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Our first Ethics in Business Seminar this fall will be on Tuesday, September 17, at 6:00 p.m.

Elizabeth Edenberg (CUNY) will present her paper "Consent in the Digital Age" (abstract below)

Join us in person if you are in Manhattan (140 W 62nd St, Room 334, Lincoln Center campus) or by Zoom if you are not. Please kindly RSVP here.

Below is a short bio and full abstract.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Miguel

When: Tuesday, September 17th at 6:00 p.m.

Where: Lincoln Center Campus, Room #334 (or by Zoom, RSVP here)

Abstract:
Consent has been a core focus of philosophical research in recent years. Philosophers have offered guidance on how we should understand consent, its requirements, and its normative force. However, philosophers have yet to substantially weigh in on consent as if functions in the digital sphere. Existing philosophical theories of consent are ill-suited to explain the centrality of consent in the digital realm. Consent plays a central role in the laws governing our rights in the digital realm, operating as a key mechanism for transferring information rights. In this paper, I will analyze the function of consent in the digital realm. I will argue that this context reveals limitations of existing theories and helps expand our understanding of morally transformative consent. First, I develop a taxonomy of the features of consent that explain its morally transformative power, synthesizing recent philosophical work. Second, I apply this taxonomy to the digital realm to show how understanding what makes consent morally transformative can correct several failures of consent in the digital realm, while also revealing limitations in philosophers' understanding of what it at stake when theorizing about consent. Third, I argue that for consent to work its moral magic for individuals, we must have strong communal protections for rights operating in the background. This points to the need to integrate insights from political philosophy into traditional consent theory. For our theories of consent to be morally meaningful, we must attend to the structural features that secure individual rights.

Bio:

Elizabeth Edenberg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College, The City University of New York (CUNY). She specializes in political philosophy, political epistemology, and the ethics of technology. Her research focuses on using philosophical tools to inform contemporary challenges facing society. These range from divisions over the demands of justice, to political disagreement, to the role of technology in shaping our future. Her articles have appeared leading journals in philosophy, computer science, and science and technology studies. She also co-edited the first research volume on Political Epistemology, which was published with Oxford University Press in 2021. Prior to joining Baruch College, she served as Senior Ethicist and Assistant Research Professor at Georgetown University's Ethics Lab where she led translational ethics projects designed to empower both students and experts to address the urgent issues of our time. She led Ethics Lab's work embedding ethics across the university's curriculum. She also led collaborations with a wide variety of partners beyond the academy, from public impact projects to policy teams seeking practical progress on complex ethical issues.