Ethics and Information Technology (2005) 7:16 DOI 10.

1007/s10676-005-0454-0

Springer 2005

Lost in translation?: Intercultural dialogues on privacy and information ethics (Introduction to special issue on Privacy and Data Privacy Protection in Asia)
Charles Ess
Interdisciplinary Studies, Drury University, 900 N. Benton Ave, Springeld, Missouri, 65802, USA E-mail: cmess@drury.edu

The papers collected here reect and articulate central elements of a critical but still nascent dialogue among Western philosophers interested in information and computer ethics and their counterparts in Eastern1 countries specically Japan, China, and Thailand. They share a common focus on privacy as a key element in information and computer ethics. Our goal in these papers is to provide philosophers and ethicists with some basic insights into the important similarities and crucial dierences between Eastern and Western concepts and emerging data privacy protection laws rst of all, for the sake of furthering an informed and respectful global dialogue in information ethics. Given the global scope and inuences of information technologies, such a global dialogue is critical especially if an information ethics is to emerge that respects and fosters those elements of specic cultures that are crucial to their sense of identity. In particular, as we will see, privacy intersects with basic conceptions of: the human person as refracted through notions of individuality and the larger collective; the nature of human consciousness and its potential facility as autonomous lawgiver and partici` -vis its dependence on pant in a democratic polity vis-a larger social networks and the importance of the collective in sustaining desirable social order; and, perhaps most fundamentally, the basic value of individual as ego either as basic ontological reality and/or as an undesirable illusion that funds both individual and collective dissatisfaction. In these and other ways, concepts of privacy thus touch upon some of the most fundamental philosophical questions and issues, ones that are of abiding interest to comparative philosophers and indeed, we hope that our collection will be of interest
As postcolonial scholars will rightly remind us, the terms Eastern and Western are more products of Western colonization, rather than useful or accurate terms for understanding diverse cultures. Nonetheless, no equivalent and recognizable alternative has yet to emerge that would help point to many of the important cultural differences discussed here so I use it as what I hope is a helpful shorthand, but one that requires precisely this sort of qualication.
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and value to the project of comparative philosophy in general, as well as to information ethics in particular. Even more importantly, we hope that as readers work through these chapters, they will expand their understanding and appreciation not only of the important similarities but also of the irreducible dierences between diverse cultures on these most fundamental matters. Such understanding and appreciation are the necessary preconditions for a mutual and respectful dialogue precisely the sort of dialogue required by an emerging global information ethics. China Our collection begins with an overview of conceptions of privacy and emerging data privacy laws in China. Yao-Huai Lu points out, there have been considerable anthropological analyses of Chinese culture, including attitudes towards privacy: but even the most recent and most signicant do not, unfortunately, move beyond the small circle of elites and rulers in order to pay adequate attention to more ordinary, but more widely shared ideas of privacy ideas that, moreover, have changed dramatically since the 1980s as China has become more and more open to Western countries, cultures, and their network and computing technologies. Indeed, Prof. Lu argues that China is importing nothing less than both Western-style market economy and notions of democracy and thereby the core Western notions of the individual and thus correlative notions of individual privacy and the importance of data privacy protection online. This is not to say, however, that extant Chinese attitudes have somehow been swept away. Rather to the contrary, a more negrained analysis shows critical dierences as well as agreements with Western conceptions including, for example, a shift from privacy as linked with Yinsi ( , shameful secret) to a broader concept of privacy that includes more positive elements of private life as well. The article then turns to an extensive summary of contemporary Chinese law regarding privacy, along with a review of recent scholarly

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reections on these laws to conclude with the observation that contemporary Chinese law reects a transition from a traditional focus on preserving the power of the state to a greater (Western-like) focus on individual rights as well. Turning to recent ethical work, Prof. Lu nds that fewer than 20 papers have been published in China between 1994 and 2004 on issues of privacy another indication that information ethics in China is in its very early stages.2 Generally, Prof. Lu nds that while there has been a dramatic shift in the evaluation of the individual and individual privacy i.e., from something seen in primarily negative terms, e.g., as selfishness, etc., to something more positive this shift still very much sustains more traditional Chinese emphases on harmony and the larger society; indeed, while there may be a dialectical unication of collective and individual interests in contemporary China, collective interests remain more important. Moreover, where privacy does emerge as an important good it is defended as an instrumental good, rather than an intrinsic good. As we will see, such instrumental defenses are shared throughout Asia while defenses of privacy as an intrinsic good are limited to Western conceptions of the individual and privacy rights.3

