The Ontological Interpretation of Informational Privacy

Abstract

In the present chapter, Luciano Floridi’s innovative and insightful approach to privacy is examined with regard to the central role played by privacy in defining personal identity in the information age. Today’s notion of privacy relates not only to protection of our intimate personal space from unwanted or unauthorized intrusion or interference, but also – and above all – it has to do with the construction of identity. Floridi’s approach proceeds from the radical claim that we are our information. If this is so, then it follows that every instance of the use of or the reliance on such information is implicated in (and is to be evaluated and judged in relation to) the creation of our personal identity. It is from this stance that Floridi conducts a detailed and thought-provoking inquiry into a notion of privacy construed in informational terms, congruent with the progressive digitization of personal identity in the information society. His reflections help us better understand how personal data can be accessed, inferred and aggregated, and thereby manipulated, disposed of and put at risk. They also alert us to the importance of maintaining an ontological balance between the protection of privacy and the benefits we stand to gain from compiling and sharing informational resources.