Postdigital Ethics

Petar Jandrić (Ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Postdigital Science and Education. Cham: Springer. Postdigital Ethics Shane Ralston, Woolf University, Valetta, Malta, philsphizer@gmail.com Keywords: postdigital, theory, norms, theology, posthumanism, morality, judgment, moral belief Abstract Ethics is not a discrete set of rules or God-given imperatives concerning how humans ought to behave. Ethics resembles a holistic process of normative inquiry, implicating concepts such as duty, utility, virtue, and rationality. Postdigitalism concerns the ways in which human knowledge and experience adapt to the rapid growth and dissemination of digital technologies. Since technology and morality are in constant flux, postdigital ethics must remain flexible and accommodating to the tools and mores that define a rapidly changing civilization. In this vein, the outcomes of postdigital ethical inquiry are typically treated as fallible, unsettled, and subject to revision in light of shifting societal norms and dynamic moral beliefs. The proper subject-matter of postdigital ethics includes theory, applied ethics, posthumanism, and theology. Introduction Ethics or inquiries involving normative judgment guided by moral beliefs—such as choosing right over wrong action, cultivating virtue rather than vice, exercising free choice as an autonomous moral agent— emerge regularly in the context of postdigitalism. For instance, postdigital ethics can render assessments of whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology poses a threat to humanity’s future (Means et al. 2022) and can deliver judgments about the moral justifiability of novel technological means of cheating in the higher education classroom (Ralston 2021). Postdigitalism is a movement to integrate and connect human knowledge in the face of increasing segregation and disconnection imposed by digital technologies (Jandrić 2019; Jandrić and Knox 2022). For example, Vallis, Wilson, Gozman and Buchanan (2023) investigate how professors of business ethics courses may unwittingly accept AI-generated instructional avatars that prove disturbing to students due to ignorance of the technology. The postdigital moment aims at restoring unity to human experience by revisiting the relationships between the analog and the digital and bringing a fresh perspective to our fractured digital reality (Sinclair and Hayes 2019). Ethics likewise offers the promise of integrating moral norms and value-based judgments into the domain of postdigital knowledge, thereby expanding and deepening our experience of a digitally imbricated world. Theory Similar to normative ethics, postdigital ethics divides into a number of theoretical accounts. However, standard ethical theories do not exhaust the universe of discourse regarding postdigital ethics or its theoretical basis. There are many more existing theories than those listed below as well as opportunities for theory building in the future: (1) Deontological theories concerning duty and obligation based on widely shared notions of human autonomy and rationality. (2) Utilitarian theories weighing relative happiness of outcomes based on the demands of human community and pleasure/pain ratios. (3) Character-based theories reflecting human excellence or the individual embodiment of specific vices and virtues. (4) Feminist theories about female empowerment based on accounts of toxic misogyny and gender-based oppression. (5) Marxist theories about working-class empowerment based on accounts of elite power and economic exploitation. While the first three ethical theories embrace a universalist and impartial perspective, the last two are unapologetically partisan and positional. Petar Jandrić (Ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Postdigital Science and Education. Cham: Springer. Postdigital ethics commonly incorporates a mixed-bag or eclectic approach to exercising moral judgment. In other words, no single ethical theory predominates or is claimed to reflect the absolute truth about what behavior is morally justified. Indeed, Reader and Savin-Baden (2020: 300) propose a modest ethics: ‘Ethics, along with both science and religion, need to exercise a degree of modesty. Claims to establish truth in some exclusive manner, and therefore at the cost of an open engagement with other contributions, need to be tempered by the recognition that no one approach has the monopoly of truth.’ For example, postdigital ethics guided by pragmatism reflects practical commitments to experimental inquiry, rejection of absolutes, and theory selection based on the needs of specific morally problematic situations. In this way, pragmatist postdigital ethics offers a compromise between universalist ethical theories (for instance, deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics) and positional ethical theories (such as feminism and Marxism). Posthumanism Most classic ethical theories—for instance, Kantian deontology or Millian utilitarianism—reflect Enlightenment-based humanism and its central ideals: rationalism, empiricism, and an abiding faith in human progress (Kant 2002/1785; Mill 2007/1861). However, the kernel of postdigital ethics is a commitment to posthumanism, the notion that humans must move beyond anthropocentric Enlightenment ideals if they are to adapt to their new digitally imbricated reality. Savin-Baden (2021) argues that grappling with what it means to be a human, with all its associated limitations and possibilities, is essential to conducting postdigital ethical inquiry. Human agency can become obscured by technologies that maximize efficiency and profitability and promote ideological conformity to the detriment of other human values. For instance, to counter government propaganda that licenses racial repression, McLaren and Jandrić (2021: 226) propose what they call ‘scallywag pedagogy, creating coordinated bunkers of antiracist activists in schools, corporations, factories, churches, libraries, and community centers who are able to establish networks to resist the normalization of white supremacy currently spreading through authoritarian regimes such as the United States and elsewhere’. Likewise, Ralston (2022) argues that online activism can be appreciated as a morally defensible tool (despite previous criticisms of what is derogatively called ‘slacktivism’) so long as activists forge a vital link between their means of protest and the movement’s objectives. In this way, postdigital ethics has the potential to catalyze genuine resistance and change. In a world co-constituted by digital technology, humans interact with machines at the risk of losing touch with their own humanity. Thomas (2021: 169) notes that ‘the nature and pace of the coevolution of humans and technology does not exist in a vacuum’. Saying what it means to be human sometimes requires acknowledging the inseparability of humans and non-humans. According to Reader and Savin-Baden (2020: 294), ‘[r]elationships between humans and non-humans and indeed between nonhumans, are entangled and enmeshed and have to be understood as such’. Postdigital ethics adjudges how machines and humans ought to relate to each other while preserving the integrity and autonomy of humans as moral agents. For posthumanists, humans are permanently entangled with their technological environment (Mason-Robbie 2021; Barad 2003), so that most discussions of separation are moot (Jandrić et al. 2018; Sinclair and Hayes 2019). The question of utmost priority for the postdigital ethicist is not whether humans and digital technology should be entangled (that is a given), but to what extent they ought to be entangled if humans are to preserve those values and beliefs that are essential to their humanity. Theology Postdigital ethics also emerges in considerations of how beliefs in supranatural reality, divine essences, and God intersect with more earthly and grounded faiths in technological progress and the presumed superiority of the digital to the analog. Reader and Savin-Baden (2022: xii) explore the location of God within a postdigital cosmos, specifically how our postdigital condition might affect our views of theistic belief, spirituality, and transcendence. Likewise, in the essay ‘Postdigital Afterlife’, Jandrić (2020) Petar Jandrić (Ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Postdigital Science and Education. Cham: Springer. explores the many philosophical meanings of immortality as it relates to human values, technology and God. Although not all ethical perspectives are grounded in a belief in a divine being, many are nevertheless anchored to this core religious belief. So, in many cases, the belief in God informs postdigital ethics as a tool of normative inquiry. Some even see theology as the key to restoring unity to a postdigital reality disconnected from the mundane in everyday human experience. For example, Trozzo (2022: 91) argues that ‘theology is a work of defracturing or reconnecting forms of human knowledge in weaving together a coherent narrative of human experience that provides hope for relationality in the midst of the destructive tendencies [of digitalization] at play in the world’. One area in which postdigital ethics and theology intersect is in investigations of what it means for humans to live beyond an embodied existence. Traditionally, the afterlife has been conceived as an ethereal space such as heaven, occupied by human souls or spirits. As technology preserves the life memories of human beings, a proxy soul can reside in a digital form. According to Jack Slater (2022:121), ‘Digital afterlife holds the potential to transform mourning and memorialization at a societal level and all communities will have to grapple with the implications of this transformation’. In a interview, Savin-Baden distinguishes between literal immortality and digital afterlife: ‘Digital immortality assumes long-term definite existence, literal immortality, whereas afterlife is much more encompassing of what people choose to leave behind about their digital assets, their digital remains, as well as whether they choose to create a copy of themselves before they die’ (Savin-Baden & MacKenzie 2022). Ethical issues arise as to what rights a digitally memorialized human being has, as well as what duties living, embodied humans have to such digital entities (Savin-Baden & Burden 2019; Savin-Baden 2022). Applied Ethics Postdigital ethics has been applied to a variety of subject-matter and in several academic fields of inquiry, demonstrating its versatility and potential for growth as a method for rendering practical moral judgment. Postdigital ethicists have inquired into the subjects of fake news (Jiang and Vetter 2020; Özdan 2021; Maginess 2021), environmental decline, the Covid-19 global pandemic (Green 2020; Jandrić et al. 2021), microcredentials in higher education (Ralston 2022), propaganda and activism on the Internet (Ralston 2022), Artificial Intelligence (Bozkurt et al. 2022), and the epistemological aspects of deception (MacKenzie and Bhatt 2021; MacKenzie et al. 2021), to name only a few. