Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T03:17:28.831Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ethics, Social epistemics, Electronic communication and Scientific research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Abstract

The most important ethical issues in the use of the Internet and World Wide Web in scientific research are considered together with some of the conceptual problems that arise as a result of applying new information technologies to old institutions. The paper concentrates on a set of issues relating to moral responsibility for the production, utilization and diffusion of scientific knowledge in a networked environment. A conclusion is that reliability of information and hence the individual scientist's capacity to take full moral responsibility may be compromised by the environment provided by the World Wide Web.

Type
Europe and Asia: Two contrasting views
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Arnauld, A. (1964) The Art of Thinking, Translated, with an introduction by Dickoff, James and James, Patricia (The Bobbs-Merrill Company) p. 265.Google Scholar
2.Scientific American, 10 1997, p. 91.Google Scholar
3.Tugendhat, E. (1992) Reflections on philosophical method from an analytical point of view. Philosophical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment, Honeth, A., McCarthy, T., (eds) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) pp. 113125.Google Scholar
4. This was pointed out in 1985 by Moor, James H. in his article ‘What is Computer Ethics?Metaphilosophy, 16(4), 266276.Google Scholar
5. See my ‘Privacy and the varieties of moral wrong-doing in an Information-Age’, Computers and Society, 09 1997, pp. 3337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. See ‘Internet epistemology: contributions of new information technologies to scientific research’, Paul Thagard, http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/articles/pages/epistemology.html. Goldman, A. I., ‘Strong and Weak Justification’, in Liaisons. Cambridge MASS: MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar
7. See ‘Computer und die Zukunft des Denkens’, Jürgen Mittelstrass in: Information Philosophie, 1991. See also his (1992) Leonardo-Welt. Uber Wissenschaft, Forschung und Verantwortung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch).Google Scholar
8.Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, Chapter III, par. 5.Google Scholar
9. See Thagard, P. (1997) Collaborative knowledge. NOUS 31(2), 242261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. Example cited by Hardwig, J. (1985) Epistemic dependence. Journal of Philosophy, 82, 335349.Google Scholar
11. See Thagard's paper ‘Collaborative Knowledge’.Google Scholar
12.The Journal of Social Epistemology is now entirely devoted to social aspects of knowledge production, utilization and dissemination.Google Scholar
13. Hardwig, op. cit., p. 335.Google Scholar
14.Sneed, J. (1971) The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics (Dordrecht: Reidel) p. 261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15. Op. cit., p. 339Google Scholar
16. Op. cit., p. 344Google Scholar
17.Hardwig, J. (1991) The role of trust in knowledge', Journal of Philosophy, 88(12) 693708, see p. 706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Hardwig, J. (1991) The role of trust in knowledge', Journal of Philosophy, 88(12) 693708, see p. 706.Google Scholar
19. See for a most informative discussion of Trust, Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press) 2936. Giddens that ‘all trust in a certain sense is blind trust’, p. 33.Google Scholar
20. Hardwig, op. cit. p. 706.Google Scholar