Question

list 5 history fact about professional conduct in computer science ( ex: stealing data, copyright, leaking data,....) and give a reason why you picked this for each fact.

Answer 1

A cybernetic view of human nature

1. Wiener’s cybernetic understanding of human nature stressed the physical structure of the human body and the remarkable potential for learning and creativity that human physiology makes possible.
2. While explaining human intellectual potential, he regularly compared the human body to the physiology of less intelligent creatures like insects.

Wiener’s underlying metaphysics

1. Wiener’s account of human nature presupposed a metaphysical view of the universe that considers the world and all the entities within it, including humans, to be combinations of matter-energy and information.
2. Everything in the world is a mixture of both of these, and thinking, according to Wiener, is actually a kind of information processing. Consequently, the brain
3. does not secrete thought “as the liver does bile”, as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity.
4. Information is information, not matter or energy.
5. No materialism which does not admit this can survive in the present day.

Justice and human flourishing

1. According to Wiener, for human beings to flourish they must be free to engage in creative and flexible actions and thereby maximize their full potential as intelligent, decision-making beings in charge of their own lives.

A refutation of ethical relativism

1. If one grants Wiener’s account of a good society and of human nature, it follows that a wide diversity of cultures – with different customs, languages, religions, values, and practices – could provide a context in which humans can flourish.

Methodology in information ethics

1. Because Wiener did not think of himself as creating a new branch of ethics, he did not provide metaphilosophical comments about what he was doing while analyzing an information ethics issue or case.
2. Instead, he plunged directly into his analyses. Consequently, if we want to know about Wiener’s method of analysis, we need to observe what he does, rather than look for any metaphilosophical commentary upon his own procedures.