- Santa Clara University
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053 USA
Shannon Vallor
Santa Clara University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
While established ethical norms and core legal principles concerning the protection of privacy may be easily identified, applying these standards to rapidly evolving digital information technologies, markets for digital information and... more
While established ethical norms and core legal principles concerning the protection of privacy may be easily identified, applying these standards to rapidly evolving digital information technologies, markets for digital information and convulsive changes in social understandings of privacy is increasingly challenging. This challenge has been further heightened by the increasing creation of, access to, and sophisticated nature of geocoded data, that is, data that contain time and global location components. This article traces the growing need for, and the structural challenges to creating educational curricula that address the ethical and privacy dimensions of geospatial data.
Research Interests: Education Ethics, Technology Ethics, Privacy and data protection, Location Data, Mobile and Location-Based Media, and 9 moreSurveillance location based services transport intelligence privacy data aggregation, Geocoding, Geocoded Data Privacy, Big Data Ethics, Mobile Phone Location Data, Data Ethics, Data ethics and security, Location prediction, location-based social network, check-in data., and Ethical Data Use
Call for Papers for Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on Digital Evidence GUEST EDITORS Judith Simon (IT University Copenhagen & University of Vienna) Shannon Vallor (Santa Clara University) INTRODUCTION Digital technologies... more
Call for Papers for Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on Digital Evidence
GUEST EDITORS
Judith Simon (IT University Copenhagen & University of Vienna)
Shannon Vallor (Santa Clara University)
INTRODUCTION
Digital technologies of the 21st century are profoundly transforming the nature of evidence and evidential practices in a wide range of domains, including science, medicine, law, education, journalism, government, public policy and global, national and domestic security. These changes call for rigorous analysis and critical reflection across a range of related topics and disciplines.
The effects and uses are as diverse as the technologies themselves. The much-heralded power of “Big Data” on an unprecedented scale is radically changing how, and from where, social science researchers, marketers and insurers draw their evidence of human behavior, desires and attitudes. Digital neuroimaging technologies are reshaping norms of evidence in the courtroom, in research labs and in doctors’ offices. Varied forms of drone imaging affect how military pilots and intelligence agencies identify and even define legitimate targets, how archeologists, marine biologists, geologists and conservation scientists understand and measure natural phenomena, and how local law enforcement agencies perceive crime and social unrest. Cellphone cameras, body cameras, webcams and hacked ‘data dumps’ have radically changed how, and what, the public sees and knows. Future innovations in digital evidence promise to destabilize traditional evidential norms and practices even further.
The philosophical questions raised by such transformations are many. What if any conceptual shifts in traditional metaphysics and epistemology do these new evidential practices suggest? Are new ontologies of evidence, or new standards of justified belief and knowledge, needed to account for them? What normative considerations (epistemic, political, ethical or legal), should be brought to bear upon these developments? How do new digital technologies condition the relationship between evidence, knowledge, belief and trust? How do these changes affect our understanding of scientific inquiry and explanation, or the role of evidential practices in human cognition, affectivity and action? How are these technologies impacting the distribution of the social and political power of evidence? These are just a few of the critical questions that new and emerging evidential practices invite us to ask.
TOPICS
We solicit the submission of papers that investigate the way in which new and emerging digital technologies are changing evidential norms and practices, within any relevant practical context or contexts (e.g. natural or social science, law, journalism, public policy, medicine, security or intelligence, etc). While the motivating questions should be of a philosophical nature, we welcome submissions from any discipline and/or subdiscipline (for example: philosophy/sociology of science, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, law, psychology, media studies, criminal justice, political philosophy/science, and so on.)
Topics of special interest include: the impact of digital evidence on scientific research standards and practices; on the role of expertise; on notions of justification, confirmation and reasonable belief; on epistemic assessments of trust, reliability, objectivity and/or truth; on the cultivation of intellectual or moral virtues; on the relationship between modes of perception, affect, reflection and judgment; on individual, group and institutional practices of deliberation, verification and decision; or on the collection, dissemination, integrity and authority of information.
