Universal Information Ethics? Ethical Pluralism and Social Justice

Abstract

The explosive, global diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) confronts us with the need for an information ethics that can resolve ethical problems evoked by ICTs and CMC in ways that provide shared, perhaps (quasi-)universal responses. At the same time, however, in the name of a transcultural social justice that preserves diverse cultural identities, such an ethics must also reflect and sustain local values, approaches, and traditions. Important ethical claims from both within Western and between Eastern and Western cultures exemplify an ethical pluralism that is able to meet these requirements as this pluralism represents important ethical differences as issuing from diverse judgments and applications of shared ethical norms.