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A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Applied ethics for professionals Johannesburg / The advent of digital ICT has raised a range of privacy problems that previously did not occur, owing to the scope and volume of data that can be collected, as well as the processing capacity of the application. These digital privacy problems are arguably not easily addressed within any particular traditional macroethical framework. We may therefore need to find an alternative approach. One such approach is proposed by Luciano Floridi, who has devised “Information Ethics” - a macroethics for the identification, clarification and solution of digital ethical issues. While IE is useful in that it highlights questions of digital agency, it will be demonstrated that it is flawed when applied to problems of privacy posed by digital ICT. IE, however, points us in the right direction: An object-oriented ethics may be able to address the issue of digital agents. In this essay I develop an argument for the moral intentionality of digital agents, based on the concepts of emergent value and indirect intentionality, that can underpin an object-oriented ethical approach to digital privacy for both digital and human agents. Using Nissenbaum’s concept of contextual spheres, I provide normative guidelines for evaluating the competing interests of agent-objects in various digital spheres. A brief evaluation of the approach, by way of an example, shows that the object-oriented LoA that I am proposing can be adopted for digital privacy problems. In such cases, and for the specific purpose of weighing up the competing rights and values of the agents and patients, we can treat all agents (human and non-human) as both intentionality and real. This provides a reading of the case that goes beyond the consequentialist or ownership-based approaches, and arguably gets closer to the heart of the issue. Where the approach is still open, however, is that we still have to justify and balance these interests. There is no simple formula to apply. A need for practical wisdom or Phronesis, in the form of a judicious weighing of moral interests, continues to apply to digital problems posed by ICT. / GR2017

This heuristic and inductive study proposes a philosophy and models for a humanizing role for higher education in the computer age. The university's traditional role stands the risk of serious erosion through increasing emphasis on technological programs, particularly in the computer areas. The pressures from inside and outside the university threaten to produce increasing numbers of what have been termed "highly educated barbarians." Because computerization offers to be a pervasive and widely-felt influence on society, the university must see that its graduates—both the producers and the consumers of computerization—become humane, liberally educated persons; they must have technical excellence and also an understanding of the "system Man." The study calls for an enhanced new curriculum fostering a "new mind" for the computer age, encompassing quality of both technique and humanity in its students.

An increased emphasis is being placed on ethics in Information Systems. An investigation of: the relevant literature which highlighted the growth of, and importance in understanding the moral philosophies which underlie Computer Ethics; and the official curricula recommendations that have increasingly and consistently recommended inclusion of courses describing the Social, Professional and Ethical responsibilities of Information Systems Professionals; and informed by the observations from two empirical Studies that showed the extent of unethical behaviour, and how this behaviour is diminished in those who have received formal tertiary level education resulted in a proposed new course module on Ethics in Information Systems. The module follows a sandwich-approach whereby two stand-alone modules are conducted on either side of integrated Computer Ethics content within the rest of the curriculum.