TIMETABLE
February 1, 2016: Deadline for paper submissions
April 1, 2016: Deadline reviews papers
May 1, 2016: Deadline revised papers
2016: Publication of the special issue
SUBMISSION DETAILS
To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/
The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- authored papers) must register into EM.
The author must then select the special article type: "DIGITAL EVIDENCE” from the selection provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the submissions to the Guest Editors.
Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure:
New Submission => Journal Editorial Office => Guest Editor(s) => Reviewers => Reviewers’ Recommendations => Guest Editor(s)’ Recommendation => Editor-in-Chief’s Final Decision => Author Notification of the Decision.
The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.
For any further information please contact:
Judith Simon, jusi@itu.dk
Shannon Vallor, svallor@scu.edu
GUEST EDITORS
Judith Simon (IT University Copenhagen & University of Vienna)
Shannon Vallor (Santa Clara University)
INTRODUCTION
Digital technologies of the 21st century are profoundly transforming the nature of evidence and evidential practices in a wide range of domains, including science, medicine, law, education, journalism, government, public policy and global, national and domestic security. These changes call for rigorous analysis and critical reflection across a range of related topics and disciplines.
The effects and uses are as diverse as the technologies themselves. The much-heralded power of “Big Data” on an unprecedented scale is radically changing how, and from where, social science researchers, marketers and insurers draw their evidence of human behavior, desires and attitudes. Digital neuroimaging technologies are reshaping norms of evidence in the courtroom, in research labs and in doctors’ offices. Varied forms of drone imaging affect how military pilots and intelligence agencies identify and even define legitimate targets, how archeologists, marine biologists, geologists and conservation scientists understand and measure natural phenomena, and how local law enforcement agencies perceive crime and social unrest. Cellphone cameras, body cameras, webcams and hacked ‘data dumps’ have radically changed how, and what, the public sees and knows. Future innovations in digital evidence promise to destabilize traditional evidential norms and practices even further.
The philosophical questions raised by such transformations are many. What if any conceptual shifts in traditional metaphysics and epistemology do these new evidential practices suggest? Are new ontologies of evidence, or new standards of justified belief and knowledge, needed to account for them? What normative considerations (epistemic, political, ethical or legal), should be brought to bear upon these developments? How do new digital technologies condition the relationship between evidence, knowledge, belief and trust? How do these changes affect our understanding of scientific inquiry and explanation, or the role of evidential practices in human cognition, affectivity and action? How are these technologies impacting the distribution of the social and political power of evidence? These are just a few of the critical questions that new and emerging evidential practices invite us to ask.
TOPICS
We solicit the submission of papers that investigate the way in which new and emerging digital technologies are changing evidential norms and practices, within any relevant practical context or contexts (e.g. natural or social science, law, journalism, public policy, medicine, security or intelligence, etc). While the motivating questions should be of a philosophical nature, we welcome submissions from any discipline and/or subdiscipline (for example: philosophy/sociology of science, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, law, psychology, media studies, criminal justice, political philosophy/science, and so on.)
Topics of special interest include: the impact of digital evidence on scientific research standards and practices; on the role of expertise; on notions of justification, confirmation and reasonable belief; on epistemic assessments of trust, reliability, objectivity and/or truth; on the cultivation of intellectual or moral virtues; on the relationship between modes of perception, affect, reflection and judgment; on individual, group and institutional practices of deliberation, verification and decision; or on the collection, dissemination, integrity and authority of information.
TIMETABLE
February 1, 2016: Deadline for paper submissions
April 1, 2016: Deadline reviews papers
May 1, 2016: Deadline revised papers
2016: Publication of the special issue
SUBMISSION DETAILS
To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/
The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- authored papers) must register into EM.
The author must then select the special article type: "DIGITAL EVIDENCE” from the selection provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the submissions to the Guest Editors.
Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure:
New Submission => Journal Editorial Office => Guest Editor(s) => Reviewers => Reviewers’ Recommendations => Guest Editor(s)’ Recommendation => Editor-in-Chief’s Final Decision => Author Notification of the Decision.
