4.2 Information Ethics and Computer Games
4.2.1 Key Concepts and Method of Information Ethics
The ethical theory I have chosen to represent a closer computer ethics perspective is information ethics as defi ned by Luciano Floridi, Jeff Sanders, and others.12 Information ethics is a radical perspective on computer ethics that takes into account the nature of computing as well as the presence of human and software agents in digital environments. Furthermore, it shares with virtue ethics a certain constructivist approach. It is my goal to provide an answer to computer game ethics that draws on the common grounds of those theories, but also to use and exploit their specifi c conceptual strengths.
In Floridi and Sanders’s words, information ethics “is an Environ- mental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life.”13 Information ethics defi nes itself as a macroethical approach, a framework that expands the responsibility of moral agents by defi ning existence as informational existence: we are all data entities. Every biological life is a data entity, but there are more data entities than life-forms: there are artifi cial data entities that need to be respected and that can be harmed. For instance, databases containing our credit card data and records are data beings that need to be preserved from harm. These data entities
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share an environment that needs to be ethically protected. Information ethics expands our moral universe to include everything informational, and the relations that we establish and that are established with us.
Furthermore, information ethics is an “architectural ethics,” an ethics addressing not only the users but also the creators and designers of the
“infosphere.”14 The infosphere is an ecological environment of informa- tional agents, patients, and their mutual relations. All elements of the infosphere are in one way or another mutually connected, precisely like in an ecosystem, and the balance of this system can be affected, leading to harm and thus defi ning what unethical actions or relations are. The infosphere is defi ned as “a context constituted by the whole system of information objects, including all agents and patients, messages, their attributes and mutual relations.”15 The infosphere is a key concept in information ethics, since it makes clear where we can fi nd data beings, how their relations constitute their ontologies, and what can harm them.
Computer games are infospheres. In a specifi c level of analysis, or level of abstraction, a game like World of Warcraft (which I will analyze in more detail in chapter 5) is an infosphere: the product, the developers, the servers and their technology, the players, and the online resources. But a specifi c server is also an infosphere, depending on the level of abstraction necessary for the analysis. The infosphere could include the player-versus- player server where I played, as well as the Internet forums hosted on the offi cial web page, for example. Other analyses may need to defi ne different operational infospheres, always depending on what is relevant for the research question to be explained.
Information ethics takes into account the necessity of operating within different informational perspectives by using the concepts of level of abstraction and gradient of abstraction.16 The use of these concepts is closely linked with the ontological nature of information ethics. According to this theory, data beings are capable of agenthood. The problem is that if there is no threshold of agenthood, everything can become an agent.
Thus, a formal approach is needed to specify what beings present agent- hood under which circumstances. The method of abstraction, from which the concepts of level of abstraction and gradient of abstraction are taken, provides a serious logical framework that allows a clear specifi cation of what reality is being observed, and how it is being observed.
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A level of abstraction “is a fi nite but nonempty set of observables, which are expected to be the building blocks in a theory characterized by their very choice.”17 A level of abstraction determines the features of the observed object we are focusing on. The whole set of different observables used in the research yields the gradient of abstraction, “a way of varying the level of abstraction in order to make observations at differing levels of abstraction.”18
Information ethics has an object-oriented approach to ontology: an object is informationally, and thus ontologically, defi ned by the objects with which it constitutes the infosphere—their relations, capacities, and possibilities.19 By using the phenomenological concept of system and relat- ing this to the procedures of information constitution and exchange of computer systems,20 information ethics describes a moral universe in which not only is no being alone, but every being is indeed related, morally related to other beings, because in their well-being is connected the welfare of the whole system. Agents are systems that affect larger systems with their actions, affecting themselves as well, since other systems are procedurally and informationally related to them.
Information ethics considers moral actions an information process. It is worth pointing out that the agent and the patient are, in this level of abstraction, not necessarily human. Information ethics allows an operative level of abstraction without human agency. In fact, information ethics suggests artifi cial agency as a key element for the understanding of moral- ity in the infosphere.
Also of interest for this ethical framework is Floridi and Sanders’s concept of homo poieticus, central to information ethics’ anthropology.21 Both information ethics and virtue ethics are constructivist approaches, but while the latter could be accused of promoting an anthropocentric approach, the former takes into account a much wider system. Information ethics expands the ethical universe, increasing the degree to which we are morally responsible for the world we live in. According to information ethics, the moral scope has to be expanded to take into consideration any informational being that is present and has importance for the well-being of the infosphere. Furthermore, as human agents we have the task, the ethical duty, of using and producing virtuous environments. For the environment to be ethically sound, we need to be ethically responsible as users and producers.
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The strong object-oriented background of information ethics implies that every agent in the infosphere, to some extent, is a producer as well as a consumer. In a system such as the one suggested by information ethics, interconnectivity is not enough to explain the degree of interdependence that every element of the infosphere presents to the other beings of that infosphere. As informational beings we are copartici- pated by every other being in the infosphere, both in a material and in an informational way. Thus, the responsibility of producing and sustaining the infosphere’s well-being is extended to each and every one of its par- ticipants, be they human or not. The concept of subject that is present in this approach is, beyond the egopoietic approach of virtue ethics, ecopoietic;
that is, it assumes that the agent creates the environment and participates in its generation and sustainability, and thus is ethically responsible for the preservation of its balance as well as for its adequate use and develop- ment. We are all developers and consumers in the infosphere, and in this regard we must behave ethically and preserve the well-being of the system.
Information ethics expands our moral universe so we are responsible for the act of participation and co-creation of the informational worlds with which we are engaged. This may seem a highly theoretical, complex understanding of computer ethics. Nevertheless, I will argue that information ethics fi ts computer games especially well, and its application provides insights on the morality of computer games and ludic experiences that place their analysis in the fi eld of computer ethics.