Privacy, Contingency and Personal Identity

Soraj Hongladarom
Department of Philosophy and Center for Ethics of Science and Technology,
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Abstract
The paper argues that there is a way to justify privacy without relying on the
metaphysical assumption of an independently existing self or person, which is
normally taken to underlie personal identity. I propose furthermore that
privacy is a contingent matter, and that this conception is more convenient in
helping us understand the complex issues surrounding deliberating
thoughtfully about privacy in many dimensions. It is the very contingency of
privacy that makes it malleable enough to serve our purposes. Basically, the
argument is that it is possible for there to be a society where individuals there
do not have any privacy at all, but they are still autonomous moral agents. This
argument has some close affinities with the Buddhist perspective, though in
this paper I do not intend to presuppose it. Then I discuss the issue of group
privacy. This is a rather neglected issue in the literature, but group privacy has
become more important now that contemporary genomics and bioinformatics
have the power to manipulate large amount of population data, which could
lead to discrimination. The proposed conception of privacy is more suitable for
justifying group privacy than the one that presupposes the inherently existing
individual.

Keywords: privacy, autonomy, individuals, liberalism, communitarianism,

identity, contingency.

Introduction

Privacy has become a primary concern in many circles nowadays. The

increasingly pervasive use of electronic and information technologies has
resulted in more sophisticated tools that are used for surveillance and data
mining, which threaten privacy rights of citizens. Furthermore, privacy has
become a concern not only in the West, but also in Asia, where there has been
 2

significant economic growth in recent decades. This concern has led many
scholars to ponder on how the concept of privacy and its implementation could
be justified, especially in the context of the East where privacy is generally
perceived to be a part of the modern West where Asia has had no exact
counterpart, a situation that prompted many papers on how privacy could be
justified in Asian contexts (E.g., Ess, 2005; Lü, 2005; Kitiyadisai, 2005;
Rananand, 2007; Nakada and Tamura, 2005; Hongladarom, 2007). What I
would like to accomplish in this paper is related to those attempts; however, the
paper is not intended as another contribution to how privacy is to be justified or
even criticized from the Asian perspective. It is instead an attempt to map out
the conceptual terrain of privacy without relying too heavily on the literature of
the traditions of Asia, which in fact has been my concern elsewhere
(Hongladarom 2007). That is to say, I intend what follows in the paper to be
generally applicable in most cultural contexts. This should not be taken to be an
argument for the supremacy of one culture over others; rather my concern is to
find out a common ground that should be acceptable for all cultures, without
privileging one over another.
The overall aim of this paper is, then, to present a philosophical analysis
and justification of privacy that differs from what is available in most literature
on the topic. I would like to be able to argue that this new conception appears
to be better suited to deal with problems arising from current technologies of
manipulation of personal information. It is well known that current
technologies, such as genetic databanking, smart ID cards, and others have
made it possible to collect, store, and systematize a vast amount of information
related to particular individuals. In Thailand, for example, the previous
government introduced what is called ‘smart ID cards.’1 Basically these are
supposed to function as identification cards for each and every Thai citizen,
which has been around in Thailand for decades. However, in recent years the
government ordered that a new type of card be issued with a microchip, which
is capable of storing a very large amount of information. The rationale was that
this new type of card would facilitate interaction with public agencies, as
important information that is required for an individual to contact the

1
“Thailand introduces national ID with biometric technology,” available at
http://www.secureidnews.com/weblog/2005/04/15/thailand-introduces-national-id-with-
biometric-technology/, retrieved May 9, 2007.
 3

government would be stored in the microchip, eliminating the need to carry a

number of paper documents. However, since the card identifies an individual
citizen, it is conceivable that deeper level of individual information might be
stored in the card, enhancing the possibility that the government or the
authorities might use the resulting huge database in profiling or perhaps
discriminating one group against others in one way or another, and so on, thus
undermining the privacy of the individuals. Many research works have in fact
been done on the Thai smart ID cards, and its potential for misuse.2
The idea to be presented here is that there is an area within and
surrounding an individual and indeed group of individuals that should be
protected, and that the boundary demarcating the area is an imaginative line,
much like the longitudes and latitudes are. In the paper, I show that the idea of
privacy is strongly related to the philosophical concepts of identity, either that
of an individual or to a group.3 Privacy is connected to identity because it does
not seem at first sight to make much sense in saying that there is a privacy to an
individual while the identity of that individual changes through time. In other
words, privacy seems to presuppose a rather strict identity of an individual.
Without such a strict identity, it would be hard, or so it seems, to identify
whose privacy should be protected.
However, I don’t believe that privacy does in fact rely on such a strict
identity of the individual. If it is the case that who an individual is constituted
by a set of information that together describes his or her identity vis-à-vis other
individuals, then there does not have to be a ‘core set’ of information such that
the core uniquely identifies the individual at all times.4 That is, the individual
does not seem to be constituted to something that works as an ‘essence’ in that
without it the individual would cease to be an individual, in the familiar
Aristotelian sense. There is a way to justify privacy even without strict identity