The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.
For any further information please contact:
Judith Simon, jusi@itu.dk
Shannon Vallor, svallor@scu.edu
Research Interests:
The widespread and growing use of new social media, especially social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, invites sustained ethical reflection on emerging forms of online friendship. Social scientists and psychologists are... more
The widespread and growing use of new social media, especially social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, invites sustained ethical reflection on emerging forms of online friendship. Social scientists and psychologists are gathering a wealth of empirical data on these trends, yet philosophical analysis of their ethical implications remains comparatively impoverished. In particular, there have been few attempts to explore how traditional ethical theories might be brought to bear upon these developments, or what insights they might offer, if any. In attempting to address this lacuna in applied ethical research, this paper investigates the ethical significance of online friendship by means of an Aristotelian theory of the good life, which holds that human flourishing is chiefly realized through ‘complete’ friendships of virtue. Here, four key dimensions of ‘virtue friendship’ are examined in relation to online social media: reciprocity, empathy, self-knowledge and the shared life. Online social media support and strengthen friendship in ways that mirror these four dimensions, particularly when used to supplement rather than substitute for face-to-face interactions. However, deeper reflection on the meaning of the shared life (suzên) for Aristotle raises important and troubling questions about the capacity of online social media to support complete friendships of virtue in the contemporary world, along with significant concerns about the enduring relevance of this Aristotelian ideal for the good life in the 21st century.
Research Interests:
This paper argues in favor of more widespread and systematic applications of a virtue-based normative framework to questions about the ethical impact of information technologies, and social networking technologies in particular. The first... more
This paper argues in favor of more widespread and systematic applications of a virtue-based normative framework to questions about the ethical impact of information technologies, and social networking technologies in particular. The first stage of the argument identifies several distinctive features of virtue ethics that make it uniquely suited to the domain of IT ethics, while remaining complementary to other normative approaches. I also note its potential to reconcile a number of significant methodological conflicts and debates in the existing literature, including tensions between phenomenological and constructivist perspectives. Finally, I claim that a virtue-based perspective is needed to correct for a strong utilitarian bias in the research methodologies of existing empirical studies on the social and ethical impact of IT. The second part of the paper offers an abbreviated demonstration of the merits of virtue ethics by showing how it might usefully illuminate the moral dimension of emerging social networking technologies. I focus here on the potential impact of such technologies on three virtues typically honed in communicative practices: patience, honesty and empathy.
Research Interests:
In the early twenty-first century, we stand on the threshold of welcoming robots into domains of human activity that will expand their presence in our lives dramatically. One provocative new frontier in robotics, motivated by a... more
In the early twenty-first century, we stand on the threshold of welcoming robots into domains of human activity that will expand their presence in our lives dramatically. One provocative new frontier in robotics, motivated by a convergence of demographic, economic, cultural, and institutional pressures, is the development of “carebots”—robots intended to assist or replace human caregivers in the practice of caring for vulnerable persons such as the elderly, young, sick, or disabled. I argue here that existing philosophical reflections on the ethical implications of carebots neglect a critical dimension of the issue: namely, the potential moral value of caregiving practices for caregivers. This value, I argue, gives rise to considerations that must be weighed alongside consideration of the likely impact of carebots on care recipients. Focusing on the goods internal to caring practices, I then examine the potential impact of carebots on caregivers by means of three complementary ethical approaches: virtue ethics, care ethics, and the capabilities approach. Each of these, I argue, sheds new light on the contexts in which carebots might deprive potential caregivers of important moral goods central to caring practices, as well as those contexts in which carebots might help caregivers sustain or even enrich those practices, and their attendant goods.
Research Interests:
Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of... more
Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of phenomenological states. By employing Husserl’s philosophy of science to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and evidence and the implications of this relationship for the empirical identification of ‘real’ conscious states, I argue that the naturalistic account of consciousness Dennett hopes for could be authoritative as a science only by virtue of the very phenomenological evidences Dennett’s method consigns to the realm of fiction. Thus heterophenomenology, qua scientific method, is incoherent.