Foundations of Information Ethics (FINE)

Goals:

The project aims at the following targets:

1. To delineate the intellectual domain of information ethics which is both philosophically consistent and technologically up to date
2. To demarcate the domain of information ethics within a wider context of applied ethics, including biomedical ethics and environmental ethics
3. To enlighten both ourselves and the intellectual community with the importance of "case studies," which analyze the conflict of interests involved in actual cases and suggest a possibly wide range of measures to take, in the hope that we will generalize over the cases into a generic understanding of the future society
4. To propose a specific frame of reference against which relevant problems are analyzed, discussed and resolved in a way that groups with apparently conflicting interest can agree, or at least mutually understand each other
5. To create domestic and international interdisciplinary for a in which people of the common interest discuss the relevant issues in light of the cutting the edge technology
6. To define the possible method and content of future pedagogical enterprise, both at home and in school, that makes much of the importance of information ethics

Backgrounds:

Information Ethics is one of the newest fields in the field of applied ethics, in the sense that applied ethics deals with and tries to resolve the conflicts between advances in technology and people's life in the modern society. The remarkable development of computer and network technology has given rise to so unprecedented and so diversified a set of ethical and moral problems that attempts at solving these problems undoubtedly will take philosophically focused and technologically well-informed intellectual efforts. The problems we are facing include the ethical status of "unauthorized" uses of computers and networks, the cultural and economic imbalance between groups with different historical, regional backgrounds in the globalized information infrastructure, the new dimensions of human rights like privacy and copyright in the digitized world, and the moral obligations and duties as professionals in information technology. The researchers working on the project are well aware of the urgency and imminence of the tasks and decided to collaborate.

Work Plan:

Year 1(August 1998 - March 1999):

In the first year, the organizational and administrative decisions are given due attention, thus the principal investigators discussing the method of data collection and organization and the methods of creating a milieu for mutual understanding.

Given the "borderless"-ness of the uses of information technology, the international collaboration and coordination is in order. Though augmented with network technology, face-to-face communication with over-sea researchers are to take place, with view to locating the primary concrete focuses of the project, in Princeton in September, London in December, and as a plenary forum, in Kyoto in March 1999.

Monthly meetings are to be held at each site to work on the theoretical and actual sides of the problems the project is tackling. The minutes and presentation materials go in the public domain soon after the meetings.

One or two college level introductory anthologies suitable for textbooks in classrooms are to be published, in Japanese, to describe the the state of the art in this newly rising ethical field.

Organization:

Principal Investigators:

Reserchers