[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

Jonathan Marshall Jonathan.Marshall at uts.edu.au
Wed May 26 20:26:25 PDT 2004


> >Thomas writes:
> >
> > > "Perception" and "convention" are two different things. Those  domains of
> > > the Internet that I mentioned below, are public by convention, however any
> > > single individual perceives them. The technique that makes the data on
> > > www/usenet available does not allow for effectively concealing the data
> > > from the general public, once a URI has been published or a posting has
> > > been posted.
> >
> >That is simply not the case.
> 
> How can you say that? What, if I have a different perception of hiddeness? 
> (scnr)

Indeed, that is the point.  These things are uncertain, and you do have a different idea of what is public to some other people :)

> >Much stuff can be hidden.
> 
> "Being hidden" and "having been concealed" are two different things. There 
> is, of course, lots of hidden material on the www, but that material has 
> not been intentionally concealed.

I'm not what this does, other than emphasise my point that the web is not always unambiguously public.
 
> >As i was arguing ethical tropes are not inherently persuasive, but depend 
> >on rehetorical and personal factors.  Ethics are ultimately undecideable. 
> >That you don't find the arguments i said more or less persuased me, is not 
> >inherently surprising, and indeed I know of know way to make those ethical 
> >arguments persuasive.
> 
> That's terrible. Does Mr. Habermas know that? Does his idea of 
> communicative rationality not have enough problems already? 

It certainly has serious problems if taken as a description of reality, rather than as an ideal prescription.

> Seriously: If 
> you argue that on a purely philophical basis, ethical arguments cannot be 
> ultimately decided, then that is a truism. 

Not for everyone.  Besides quite a few people object to the idea.
And if it *is* a truism, why don't you appear to accept that ethics is uncertain?

> That does not mean that  ethics 
> are merely a matter of taste, or that all arguments are equally 
> persuasive.

I have not argued that that because things are uncertain, every argument is equally valid. However what this implies for me is that ethics are an ethnographic question and cannot be assumed in advance by the researcher applying their own standards.  It also implies that ethics is a matter of argument, and that persuasiveness is a socially based phenomena.  

As a minor point, I'm not sure why taste, should be dismissed as a 'merely'.  Taste is not something which seems to have been satisfactorarily explained - even by Bourdieu :)

By the by you might like to prove your point about ethics being a matter of taste, by suggesting an ethical position in research which could never be ethically approved by anyone, anywhere, in any situation.


> > If some people think their blogs or usenet discussion enjoy privacy
> > protection, they are mistaken, their *perception* does not reflect the
> > actual technical and institutional arrangements.
> >
> >Again, because you can shoot people does not make it always ethical - even 
> >if the law allows it.
> 
> That's besides the point. I am not arguing here that the way the Usenet and 
> the www works is morally good, I am merely describing that communication on 
> these parts of the internet is publicly available. 

you seem to be arguing here:
1) The arrangement of usenet and the www is not necessarily morally good and
2) making use of this arrangement for research is morally good.

> That is a falsifiable 
> hypothesis that seems pretty hard to refute to me. So, I challenge you to 
> falsify it.

Well i've just spent some time trying to search for usenet comments by myself under various addresses and identities, and have failed in general.  Although occasionally i found posts by me quoted by others :)  It is of course difficult for me to prove that many other texts i don't know about are generally unaccesbile.

Besides as i keep saying, I'm not disagreeing that that much of usenet is accessible, what i am disagreeing with is the argument that this automatically makes any use of the texts found there by researchers ethical. 
 
> >However, perceptions, do reflect social facts and processes, as such they 
> >cannot be assumed, and it may not be ethical to violate them by fiat.
> 
> Perceptions are certainly not a isomorph reflection of social reality, you 
> don't have to read Marx (->false class consciousness) to figure that out. 

Again that I argue that perceptions are a product of social processes does not mean that I argue that they "isomorphically" reflect social reality.

But what does that have to do with ethics?

> How do you "violate" perceptions?

By treating them as stupid or obviously false, and making use of the person's different perception.

> > > If you just fell off Mars and would not know, what kind of technique TV 

[snip]
> >If I was studying martians I would find this interesting, and not 
> >something to dismiss as ignorance or stupidity.
> 
> No offense, but I think that the ETs will become my friends, because I will 
> be glad to explain them their mistake.

If every time you tell someone they have made a mistake, by exploiting that mistake, then they have become your friends, you have lived in a different world to me :)

Informing someone they were wrong, is not the same as making use of, or drawing attention to their error by using it for your own research.  Hackers who crack computer systems to show how insecure they are are not always appreciated.

> > There may be different concepts, about what *belongs* into the public
> > realm, but as long as you are making any distinction between public and
> > private, it will be hard to make an argument that Usenet and www are *not*
> > public(ly available).
> >
> >This sounds like you believe that humans are consitantly rational or 
> >something,
> 
> I don't understand, how you get the idea that I would argue here that 
> "humans are consitantly rational". 

Largely because you seem to be implying that given the nature of the facts, only one reasonable conclusion can be drawn consistantly by humans (and martians for that matter).

> >I was trying to argue that law and ethics are not the same thing. Because 
> >you can legally do something does not mean that it is ethical.
> 
> Of course not, but in democratic polities, law is IMO a pretty 
> good decider for ethical questions.

That is an ethical position and debateable :)

> > > >who is is making these assumptions?
> > >
> > > Common sense? The actual technical configuration and its nstitutional
> > > underpinnings, if you'd prefer the fancy answer.
> >
> >Common sense, is something to be investigated not assumed.
> 
> I did investigate it and found that common sense, for once, made sense.

So before this debate on this list you have never found anyone who's common sense about what consitutes a public domain differed from yours?

> >  The technical configurations have nothing necessarily to do with social 
> > conceptions and conventions - they may have, they may not.
> 
> In this particular case, they do have something to do with each other: When 
> I publish my webpages on the WWW the technical configurations make  it 
> feasible that you access these pages for any computer that is connected to 
> the Internet. In fact, my employer had the conception that I should make 
> material available for public use, and, voila, it is.

Obviously that is your place of work's convention :)
Do you have internal web pages which are not supposed to be accessible by outisders?
 
> > > If they are password protected or the relevant URIs have not been
> > > published, that's a different story. In fact, if there are no links to 
> > > your private website parts, it is debatable, if they are even part 
> > > of the www.
> >
> >That is the point is it not: "it is debatable"!
> 
> Yes, it depends on your definition of the www. A definition that would 
> exclude such pages, seems reasonable to me, just as one that would include 
> them might be a possibilty. In sociology, I would prefer the former 
> definition, in engineering the latter.

So we agree ?

> >Not "it is certain" to me the investigator.
> 
> Once, we have agreed on a definition of what exactly constitutes the www, 
> it is certain for all practical purposes, that is, leaving some ephemeral 
> philosphical musings aside.

who is this 'we'?  How do we know that everyone argees to be defined as we?
Again this argument implies some fixed kind of consistant rationality to me.

> [to be continued]

cool...

jon 



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