2
Rananand also discusses the situation in Thailand as a surveillance state and how this affects
the right to privacy in Rananand (2007), and Kitiyadisai gives a detail about the policy
concerning the smart ID card in Thailand in Kitiyadisai (2005).
3
A possible corollary to the argument presented here is that I am in favor of emphasizing the
right to privacy and its irreducibility to other rights. In fact there have been many debates on
whether there is such a thing as the right to privacy. See, for example, Thompson 1975; Scanlon
1975; Rachels 1975; Reiman 1976. However, there is not much literature on group privacy at all
at the moment.
4
I examined the core set of information in bioinformatics in Hongladarom (forthcoming).
 4

of the individual whose privacy is to be protected. According to the view to be

developed, information about an individual, even genetic information, does not
on its own succeed in becoming such a core set. Privacy needs to be defended
and justified, not through reliance on the metaphysics of the isolated, self-
subsisting individual, but through the individual’s relations to her socio-
cultural environment and to other individuals. Privacy is needed when there
should be a check against the authorities (such as against the Thai government
issuing smart ID cards) so that the authorities are prevented from potentially
misusing their power. This prevention is crucial for a functional democracy.
Since the power of the government is based on consent of the people, not
having such a means to limit the power of the government over personal
information of the population would mean that the government has too much
power, especially power to manipulate groups of population. Such excessive
power would be detrimental to democracy. In what follows I will argue that
there is a way to justify privacy rights which does not rely on the metaphysics
of the inherently existing individual self.

Justifications of Privacy

Among the vast literature on justification of privacy, perhaps the ones

argue that privacy is justified because individuals do have a right to their
autonomy are the most prevalent. And among the numerous definitions of
privacy, a common thread that binds them together seems to be that privacy is
something that is cherished by the individual in question, something that she
does not want to be exposed to the public.5 That could be the fact that she does

5
Providing definitions of privacy appears to be a thriving academic industry. In a well known
article, Fried writes: “It is my thesis that privacy is not just one possible means among others to
insure some other value, but that it is necessarily related to ends and relations of the most
fundamental sort: respect, love, friendship and trust. Privacy is not merely a good technique for
furthering these fundamental relations; rather without privacy they are simply inconceivable”
(Fried, 1968, p. 477). In roughly the same vein, Parent states: “Privacy is the condition of not
having undocumented personal knowledge about one possessed by others. A person’s privacy
is diminished exactly to the degree that others possess this kind of knowledge about him,”
(Parent, 1983, p. 269) where personal information “consists of facts which most persons in a
given society choose not to reveal about themselves (except to close friends, family, . . .) or of
facts about which a particular individual is acutely sensitive and which he therefore does not
 5

not want other people to peer into her house, or data about herself, her
‘personal’ information (Parent 1983). What justifies this right to privacy is that,
as an individual citizen, she is entitled to some form of protection against
unwanted intrusion, which is considered to be a breach to her autonomy. In a
hypothetical polity where the state has unlimited power to take any
information concerning its citizens as much as they like, and to have a
surveillance scheme, Big Brother style, that provides every detail of the lives of
the individuals, in that case it would be correct to say that the individuals do
not have any privacy. What is missing is that the individuals do not have a
means to operate without the seeing eyes of Big Brother. They do not have a
leeway, so to speak, within which they can function on their own without
always being aware that their action is constantly being watched. So we might
call what is missing here ‘personal space’ where the individual would feel to be
free to do their things as they please, so long, of course, that these do not
infringe on the rights and liberties of others. Talking about the potential loss of
privacy by employees due to increased use of surveillance technologies by the
employers, Miriam Schulman quotes Michael J. Meyer as follows: “Employees
are autonomous moral agents. Among other things, that means they have
independent moral status defined by some set of rights, not the least of which is
the right not to be used by others as a means to increase overall welfare or
profits” (Schulman 2000, p. 157). Meyer then continues: “As thinking actors,
human beings are more than cogs in an organization--things to be pushed
around so as to maximize profits. They are entitled to respect, which requires
some attention to privacy. If a boss were to monitor every conversation or
move, most of us would think of such an environment as more like a prison
then a humane workplace” (Schulman 2000, p. 157). The key phrase here is
‘autonomous moral agents,’ and in fact we could extrapolate Meyer’s statement
to include privacy for individuals in general. The linchpin of a standard
justification for privacy is, then, that individuals are autonomous moral agents,
which imply that they are entitled to some personal and private space where
they feel comfortable and where they do not have to behave as if they are being
watched all the time.

