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The Ethics of Information: Foundation to Regulate Moral Framework for Distributed Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), such as Bitcoin

Asgarinia, Hale | 2017

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 49306 (42)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Philosophy of Science
  6. Advisor(s): Taqavi, Mostafa
  7. Abstract:
  8. Information and communications technologies have affected the human world rapidly, which challenges the facing today’s information society. Extensive use and impact of these technologies in different aspects of human life have led to an information revolution. This revolution, changes in our understanding of the human nature and physical world. The human is an information organism among the other agents which is living in the informational environment, that is called the infosphere. Moreover, the information revolution has caused to emerge of “Bitcoin”; a phenomenon that is changing economic relations. Bitcoin is a “crypto-currency” and “encrypted payment system” that relying on a peer-to-peer network and working without centralized authority (central bank). Since the development of this system (2009), most of the experts concentrate on the technical aspects of this network, but less discussion has been argued about the “ethics of Bitcoin”. In accordance to the Agent-Based Modeling, we can achieve a better understanding of the ethical complexity of this system. The aim of this thesis is to provide a conceptual framework for ethical issues of Bitcoin in which this framework allows computational modelling. Bitcoin is a Distributed Multi-Agent System This system is based on interactions between the human being and the technological artifacts; thus, in the proposed ethical framework, the technological artifacts have to be considered in the moral community. These artifacts have physical and social dimensions which can interact with the human being with the social aspect and helping to shape the human actions and decisions. “The Ethics of Technology” theory focuses on this dimension and the artifacts have entered into the moral community. Furthermore, these newly arrived entities can be assigned moral values. Luciano Floridi’s “Information Ethics”, which is an integral part of his “Philosophy of Information”, can regulate the ethical framework in which all informational entities have a minimal degree of moral value. The information ethics focuses on the networks of the agents and their behavior.Information Ethics’s capacity to study phenomena and processes at the basic level makes it unique among ethical theories in providing a conceptual framework for fundamental level analysis of information and communication-based world. Finally, through Info-Computational interpretation of Ethics of Information, we can regulate ethical framework for agent-based modeling of distributed multi-agent systems, such as Bitcoin
  9. Keywords:
  10. Bitcoin ; Agent Based Modeling ; Information Ethics ; Distributed System ; Multiagent System ; Technology Ethics ; Information Revolution ; Information Philosophy

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