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Discourse ethics for computer ethics: a heuristic for engaged dialogical reflection

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Abstract

Attempts to employ discourse ethics for assessing communication and information technologies have tended to focus on managerial and policy-oriented contexts. These initiatives presuppose institutional resources for organizing sophisticated consultation processes that elicit stakeholder input. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, this paper supplements those initiatives by developing a more widely usable framework for moral inquiry and reflection on problematic cyberpractices. Given the highly idealized character of discourse ethics, a usable framework must answer two questions: (1) How should those who lack organizational power (e.g., concerned citizens, students) conduct their moral inquiry under non-ideal conditions of discourse? (2) How ought they to understand the moral force of the judgments they reach under such conditions? In response, I develop the heuristic implications of Habermas’s principle of universalization. To render that principle usable for non-ideal discourse, I propose a modification that yields a scalar measure of “dialogically robust” judgments that are responsive to the actual state of discussion. To illustrate the use of these principles, I sketch two case studies, which examine the moral acceptability of violent video gaming and government cyber-surveillance.

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Notes

  1. See Habermas (1990), Apel (1980), Alexy (1990). Note that Habermas’s use of “validity” should not be confused with the formal-logical sense.

  2. This paraphrases Habermas’s “Discourse Principle” (D), which he now understands as a broad principle of normative justification, applicable to the full range of types of norms: moral, legal, group-centric, and so on; see Habermas (1996, 107–11).

  3. However, Birrer favors Albrecht Wellmer’s version of discourse ethics (Wellmer 1991) over Habermas’s.

  4. Habermas (1993, chap. 1); he also distinguishes “pragmatic” issues, which concern the selection of means, but this has been less contentious.

  5. In critical social theory, McCarthy (1998); in cyberethics Stahl (2004); see Mingers and Walsham (2010) for a proposal for overcoming practical difficulties in distinguishing morality and ethics.

  6. Moor assumes that “some policies will be regarded as unjust by all rational, impartial people, some policies will be regarded as just by all rational, impartial people, and some will be in dispute” (1999, 67); but he does not say how to resolve disputed cases.

  7. This idea harkens back to Kant’s Kingdom of Ends formulation of the Categorical Imperative: “A rational being must always regard himself as a legislator in a kingdom of ends” (Kant 1994, Ak. 434). For an analysis and defense of the deeper value commitments of Habermas’s broader discourse theory, see Rehg (1994, 134–149).

  8. Habermas’s terminology reflects his distinction between particular interests, cultural values, and generally binding norms; notice however that each of these may be regarded as something a person does or ought to “value” in some way.

  9. A typical defense of discourse ethics points to the vast area of moral agreement in everyday life. But that defense does not suffice for cyberethics, with its focus on unsettled, even muddled and opaque, moral problems.

  10. Debates beginning at the end of the sixteenth century between probabilists and their opponents turned on the level of expert support necessary for considering a judgment morally acceptable; see Harty (1911).

  11. I draw to some extent on cases that were collectively developed in a team-taught computer ethics course; I thank the co-instructor (and computer scientist) Erin Chambers and the students of this course (Computer Ethics, Saint Louis University, Spring 2014).

  12. Some evidence suggests the lax policy is followed by the overwhelming majority of parents of teenage gamers; see Anderson and Bushman (2001, 354).

  13. In 2011, the Supreme Court cited First Amendment grounds when it invalidated legal prohibitions against the sale of violent games to minors (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association). I assume that ruling does not bear on parental authority, but only on legitimate government intervention.

  14. However, it is not clear how much weight their agreement or disagreement should have in assessing the level of reasonable consensus. In general, the status of less-than-fully-autonomous stakeholders remains somewhat undeveloped in discourse ethics; see Rehg (2003, 86–87, 93–96).

  15. See, for example, the extended list of stakeholders in Gotterbarn et al. (2008, 436).

  16. See the Entertainment Software Rating Board guidelines (ESBR 2014a, b).

  17. As pro-gamers like Seth Schiesel (2011) acknowledge; cf. also Olson et al. (2009, 196), who doubt long-term negative effects, but still suggest that parents play video games with their children as a part of exercising oversight.

  18. According to Sicart (2009), violent games can actually foster virtue when played intelligently.

  19. The programs did not require any significant judicial oversight; they were designed to identify unknown terrorists, and thus potentially swept in every citizen as a potential link; surveillance of foreigners was almost entirely unregulated. The constitutionality of the surveillance programs was dubious from the start, and in any case, actual agency practices significantly violated even the lax rules that were eventually put in place; see Kirk (2014), Clarke et al. (2013), Gorban and Barrett (2013).

  20. Students can easily miss this point, when they assume that de facto empirical inconsistencies between a practice and values render the practice morally unacceptable.

  21. A practice can be morally wrong even apart from its effects. A recent example is the social experiment that Facebook conducted on its users without their consent. Although this experiment might have had negative effects on some users, the lack of consent makes it inherently wrong, whether it had such effects or not (Lanier 2014).

  22. Clarke et al. (2013, 46–49) identify three further risks: to individual liberty, international relations, and trade. The negative effects of surveillance on these values, as well as its tendency to weaken public trust, flow from the undermining of privacy. On the risk to liberty and freedom of expression, see also Greenwald (2014, 172–86).

  23. One might object that effective surveillance contradicts Moor’s publicity requirements. In reply, critics could cite NSA director Michael S. Rogers, who recently allayed fears of lasting damage from Snowden’s revelations (Sanger 2014).

  24. For an overview of the legal and empirical arguments, see Rollins and Liu (2014); on the Obama Administration’s legal defense, see Administration White Paper (2013); for a critique of this defense, see HLR 2014.

  25. Citizen metadata surveillance programs were authorized by sec. 215 of the amended Patriot Act, whereas foreign surveillance programs, which targeted data content, rested on sec. 702 of the amended Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A more detailed analysis would have to consider the different effects of these programs; for example, the fact that US citizens’ data were easily swept into foreign surveillance methods (Rollins and Liu 2014; Clarke et al. 2014, 80–81).

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Acknowledgments

I thank Garth Hallett and Erin Chambers for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I also thank Professor Chambers and the Computer Ethics class (Saint Louis University, Spring 2014), whose discussion of issues and case studies in this paper has shaped my analysis.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO, 63108-3414, USA

    William Rehg

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Rehg, W. Discourse ethics for computer ethics: a heuristic for engaged dialogical reflection. Ethics Inf Technol 17, 27–39 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-014-9359-0

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