choose to reveal about himself, even though most people don’t care if these same facts are
widely known about themselves” (Parent, 1983, p. 270).
 6

So the standard justification of privacy is that since individuals are

autonomous moral agents, they are entitled to some degree of privacy. This
argument hinges of course on a conceptual link between the two. How is it
possible that someone’s being an autonomous moral agent entitles her at least
some degree of privacy? Presumably the answer is that, as an autonomous
moral agent, one should be accorded some degree of personal space, since if
not, then one would not get the respect that one deserves in virtue of one’s
being a human being. When we consider the hypothetical state where nobody
has any privacy as mentioned above, the standard argument would have it that
in such a scenario the individuals are not paid respect to, since the authority (or
the employer) has the power to gather all kinds of information pertaining to
them. This presupposes that gathering information and constantly monitoring
and watching the individuals all the time are not instances of respect. Thus we
can sum up the standard argument as follows. As individual humans are
autonomous moral agents, which imply that they are capable of making
decisions by themselves and that they deserve a degree of respect, their private
lives should not be intruded because such intrusion would mean that the
intruder does not respect the individuals in virtue of their humanity.
However, this argument depends on some other crucial factors. What if
the individuals in question willingly give up their privacy and allow the
authority to watch their every move? In fact we are already seeing something
like this happening with people putting web cameras in their bedrooms and
turn them on all the time for all the world to see. Would we say that those who
do this do not have privacy? But is their right to privacy being violated? It
seems clear that simply the fact that somebody’s private life is being exposed
for the whole world is not sufficient for her privacy right to be violated. In this
case it seems that nobody is violating her right, since she willingly does all this
by herself. Another factor is that the authority who has the power to intrude on
people’s private lives must act in such a way that harms those people through
their intrusion; otherwise the authority’s action might not be considered as a
violation of privacy. The idea is this: Let us go back to the hypothetical scenario
mentioned earlier. Nobody has any privacy; the authority has the all seeing
power to know every small detail of their people’s lives; nothing is hidden.
Nonetheless, if the authority happens to be a wholly benevolent one and will
not use the information in any harmful way, and if, in addition, the people are
 7

aware that the authority is watching them, but they don’t mind since they trust
the authority completely, then would we also say that their privacy rights are
threatened? According to Meyer, privacy appears to be an inherent property of
an autonomous agent, but these scenarios seem to complicate the picture a
little. Privacy may still be an inherent property in the case where people
willingly put up webcams in their bedrooms and even their bathrooms, and in
the case where the people trust the all seeing authority completely, but even so
their inherent property here is not expressed. Even if the property is there, it
lies dormant, so to speak, since the people willingly forego it. However, if this is
really the case, then what is the difference between someone’s having the
inherent characteristic of privacy but it lies dormant and someone’s not having
the right to privacy at all?
The difference, of course, lies in the fact that in the first case someone
could decide at any time to enforce her privacy right, which happens when, for
example, somebody shuts down her webcam, whereas in the second case that is
not possible. But if this is so, then the justification of privacy is not simply a
matter of someone’s being an autonomous moral agent who deserves respect,
his or her relation with those around her also play a crucial role. If she trusts the
all seeing authority completely, or if she does not think her private life should
be kept to herself alone and welcomes the world to see all of her, then the
trusting and the willingness to let others enter one’s private domain become
important. These are all relational concepts; one trusts another person, and one
willingly lets others enter one’s private life. After all, protecting privacy means
that one is protecting someone’s private domain from encroachments by others.
If one lives alone, like Robinson Crusoe, then there is no need to even start
talking about privacy.6
Another point is that it seems that one can even remain an autonomous
moral agent without one’s having privacy. In the scenarios described above, the
one who trusts the authority completely, who lives in an environment where
the authority is fully trustworthy, and who willingly foregoes privacy can still
be an autonomous moral agent, since all her decisions are made through her
free will in her rational capacity. An autonomous moral agent that willingly

