A Compass for What Matters: Virtue Ethics and Information Literacy #ECIL2023

Sheila here, and this is my first liveblog from the The European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) in Krakow, Poland. The wifi is stuggling to cope with do many eager ECILers so we may not manage as much LIVEblogging as planned, but there will still be blogging (and I've just got online! so this will be a liveblog). The first keynote was A Compass for What Matters: Virtue Ethics and Information Literacy, presented by Timothy Gorichanaz (Drexel University, USA). I'm blogging in real time, so there are the usual caveats about this being my interpretation on the fly. Also it is ann account of what I think I heard, not my own perspective.
Gorichanaz started with Floridi’s question “What is our human project for the digital age?” urging us to consider this a “special time” as the internet is still relatively young, so it is still a good time to reflect on what we want to do with the digital. Gorichanaz identified some of the challenges and issues that have already arisen, and talked about how we can be seen as in a time of chaos (he used the image of the Tower of Babel). He also used the examples of the information and misinformation around the availability of the COVID booster jab in the USA, and Microsoft publishing an AI-written guide to Ottawa that wrote about Ottawa Food Bank as though it were a restaurant.
Gorichanaz then framed his presentation within the field of applied ethics, defining ethics as “the study of the good life, right and wrong etc.” He also identified the increase of journal articles with the word “ethics” in the title or abstract, with the prncipal approaches used being:
- Deontology (“duties and rules for right action”) Gorichanaz felt this was inadequate as constant change made old rules unreliable
- Consequentionalism (“calculating the rightness of the outcomes of actions”) The problem here was seen as being that consequences might not be seen (e.g. they will not be obvious for a long time, they have impact in a different part of the world)
Gorichanaz therefore thought that a third approach, Virtue Ethics, was more relevant to our times (“Begins with the qualities of the moral agent”). The virtues are “qualities that people can cultivate that are conducive to the good”, and are relational i.e. have to be considered in context. Gorichanaz referred to the book by Bivens-Tatum (Virtue Information Literacy, 2023), his own paper in JASIST, and an article by Burgess (Reconciling social responsibility and neutrality in LIS professional ethics: a vitue ethics approach).
Gorichanaz said that he had become particularly engaged with virtue ethics after encountering the book Technology and the virtues (Shannon Vallor) who positions this as a time in which it is particularly difficult to predict the future (she terms this sociotechnical opacity). Gorichanaz then introduced 7 practices for cultivating virtue: so he was proposing these as a compass for the future, which could be incorporated into education and practice.
Firstly “Moral habituation” was about learning through practice how to do good things. He felt that information practice could incorporate this approach
Secondly Relational understanding was about understanding your role, your place in society etc. and he referred to the work of Pamela McKenzie’s
Third, Reflective self examination, including reflecting on current limitations and where you want to be, with an example of an article by Siracky
Fourth was Self-Direction “Choosing our goals” and where we want to go and he referenced Ruthven’s work on information sculpting
Fifth is “Moral attention” (what should we pay attention to, and paying attention to morally salient details). Gorichanaz connected this to the concept of relevance and he referenced Haider & Sundin’s idea of societal relevance
Sixth is “Prudential Judgment” – chosing the best option you can – which he suggested “might be synonymous with information literacy”
Seventh was “Extension of moral concern” – connected with doing good for others as well as ourselves, extending the range of your moral concern (though in a way that is “appropriate”). Here he referenced one of his own papers and how the research concerns are concerning in library and informatuon science
After briefly introducing those 7 practices Gorichanaz also talked about Exemplarist moral theory, based on the idea that we can learn morality through identifying people we admire (for their heroism, wisdom or saintly qualities) and then using them as exemplars. Gorichanaz refered to “Infomoral exemplars”, using the example of Nelson Mandela talking about how he came to use words very carefully (and referring to a book on information ethics).
Gorichanaz suggested an exercise in asking people to identify intellectual heroes and thinking about how you could emulate them using the 7 practices. He felt that librarianship was moving back towards seeing ethical issues as their province. Gorichanaz finished by asserting that “The quality of our information is the quality of our life” and recommended using virtue ethics as a compass for what matters.