Foundational issues ininformation ethicsKenneth Einar HimmaDepartment of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, USAAbstractPurpose – Information ethics, as is well known, has emerged as an independent area of ethical andphilosophical inquiry. There are a number of academic journals that are devoted entirely to thenumerous ethical issues that arise in connection with the new information communicationtechnologies; these issues include a host of intellectual property, information privacy, and securityissues of concern to librarians and other information professionals. In addition, there are a number ofmajor international conferences devoted to information ethics every year. It would hardly beoverstating the matter to say that information ethics is as “hot” an area of theoretical inquiry asmedical ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on these and related issues.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a review of relevant information ethicsliterature together with the author’s assessment of the arguments.Findings – There are issues that are more abstract and basic than the substantive issues with whichmost information ethics theorizing is concerned. These issues are thought to be “foundational” in thesense that we cannot fully succeed in giving an analysis of the concrete problems of information ethics(e.g. are legal intellectual property rights justifiably protected?) until these issues are adequatelyaddressed.Originality/value – The paper offers a needed survey of foundational issues in information ethics.Keywords Ethics, Philosophical conceptsPaper type Research paperIs information ethics theoretically unique?A number of theorists have attempted to justify the study of computer ethics as a fieldby arguing that computer ethics is unique in some theoretically significant sense. Onthis line of analysis, the use of computing technologies gives rise to uniquemeta-ethical, ethical, or epistemic difficulties that warrant treating those problems as atheoretically unified class that requires specialization. While a number of authorsargue that computer ethics is distinct in some theoretically significant way (henceforththe uniqueness thesis), they differ with respect to the sense in which they think it isunique.Interpreting the uniqueness thesisThere are a number of different interpretations of the uniqueness thesis[1]. First, onemight argue that computer ethics is unique in the sense that some acts involvingcomputers possess ethical qualities not possessed by any other type of act. Since theexisting concepts of obligatory, permissible, good, and supererogatory (i.e. goodinvolving a sacrifice that is beyond the call of duty) purport to adequately describe allexisting ethical qualities of acts, this interpretation can adequately be expressed asfollows.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htmIssues ininformationethics79Received 2 April 2006Revised 18 October 2006Accepted 1 November 2006Library Hi TechVol. 25 No. 1, 2007pp. 79-94q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0737-8831DOI 10.1108/07378830710735876The meta-ethical thesis. There are acts in computer ethics that cannot adequately becharacterized by the traditional concepts of obligatory, permissible, good, andsupererogatory.The meta-ethical thesis, then, makes the very strong claim that the verymeta-ethical foundation for general and applied ethical thinking is inadequate[2].Second, one might hold that existing ethical theories (or so-called “first principles”)might be adequate to resolve problems in other areas of applied ethics but areinsufficient to resolve certain problems involving computer use[3]. Computer ethics,according to this view, is unique in the following sense.The normative thesis. Computer technologies present ethical problems that cannot,as an objective matter, be adequately resolved by recourse to existing ethical theories.The normative thesis, then, states a claim about the objective coverage of theexisting set of first-principles – and not about our abilities to apply those principles. Inparticular, it asserts that not even a perfectly intelligent observer could correctlyevaluate certain ethical issues solely by recourse to existing first-principles becausethose principles do not fully cover those acts.Third, one might argue that certain types of reasoning useful in other areas ofapplied ethics are of limited utility in the context of computer ethics. Walter Maner(1996, reprinted in Hester and Ford, 2001) argues, for example, that we lack theresources to build analogical bridges that would link certain problems involvingcomputer use to problems in other areas in applied ethics and asserts that problems incomputer ethics are epistemically indeterminate (Maner, 1996, reprinted in Hester andFord, 2001).The epistemological thesis. Computer technologies present ethical problems thatresist the analogies that enable us to see how ethical theories and first-principles applyin other areas of applied ethics.The epistemological thesis, then, asserts no more than that the techniques thatfrequently help us in seeing how existing normative materials apply to specificproblems are inadequate to help us with problems in computer ethics. While it mightbe that existing theories and principles are logically adequate to address theseproblems, we lack sufficient epistemic resources to determine how they apply.Finally, some writers argue that computing machines instantiate properties that areethically unique among members of some class of entities. The idea here is thatcomputing machines instantiate ethically significant properties (i.e. properties that arerelevant in evaluating acts involving computers) that are instantiated by no othernon-living artifact.The property thesis. Computer technologies possess moral properties that are uniqueamong non-living artifacts (though such properties might be possessed by livingthings).Thus, for example, one might argue that computers are unique among machines ininstantiating some form of moral standing (e.g. moral personhood)[4].Evaluating the uniqueness thesisThe meta-ethical thesis can pretty much be rejected at the outset. There is little reasonto think that existing ethical categories are insufficient in the way described by themeta-ethical thesis. Our set of existing categories can be inadequate only if either thereis more than one ethically significant class