Table Of ContentEvil Online
Blackwell Public Philosophy
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2. Doubting Darwin? Creationist Designs on Evolution
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3. The Extinction of Desire: A Tale of Enlightenment
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4. Torture and the Ticking Bomb
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5. In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier
by Thomas I. White
6. Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy
by Seumas Miller
7. Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes
by David Koepsell
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14. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao
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16. Who Owns You? Science, Innovation, and the Gene Patent Wars
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publicphilosophy
Evil Online
Dean Cocking
Jeroen van den Hoven
This edition first published 2018
© 2018 Dean Cocking and Jeroen van den Hoven
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The right of Dean Cocking and Jeroen van den Hoven to be identified as the authors of this
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Cocking, Dean, 1958– author.
Title: Evil online / by Dean Cocking, Jeroen van den Hoven.
Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2018. | Series: Blackwell public philosophy |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017060972 (print) | LCCN 2018006550 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781119471202 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119471189 (epub) |
ISBN 9781405154369 (cloth) | ISBN 9781405154376 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Good and evil–Electronic information resources. |
Internet–Moral and ethical aspects.
Classification: LCC BJ1401 (ebook) | LCC BJ1401 .C57 2018 (print) | DDC 170–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060972
Cover Image: © DimaChe/Gettyimages
Cover Design: Wiley
Set in size of 10.5/13.5pt MinionPro by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my mother “Bonnie”
Dean Cocking
Ter nagedachtenis aan mijn vader
Jeroen van den Hoven
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
1 The Many Faces of Evil Online 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Some Trends and Cases 7
2 Our Online Environment 33
2.1 Introduction 33
2.2 Epistemic Success, Connectivity, and Coordination 39
2.2.1 Epistemic Success 39
2.2.2 Connectivity 40
2.2.3 Coordination 41
2.3 Other Features of Online Worlds that Shape Our Lives 43
2.3.1 Selectivity 43
2.3.2 Homophily and Stigmergy 46
2.3.3 Jurisdiction 47
2.3.4 Anonymity 48
2.3.5 Virtuality 49
2.3.6 Voluntariness 49
2.3.7 Positionality 50
2.3.8 Interpretive Flexibility 51
2.3.9 Interactivity 52
2.3.10 Publicity 53
2.3.11 Domesticity 55
2.3.12 Isolation 56
2.3.13 Addictiveness 57
viii Contents
3 The Transformation of Social Life 59
3.1 Introduction 59
3.2 Our Public and Private Lives: Plural
Worlds and Values 61
3.3 Public/Private Lives Online 69
3.4 Life on Your Own Terms 71
3.5 Online/Offline World Contrasts: Overstated
and Alarmist 77
3.6 Alarmism about Sexual Predators and Children 79
4 The Moral Fog of Our Worlds 83
4.1 Introduction 83
4.2 The Moral Fog of Evil 86
4.3 The Shared Life and Our Vulnerability to Evil 97
4.3.1 Learning and Development Vulnerabilities 104
4.3.2 The Need for Intimacy 107
4.3.3 Keeping Up with Others 108
4.3.4 Working and Professional Life 110
4.3.5 Plural Identities 113
4.3.6 Incremental and Collective Evils 114
4.3.7 Widely Shared Vice and Weakness 116
5 The Fate of the Moral Life 119
5.1 Introduction 120
5.2 Moral Character: A Case of Mistaken Identity? 120
5.3 Good Character, Self‐interest, Others and Surrounds 124
5.4 Evil and Responsibility 131
5.5 Nothing New Under the Sun 140
5.6 The Liberal 142
5.7 Conclusion: Just Me and the Internet 145
Bibliography 150
Index 157
Acknowledgments
This book has been in progress for a number of years and much has
happened along the way. Hence, we apologize in advance to those who
have helped us, but whom we have forgotten to thank. Three research
assistants have helped us over the course of writing the manuscript: Job
Timmermans provided some excellent work on cyberbullying, and on
online social worlds, in the early days of the project; Sofia Kaliarnta also
gave us some excellent work on online trends and cases for Chapter 1
and David van Putten provided us with many helpful corrections and
suggestions throughout. The book has also benefited from careful
readings given by Justin Oakley and Robert Young. We are grateful for
their many suggestions that helped develop our thoughts, and the many
revisions that helped us avoid some embarrassing mistakes.
We are indebted to the Department of of Values, Technology and
Innovation: Delft University of Technology, for their support of the
project. In addition to supporting the work of our research assistants,
Dean was also provided with a six‐month fellowship to work on the
project. We would also like to thank our editor at Wiley‐Blackwell,
Michael Boylan, for his strong support and encouragement in the
early days, and his significant help over the past year. We are also very
grateful to Alec McAulay for his excellent, collaborative and extensive
copy-editing work and to Sindhuja Kumar whose proof-reading and
production editing also improved the book significantly.
For their love and support Dean would like to thank his wife, Kylie
Cocking, and their children, Harry, Chloe, Georgia, and Lola. Kylie
and Dean have also spent much of their time over the past decade or
so discussing this project. As a result, Kylie has initiated and helped
develop many lines of thought in this book. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are
especially indebted to her contributions. Jeroen would also like to
thank his family for their support: his wife Eugenie and his son Allard
and daughter Emilie. To Emilie we are also grateful for providing us
with some striking cases and examples. Jeroen would also like to
thank his colleagues in Delft who have heard a lot about a project on
evil and the Internet for a number of years, and not given up hope that
it would appear.
Emblematic Still Life with Flagon, Glass, Jug and Bridle,
Johannes Torrentius, 1614
Preface
In the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam hangs the seventeenth-century
still life painting you can see on your left. It is by a painter named
Torrentius, a contemporary of Vermeer, who, according to some who
had been in a position to compare their work, was the better and tech-
nically more skilled painter of the two. Torrentius’s ability to paint still
life realistically was allegedly so impressive that some thought he had
come to an agreement with the devil. The choice of topics of his paint-
ings was also extraordinary: He was accused of and convicted for
painting downright pornographic images.
What we know about Torrentius we mainly know through the
proceedings of the many court cases that were brought against him
because of his pornography. In Holland he had a group of enthusi-
astic followers and friends sometimes referred to as “Torrentians.”
They had outspoken ideas about good and evil, and one of their
central lines of thought was that they were beyond good and evil.
Torrentius himself is reported to have behaved and justified his
actions as if he was the sole measure of good and evil.
The still life in Amsterdam is the only remaining painting by
Torrentius. The painting is in the genre of the temperance movement,
a symbolic reminder of the virtues of temperance and restraint. It
depicts a horse bridle, two vases, a glass and a music score and the
following text in Dutch: “wat buyten maets bestaet in onmaets quaat
vergaet,” which translates as “what fails to keep measure, will perish
by extreme evil.” Torrentius lived his life in stark contrast to this
pictorial evocation of temperance. He was well known in his