6
In the same spirit, Priscilla Regan also argues for the concept of privacy being relational,
adding that the concept would be more useful if considered as relational rather than singular
(Regan, 1995).
 8

puts up webcams around her house is still so. But if this is the case, then the
standard justification of privacy is in need of qualification. Being an
autonomous moral agent alone is not sufficient, one also needs to relate with
others and live in a certain kind of environment (such as one where it is not
possible to trust the authority completely), in order for the right to privacy to
actually have a force. Nevertheless, an objection to this line of argument is that
in these scenarios the individuals always have their privacy rights all along, but
as we have seen there does not seem to be much of a difference between having
the right to privacy and keeping it dormant (perhaps always so) and not having
it at all. This, let me emphasize, is tenable only in a very special case where the
authority can be trusted completely and where the individuals are willing to let
others view their lives, and this could be extended to include the individuals’
information about themselves, their communication and others (Regan 1995).

Contingency and Privacy

Another factor affecting the standard justification concerns the

metaphysical assumption that it tends to make regarding who exactly is the
autonomous moral agent. Does it have to be a metaphysically self-subsisting
individual subject? Here the standard justification argument seems to
presuppose that the autonomous moral agent does have to be a self subsisting
metaphysical entity. This is so because, in order to argue for the privacy of
somebody, there has to be, necessarily, some entity whose privacy is to be
justified and protected. Furthermore the entity in question would presumably
need to self subsisting one because if not, then the entity would be in flux and it
would be difficult to pinpoint exactly whose privacy is to be justified. It seems
to be without saying that justifying privacy presupposes the existence of the
one whose privacy is to be justified. After all, defending privacy naturally
presupposes that the privacy has to be that of an individual. Justifying privacy
would mean that one is attempting to draw a line demarcating a boundary that
belongs exclusively to a person and it would be wrong for the authority or
anybody else to enter that boundary without the person’s permission. What is
more is that the person here is a metaphysically self subsisting person. What
this means is that the person or the individual has to be something that exists
objectively; there is something that inheres in the person such that it defines
 9

who that person is and nobody else without having to enter into any relation
with anything outside. So it would naturally appear that, according to the
standard argument for privacy, the existence of a self subsisting person is
presupposed. This standard justificatory picture is much in accordance with
common sense. After all, when one is justifying or defending privacy, one
naturally presupposes that there has to be a person whose privacy is to be
justified and that the person has to be metaphysically objective. Otherwise it
would be difficult to find a conceptual link between the metaphysically
objective person here and her status as an autonomous moral agent. Being an
autonomous moral agent would seem to presuppose that there is something
deep down inside functioning as the holder of the qualities of being
autonomous, being moral and being an agent.
Defending a conception of privacy that is closely related to that of
personhood, Jeffrey Reiman writes: “Privacy is a social ritual by means of
which an individual's moral title to his existence is conferred” (Reiman 1976, p.
39). An individual is recognized as one who deserves to be treated morally, i.e.,
as one who is morally entitled to existence, when his or her privacy is
respected. Respecting someone’s privacy, according to Reiman, is to recognize
that he or she exists as a human being who deserves to be treated as an end and
never as a means, to use Kant’s terms. Furthermore, Reiman adds that privacy
is necessary for the creation of the individual self (Reiman 1976, p. 39); for
without privacy, there is no way, according to Reiman, to an individual to be
recognized as such, since there would be no way for her to recognize that the
body to which she is attached is her own, to which she has exclusive rights
(including that of privacy). That recognition is the process by which the sense of
self of the individual is created, and it is in this sense that Reiman makes his
startling claim. Reiman further states: “[P]rivacy is a condition of the original
and continuing creation of ‘selves’ or ‘persons’” (Reiman 1976, p. 40). That is, so
long as someone’s privacy is respected, to that extent her selfhood and
personhood is thereby respected and recognized. Privacy, for Reiman, is a sine
qua non for the selfhood or personhood of someone; in other words, privacy
necessarily belongs to someone in virtue of her being ‘someone’ or ‘a person’ in
the first place.
If one were to search for strong arguments attempting to link privacy
with selfhood or personhood, Reiman’s must be among the first ones in the list.
 10

