MIT SESSION 2: Moral Implications of the Web’s
On Tuesday night, 7-9, Building 1, Room 390, I’ll be teaching the second of three sessions of my mini-course at MIT. Here are my notes for your comments and improvement:
Three basic approaches to morality. Something is moral because:
(a) Deontological: it fits under a principle (e.g., many religions, natural rights)
(b) Consequentialist: something is moral based on its effects (e.g., utilitarianism, selfishness)
(c ) Virtue: Moral actions comes from good habits of character
How do we decide about moral philosophy? We see if the theory sorts known cases into the right bins. E.g., if utilitarianism lets us hang an innocent person, we’ll reject that version of utilitarianism.
But this means that we come into this with a sense about what’s right and wrong. At its root, IMO, this moral sense is a sympathy for others, a caring about others. This occurs within a shared world. Sympathy in a shared world — that is, a shared caring about our world — is at the root of morality.
This is at odds with the current view of sympathy as a “tuning fork” that vibrates in us as it vibrates in others. The current view assumes we are first and foremost individuals and wonders how we could ever get beyond the self to care about others.
Now look at the Web’s architecture. Links come first. Every time I put in a link to a site, I am sending people away from my site, a little act of selflessness and generosity. The Web is characterized by generosity throughout. The Web is a shared world created out of shared interests. It is fundamentally connected, sympathetic and moral.
Obviously, many immoral awful things occur on the Web. But its architecture reflects our moral nature. And it’s exciting to so many of us because of the promise it offers for moving the species forward not only technologically but also morally.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Are we more or less moral online? Are we the same?
Is the Web a reflection of who we are or a reflection of our “better nature.”
Is there a developing online ethics or ethos? In what is it rooted?
Can a technology be moral or immoral, or do the terms not apply?
Is the Internet political? Does the value-free transmission of bits have its own value? What did the Taliban make of the Internet? China? Fundamentalists? Are they wrong?
What’s the best we could hope for (= work for) WRT the Web?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Oooh, great questions–sure to stir things up!
Your thesis about sympathy being at the root of our morality is where everything hinges–and where you can be most challenged by participants. I trust that you’re prepared to defend that position!
This reminds me of those frenzied discussions in my Business Ethics class where we’d collapse in disagreement over what constitutes a moral measure. If we couldn’t get past that, we couldn’t decide if issues/actions were moral.
I agree that the Web’s architecture is indeed a reflection of the *best parts* of our moral nature (from wherever it comes)–because of my passion for community, connection, relationships. But it’s that question of where morality arises that ultimately shapes our view of the Web.
Sure wish I could be there. Hey–take it on the road. MIT in the winter, Caltech in the spring!
Isn’t C. Virtue a subset of, or at the least, inextricably intermingled with, both the A. Deontological and B. Consequentialist positions?
How does one enact moral virtue without reference to principle or outcome? In what way is virtue a method for moral ordering and not a generalized descriptor of a particular deontological or consequential position in action?
On the point of linking being selfless…
Is it? Could be viewed as a backdoor to getting more people to you (If I link to JOHO he will be more likely to link back to me. Therefore, all his readers would jaunt to my site).
I wonder if this could tie into pondering the question of the us being the same online as we are off?
The net, it seems, makes our strongest characteristics viewable, while downplaying the stuff we spin as “us”. The net speeds EVERYTHING up.
I believe the tie in to your discussion a few months back would be helpful (something about yahoo chat/message boards and the internet and is it cheesy or good or whatever)
Thoughts without editing…
Dan, Clearly all 3 are related, and virtue does cut across the other 2. But the idea as I understand it, stemming from Aristotle and going through MacIntyre, is that we center morality in the character of the agent, not in the rules that agent follows or the consequences of that agent’s actions. MacIntyre argues that “we need to attend to virtues in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules” (p 119) and of moral outcomes (“After Virtue”).
I like your topic and your ideas here. It sparked some nice dialogue while taking the kids to school this morning…
“The Web is a shared world created out of shared interests. It is fundamentally connected, sympathetic and moral.” -dw
The W3 metaphor for a communal morality is interesting. The moral being a shared system of interests and sympathy–communal movements of micro-agreement locally lived with ramifications across the entire network.
