Abstract

Computers hold a central place in the development of our social structures today. Following the thought of Martin Heidegger, if we are to understand the digital phenomenon, we must understand it ontologically. In my dissertation, I define digital ontology as the fundamental commensurability between artifacts and nature, human beings and machines. Analysts are divided concerning the merits of this. The optimists believe it will remove the hierarchies dividing people from each other, and the naysayers think it eliminates the uniqueness of human beings, and calls into question the principles and mores defining civilization. Digital ontology, they fear, is the reduction of humanity to a machine. ;The central question of my dissertation is this: What is the nature of digital ontology, and is it possible to define a digital ethics within this digital environment? By examining the digital phenomenon, I determine that it is a cybernetic, systemic environment characterized by what I call "shifting centers." These are the building blocks of digital ontology, and are momentary responses to the system of which they are a part. Their existence is determined by their purpose, and once that purpose is fulfilled, the center is deconstructed and quickly passes away. As such, digital ontology is the unending erasure and redrawing of boundary conditions that constantly define and redefine the nature of the system and its elements. Digital ethics must take into account the phenomenon of shifting centers, and the way it redefines the self, responsibility, accountability, and what Jean Baudrillard calls "radical otherness." ;Most people, I discover, attempt to define digital ontology as totalizing discourse, which is opposed to ethics. If we allow the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to inform our understanding of digital ontology, however, we will discover that digital ontology need not be understood as totalizing discourse, but is more successfully understood as the condition for ethical discourse defined by the other. I conclude by outlining a prolegomena to future digital ethics based upon the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and his definition of ethical discourse as the domain of radical otherness