Digital dignity: Richard Seebohm visits the Campion Lecture

‘The search for truth is becoming more and more necessary.’

Campion Hall is an Oxford college which, as a ‘permanent private hall’, is also a Jesuit institute. Last month I went to this year’s Campion Lecture there, on ‘Developing Human Dignity in the Digital Age’.

It was given by Paolo Carozza, a law lecturer at Notre Dame University in Indiana. For the past two years he has worked on human rights law as it relates to electronic media and artificial intelligence (AI). In this he looked to Catholic Social Teaching (CST). His starting point from this was that every person was a child of God.

The issues he now saw were not denominational, however, but concerned attacks on human dignity from all directions. Narcissism and tribalism are leading to bullying and violence against minorities. The media and AI are enhancing fixed mindsets, as is surveillance capitalism. One CST concept, subsidiarity, should lead to freedom of individuals and groups, he said, but these trends were distorting it. The media community served a vast network of undifferentiated people while very small teams were managing it. It was naive to see any of this as contributing to the CST concept of solidarity.

Human dignity and the value of the human person are built into treaties and legislation, but the consensus about these is allowing real problems to be evaded. In this digital age, he said, we should perhaps rethink the principles. It was Wittgenstein who said that we must revisit the rough ground. Life lived on screen disembodies relationships. It offers experience with no meaning.

Coercion in this regard isn’t necessarily physical. Even Facebook has admitted mental health risks. Individual agency and freedoms have been diminished. Algorithms and AI are reducing the need – and hence the capacity – for individuals to take decisions. Having new tools inevitably changes the world we live in. A typical unintended consequence is the way that GPS technology is undermining our understanding of spaces and distance. Understanding more widely was at risk, said Carozza, not just the unknowable universe, but of matters moral, social, ontological, and ultimately of God.

We can’t wholly avoid technology, but alongside it we can seek a ‘thicker understanding’ of human dignity. With human rights under threat, the search for truth is becoming more and more necessary. Freedom of thought is under pressure, he said, let alone freedom of religion. In the question period I was able to say that Quaker testimonies closely matched his Catholic advices.

Paolo ended by saying that he did not disown digital technology, but hoped that, with the application of CST, we can be brought back from ‘the abyss’. As a Quaker, I hope so.

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