“…stemming from Aristotle and going through MacIntyre, is that we center morality in the character of the agent, not in the rules that agent follows or the consequences of that agent’s actions. MacIntyre argues that ‘we need to attend to virtues in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules'”
Functionally placing the “attendance to virtue” prior to understanding the purpose and authority of rules does not seem, to me, to create a new category of moral approach. Do not all rule-systems end up doing what MacIntyre describes? It is a very real possibility that I simply am obtuse regarding these things.
{warning: dan thinking out loud…}
Running with MacIntyre… How is character defined if apart from rule or outcome?
Could character be a tendency toward certain outcomes; a propensity for a confluence of certain rules? Can one presume a rule-based system even if one cannot sufficiently demarcate the system? If one takes a position that states that one is always already within systems of knowing agency, even if the particular structures are themselves contingent, ever emerging, particular outcomes of these systems, can virtue be anything but a loosely coupled consensus on rule and/or outcome?
The Aristotelian capitalized Virtue tradition is one that, at times, I have real problems with. It seems less a (for this discussion) “bin” and more a layer on top of presupposed cultural agreements (fuzzy rules) justified or vilified through meeting or failing to meet internally defined criteria for success (making one virtuous or without virtue) which are posited as something more fundamental than the active agreements they rest upon.
MacIntyre’s virtues-in-action perspective (“we need to attend to virtues in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules”) is something that seems impossible for human beings to exclude–it seems built into the very fibers of our existence. We understand rules and outcomes only after we emerge into systems of biochemical existence and memetic systems of community and self-reference that are inherently active.
To me, A./B./C. seem too interrelated for any one to stand alone. I think that “centering” morality in the character of an individual is always already an act of moralizing in and around communities of loosely joined agreements held together by common existence that have everything to do with rule and outcome; constraints and results; orthodoxy and orthopraxy; structures of trust and closer relationship.
revolution is merely changing the rules of constraint; heresy changing the outcome of constraint’s interpretation.
perhaps all i am doing is advocating a post-structuralist version of virtue morality? hmm.
{dan is done thinking out loud, he apologizes for his clawing ineptness}
All the best on your class tonight.
Morality express rules. The logic of rules stems from ethics. Ethics tells us what is good and evil (that is, when we treat it as seriously objective as any other intellectual discipline).
From Socrates to GE Moore, we have had elaboration of ‘goods’ in terms of exemplary qualities that makes up some object (a good man, or a good watch). The significant feature of goods in relation to people, is that they encourage collaboration, energy and risk: for it is the exemplary nature of things (including people) that provoke the passions needed to excel at creating or nurturing them. Evil, by contrast, pushes the imperative of “what’s in it for me?”. The rule of comfort and the (political need) to stop each trampling on the other….
The Internet is indeed a web of links. In so far as those links provide a platform for production (rather than consumption), then there’s always more than ‘me’ involved. Such a ‘beyond’ is what makes us capable of ‘good’. Such links then carry, direct and modulate passion.
One of the grand historical ironies of the Internet will be that while it appeared to let “everyone do their own thing” and thus encourage relativism, whim and ego; it will have turned out — as long as the forces of good go for it! — to have been a unique conjuncture where objective ethics, in the practice of goods, actually reappeared on the stage of history (after being banished since the days of Thomas Hobbes).
I like G.
NEW ACQUIANTANCE, NEW FRIENDS
Having been aware of your sense of community, you are now in a new phase of your life wherein joining groups and meeting people becomes a preoccupation. In being involved one is given the opportunity to meet people and get acquianted with them which can lead to a new bond of friendship. We make new friends at the start of the school year, as we join organizations, as we encounter different people in school, parties, meetings, seminars and conferences. This can be a part of our socialization process. As teenagers, these questions can help you.
“When do adults consider you mature enough to decide for yourself?”
“When can you attend functions unchaperoned/”
“What are some moral implications of your act?”
More parents and elders see the value of allowing you to attend these functions as a way of cultivating friendship.
Please:explain it, and give anexamples of each sentence. And e-mail me, coz I don’t know what is this all mean.
By the way, what is the meaning of unchaperoned?
What is its men “New Acquiantance, New Friends”? please explain. give examples.
Than you.
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