Can we say anything ethical about Digital Religion? Philosophical and methodological considerations

Introduction

One of the most striking developments within Internet Studies and Media and Communication Studies (MCS) is the growth of explicitly ethical prescriptions and normative frameworks. This development is remarkable as it runs directly contrary to defining commitments in the social sciences to notions of objectivity that entail “value-neutral” or “value-free” approaches. Nonetheless, leading figures in both MCS and Internet Studies have developed and argued for the inclusion of explicitly ethical norms and frameworks (e.g. Couldry, 2013; Rainie and Wellman, 2012). Indeed, the 2014 conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) focused on “Communication and the Good Life.” Where “the good life” is a defining topos of virtue ethics, the conference thematic thus indexes increasing interest in both virtue ethics and normative approaches more broadly within MCS (cf. Wang, 2015).

Digital Religion (DR) can be understood as an increasingly prominent domain within Internet Studies (Campbell, 2013: 680). Hence, as a further extension of these developments, I propose a normative framework as a new theoretical and methodological approach in DR. I justify this approach, rooted primarily in virtue ethics, in part because of its relevance to DR interests in identity, community, and authority. First, virtue ethics endorses a strongly relational sense of identity, one that I further specify in feminist terms of a relational autonomy. Relational autonomy then preserves individual authority and Kantian-based norms of respect for and thus equality of persons. Sustaining individual authority thus grounds more egalitarian and democratic forms of community, in contrast with more hierarchical and non-democratic forms often affiliated with more fully relational selfhood.

I sketch the applicability and fruitfulness of this framework for DR in two ways: first, as the basis of an ethical critique of a particular Bible study application that utilizes social networking media; second, I show how religious communities that endorse equality, respect for persons, and the virtue of loving could draw on this framework in the design and application of new communication applications.

Along the way, I highlight the features of this framework and its application that help counter the primary concerns of conjoining normative frameworks with value-free social science. I conclude by showing how this normative framework thus enhances DR and thereby Internet Studies more broadly.

Normative approaches in DR: preliminary objections and replies

Arguing for an explicitly normative approach in a strongly social scientific domain such as DR is risky: any normative approach will directly contradict long-established canons of analytical concepts and methodologies in the social sciences originally designed as value-neutral or value-free frameworks. Moreover, given that religious traditions, practices, and so on are centrally driven by specific value commitments defined within a given tradition, conceptual collisions and contradictions between a more external normative framework and the defining core values of a specific tradition seem all but inevitable.

To respond to the first concern: especially in a post-positivist age, we are acutely aware of the many ways in which positivist notions of value-neutral objectivity are, at best, heuristic ideals. Extensive and now mainstream literatures document how, for example, Kantian epistemology, quantum mechanics, and/or more recent feminist and constructivist critiques of the natural sciences demonstrate that all efforts to know and understand the world inevitably retain the traces of our individual and collective value commitments and norms (e.g. Simon, 2015). Since normative commitments cannot be avoided by human observers, we can minimize purely individual subjectivity and bias by making these commitments clear and explicit; doing so thus presents them for reflection, critique, and possible revision. Such reflexive critique thereby helps us better judge both the strengths and limits of any given scientific enterprise.

In response to the second concern, a key advantage of the virtue ethics I foreground here is its global heritage; it may thereby be less likely to conflict with established religious norms and practices.

Virtue ethics: a primer

Virtue ethics enjoys a literally global heritage: virtue ethics emerges among more or less every religious and normative tradition we have record of (Ess, 2013). It is found in multiple indigenous traditions and explicitly developed in Confucian, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions as well as in Socratic, Platonic, and especially Aristotelian philosophies. The latter serve in turn as critical components of the Abrahamic religions. Finally, virtue ethics defines many of the ethical impulses of Enlightenment rationalism, including its more secular versions, that is, independent of any specific confessional or religious commitments and beliefs (Ess, 2013: 207–212).

This global history and scope suggest that virtue ethics is prima facie more likely to cohere with both a great diversity of religious traditions and more secular-rational normative approaches. Virtue ethics is thus well positioned to meet the second objection to including normative approaches in DR: in many cases, at least, virtue ethics can cohere rather than clash with the ethical norms and approaches defining a given religion tradition. Moreover, a brief review of virtue ethics will show how it directly intersects DR’s defining interests in the themes of identity, community, and authority.

