Unreal friends

Ethics and Information Technology

Volumn 2, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 223-231

  Cocking, Dean ^a   Matthews, Steve ^a  

^a CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY;

SHARED EXPERIENCES; WELL BEING;

SOCIAL SCIENCES;

EID: 33748280045     PISSN: 13881957     EISSN: 15728439     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1011414704851     Document Type: Article

References (10)

1. It has been pointed out to us that our use of the term 'virtual' is infelicitous given our focus on email and chat forums. A virtual environment is one that simulates a real environment, but surely email is not a simulation of talking to someone. It is true that email talk is not simulated talk this reminds us of a point about arithmetic: there could be no real difference between successfully adding two numbers together and simulating such a successful addition. Our point, though, is that email (and other electronic communication) is a simulation of a face-to-face communicative exchange. Perhaps it is not a simulation in the sense of trying to image face-to-face communication; nevertheless, it may substitute for face-to-face communication, and that is all we are claiming.
2. A brief comment is in order here over our use of scare quotes on the term 'friendship'. Since our thesis is that internet friendships are psychologically unavailable to human agents, the use of this term unmodified is unacceptable to us. But someone might quibble that the use of scare quotes begs the question in favour of our thesis. To avoid this dilemma, and so to leave the issue open as we proceed, we stipulate that by the expression 'Net "friendship" ' we refer to those internet relationships alleged by some to qualify as genuine friendships.
3. See the film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Directors Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick. Produced by Colin Neale, Dennis Murphy, Adam Symansky and the National Film Board of Canada.
4. On similarity and similarity in virtue, see, e.g., Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, 1159a35 and 1165b 14-35. On the self-knowledge to be found in friendship
5. see, Aristotle, Magna Moralia, 1213a 10-26;
6. John Cooper, "Aristotle on Friendship", in Amelie Rorty (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (University of California Press, 1980), pp. 322-323.
7. For such an account, see, Laurence Thomas, "Friendship", Synthese 72 (1987).
8. See Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett, "Friendship and the Self, Ethics, April, 1998.
9. In this section we use the term 'character' widely to include not only such things as bodily features, and psychological traits, but also such relational characteristics as the kinds of institutions one may be a part of e.g., being a member of a certain sporting club or political party. The latter may well reflect indirectly on a person's qualities, and such relational features are also of course commonly the subject of interpretation between individuals.
10. In his "Moral Behaviour and Rational Creatures of the Universe", Monist 71, July 1988, pp. 59-71, Laurence Thomas arguing for the significance of non-verbal behaviour to our moral assessments of others says our emotional displays are 'indispensable barometers by which we assess a person's motivations and judge the sincerity of his utterances', p. 65. While we think Thomas might overstate his case for the non-verbal, we do think that sincerity losses are, at least, a real problem for the imagined loss of the non-voluntary to purely voluntary interaction.