It would be tempting, then, to test Reiman’s argument here in the scenario

raised above where the individuals do not seem to have any privacy, or do not
object to their putative privacy rights taken away at all. The question then
would be: Are these individuals in this situation recognizable as selves or
persons at all? According to Reiman the answer would have to be no, because
in his argument privacy is the sine qua non for the very existence of a self or a
person, as we have seen. But this seems counterintuitive. In this hypothetical
situation, the individuals there are still very much the very same kinds of
individuals that we know. They go about their businesses and they are certainly
capable of rational thinking and so on. The hypothesis we already have seen at
the start is that this is a place just like our own, except only that the people there
totally do not mind the possibility of being in the public’s eyes all the time. For
Reiman, these people would immediately cease to be persons, but that is clearly
too strong. The point is that if the scenario of people who willingly forego their
privacy is a plausible one, then one would be hard pressed to come up with a
tenable conception of privacy which is metaphysical and non-relational.
Attempts to tie up privacy with conception of selfhood or personhood, like the
one proposed by Reiman, seems to fail in the case where the selves or persons
do not mind their lack of privacy at all.7 So it seems that one needs another way
to justify privacy, one that does not presuppose the metaphysical assumption of
the enduring or objectively existing individual self.
Since privacy is relational, one justifies it more effectively, I believe, if
one looks at it as a political or sociological or pragmatic concept. Privacy is

7
Reiman might counter this argument saying that in the lack-of-privacy scenario, the
individuals there still possess their privacy right, even though they choose not to exercise them.
But then the difference between his and my conception in this case would be then that
according to Reiman, the privacy right is kept inside, unexpressed whereas in mine there is no
privacy in the first place. Assuming that there is no condition coming up that forces people to
exercise their dormant privacy rights, then there is no difference between his and my
conceptions at all. The individuals there would go about their lives and their lack of privacy,
and everything would remain the same no matter they actually have some privacy rights
hidden inside their own selves or not. But if the condition requiring people to enforce privacy
rights comes to the fore, such as when the authority is abusing their power, then according to
my conception the people can well devise ‘privacy rights’ as a means to counter the authority.
This devising does not seem to require that the concept is already there inside their selves.
 11

justified because it brings about something desirable.8 In fact when Reiman

argues that the selves are constituted through privacy, he appears to be on a
right track because that would mean that the self is a creation and not
something that is ontologically prior to anything. The point is that, if the self is
a creation, something that emerges out of transactions one has with one’s
environment and one’s peer, then the conception of privacy that depends on the
objectively existing self would need to be modified. Considered this way,
privacy then is a hypothetical line that one draws around oneself to demarcate
the line where one does not wish others to enter without one’s own consent.
And the line here is very fuzzy and very much dependent on varying contexts.
It is a hypothetical line in the sense that the longitudes and latitudes are. One
never finds them on the ground, but always in a map as a useful heuristic
device to locate one’s position.
Let us go back to the no-privacy world mentioned above, the world
works because the authority is trusted completely and the individuals there do
not mind having no privacy. However, if the situation changes and the
authority becomes less trustworthy, and the individuals happen to feel that
they need some privacy to themselves, then in this situation the conception of
privacy emerges. People there might conceivably devise the concept as well as
means to realize it in practice. If this can indeed be the case, then the concept of
privacy is not one that is metaphysically attached to the persons or individuals
from the beginning, as is a social and legal conception that emerges due to
certain kinds of situation. What this implies is that privacy is a contingent
concept. A well known example of contingent concepts and rules derived from
them is the rule on driving. In Thailand people drive on the left side of the road,
which is the same in Britain, Australia, Japan and some other countries.
However, the majority of countries in the world drive on the right side. There is
no absolute rule specifying which side of the road is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ one.
People just devise the rules out of their convenience or habits or whatever.
Accordingly, privacy is a concept that emerges out of certain kinds of situation

8
Here Priscilla Regan is absolutely right when she said that the concept of privacy is relational
and is necessary for democracy. Democracy is certainly one of the desired goals brought about
by recognizing and enforcing the right to privacy. This is one of the best justifications for
privacy (Regan 2002, p. 399).
 12

and it does not have to be there since the beginning where there is no need for
it.