Virtue ethics characteristically begins with what appears to be a near-universal human concern: what must I do/become to be content with my life? Here, “content” translates the ancient Greek term eudaimonia—literally, a well-spiritedness. This contentment is exemplified in undertaking a difficult challenge, such as mastering the skills of musicianship. Broadly, virtue ethics articulates a sense of the good life—a life of contentment and meaning—as emerging from our seeking to become more complete human beings as we pursue both (1) those virtues or excellences most interesting to us as individual persons (e.g. a craft, musicianship) and (2) those that render our relationships with others as mutually harmonious and fulfilling as possible. For Aristotle and Confucius, friendship is the premier example of human relationship that requires a suite of habits and skills (“virtues”) that must first be acquired and practiced in order for friendship to unfold and thrive. For example, Shannon Vallor (2010) highlights the virtues of empathy, patience, and perseverance as critical to friendship.

Broadly, there has been a remarkable renaissance of virtue ethics in recent decades, partly in conjunction with the rise of feminist philosophies and ethics of care. Moreover, virtue ethics attends to central features of our moral lives otherwise neglected by deontologies and consequentialisms, including “moral wisdom or discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept of happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life, and the questions of what sort of person I should be …” (Hursthouse, 1999: 3).

Furthermore, virtue ethics is well established in information and computing ethics, starting with its central role in the foundational work of Norbert Wiener (1954 [1950]), “father” of cybernetics. Virtue ethics is also at work in MCS. For example, Nick Couldry (2013) draws on Macintyre’s neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to develop an ethics for digital journalism; Couldry argues that the virtues of accuracy, sincerity, and care are thus not simply virtues for professionals, but, in my phrase, ethics for the rest of us as well (cf. Ess, 2015).

Identity, community, authority, and risk

At the same time, however, from the standpoints of high modern ethics and political philosophy, as grounded on specific understandings of the human being as a moral agent, virtue ethics entails specific risks. Briefly, early modern philosophy developed a highly atomistic conception of the individual, as either a res cogitans, that is, a purely rational self (René Descartes, 1972 [1637]), or a largely desire-driven, solely self-interested ego (Thomas Hobbes, 1994 [1668]). These strongly atomistic conceptions are somewhat ameliorated in Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). At the same time, Kant’s account of rational autonomy is foundational for high modern conceptions of ethical norms of respect and equality—and thereby the modern democratic-liberal state as a political ideal (Ess, 2013: 209f.).

Against this background, virtue ethics poses profound risks. First, as its historical roots in preliterate societies suggest, classical virtue ethics rests upon strongly relational rather than individual understandings of selfhood and identity. Relationality embeds self-identity and personhood within the multiple relationships with Others that define a given person: historically—and in some contemporary examples—such a relational self is thus deeply dependent upon a strongly hierarchical set of relationships within which it must establish and sustain itself with maximum harmony (cf. Ess, 2013: 60f, 238–243).

With regard to DR’s interests in matters of identity (Campbell, 2012: 686f), a shift toward virtue ethics means first a shift toward more strongly relational selfhood. This shift then holds immediate implications for the further matters of community and authority (Campbell, 2012: 682). To risk oversimplification, a more individual emphasis on selfhood frequently correlates with more egalitarian community structures and more openness to challenging the authority of existing institutions and traditions, including religious ones. So, for example, Knut Lundby (2012) has noted how Protestant churches encourage “the individual voice” more strongly than the Roman Catholic Church, with the upshot that “Protestant church structures are definitely being challenged” (p. 36). By contrast, the more relational emphasis frequently correlates with more hierarchical community structures and greater insistence on obedience to authority. For example, the primary Confucian virtue of filial piety demands precisely the subordinate son’s obedience to his father and, by extension, to the ruler of the state. Alisdair MacIntyre makes the same point in contemporary virtue ethics. First, MacIntyre (1994) makes clear how the relational self is dependent for its sense of identity and being upon the larger set of community relationships that define it (p. 28). Again, historically, these communities have been strongly hierarchical and thus require submission as a first virtue (MacIntyre, 1994: 190). Par contra, from radical reformers to democratic revolutionaries to modern conscientious objectors and various movements aiming at greater democracy, inclusion, and equality, these all rest on individual autonomy and agency as expressed in dissent from and disobedience to prevailing traditions, authorities, and hierarchical structures (e.g. King, 1964 [1963]).

