In today’s day and age, we see a constant flow and exchange of
information like never seen before in history.
Much of this information lies literally at our fingertips. Questions concerning everything from current events
to history and science can often easily and fairly accurately be answered with
a quick Google search. But beyond this
general access to hoards of information, our ability to receive information
directly from each other has also become oftentimes instantaneous, through
email, texting, and similar functions.
But this environment has also created ethical dilemmas, as it is also
often possible to receive information from others without their consent. A controversial topic has become internet
privacy, and the ability of strangers, companies, and even the government to
access people’s personal information that they may not want to be available. But the notion that obtaining information from
others can be immoral is nothing new.
Throughout history, people have found enumerable ways to obtain
information from others, oftentimes through force. A prime example is the Inquisition, during
which the Roman Catholic Church used elaborate techniques of torture and interrogation
to attempt to elicit admissions of heresy from suspects (Mackay 548). Today, certain practices of gaining
information from others have incited major controversy, such as the US
Government’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques with terrorist suspects,
and the NSA’s collecting of people’s private information. The concept could even be broadened to
include obtaining information from creatures other than humans, which can be
morally questionable in some forms, such as animal testing. The examples stated above are, of course,
extreme examples of gaining information from living beings, but it’s important to
look at these to realize that even they are not black and white in terms of
morality. Therefore, it’s necessary to
think more broadly to determine the ethics of related situations that have
consequence in our own lives.
When considering the ethics of eliciting
information from people and other creatures, it is first important to
understand why the practices involved can be immoral. Probably the vast majority of the time, it is
not immoral. We go about our lives asking people questions multiple times a
day, mostly with good intentions, or at least with no result that harms any
other beings. However, there are obvious
ways in which eliciting information can quite harmful to others (and I say “information”
rather than “truth”, because when someone receives information, there is no way
to know for sure that it is true, and though the person may believe it and act
as if it’s true, it may be quite far from the actual truth). Overall, we can say that if an action has a
net negative result among all affected parties, it is immoral. Within this rule, there are two general ways
that eliciting information from living beings can be immoral. The first involves the process itself of
eliciting information and any direct harm that results from it. An obvious example would be torture. During the “witch hunts” of the Inquisition,
inquisitors would seek out women they believed to be carrying out the will of
the Devil through witchcraft, and use torture techniques to elicit a confession
from them (Mackay 548). These methods,
which were obviously harmful to the women involved, seem quite immoral to us
today, especially as experts now say that the accusations of crimes attributed
to the women have virtually no truth to them (Mackay 32). The second way that eliciting information can
be immoral involves the results of that information being obtained. An example might be if an enemy of the US cajoled
someone to leak classified documents, which were then used to carry out a
terrorist attack.
There are many more ways that the process or results of
eliciting information from a living thing can be immoral, but the morality of
these is not always so clear cut. Even
with extreme examples, there are often strong arguments on each side. In the case of torture, a fair question is,
if it prevents more suffering than it causes, then can it be worth it? The same goes for government spying and
animal testing, which can have perfectly good intentions. Rules should be in place to regulate this
type of thing to make sure it is not abused, but there is no overall rule of
whether each of these is overall good or bad.
For this reason, the ethics of eliciting information from living
creatures should be thought of just like any other ethical dilemma. Simply put, if there is good reason to believe
that the action will do more good than harm, then it makes sense to take that
action. Of course, even the Catholic Church
had their own belief that they were doing their part to thwart the plans of
Satan during the Inquisition (Mackay 33), but that is the nature of
ethics. We’re all limited by own beliefs
of what is good and bad, so we just have to do the best we can.
Works Cited
Mackay, Christopher S. Malleus
Maleficarum. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.
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