Call for Papers | Issue 5(2024): Ethics in Open and Distance Education

Ethics and Spiritual Growth in Open Science and Open Education 

Editorial by the Managing Editor

 

Open education is in comparison to the UNESCO 2021 recommendation for open science, based primarily on the intellectual virtue of open science. We easily notice in this text the great admiration for a philosophical positivism, placing academic knowledge and science in the center of some collaborative practices:

“open, transparent, collaborative and inclusive scientific practices, coupled with more accessible and verifiable scientific knowledge subject to scrutiny and critique, is a more efficient enterprise that improves the quality, reproducibility and impact of science, and thereby the reliability of the evidence needed for robust decision-making and policy and increased trust in science.”

There is a “vital importance of science, technology and innovation (STI)”, if not for “promoting democracy and peace” or for complying with the UN “Sustainable Development Goals”, open science or its younger brother open education are meant surly to reduce a de facto economically unequal situation in the world, which can be depicted as distance or “digital gaps” existing “between and within countries”. Let’s look closely at the problem.

More specifically, it is interesting to note that extreme poverty and isolation or physical distance occur often as multiplying negative factors in the world (Gallup, Sacks & Mellinger, 1999). This is contrary to population density which exists both for poor and rich groups of countries. Without open science as defined above, education may not be as effective, it may even not function at all. Open science can be first defined as meeting the condition of the principle of falsifiability which entails large communities of academic researchers meeting and discussing new findings. For an innovative concept to have credence, it must be as a concept disprovable (Popper in Cabot, 2021). Second, if not confronted to contradictory claims about true value, or knowledge value, other epistemic values such as alethic values (comprehension, creativity, interpretation) are among important epistemic values, all useful for testing a new claims in a form of organized scepticism (Merton, 1973). Both ways suppose a wide scientific community, all peers involved in discussing new theories, or creative products refuse to abandon “description and analysis for homily” as Merton points out (ibid.). Science as education "may dispute if it has a good theory but it has its artisans" (Ibid).

Open economy of knowledge suggests a ground principle of negative freedom not to be constrained in an access to some basic goods. We should think about natural conditions, not only political and economical or human decision related constraints: Africa, and the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), show that natural types of constraints are everywhere. Interestingly, twelve among the poorest countries (with the lowest Human Development Index, (HDI) scores) are landlocked, or isolated places. On the one hand, climate deregulation has started significantly to bring new water risks to coastal aeras. On the other hand, large continental areas with dense population such as in India and China have moved from poor countries, to leading economic actors in Asia. Besides exceptions, frequent natural disasters and threats of sea level and rising waters expose small island developing States (SIDS) such as the Fiji Islands, dependant on network services and neighbouring cooperations for access to educational services. In other words, circumstances, which either are resulting from human made hardships (sieges/occupations and wars), or natural conditions (pandemics, living in a place remote from costal line), bring the need to facilitated sharing of competencies and the need of very costly but vital infrastructures, such as electrification infrastructures, large databases, mobile network, etc.

Open education has for this reason been seen as emerging among solutions related to risk management, and seem to be promising for mutual development, as open science was originally seen as a powerful tool for controling the quality of knowledge and education. We may claim that this simple observation is probably universally plausible, not only in poor countries scenarios.

In the richest part of the world, as shown in the current outcomes of the Rome Call for Ethics and AI, during the G7 Hiroshima Summit, where the objective is of discussing the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence technology (called: the Hiroshima AI Process), all provide excellent illustrations of an ideal of developing open information and education systems, based on the promises of the growing enthusiasm for AI. Algorethics, a new subdomain of applied ethics of technology has been created, and the ethics of communication and information have started to assess the challenges related to the governance of AI (Benanti, 2024).

If we step a little back from these promising new needs of regulations arising from the fast development not only in the G7, but also as the BRICS expansion to the G20, on digital industrial and entrepreneurial innovative opportunities, we see that human psychology, or on the philosophical level of the ethics of the character, remain equally a key factor for the overcoming of obstacles in education (Stückelberger et al., AI Governance Ethics, 2024). The focus on the concept of “data to flow with trust”, in order to consolidate interoperability, should not be interpreted in the narrow sense as technosolutionism, and we need to reaffirm the value of open science and education. Both allow ourselves to meditate the meaning of trust in a complete human sense (the word "trust" is explicit in many OECD digital plans “Data Free Flow with Trust” (DFFT), OECD). We are told, in the important G7 policy document, that organizations “should prioritize responsible stewardship of trustworthy and human-centric AI and also support digital literacy initiatives”.

Ethics of trust (which include love and compassion) not to be over frightened by educational challenges, is on the subjective side collectively as important, as the objective and empirical conditions of cooperation and development of vulnerable human groups, or the opportunity conditions for reaching higher, among the richest parts of the world. Trust and love are indeed given constituting elements of our human condition. Trust is equally important for all, as avoiding mistrust, self-defeating postures, or stem the fear in times of crisis.