Finally, Prof. Lu makes a number of predictions regarding the future of privacy concepts and rights. Generally, he is optimistic that privacy protections will continue to expand in China, in part under the pressures of globalization, increasing trade with and exposure to Western societies, and the increasing demands for Western-style individual privacy by young people. In particular, Prof. Lu argues that greater attention to Western concepts of the individual and privacy attention that will come, for example, through a global dialogue on information ethics will help Chinese philosophers and the larger public extend and revise their basic understandings of these concepts and rights. Even so, Prof. Lu argues that in the end, just as the Chinese market economy is a market economy with Chinese characteristics (i.e., not the same as a Western market economy), so the emerging Chinese conceptions will remain distinctively Chinese i.e., they will retain a basic consistency with traditional Chinese values and approaches.

Thailand We then turn to Prof. Krisana Kitiyadisais account of privacy and emerging data privacy law in Thailand. To begin with, as in the Chinese concept of Yinsi ( , shameful secret), earlier understandings of privacy in Thailand were negative involving shame, disrespect, or losing face. And (as we will also see in the example of Japan), the Thai word for privacy privade is a loan word from English, introduced in the 19th century. At the same time, the social structure and history of Thai society shades notions of privacy in distinctive directions. On the one hand, there exists an individual notion of privacy in the sense of a right to be left alone not, however, for the sake of personal positive development (e.g., as would be the case in some Western arguments) but for the sake of saving face in a collectivist, hierarchical society in which ones face determines access to resources, social status, etc. On the other hand, interfering in private matters can be justied precisely for the sake of saving face, if necessary. Prof. Kitiyadisai further takes up the Buddhist perspective on privacy rights. Briey, given Buddhist ontology and analysis of the human condition any notion of individual rights are rst of all not anchored on some positive notion of the individual as a fundamental reality (since it is precisely the illusory belief in the individual that in Buddhist analysis is the source of all human dissatisfaction). On the contrary, rights are, we might say, a social construction whose only justication lies in their fostering social harmony and order.

This can also be seen in the fact that the rst book on information ethics in Chinese Prof. Lu s, Xin Xi Lun Li Xue [Chinese Information Ethics] was published just in 2002. By the same token, our Thai colleague documents that the discussion of privacy rights and data privacy protection laws in Thailand is barely 10 years old, as compared with at least 50 years of such discussion in the West. 3 As I have argued elsewhere (Culture and global networks: hope for a global ethics? in Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert (Eds.), Information Technology and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, University Press, forthcoming) and as our Western colleague makes clear, there is a pluralistic continuum of privacy justications. Western countries such as the US and Germany justify privacy as an intrinsic good, as well as one that is instrumentally needed for the sake of democratic polity. By contrast, as we will see here, China, Japan, Thailand and other Asian countries and regions such as Hong Kong defend privacy rights, at least initially, in terms of data privacy protection that is instrumentally necessary for the development of e-commerce. This continuum of justication suggests a pluralism in which shared beliefs and values are nonetheless interpreted and applied in diverse ways that reect the distinctive characteristics, traditions, and values of diverse societies. Such a pluralism conjoins both (quasi)-universal values with diverse cultural identities thereby marking out a middle ground between a universalism that achieves unity only through homogeneity, and an ethical relativism that eliminates any possibility of cross-cultural dialogue and ethics altogether.

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The paper then explores the relatively recent history of the emergence of demands for basic human rights in Thailand including rights to privacy. On the one hand, the 1997 Constitution guarantees basic rights and liberties. And the 1997 (2540 by the Thai calendar) Ocial Information Act of Thailand guarantees a right to know and a right to privacy but only as these rights are fundamentally delimited by the greater need to ensure the security of the State. (As in China, that is, the needs of the State seen in terms of its function of providing stability and order outweigh individual interests.) The data privacy protection oered here, moreover, does not extend to information collected by businesses, nancial institutions, etc. Still more problematically: even though this may sound somewhat Western in its eort to protect some version of privacy the hierarchical structures and parallel attitudes of tradition Thailand remain very much in place: for an individual to request information from an ocial while legal or de jure nonetheless in cultural terms amounts to a de facto confrontation with the ocial, and thus to his losing face. As in the case of China, especially younger and middle-class Thais who have access to ICTs and the Internet and the Web have become increasingly aware of the importance of some sort of data privacy protection indeed, there is a draft Data Protection legislation that awaits nalization. But while this legislation stalls, work goes on to implement a socalled Smart ID Card in Thailand one that would contain a considerable range of personal information. Prof. Kitiyadisai provides a nicely detailed account of the debates regarding the implementation of the Smart ID Card including the problem that any breeches of privacy that might occur in this implementation are technically not illegal, since the Data Protection legislation has yet to be made law in Thailand. In contrast with Prof. Lu s relative optimism that privacy concepts and rights will continue to expand in China, Prof. Kitiyadisai argues that the future of these concepts and rights in Thailand is much more uncertain.

