The third meeting of the project “Systems Approaches to Information Ethics” was held in Vienna 13-17 November 2017.

The topics included:

  1. foundational questions of systems approaches (evolutionary theory, emergentist systemism and normativity; information in the context of Being and non-being, actuality and potentiality, and existence and non-existence); 
  2. problems of Information Ethics approaches (inter- and/or transcultural Information Ethics; the possible reconciliation of the perspectives of Capurro, Ess and Floridi); and
  3. applications questions (Internet and cognitive enhancement; convivialism as provider of design criteria; dystopias in novels and technology; current norms and rules in the area of Business Ethics like ISO 26000, GRI standards, concept of triple P, “Gemeinwohlmatrix”; Ethically Aligned Design as proposed by the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in AI and Autonomous Systems).

Cristina Voinea, PhD student in philosophy from the University of Bucharest, working on Internet governance, was guest of the Center and participated in the meeting along with our current PhD scholars from the School of Humanities at the Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Liang Wang and Tianqi Wu, and with our most recently elected Fellow of the Bertalanffy Center, Annette Grathoff, besides the leaders of the project, Wolfgang Hofkirchner and Tomáš Sigmund. In addition, BCSSS Fellow Felix Tretter, Robert Jahn, Renate Quehenberger and Stefan Blachfellner contributed to the discussion.


The project started in January 2017. The meeting was supported by the University of Economics, Prague, the University of Bucharest, and the Bertalanffy Center. It is connected to the activities of the international “Emergent Systems, Information and Society” Group.

Find contributions here:

Topic one:

Annette Grathoff | The evolutionary perspective 

Wolfgang Hofkirchner | A comment on the stage model of emergentist systemism | Another comment on metasystem transition and suprasystem hierarchy


Tianqi Wu | A new perspective on existence and non-existence 

Topic two:


Liang Wang | Systematic approach to transcultural Information Ethics 

Tomáš Sigmund | Phenomenological perspective on Information Ethics 

Topic three:


Cristina Voinea | The Internet as a labyrinth: a failed cognitive enhancement | Designing for conviviality (for a good society) 


Tomáš Sigmund | Dystopian features of ICTs | Business ethics standards