These implications are apparent within DR, beginning with challenges to extant institutional structures, for example, through the interactive and participatory functions of comment fields and ranking functions. Hence, by disabling or removing the ranking functions and comment fields of its YouTube channel, the Roman Catholic Church has successfully instantiated and sustained its hierarchical structures via a top-down, “one-to-many” broadcasting model online (Campbell, 2012: 91f.). Protestant churches have been equally adept at both limiting online challenges to authority (e.g. Lomborg and Ess, 2012 and reasserting more traditional forms of authority in the face of such challenges (Cheong et al., 2011).

Given these backgrounds and developments, most especially within Internet Studies and DR, if we take notions of human beings as autonomous individuals coupled with democratic governance and equality as normative, we will be rightly skeptical about a virtue ethics that entails a more relational sense of selfhood.

Relational selfhood and the virtue of loving

These risks of relational selfhood to autonomy, democracy, and equality can be offset by incorporating recent notions of relational autonomy within a virtue ethics that highlights loving as a virtue.

First, notions of relational autonomy incorporate critiques of modernist conceptions of autonomy and moral agency as excessively individualist, rational, and thereby overly masculine. At the same time, however, some feminists (e.g. Oshana, 2006) recognize that modern conceptions of individual rational autonomy directly serve their emancipatory interests for women (among others). Hence, recent work reconfigures the notion of autonomy, showing how relational autonomy entails both independence from and relationship with Others. Specifically, autonomy requires skills and abilities —virtues—that are learned only in and through relationship with Others (Westlund, 2009: 26).

Relational autonomy is further interwoven with the defining goals of virtue ethics. So, Andrea Veltman and Mark Piper (2014) note that “autonomy is one primary good among others that a person needs to live a good life or to achieve human flourishing” (p. 2). At the same time, Veltman (2014) conjoins virtue ethics with a Kantian deontological account of autonomy that grounds respect for persons as a primary value.

Embodiment and loving as a virtue

Sara Ruddick, a prime founder of the ethics of care, grounds a last but central component of virtue ethics. Ruddick (1975) develops an account of “complete sex,” as marked, for example, by mutuality of desire. Ruddick’s (1975) account rests in part on phenomenological accounts that stress the role of embodiment in defining our identities in non-dualistic ways (p. 89). In this context, moreover, Ruddick (1975) foregrounds loving itself as a virtue, that is, a practice that can be difficult at times and one that requires attendant commitments, as she shows, to a Kantian respect for persons and thereby equality (p. 98f.; see Ess, 2016).

These understandings collectively constitute a normative virtue ethics framework that foregrounds loving itself as a primary virtue for a relationally autonomous (embodied) individual. Contra the risks of relational selves becoming totally subordinate to hierarchical social structures and non-democratic regimes, relational autonomy remains here sufficiently individual, rationalistic, and independent as to ground foundational norms of (Kantian) respect for persons. As Ruddick illustrates, such respect for persons immediately entails equality, as manifest first in a shared respect for one another as rational and autonomous persons. Moreover, both Ruddick and the subsequent development of relational autonomy make clear that such equality is foundational specifically for gender equality. Finally, such relationally autonomous selves thus continue to legitimate and require modern democratic states.

Applying virtue ethics in DR

The potential fruitfulness of this normative framework can be illustrated by applying it to a popular Bible-reading app, “YouVersion” (https://www.youversion.com/). YouVersion instantiates the correlation between relational selfhood and submission to (hierarchical) community and authority as it utilizes social media in a form of voluntary surveillance. For example, it records when, where, and what you read and when you don’t. It then engages you in a surveillance-based dialogue, regularly inviting you to read the text, alerting you to the latest stage in your selected reading plan, and reminding you when you fall behind schedule. Still more widely, you can voluntarily publish your reading activity through social media, specifically through a social network of up to 150 friends (cf. Hutchings, 2015).