Japan and the West Our nal two papers belong together the rst on Japanese conceptions of privacy, and the second as an extended reection on important historical and contemporary parallels and dierences between Western and Japanese notions of privacy, especially as rooted in fundamental philosophical conceptions of what constitutes human selfhood and consciousness, their relation to the larger society, and the value of self and ego.

Prof. Makoto Nakada and Mr. Takanori Tamura explore the complexities of privacy in Japan by rst introducing us to three worlds of Japanese consciousness Seken, Shakai, and Ikai. These worlds each have a historical reference Seken to traditional, indigenous Japanese culture; Shakai to imported Western notions of individualism, democracy, etc.; and Ikai to cultural domains and activities that, once in some measure good, were repressed under the Tokugawa era (16031868), issuing in a blended ethical evaluation of its elements, i.e., as sometimes valuable, as sometimes dangerous. Their case study highlighting what Westerners would consider personal information of homicide victims that is nonetheless published in a respected newspaper makes clear how for a Japanese consciousness that takes up elements from these three domains, this seemingly personal information is necessary for Japanese to understand the meaning and signicance of the homicide: in particular, the personal information published in the newspaper is needed in order to understand the all-important human relations (not just the personalities of individuals) emphasized in Japanese culture specically, in the notion of aida (in-between), the space/relationships between individuals that are seen to be constitutive of both specic individuals and the larger society. (In other terms in contrast with Western notions of the individual as the primary atom upon which relationship and society is built here, as in traditional Confucian thought4 and the many Asian societies it has inuenced [including Japan], the individual and individual consciousness seen to be much more relational and dependent precisely on the web of social relationships in which one nds oneself.) Indeed, this contrast with Western views is highlighted in the discussion of Musi literally, no-self i.e., the denial of the individual ego and subjectivity that begins with Japans Buddhist heritage. Our authors connect Musi with Ikai the repressed and largely negative domain of Japanese cultural elements, but one that also serves as the source of important energy and creativity. That is, as is well known to Westerners through such classic works as Zen in the Art of Archery,5 the practice of eliminating ego and the sense of being an individual is seen as the path towards achieving a more immediate intuition of the world as process and thereby operating in the
See The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (translated, with an Introduction, by Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr.). Ballantine Books, New York, 1998, pp. 2329. 5 Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery. Vintage Books, New York, 1971.
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world much more eectively, creatively, and satisfactorily. Such a view as Rafael Capurros companion article that compares these Japanese concepts with Western counterparts makes clear is more or less opposite to the understanding in the West of the individual as an atomistic autonomy, one that serves as the foundation for conceptions of privacy and its importance. So, for example, some authors, as inuenced by Japans Pure Land (Jodo-shinsyu) Buddhist denomination, interpret the emphasis on Musi, noself, to imply a practice of purifying and thus eliminating ones private mind precisely by the intentional violation of privacy i.e., by voluntarily sharing ones most intimate and shameful secrets. Our authors support their analysis by way of examples from important Japanese literature and literary traditions, anthropological analyses, and their own sociological research. The complexity of Japanese consciousness, as involving the matrix of Seken, Shakai, and Ikai, alongside a comparative devaluation of the individual through notions of Musi, makes clear that comparisons with Western counterparts require a careful and nuanced understanding of the complexities involved: moreover, such comparisons as Prof. Capurros companion essay further articulates will show that such basic notions as the individual and privacy only partially map across these cultural dierences. That is, a complete comparative account of these notions will show (a) closely similar elements; (b) only roughly parallel elements; and (c) irreducible dierences that absolutely forbid any easy translation of terms and concepts from one cultural domain to the other. These points are further illustrated through the authors discussion of Ohyake and Watakusi, terms that roughly but only very roughly serve as counterparts to Western distinctions between public and private. As in our rst example of China, these notions have undergone signicant change especially in the last few decades. Indeed, as in the example of Thailand, privacy (puraibashii) enters Japanese as a loan word. Our Japanese colleagues show how the frequency of the word has dramatically increased in a representative Japanese newspaper from 1987 to 2004 as has the frequency of the terms ICT and personal information. Privacy now includes precisely the expectation of data privacy protection.

