RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
A1 Mahrik, Tibor
A1 Neal, Mark
T1 C. S. Lewis and the Challenge of Ethics in Digital Society
JF Communications - Scientific Letters of the University of Zilina
YR 2018
VO 20
IS 11
SP 38
OP 44
DO 10.26552/com.C.2018.1A.38-44
UL https://komunikacie.uniza.sk/artkey/csl-201811-0007.php
AB This paper examines the idea that digital societies lack an ethical framework for understanding and mitigating the impact of digital technologies on human flourishing and the consequent diminishing of human agency. The authors examine how selected works of C.S. Lewis address man's moral responsibility while living in a developing society and call for a grounding in metaethical frameworks prior to any outcomes of applied ethics. Each of the authors contributes from his own field of expertise - Mahrik on nanoethics and Neal on digital media - while Lewis' writing corpus is the shared interest as well as the basis for their research. Writing and thinking from within a metaethical framework he terms the Tao, or natural law, Lewis offers an approach to the dehumanization of digital culture through his own approach to one of the oldest technologies: that of language. This offers the beginning of an infrastructure for thinking about and reacting to digital society in an ethical manner.