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11: An Ethics of Agency

11: An Ethics of Agency

FOSS and Crafts · FOSS and Crafts

October 1, 2020Explicit

Show Notes

<p>Chris and Morgan discuss an ethical framework Chris has been workshopping for the last few years, &quot;An Ethics of Agency&quot;, with the foundation of maximizing agency &quot;for you, for me, for everyone&quot; and minimizing subjection. <strong>CW:</strong> <em>Note that Chris talks about an incident involving them experiencing suicidal depression at one point.</em></p><p><strong>Links:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Other philosophical systems mentioned:</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism">Utilitarianism</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantianism">Kantianism</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_care">Ethics of Care</a></p></li></ul></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer">Peter Singer</a>'s book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_(book)">Animal Liberation</a>, and the argument for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_consideration_of_interests">Equal consideration of interests</a>. (Note that Peter Singer gets criticism from some disability circles; this is a <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-about-disability-and-infanticide-from-peter-singer">good summary</a>. In general it's our position to focus on &quot;raising up&quot; rights, including those of animals; pitting animal rights vs disabled rights need not be done in a society with as many resources as ours presently is.)</p></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen">Amartya Sen</a>, whose book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_as_Freedom">Development as Freedom</a> had a bigger background influence than Chris probably realized in its treatment of the agency of people as the primary index by which we measure a country's development</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html">The GNU Manifesto</a>. Search for &quot;Kantian ethics&quot; on the page. (Curiously its preceding sentence is described in an example that appears consequentialist! By the way, pretty much every decent ethical system claims that its foundation is the &quot;golden rule&quot;, this isn't unique to Kantianism.)</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html">The Free Software Definition</a>. Also note the pun on another speech called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms">The Four Freedoms</a>.</p></li><li><p><a href="http://faif.us/cast/2013/jul/17/0x3F/">Free as in Freedom episode with the AGPL panel discussion</a></p></li><li><p>A FOSDEM talk in 2014, <a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/network_freedom/">The Road Ahead for Network Freedom</a>, where &quot;freedom for developers, but not for users&quot; is mentioned as a phrase</p></li><li><p><a href="https://librelounge.org/">Libre Lounge</a>'s subtitle: &quot;a casual podcast about user freedom&quot;, including <a href="https://librelounge.org/episodes/episode-5-karen-sandler-and-software-freedom-conservancy.html">mentioned episode with Karen Sandler</a></p></li><li><p>Some talks in 2018 by Molly DeBlanc (and Karen Sandler) using the term &quot;user freedom&quot;:</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo_WH1bYgbo">That's a free software issue!</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://vimeo.com/305038607">User freedom: A love story</a></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Molly DeBlanc has a <a href="http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/22/user-freedom-n/">wonderful article giving a personal definition of &quot;user freedom&quot;</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://techautonomy.org/">Declaration of Digital Autonomy</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://2018.splashcon.org/track/ocap-2018-papers">OCap conference 2018</a>, source of the mentioned dinner between Chris, Mark Miller, Kate Sills</p></li><li><p>Chris's ActivityPub Conference 2019 keynote, <a href="https://conf.tube/videos/watch/2b9a985b-ccdd-49ce-a81b-ed00d2b47c85">ActivityPub: past, present, future</a></p></li></ul>