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, normative issues emerged regarding digital technology, global justice, and educational opportunity (see Jandrić et al. 2021). For instance, Hurley and Ali-Ali (2021) explored how Arab women resisted the invasion of technology into the classroom through a feminist postdigital framework uniquely informed by Middle Eastern culture. Leaning on a Marxist ethical framework, Pappachen and Ford (2023) contend that historical materialism partnered with postdigitalism helps reveal the ‘deepening suffering for most of the working people of the world’. Green (2020) urges the re-evaluation of global ethics in the face of international challenges, such as the global viral pandemic of 2019 to 2022, and the substitution of what he calls an ‘ethos of community’ for ‘the prevailing Kantian flat universalism’. Treatments of digitally-enabled deceit and fake news in democratic societies also feature prominently in postdigital applied ethics. According to Demetriou (2018), ethical aspects of the humanmachine interface emerge through live performances in digital spaces where immersive technologies are continually challenged. Examples include the performance of duping others through deceptive and manipulative online rhetoric (Maginess 2021), the enaction of laws to combat the proliferation of fake news in digital media (Özdan 2021), and the validation of authentic information on Wikipedia through critical media literacy (Jiang and Vetter 2020). One of the most prominent examples of applied postdigital ethics is the critical-normative reaction to Artificial Intelligence. The proliferation of AI technology risks undermining human creativity, labour and reason through the rise and dominance of machine learning. According to Peters, Jandrić an Means (2019), ‘All signs indicate that the theoretical principle of the infinite substitution of capital for labour has Petar Jandrić (Ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Postdigital Science and Education. Cham: Springer. arrived in applications of AI to labour processes alongside a huge gearing up for ‘intelligent capitalism’ across manufacturing and services’. Fear of an AI-dominated future, and its corresponding ethical risks, does not necessarily militate in favor of staving off the digital in favor of the analog (Fawns 2019; Feenberg 2019; Jandrić 2019). According to Brown, [t]echnology is now moving far beyond the concept of computers as calculating machines writ large. If the concepts associated with posthumanism have any chance of realisation, it opens the prospect, not only of humans eviscerating their nature by acting like calculating machines but perhaps also of machines enhancing their nature to become, at least in some respects, as humans. (Brown 2021: 127) The normative dimension of AI unsettles moral assumptions that traditionally ground our conceptions of what it means to be human, challenging us to restructure our moral beliefs accordingly. According to Coeckelbergh, AI also presents opportunities for resistance: ‘We can resist, and we can ‘hack’ the technology. Not all of us have a technical background, but we can use the technology in a different way than it’s meant, if that helps us to live more meaningful lives’ (Coeckelbergh & Reader 2023). For postdigital ethicists, practical issues such as global justice, fake news, educational innovation and AI represent new ways to test normative theories, render moral judgments, and explore the limits of ethical concepts such as duty, virtue, humanity, and rationality. Summary Postdigital ethics pertains to normative judgment guided by moral beliefs, especially as applied to inquiries that integrate areas of human knowledge affected by the proliferation of digital technology. Digitalism increasingly segregates and disconnects humans from their everyday experience of the world. Instances include AI chatbots that undermine creative human activity, such as research and writing, as well as virtual higher education courses guided by digital avatars rather than flesh-and-blood scholarteachers. Although in its infancy, postdigital ethical inquiry encompasses ethical theory, posthumanism, theology, and applied ethics. It also presents new avenues for expansion, particularly in the areas of theory and application. With regard to theory, postdigital ethics offers promise of further development and refinement, specifically as a theory of pragmatist ethics, since the objectives of postdigital ethical inquiry are commonly understood as fallible, unsettled, and subject to change in light of flexible societal norms and revisable moral beliefs. Cross References →Postdigital →Postdigital Humans →Postdigital Democracy →Postdigital Education →Postdigital Performing Arts →Postdigital Transdisciplinarity →Postdigital Publishing →Postdigital Academic Writing →Postdigital Citizenship →Postdigital Argumentation References Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 808. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321. 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