YouVersion presents these practices of surveillance as designed to encourage your responsibility and accountability. At the same time, however, to use this app is to function first as a strongly relational self, one that is now electronically tethered to and constantly under the surveillance and thus social control of one’s larger communities. To echo MacIntyre, there may well be important virtues and practices to be acquired and refined through doing so, beginning with the virtue of accountability. At the same time, however, in these ways, YouVersion reinforces the subordination of a relational self to one or more communities, beginning with the self-chosen community of like-minded believers interested in Bible reading. Such engagements, finally, seem to highlight submission to the authority of both these larger communities and the Bible as a sacred text.

Suppose that further research on the use of an app such as YouVersion developed strong empirical evidence of increasing dependence among its users upon larger communities—communities marked by traditional hierarchies, specifically gender hierarchies. I would argue that a normative critique would then be justified, specifically on the grounds of virtue ethics, relational autonomy, and commitments to individual authority, equality, and respect for persons. First, such a critique would make a clear an explicit articulation of its ethical grounds and commitments, so as to thus be available for reflexive critique in turn; such reflexive critique, we have seen, is a primary condition for normative approaches in the social sciences. Second, the conclusions of such a critique—specifically as rooted in normative commitments to (relational) autonomy and (gender) equality—are clear: where the practices and habits encouraged by such an app appear to diminish one’s autonomy and exclusively foster subordination to hierarchical authorities, such usage should be discouraged.

Finally, the framework is promising in terms of design. Shannon Vallor (2010) has examined how far the communicative practices afforded by social networking sites (SNSs) either foster or hinder our acquiring and practicing the virtues central to friendship as a primary component in a good life or life of flourishing. These virtues include patience, perseverance, and empathy. Vallor finds that prevailing designs, affordances, and practices clustering around SNSs largely work against these primary virtues; our engagement with SNSs favors instead quick disconnects when communication is no longer pleasant or entertaining, thereby undermining our learning to stay engaged with one another long enough to develop a strong sense of empathy with our communicants.

Vallor (2010) then argues that these analyses can be used in turn to guide design of new sorts of SNSs that better serve the aims of acquiring and practicing such virtues (p. 168f.). Vallor thereby represents a growing number of ethicists and designers arguing for normatively driven approaches to design in information and communications technologies (ICTs)—for example, under rubrics such as “human-centered ICT,” “Fair ICT,” and “slow tech” (e.g. Patrignani and Whitehouse, 2014). Most recently, Sarah Spiekermann has systematically applied virtue ethics to an extensive array of IT planning and management topics, and specific IT design approaches and requirements (2016). These developments and expanding literatures directly intersect with, and may offer new insights to, the thematic focus in DR on how technologies shape religion and vice versa, especially as this research focuses on the negotiations between “the beliefs, discourse, and tradition of a given religious group” and new technologies and their uses (Campbell and Lövheim, 2011: 1088). A natural extension here would be to develop normative guidance for future ICT design and implementations within DR. Here, I have argued that such design and implementation should include the virtues of loving, equality, respect for persons, and democratic norms and practices—as fostering and fostered by relationally autonomous selves.

Concluding remarks: a virtue ethics framework for DR?

We can now see how this framework fits within DR, Internet Studies, and MCS at large. First, this framework brings into play recently developed philosophical understandings of relational autonomy, thereby directly contributing to what Wellman (2011) identifies as a chief focus of the third age of Internet Studies, namely, attention to how our interactions with CMC technologies involve new conceptions of selfhood and identity (p. 21f.). We have further explored this focus within DR as such (Campbell, 2012: 686f.). At the same time, as we have seen, this framework directly intersects immediately conjoined interests in community and authority.

Moreover, this framework expands the theoretical and methodological toolkits of DR and Internet Studies to include an explicitly normative approach—one that should prove useful both for the sake of critical analysis of extant applications and practices and for design and deployment of technologies intended to preserve or enhance practices of virtue, beginning with the virtue of loving. To my knowledge, this would be a relatively novel addition. On one hand, this framework extends the appropriation of virtue ethics in MCS more broadly (so Couldry, 2013; Ess, 2015). But within Internet Studies broadly, and DR as a domain thereof, explicitly normative approaches are generally avoided (e.g. Campbell, 2013: 680, 682; Peng et al., 2013). Insofar as these recent overviews of Internet Studies and DR are accurate, the normative framework developed here—presuming it indeed proves to be useful and fruitful in both analytic and normative ways—would hence represent a distinctive contribution to these domains.