Towards an interdisciplinary ICT applied ethics: language matters

Marcelo E. K. Buzato

Authors

Marcelo E. K. Buzato Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) ##default.groups.name.author##

Keywords:

ICTs, applied ethics, applied linguistics, post-humanism, meaning-making

Abstract

This study seeks to support an interdisciplinary, theory-practice integrated work on the applied ethics of information and communication technologies (ICT). Current work on applied ICT ethics is of a disciplinary nature and seeks to apply traditional philosophical norms to novel situations that are not easily identified by analogy to previous cases. I propose an alternative view in which ICTs are seen as a moral environment and ethical agents are seen as human-computer hybrids (cyborgs) whose experiences acquire ethical value ecologically. To implement such a view, I propose employing two different kinds of semiotics: a semiotics of meaning-making that is open to the environmental effects of cyborg acts across scales, and a material semiotics that allows for interdisciplinary practitioners to recognize the modes of existence involved in the ethical issues and work out better means-ends relationships among the modes pertinent to each discipline.

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Author Biography

Marcelo E. K. Buzato, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Departamento de Linguística Aplicada

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