Virtue vs utility: Alternative foundations for computer ethics
- George Washington Univ., Washington, DC (United States)
Ethical decisions within the field of computers and information systems are made at two levels by two distinctly different groups of people. At the level of general principles, ethical issues are debated by academics and industry representatives in an attempt to decide what is proper behavior on issues such as hacking, privacy, and copying software. At another level, that of particular situations, individuals make ethical decisions regarding what is good and proper for them in their particular situation. They may use the general rules provided by the experts or they may decide that these rules do not apply in their particular situation. Currently, the literature on computer ethics provides some opinions regarding the general rules, and some guidance for developing further general rules. What is missing is guidance for individuals making ethical decisions in particular situations. For the past two hundred years, ethics has been dominated by conduct based ethical theories such as utilitarianism which attempt to describe how people must be behave in order to be moral individuals. Recently, weaknesses in conduct based approaches such as utilitarianism have led moral philosophers to reexamine character based ethical theories such as virtue ethics which dates back to the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. This paper will compare utilitarianism and virtue ethics with respect to the foundations they provide for computer ethics. It will be argued that the very nature of computer ethics and the need to provide guidance to individuals making particular moral decisions points to the ethics of virtue as a superior philosophical foundation for computer ethics. The paper will conclude with the implications of this position for researchers, teachers and writers within the field of computer ethics.
- OSTI ID:
- 111331
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-941133-; TRN: 95:005753-0005
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Meeting on ethics in the computer age, Gatlinburg, TN (United States), 11-13 Nov 1994; Other Information: PBD: 1994; Related Information: Is Part Of Ethics in the computer age. Conference proceedings; Kizza, J.M. [ed.]; PB: 219 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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