Programming Research Group
Technical Report TR-5-00
Two papers on the foundations of computer ethics
Luciano Floridi and
J.W. Sanders
September 2000, 35 pp.
Abstract
It has been argued that Information Ethics, which amongst other things
concerns questions of normally non-sentient agents acting on information
(i.e. entities in Cyberspace), is a macroethics (a theoretical,
field-independent, applicable ethics) not accurately subsumed by standard
ethical theories. In this paper that argument is extended. Four requirements
of Information Ethics are determined: stability, modularity, rigorousness and
soundness. A concept called entropy structure is proposed as the basis
for an Information Ethics consistent with those requirements. Finally, evil
actions are characterised as those that increase the entropy ordering and a
variety of examples is analysed.
This paper is available as two separate ( 5a
and 5b ) gzipped PostScript files.