceptable assumption, a juridical fallacy. There is plenty of room for prescriptive discourse that is independent of responsibility-assignment and hence requires a clear identification of moral agents.

Consider the following example. There is nothing wrong with identifying a dog as the source of a morally good action, hence as an agent playing a crucial role in a moral situation, and therefore as a moral agent. Search-and-rescue dogs are trained to track missing people. They often help save lives, for which they receive much praise and rewards from both their owners and the people they have located. Yet this is not quite the point. Emotionally, people may be very grateful to the animals, but for the dogs it is a game and they cannot be considered morally responsible for their actions. The point is that the dogs are involved in a moral game as main players and therefore we can rightly identify them as moral agents accountable for the good or evil they can cause.

All this should ring a bell. Trying to equate identification and evaluation is really just another way of shifting the ethical analysis from considering xas the moral agent/source of a first-order moral action y to considering x as a possible moral patient of a second-order moral action z, which is the moral evaluation of x as being morally responsible for y. This is a typical Kantian move, with roots in Christian theology. However, there is clearly more to moral evaluation than just responsibility because x is capable of moral action even if x cannot be (or is not yet) a morally responsible agent.

By distinguishing between moral responsibility, which requires intentions, consciousness and other mental attitudes, and moral accountability, we can now avoid anthropocentric and anthropomorphic attitudes towards agent- hood. Instead, we can rely on an ethical outlook not necessarily based on punishment and reward (responsibility-oriented ethics) but on moral agent- hood, accountability and censure. We are less likely to assign responsibility at any cost, forced by the necessity to identify individual, human agent(s). We can stop the regress of looking for the responsible individual when some- thing evil happens, since we are now ready to acknowledge that sometimes the moral source of evil or good can be different from an individual or group of humans (note that this was a reasonable view in Greek philosophy). As a result, we are able to escape the dichotomy

(i) [(responsibility implies moral agency) implies prescriptive action], versus (ii) [(noresponsibilityimpliesnomoralagency)impliesnoprescriptiveaction].

There can be moral agency in the absence of moral responsibility. Promoting normative action is perfectly reasonable even when there is no responsibility but only moral accountability and the capacity for moral action.  Being able to treat non-human agents as moral agents facilitates the discus- sion of the morality of agents not only in cyberspace but also in the biosphere – where animals can be considered moral agents without their having to dis- play free will, emotions or mental states – and in contexts of ‘distributed morality’, where social and legal agents can now qualify as moral agents. The great advantage is a better grasp of the moral discourse in non-human contexts.

All this does not mean that the concept of ‘responsibility’ is redundant. On the contrary, the previous analysis makes clear the need for further analysis of the concept of responsibility itself, especially when the latter refers to the ontological commitments of creators of new agents and environments. This point is further discussed in Section 5.2.4. The only ‘cost’ of a ‘mind-less morality’ approach is the extension of the class of agents and moral agents to embrace artificial agents. It is a cost that is increasingly worth paying the more we move towards an advanced information society.

Conclusion

There is a famous passage in one of Einstein’s letters that well summarizes the perspective advocated by IE.

Some five years prior to his death, Albert Einstein received a letter from a nineteen-year-old girl grieving over the loss of her younger sister. The young woman wished to know what the famous scientist might say to comfort her. On March 4, 1950, Einstein wrote to this young person: A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons close to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all humanity and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is capable of achieving this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. (Einstein 1954)

Does the informational level of abstraction of IE provide an additional per- spective that can further expand the ethical discourse, so as to include the world of morally significant phenomena involving informational objects? Or does it represent a threshold beyond which nothing of moral significance really happens? Does looking at reality through the highly philosophical lens of an informational analysis improve our ethical understanding or is it an ethically pointless (when not misleading) exercise? IE argues that the agent- related behaviour and the patient-related status of informational objects qua informational objects can be morally significant, over and above the instru- mental function that may be attributed to them by other ethical approaches, and hence that they can contribute to determining, normatively, ethical duties and legally enforceable rights. IE’s position, like that of any other macroethics, is not devoid of problems. But it can interact with other macroethical theories. and contribute an important new perspective: a process or action may be morally good or bad irrespective of its consequences, motives, universality or virtuous nature, but depending on how it affects the infosphere. An ontocen- tric ethics provides an insightful perspective. Without IE’s contribution, our understanding of moral facts in general, not just of ICT-related problems in particular, would be less complete.