Privacy and Personal Identity

Moreover, there have been many research works analyzing and

criticizing the metaphysical idea of the individual subject, much of it being
based on the Buddhist teaching (See, e.g., Gethin, 1998; The Dalai Lama, 1997;
Collins, 1982; Parfit, 1986; Hongladarom, 2007; Hongladarom, forthcoming;
Varela and Poerksen, 2006). A common thread in these arguments is that the
idea is a metaphysical one, meaning that it is not there when it is searched for
through empirical means. The very idea of the individual subject, according to
these research works, is not there to be found when searched for empirically,
because one always finds what are supposed to be instances of the subject, but
not the subject herself. What constitute a human being are the body and the
mind, the physical and the mental. One does not have to follow Descartes'
influential view that the two are radically separated, a view that is currently
under attack from many fronts. Nonetheless, one could focus each of the two in
turn for the sake of simplicity. It is well known that most cells in the body do
change and are replaced by newer cells after a period of time. There may
perhaps be some cells in the brain that do not change, but then one would not
bet on them to be the seat of the individual subject or the person. On the other
hand, when one focuses on the mental episodes, one also finds them to be
changing very rapidly. One’s personality changes over time; one’s
psychological makeup does not remain constant. At least if one were to point
out which episode or which event constituting one’s psychological makeup is to
be the individual subject, then one would be hard pressed to find one. This is so
because any candidate episode would have to stay frozen and locked up in
order for it to function as the core identity of the subject herself. But an episode
is by definition a kind of event, which if frozen in time will cease to be an event
altogether. However, if the core is to be something physical, then we go back to
the point made earlier about the physical body.
The fact that the core identity of the individual subject cannot be found
empirically does not imply that there are no individual human beings whose
privacy is to be protected. What I am driving at is not that there are no human
 13

beings, which is absurd, but that there is no substantive core that functions as
the ‘seat of identity,’ so to speak. Again this does not mean that humans have
no identities, which is also absurd. Having no substantive core means only that
the identity of a particular human being is a relational concept and is
constructed out of the human being’s interaction with her society and her other
contextual environments. As many research works have shown, one’s identity
is constructed out of one’s interaction with one’s friends, enemies, relatives, co-
workers, and society at large.
The relevance of this argument to the analysis of privacy is that there is a
way to justify privacy without relying on the idea of there being a metaphysical
concept of the person. One can rely only on what is obtainable through
empirical means. This way of providing justification is as strong as it can be,
because for one thing it is based on publicly observable entities and not on
metaphysical construction.9 The normative force of the argument related to
privacy would then be derived from shared meanings and understandings
rather than from abstract rationalization. Since identity of the person is
constructed through her interaction with the world, her privacy would
presumably be constructed out of such interaction also. And in more concrete
terms this would mean that the social world finds privacy to be important and
devise ways and means to enforce it. Since privacy is an imaginative line as we
have just seen, it is then constructed out of shared meanings and
understandings that members of the social group have together.
A common objection to the idea of basing privacy on the conception that
presupposes the person to be empirically constructed is that such a conception
of person would be too weak. A conception of the person that is empirically
based would, so the objection goes, not be appropriate to be a foundation for
the autonomous moral agent that seems to be required for a viable conception
of privacy. To put the point simply, if the person is always changing and
something that is constructed, then whose privacy is one trying to justify? If the
person is continuously changing without any substantial identity, then who
will be the autonomous moral agent? And without the agent where will the
concept of privacy come from? But if the autonomous moral agent is not
sufficient for privacy as we have seen, then the argument here loses much of its