Open and distance education are rooted in the presumption that discipline can be learned by all, it is as if we wish that by opening the sluice gates we can put two arms of a river at the same level. Opening the access may not suffice, as developing in difficult circumstances requires facing our weaknesses, it is uncomfortable, and it generates a fear of discipline necessary. Sharing self-development as a discipline entail accepting to be truly seen and known, which is a key component of love, including self-love; it is bringing up the need of “facing reality, working through it” (Brenifier, 2024).

Sharing discipline “can be “tough” but it comes from a place of love that seeks growth” (ibid.). Discipline and development, “grounded in care and guidance”, is “a form of loving action” (ibid.); adding small atoms of strength or harvesting good opportunities. When we talk of knowledge or information as sharing parts of a cake, we usually view it as not entailing a zero-sum game because ideas are immaterial entities. Transmitting an idea involves a medium, which has a very different value and physical constraints. Let’s examine closer our allegoric example of a sluice on a river for open knowledge sharing and education.

Open education shares an ideal of training between a teacher and a learner in the manner of a barge, which passes through three levels when it passes a lock. A multi-step lock system where the barge gradually moves upstream or downstream through distinct water levels represents allegorically open education, which is never absolutely open but does it gradually. First there is the first level of expectations of the different people, when the flow of knowledge and the example or hypothesis is not confirmed. Then the first lock is opened, in the second compartment the level will be raised as the order to pump the level of the second compartment is given and executed. It’s positioned on the middle level of the river, ready to raise or lower to the next phase. It is only after this second level that the barge can pass to the third compartment and finally reaches in this way the arrival level upstream, the expected outcome of the whole operation in three phases.

The imaginary vessel with all wisdoms and knowledges on Earth could advance, as we open on various directions the flow of a stream, to allow intellectual or spiritual wealth to circulate. Once the lock gate is wide open, when the barge descends downstream or follows its route upstream, it reaches a point where the boat cannot jump over directly to any position, it experiences being distant as proximity and openness come into play, but only gradually as a mode of evolution across stages of a learning itinerary.

In making the barge advance, we probably also allow a gentle change of the landscape upstream, as we are reaching a higher point on the river. You don’t open all river lock gates, only one at the time. Rivers also need dikes, well-planned, and experienced professionals and workers, who operate at the juncture of these waters. Isn’t the profession of educator or knowledge professionals as transmitters of cultures, similar to the worker at the barge, who makes the boat go ahead?

We need in order to grow to mutually know that accountability and self-improvement can be guaranteed only while being open to change or corrections, accepting the influence of others and not having only vague imaginary boundaries. If we plan on real rational regulatory schemes of human understanding, between the scientifically informed objective figure of the circle, and the ethically subjective levels of the reality of the moral law, we can view the process as a kind of spiritual art, a progressive development of our most precious mental and sensible faculties, an art rooted in our faculty of judgment.  

The Board of Editors of JEHE cordially invite you to discover the theme of our newest Issue 5(2024) on
Ethics in Open and Distance Education.

Managing Editor
Ignace HAAZ

_{Globethics Office,
Geneva, Oct. 2024}

Sources:

Benanti, P., “Algorethics: potentiality and challenges in the age of AI”, Conference, Luce Institute. Feb. 2024. YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKiooIqZ2I; accessed Oct. 2024.

Brenifier, O., “Fear of discipline”, Blog post, 9 Oct. 2024.

Cabot, Y., “Le critère de démarcation de Popper et la thèse de Duhem-Quine”, Philonsorbonne [Online], 15, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/philonsorbonne.1642; accessed Oct. 2024.

Gallup, J. L. and J. D. Sachs, with A. Mellinger, Geography and Economic Development, CID Working Paper No. 1, March 1999. Preamble.

Hentsch Cisneros, A. / S. Premawardhana, Sharing Values: A Hermeneutic for Global Ethics, Geneva: Globethics Publications, 2011.

Hiroshima AI Process, Hiroshima Process International Guiding Principles for Organizations Developing Advanced AI System, https://www.soumu.go.jp/hiroshimaaiprocess/pdf/document07_en.pdf, accessed Oct. 2024.

Kant, I. The Critique of the Power of Judgment, 1790.

Merton, R. K. "The Normative Structure of Science", in Merton, Robert K. (ed.), The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. First publ. 1942.

Stückelberger, C., M. M. Rocamora, D. Singh, P. Duggal (Eds.), AI Governance Ethics. Artificial Intelligence with Shared Values and Rules, Geneva: Globethics Publications, 2024. DOI: 10.58863/20.500.12424/4318987

UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, Paris: UNESCO, 2021, 34p. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54677/MNMH8546