expectations of privacy and their equally complex counterparts in Western history, philosophy, and theology. Ranging from the Pre-Socratics through Descartes, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, coupled with discussion of Christian traditions and especially Kant, Prof. Capurro examines in comprehensive detail just how each element of the Japanese analysis of privacy and related concepts compares with this spectrum of Western concepts and traditions. In doing so, he makes clear how far we can translate terms such as privacy between the two traditions i.e., as they share at least some similarities, especially with regard to data privacy protection but only as we simultaneously keep squarely in mind how these similarities are at the same time accompanied by crucial and irreducible dierences that forbid any easy assumption that the term, and, more fundamentally, its aliated notions of the individual and the individual ego, are somehow univocals or universals in a simple sense. In particular, as Prof. Capurro writes, even such seemingly basic and commonly shared ...denitions of privacy as the right to be let alone and the right to control ones personal information are indeed subject to dierent interpretations according to dierent cultural backgrounds. By undertaking the comprehensive comparison of the historical, cultural, philosophical, and theological backgrounds that shape these dierence interpretations, Prof. Capurro helps us more clearly and completely understand the complex of both similarities and irreducible dierences between these diverse cultures and their understanding of the individual and privacy. Clearly, as he points out, such understanding is absolutely critical for the emergence of what he calls intercultural information ethics. As a major contribution to this emerging ethics, Prof. Capurro closes this article with a summary comparison that should be read side-by-side with its companion summary concluding the Japanese article. But of course, this emerging ethics has only just begun and so Prof. Capurro articulates two additional questions for future dialogues that should prove fruitful for intercultural information ethics.

Initial impressions, provisional conclusions, future directions First of all, each of our contributors makes clear that Western concepts of privacy are quite alien to the cultural, historical, religious, and philosophical traditions that shape the large worldviews of China, Japan, and Thailand. Broadly speaking, as more collective and social in their orientation, these countries and cultures thus lay comparatively less emphasis on the individual and so we nd there no immediate

From a Western perspective In our nal paper, a companion reection on the Japanese discussion, Prof. Capurro undertakes an extensive comparison between these complexities surrounding contemporary Japanese understandings and

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counterpart to the Western ontological understanding of the atomistic individual that funds Western concepts of privacy as rst of all individual privacy. (By contrast, for example, the earlier concepts of privacy operating in Thailand were collective concepts ` -vis the such as the concept of family privacy vis-a larger community and state.) These ontological differences are accompanied by signicant dierences in prevailing understandings of how individual consciousness and identity emerge. In particular, in those countries such as Japan and Thailand where Buddhism plays a central role in shaping cultural values and identity, the Buddhist emphasis on no-self (Musi in Japanese) directly undermines Western emphases on the autonomous individual as the most important reality (at least since Descartes), the source of morality (in Kant), the foundation of democratic polity, and in all these ways the anchor of Western emphases on individual privacy. As Buddhism stresses instead the importance of overcoming the ego as the primary illusion at the root of our discontent it thus provides a philosophical and religious justication for doing away with privacy altogether, as in the example of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (Jodo-shinsyu), which inspires some authors to move towards salvation by voluntarily betraying private, even shameful personal thoughts. Relatedly, the Confucian (and broadly Asian) understanding of the individual as a relational entity i.e., one whose identity and characteristics in many ways are dependent upon the web of relationships within which one nds oneself likewise directly challenges Western emphases on the individual as a kind of basic, ontological atom that is instead the primary source of both its own moral law (Kant) and agent of any social and political relationships that it may choose to engage in. Again, this Western concept anchors Western emphases on the importance of individual privacy and its absence in Asian cultures and traditions, not surprisingly, correlates with a similar absence (until recent Western inuences) of individual notions of privacy as a positive good. Perhaps most strikingly, for example, our Japanese colleagues describe an identity that is not simply discontinuous, as compared with Western assumptions including those, as Prof. Capurro points out, are aliated with moral autonomy: more dramatically, a Japanese sense of identity involves negotiating the in-between (aida) space of relationships created precisely by a specic nexus of persons dened, for example, in terms of social identity and status an in-between space that further involves complex interactions between the three dierent domains of Seken, Shakai, and Ikai. Each of these three domains has a specic set of values inuenced in good mea-

