Introduction

Ethics and Communication – Global Perspectives

Göran Collste

Ethics requires empathy and communication. Why should we bother about what is right and wrong if we have no idea of how other people feel and sense? Our ability to identify with other people is an important starting point for ethics. A morally conscious person cannot remain indifferent and passive when human beings are exposed to suffering. There is a tacit demand to intervene when we encounter other peoples' needs and suffering (Løgstrup 1997). A blunting of moral sensibility or cold-heartedness implies that a person lacks the ability to see and judge events from a moral perspective.

A person does not live his or her life in a moral vacuum. By our very existence, we are included in morally relevant relationships, and communication is thus a fundamental existential category. As humans, we are dependent on other people in various ways and on the natural world around us. Our actions – or our failures to act – affect in various ways other people; we can harm or succour. The aim of morality is to guide our actions so that we can take responsibility for our way of living and acting.

This view of moral responsibility seems to presuppose that ethics requires nearness between individuals. We must experience the other person's vulnerability and suffering. What is then the impact of globalization for our moral responsibility? Globalization means that we are linked to people at a distance. Does distance exclude moral relations with the Other as some communitarian philosophers seem to assume?

Globalization implies that our actions have far-reaching reverberations. The dissemination of greenhouse gas leading to global warming is one example of this. Globalization also means that we are better informed about living conditions in different parts of the world; of wars, oppression, natural catastrophes and other things which challenge people's lives at a far distance. This information can lead to involvement and commitment. The worldwide shockwave following the publication of the picture of the three-year-old Aylan Kurdi's dead body at the shore of Turkey in 2015 shows that empathy can transcend national boundaries. We can identify with a distant victim, which inspires our moral engagement.

But how can we communicate our moral views across cultural and national borders? The aim of this book is to discuss and provide answers to this question. 'Global Perspectives' in the book title means that the book focuses on ethics and communication in an age traced by globalization. But it also means that authors with various cultural backgrounds coming from different parts of the world contribute in the search for answers.

In the wake of globalization, social practices such as politics, research, (social) media, health care, information and communication, education and business increasingly include actors from different parts of the globe. Ethics is of crucial importance for these practices, and hence, the question of how to communicate ethics across borders becomes acute.

How then is ethics communicated in an age of globalization? Is it possible to overcome cultural differences and agree on values and ethical principles across cultural borders? The overarching aim of this anthology is to respond to these questions. Comparative value surveys are often researched empirically with the help of sociological methods or pursued within communication studies (Ingelhart and Welzel 2005, Hall 2005). However, this anthology's disciplinary point of departure is philosophy, and in particular ethics. Studies of ethics and communication entail both the classical question of the universality or contextual limits of ethics and values, but also new challenges for communication; how are values and norms communicated, shared and perhaps transformed in global interactions?

Ethical issues raise controversies in various fields. Through e-medicine, medical information and consultation are provided globally via the Internet. But ethical norms of medicine and health care are embedded in local health care institutions. The ethical principles guiding health care in Europe and United States, such as the four principles of patient autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice may be contested in other parts of the world (Beauchamp and Childress 2013; Fu-Chang 1999). So, which principles should guide globalized e-medicine?

Research is another social practice that has turned global. Established guidelines for research on human beings include principles of health, human dignity, integrity, right to self-determination, privacy and confidentiality of personal information of research subjects, and the conduct of research is based on ethical principles of integrity, honesty and trust (Helsinki Declaration 2013; Singapore Statement 2010). There are controversies of how to balance and prioritize principles of research ethics and challenges for participants in global research projects to come to agreements.

Gender equality is one of the basic goals for Swedish foreign aid. But is this goal interpreted in the same way by Swedish donors and the receiving countries?

Global warming illustrates how we are globally connected and how our collective actions have increasingly global reverberations. In order to come to grips with climate change, shared ethical principles have been articulated (UNESCO 2010), but it has also raised controversies regarding what is a just distribution of the burdens to limit climate change.

Questions of justice are also raised by migration from the global South to the global North. What are the rights of migrants and refugees and what duties do the wealthy countries have to open their borders?

These examples illustrate that globalization requires communication of ethics and new arenas for discussions of ethical issues. But are not cultural boundaries and traditions obstacles to communication and do perhaps conflicting social and economic interests stand in the way of global ethics?

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, 'communication is the exchange of meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols'. An 'exchange of meanings,' in our case an exchange of ethical ideas...