Title: Evil online /
Authors: Cocking, Dean, 1958-; Hoven, Jeroen van den,
Year: 2018
Subjects: Good and evil Electronic information resources.; Internet Moral and ethical aspects; Internet Moral and ethical aspects
Abstract: We now live in an era defined by the ubiquity of the internet. From our everyday engagement with social media to trolls on forums and the emergence of the dark web, the internet is a space characterized by unreality, isolation, anonymity, objectification, and rampant self-obsession--the perfect breeding ground for new, unprecedented manifestations of evil. Evil Online is the first comprehensive analysis of evil and moral character in relation to our increasingly online lives. Chapters consider traditional ideas around the phenomenon of evil in moral philosophy and explore how the dawn of the internet has presented unprecedented challenges to older theoretical approaches. Cocking and Van den Hoven propose that a growing sense of moral confusion--moral fog--pushes otherwise ordinary, normal people toward evildoing, and that values basic to moral life such as autonomy, intimacy, trust, and privacy are put at risk by online platforms and new technologies. This new theory of evildoing offers fresh insight into the moral character of the individual, and opens the way for a burgeoning new area of social thought--back cover.
Contents: 1. The many faces of evil online -- 2. Our online environment -- 3. The transformation of social life -- 4. The moral fog of our worlds -- 5. The fate of the moral life.