sure by distinctive moments in Japanese history. Shakai involves those values such as democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, etc., that were imported into Japan, beginning with the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, and especially following WW II while Seken represents a more traditional world of social relationships, etc. But Seken in turn is complicated by its contrast with Ikai, where Ikai represents a kind of repressed domain that entails both positive and negative elements (precisely as shaped by the history of the Tokugawa Era). As Prof. Capurro makes clear in his comparisons, there are rough analogues between these three elements in Japanese identity and culture and various moments in the historical development of Western conceptions of the individual: but the analogues are only rough and the upshot is that privacy as understood in the West (especially as rooted in a modern, specically Kantian conception of the autonomous individual who thus ` -vis the larger society, especially requires privacy vis-a for the sake of participation in a democratic society) is not isomorphically synonymous with what Japanese understand by privacy. Rather, as all our contributors make clear, privacy, especially as aliated with emerging data privacy protection laws in these (and nearby) countries, entails an emerging synthesis and developing hybridization between Western concepts and indigenous cultural values, traditions, and concepts of the self vis` -vis society. In light of the resulting complex of sima ilarities and irreducible dierences, any assumption that privacy in Asian contexts directly translates Western notions is both mistaken and dangerously misleading. Such translation is at best, incomplete, and the resulting concepts and attitudes, while bearing a recognizable family resemblance to their Western counterparts, at the same time retain their distinctiveness as Chinese, Japanese, and Thai conceptions of privacy. As we hope these articles make clear philosophers and ethicists interested in genuinely global dialogues regarding privacy as a key element in information and computer ethics must develop a careful and detailed understanding of both similarities and distinctive dierences between Western and Eastern conceptions and assumptions. This groundwork requires philosophers to extend their analyses to include anthropology, sociology, religious traditions, and cultural history. Generally, such groundwork is necessary in order to avoid the usual pitfalls of comparative philosophy rst of all, the dangers of ethnocentrically projecting ones own cultural presuppositions upon an Other: such a projection not only issues in errors of equivocation at the philosophical level, but, more deeply, commits a form

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of conceptual and philosophical colonization of the Other as this Other is thereby remade in ones own image, resulting in the loss of distinctive cultural identity in the process. Stated positively, we have the most to learn from those most dierent from ourselves: by developing this cross-cultural groundwork, philosophers take up the possibility of learning a great deal indeed both about their own philosophical traditions, culturally-related assumptions, etc., and those of the Other. Indeed, as our Japanese and Western colleagues remind us such comparative discussion is needed if we are to understand not only the Other but ourselves more deeply. (As Goethe said, whoever does not know a foreign language does not know his own.) But again, beyond these intrinsic goods, the crosscultural exchanges at work here are necessary for global dialogues based on mutual respect and understanding. That is to say, our contributions are inspired in part by the conviction and experience that only by recognizing and respecting these deep dierences, as part of the identity that denes distinctive cultures and their dierences from one another, can conversation partners undertake discussions and dialogues that are indeed fruitful. Such dialogues, nally, are critical to the continued development of a global information ethics. Clearly, such an information ethics is made much more dicult in light of the very large dierences between Eastern and Western cultures on such basic points as notion of the ` -vis society and correlative notions individual vis-a and evaluations of privacy. But these dierences and diculties mean precisely that developing the sort of cross-cultural understandings we articulate here is all the more urgent. This urgency is further amplied precisely by the dramatic expansion of

CMC technologies in Asian countries and, indeed, throughout the world, and the correlative demand for information ethics where, again, such information ethics, emerging from both within the philosophical frameworks of specic cultural traditions in Asia and through hybridization with Western concepts, is relatively young. For these many reasons, we are convinced that a central component of global information ethics is the comparative philosophical work of articulating and preserving the philosophical dierences that dene cultures and their diversity not only for the sake of protecting cultural identity, as important as this is, but also because it is precisely in those dialogues across such fundamental dierences that we have the most to learn, both about ourselves and the Other. So we hope that these articles will fruitfully contribute to what Prof. Capurro helpfully calls an intercultural information ethics an ethics that struggles to discern and take up commonalities and values shared across cultures, while simultaneously articulating a deep understanding of and respect for foundational cultural dierences at work in basic elements of information ethics such as privacy and its aliated notions (e.g., of the individual ` -vis the larger society), with the goal of previs-a serving and fostering these dierences as crucial elements of both individual and cultural identity. Most optimistically, we hope these articles will further inspire and contribute to what we see as urgently needed dialogues that will continue to explore and develop the information ethics required for individuals and societies who are ever more shaped and dened by the rapid expansion of ICTs and incorporation of these technologies into our individual, social, and cultural lives.