The document discusses the intersection of ethics and epistemology in the digital age, highlighting the lag in ethical regulation compared to technological advancements. It introduces a methodological framework focused on macro-ethics to address ethical challenges arising from digital transformations, and emphasizes the need for pluralism and a consideration of ontology and epistemology in ethical discourse. Additionally, it promotes virtue ethics as a teaching tool and advocates for a holistic approach to ethics that encompasses care and responsibility towards the digital infosphere.

1. Ethics-cum-epistemology
A methodological framework
Marilou Niedda and Federica Russo

2. Ethical questions in the digital era
• A call for more ethics and more regulation
• New challenges, AI and generative AI
• Two speeds: the speed of technological developoment, the speed of ethics
and regulation. The latter is constantly running late to catch up.
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3. A step back:
why ethical question of the digital
• The digital revolution comes with significant changes at the level of ontology and
epistemology, with spillover effects on ethics – how well do we grasp them?
• E.g. blurring of online/offline, displacement / localisation, co-production of knowledge
• Ethical challenges are not just as consequences of applying / using digital
artefacts
• E.g.: Moral dilemmas of doing pre-natal screenings vs how privacy has changed in onlife
environments
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4. A methodological approach
to ethical questions
• Information ethics as macro-ethics
• A conceptual framework for analysing ethical problems
• Tied to constructionist ethics
• Look at the sources of moral action
• Consider moral agents not just as passive, but also as active, poietic agents
• An ecological approach,
• About inforgs in the infosphere, and their responsibilities in it
• N.B.: inforgs are not just humans
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5. Why macro-ethical approach is important
• Understanding source of moral problem helps see that it is never just about
ethics
• It is also about ontology, epistemology, methodology
• So macro-ethics, in the informational framwork, paves the way for ethics-cum-epistemology
• Yet, macro-ethics is still in need of micro-ethics
• See next
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6. Micro-ethics frameworks, as practical tools
• Overview of major micro-ethics approaches
• Rationale:
• VSD: an established account, but worth using in design settings
• Responsible Innovation: if we can’t stop technological innovation, let’s make it responsible;
how to cash out ‘responsible’?
• AI auditing, and Human-centered: where the spotlight currently is
• Data feminism: sheding light on inequalities due to (mis)use of digital technologies
• Algorithmic-induced epistemic injustice: the methodological source of the ethical problems
such as epistemic injustice
• These (and others) are all necessary but insufficent on their own to address
ethica challges of the digital society
• Few of them connect ethics to epistemology, whence then need of broader framework
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7. Broadening the scope of ethical questions
• Re-start conversation from information ethics as macro-ethics
• If moral problems are also rooted in changes at the level of ontology and epistemology, we
need to be able to look at them as sources of moral problems
• In the background: against The-One-Theory of Ethics, for pluralism (and some form of
pragmatism)
• An emerging approach:
• Ethics-cum-epistemology or, No-ethics-sine-epistemology
• See also the work of Dina!
• More generally: trying to carve out space for this emerging approach, while
recognizing importance of other micro-ethics approaches
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8. Driving change vs imposing constraints
• Complementary approaches:
• Imposing constraints: all of the traditional ethical approaches
• E.g. need of AI auditing, trustwhorty AI …
• N.B. many EU documents are principled-based, but still say what we ought to do (so they are
based on deontology)
• Driving change: who and how can drive change
• Change not just top-down (e.g., via regulation) but bottom up, via changing design,
implementation, engineering practices
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9. A virtue ethical framework for developers and
leaders
• Virtue ethics and its importance for teaching
• See e.g. pioneering contribution of Bezuidenhuit and Ratti on teaching data
ethics using virtue ethics
• Much more to be done
• Should we significantly revise our approach to teaching ethics to non
philosophy students?
• What is the value of cases?
• What about moral pluralism? Cultural diversity? The value of design, beyond
the specific artefact?
• That’s why virtue ethics may be a good approach for teaching
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10. Beyond teaching,
ethics is everyone’s business
• Restart from information ethics and duties towards infosphere (ecological approach)
“The moral agent is an agent that looks after the infosphere and brings about positive
improvements in it, so as to leave the infosphere in a better state than it was before the
intervention.”
Floridi, The Ethics of Information
• IE maxim
• Is generic enough to be applied to designers / engineers, citizens, parents, …
• Is however too generic to see how positive improvement can be brought about
• Thus: substantiate IE maxim in terms of care
• Drawing on core idea of ‘care’,
• Useful intersection of care ethics, virtue ethics, feminist approache
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11. Back to ethics-cum-epistemology
• Care as an epistemic concept (not just ethical)
• Based on practice
• Includes attentivennes, responsibility, competence, responsiveness
• These are not confined to ethical action, but also characterise ‘good’ (in the sense of
virtue) methodological/epistemological approach
• A virtuous, caring epistemology-cum-ethics invites (or is need of?) pluralist
approaches both in epistemology / methodology and in ethics
• Why?
• Well beyond scope of this work to connect need of pluralistic approaches to
normative dimensions
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