Abstract
This chapter provides an innovative approach to evaluating information and its normative relation to well-being, through the concept of wisdom. Wisdom understood as a form of metainformation or metaknowledge provides a direct conceptual and practical link between the concepts of information, knowledge, and well-being, and generally a direct link between digital media, communication ethics, and well-being. As such, the concept of wisdom allows for a direct normative evaluation of the impact of information on well-being. As a metaepistemological term, wisdom is a form of metaknowledge (knowledge why) that includes both knowledge that (theoretical knowledge) and knowledge how (practical knowledge). Wisdom is capable of providing an individual with the necessary reflective knowledge and understanding in making judgments and reaching decisions that assist and guide that person in attaining well-being, both for oneself and for society generally.
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Notes
- 1.
Spence, Wisdom and Well-being in a Technological Age.
- 2.
“I Want You to Know How Sorry I Am: Tearful Rice.”
- 3.
Barrett and Dutton, “Joel Monaghan in Tears After Quitting the Raiders.”
- 4.
Sankey, “Deveny Dropped as Columnist for The Age.”
- 5.
Matthews, “Journalist Nir Rosen Quits After ‘Insensitive and Offensive’ Lara LoganTweets.”
- 6.
Elliott and Spence, Ethics for a Digital Era, ch. 10; and Spence, Wisdom and Well-being in a Technological Age.
- 7.
Spence, A Universal Model for the Normative Evaluation of Internet Information.
- 8.
Spence, A Universal Model for the Normative Evaluation of Internet Information.
- 9.
Ryan, “What Is Wisdom?”
- 10.
Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, 44–45, 86.
- 11.
Floridi, “Is Semantic Information Meaningful Data?”
- 12.
Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information. 44–45, 86.
- 13.
Spence, “A Universal Model for the Normative Evaluation of Internet Information.”
- 14.
Spence, Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewirthian Approach; and Gewirth, Reason and Morality.
- 15.
Alan Gewirth’s main thesis in Reason and Morality is that every rational agent, in virtue of engaging in purposive action, is logically committed to accept a supreme moral principle, the Principle of Generic Consistency that commits every agent to respect the rights of freedom and well-being of all other agents including their own. The basis of his thesis is found in his doctrine that action has an inherent normative structure whose necessary features are freedom and well-being, and because of this structure every rational agent, in virtue of being an agent, is committed to certain necessary prudential and moral constraints and in particular respect for all agents’ rights to freedom and well-being. For a detailed exposition and analysis of Gewirth’s argument for the PGC, see Spence, Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewirthian Approach, chs. 1–3.
- 16.
Spence, “Information, Knowledge and Wisdom: Groundwork for the Normative Evaluation of Digital Information and Its Relation to the Good Life.”
- 17.
Spence, Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewirthian Approach, ch. 5.
- 18.
Spence, Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewirthian Approach, ch.10. This chapter demonstrates how Alan Gewirth’s notion of self-fulfillment as capacity-fulfillment, is conceptually similar to the Stoic notion of eudaimonia, thus offering a Neo-Stoic interpretation of Gewirth’s notion of self-fulfillment in terms of the Greek notion of eudaimonia.
- 19.
Floridi, “What Is the Philosophy of Information?”
- 20.
Gewirth, Self-fulfillment.
- 21.
Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, 203.
- 22.
Spence, “Information, Knowledge and Wisdom: Groundwork for the Normative Evaluation of Digital Information and Its Relation to the Good Life.”
- 23.
Spence, “A Universal Model for the Normative Evaluation of Internet Information.”
- 24.
Spence, “Information, Knowledge and Wisdom: Groundwork for the Normative Evaluation of Digital Information and Its Relation to the Good Life.”
- 25.
Spence, “Information, Knowledge and Wisdom: Groundwork for the Normative Evaluation of Digital Information and Its Relation to the Good Life.”
- 26.
Pascal, Pensees.
- 27.
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
- 28.
Wilkins, “Mitigation Watchdogs: The Ethical Foundation for a Journalist’s Role.”
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Spence, E.H. (2021). Promoting the Human Good: The Dual Obligation Wisdom Theory and the Duties of Ethics. In: Ward, S.J.A. (eds) Handbook of Global Media Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_18
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