9
But how to avoid the charge that this conception is relativist?
 14

force. In fact the force of the objection is that, without the autonomous moral
agent, there would be no privacy, which implies that the autonomous moral
agent is necessary for privacy. But if the proposed conception of the person
which is based on empirical observation rather than metaphysical assumption
is tenable, then, on the assumption that the autonomous moral agent needs to
be a metaphysically substantial person, which seems to be accepted by those
who favors this line of argument, the autonomous moral agent is not even
necessary for privacy either.
That the autonomous moral agent is neither sufficient nor necessary for
privacy should come as no surprise, for the agent here is commonly taken to be
the substantially existing person whose identity is based on the metaphysical
assumption that grounds her identity even though no empirical correlate has
been found. And this should by no means be understood to mean that the
justification of privacy proposed here assumes that privacy is not a moral
concept. The conclusion that the autonomous moral agent is neither sufficient
nor necessary does not imply that privacy is not a moral concept because the
individuals in society can well construct a concept such as privacy as a tool for
regulating their lives and defining the relations between themselves and the
political authorities without thereby depending on metaphysical assumptions.10
This conception has another advantage to the standard one in that it fits
better with the emerging scenario where non-humans are becoming more like
humans and therefore deserve moral respect.11 As far as I know no robot has
been accorded with the right to privacy yet. We feel that we can watch and
monitor a robot and to mine any information from it (him?) to our heart’s desire

10
In addition, that the autonomous moral agent is neither sufficient nor necessary for privacy
should not be understood to imply that people are not autonomous moral agents in the sense
that they are capable for making moral judgments and decisions on their own. Nothing in my
argument leads to that absurd conclusion. The individuals in the no-privacy world, as we have
seen, are as moral and as autonomous as any in our world; only that they do not seem to take
privacy seriously and are happy leading their lives totally in public view. To them there is
nothing wrong with that. This does not mean that they are not moral agents.
11
Recently there has been an interest in how robots should be accorded with moral respect and
moral rights in some form. This is known as ‘roboethics.’ For example, Luciano Floridi and John
Sanders (2007) argue for a concept of moral agents and patients could be applied to non-
humans even though they are not capable of feeling or free will, such as early stage robots and
animals. Another interesting source is “Robots may one day ask for citizenship” (2007).
 15

without infringing upon its (his?) privacy. But as robots mature enough and are
beginning to think and be conscious, then the question about robot privacy
presents itself. One way to think about this is, of course, to think that robots are
starting to attain the status of ‘autonomous moral agents;’ that is indeed the
case if being an autonomous moral agent does not imply that robots somehow
instantiate the abstract model of rationality that have informed humans being
long before. Instead of assuming that the autonomous moral agent is a
metaphysically substantive entity, we might consider robots more simply as
ones who are starting to become like us humans. That is, they are becoming
capable of talking, understanding, planning, desiring, dreaming, and so on,
characteristics that have defined humans. In this case they deserve privacy. At
any rate, it is simpler just to view robots as becoming more like humans than to
assume that they are starting to instantiate the abstract model of rationality and
moral agency, assumption that incurs the added burden of explaining the
identity and the justification for the existence of the said model.

Group Privacy

So how does the proposed conception play out in real life? Here is
another distinct advantage of the proposed conception over the mainstream
one. In emphasizing the role of the individual, the mainstream conception
appears to neglect the importance of families and social groups, whose privacy
needs to be protected also.12 Privacy of families is violated when the authority
or somebody intrudes upon family life with no justified reason. What is
happening inside a family seems to be a private matter to the family itself;
intrusion is justified only in case where it is suspected that there are physical or
verbal abuses going on within the family, in which case the rights of individual
family members to bodily integrity trumps over the family’s right to privacy.
Here the proposed conception fares better because it is not tied up with
justifying privacy through the individual. According to the standard picture,

12
There are only a few references in the literature on privacy that pay attention to group
privacy. Olinger, Britz and Olivier (Olinger et al. 2007) discussed the African concept of Ubuntu,
which puts the interests of the group before those of the individuals. Patton (2000) recognizes
the value of group privacy and sees that sociality plays a complimentary role in the analysis
and justification of privacy.
 16

families or other social groups seem to be little more than collections of

individuals, and it is individuals who are the atomic units whose rights and
privileges should be the main prerogative. Families are but appendages of the
individual. But that seems counterintuitive. As philosophers such as Hegel and
Charles Taylor have shown, individuals are nothing without their roles and
positions within the family or larger social groups (Hegel, 1977; Taylor, 1975;
Taylor, 1989). Hegel argued that ontologically the individual derives her
individuality and ontological being through her relation with other individuals.
So the picture is a reverse from the standard one. It is the social group that is
more primary, and the individuals are derived from them. This issue, of course,
comprises a standard debate between liberalism and communitarianism in
social and political philosophy (See, e.g., Bell, 1993; Bell, 2000; Taylor, 19989;
Sandel, 1998).
Without being tied up with the individual who is supposed to be the
linchpin of a justification of privacy, the proposed conception here makes it
easier conceptually to deal with privacy of social units. Without assuming
anything metaphysical that exists beforehand, the proposed conception would
justify privacy of social unit through their needs to protect their boundaries vis-
à-vis possible encroachment by the state or other authorities, and the social
groups can justify their privacy by referring to the desired goal if privacy right
is upheld. For example, there might be a conception of privacy of an ethnic
group such that the group is entitled to keep certain set of information private
to their own group. The issue has become more significant recently due to the
increased sophistication in manipulation of genetic data obtained from a
population. This information may be something that is dear to them and
something that they don’t want to share with outsiders. If there is no
compelling justification for making this information public (such as when the
publicizing of the information is necessary in an emergency), then the authority
has no right to encroach and to pry upon the information. Since the conception
of privacy arises out of needs and contexts, there is no metaphysical baggage to
unload.
An obvious objection of the concept of group privacy concerns the
ontological status of groups. What this actually means is that any view that
concerns groups of individuals, treating them just like an entity (such as when
the group holds some sort of privacy right together), have to clarify how the
 17

group is supposed to be defined and demarcated such that one group is

differentiated from another. However, if the individual herself could be
regarded as an abstraction or a construction, then there is no problem in
regarding groups to be the same too. That individuals are abstractions can be
seen from the fact that an individual is composed of various parts, such as
bodily parts, cells, memories, emotional traits, and so on. In fact this is the
standard Buddhist view of reality in that individual selves do not exist
independently of any relation, but they do indeed exist through the relations
that the individual maintains with various entities, forming a complex web of
relations where an individual is a node. Thus, a group of an individuals, for
example a family or an ethnic group, is held together by some special relation
among members of the group such that others do not share in it. A family is
differentiated from another by the simple fact that the individuals are not the
same; they do not share the same backgrounds, the same stories, the same
personalities, and so on. Likewise, an ethnic group is also defined through their
shared meanings and traditions, not to mention in some cases their shared
genetic heritage.
In the latter case of groups sharing the same genetic heritage, there is an
added dimension related to their privacy in that their genetic makeup may
happen to be of some potential benefits for pharmaceutical or other scientific
purposes.13 There is not enough space in this paper to deal in any detail on this
very important topic, which itself is a subject of a vast number of books and
articles. What I would like to maintain here is merely that the concept of group
privacy may be advantageous to protect these ethnic groups from potential
discrimination or intrusions in their collective lives. In the same way as we need
to protect the privacy of an individual, we also need to protect privacy of a
group in the case where the group shares some genetic heritage or some other
type of information together. A family (or for that matter a married couple)
often have some kinds of ‘secrets’ that they only share among themselves and
not to the outside world. This is a clear case of privacy. Obtaining this
information from the group without their consent would undoubtedly
constitute intrusion of privacy. As the privacy of an individual needs to be

13
I discussed some of the issues surrounding this problem in Hongladarom (forthcoming).
 18

protected against the potential abuse by the authority, so too needs the privacy
of a group.

Conclusion

My view so far is that there is a way to justify privacy without relying on

the metaphysical assumption of an independently existing self or person. In fact
I believe that the proposal offered here, that privacy is a contingent matter, is
more convenient in helping us understand the complex issues surrounding
deliberating thoughtfully about privacy in many dimensions. It is the very
contingency of privacy that makes it malleable enough to serve our purposes.
What is certain in any case is that we in the 21st century do not live in the world
where privacy does not matter any longer; hence there is a need to protect
privacy against all prying eyes. Thai citizens, to take a specific example, need to
find a way to guard against the manipulation of their personal data through the
smart ID card policy. What this paper has accomplished, I hope, is to lay out
some foundational issues on privacy so that we know which direction we
should be heading as we lay out conceptual maps that will possibly translate to
rules and regulations later on. Moreover, the privacy of the group also needs to
be recognized, as modern genomics has advanced and is now coupled with
information and computational science, the potential for misuse and injustice
increases a thousand fold.14

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14
Research leading to this paper is partly funded by a grant from the Thailand Research Fund,
grant no. 4980016. I would like to thank Prof. Vichai Boonsaeng for his unfailing support.
 19

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