(76) A third ethical frame regarding FIMI

By Onno Hansen-Staszyński | Last Updated: 28 October 2025

In earlier blog posts, I discussed the, in my view, main ethical frames that Western democracies rely on to make sense of the information sphere: the human rights approach by the European Union (see: blog post 39) and an evolutionary psychology approach by the current US administration (see: blog post 44). In this blog, I’ll outline a third, alternative frame. But before I do that, I’ll summarize the two earlier blog posts.

Summary of the, in my view, dominant Western approaches

Both blog posts examine how two major ethical frames, the human rights approach and evolutionary psychology, can be positioned on a moral spectrum running from Levinasian responsibility to Hobbesian self-interest, and what this means for real-world FIMI. The human rights approach, grounded in the Universal Declaration, lacks a firm ethical foundation and can be co-opted for propaganda or in-group moral enforcement, oscillating between paternalistic Levinasian care and Hobbesian control. Evolutionary psychology, meanwhile, views ethics as an evolved mechanism for managing reputation and group cohesion, producing egoistic and tribal behavior reflected in contemporary political actors such as Trump, Musk, Yarvin, and Vance. Together, the essays show how both frameworks reveal morality as a strategic social instrument rather than a universal guide, shaping how societies justify censoring, manipulation, influence, and selective empathy within the global information sphere.

The empathetic-utilitarian approach

The third approach, which aligns more closely with my understanding of the information sphere, relies on two pillars: Levinasian empathy and utilitarian self-interest. These two pillars operate on different levels of ethical experience. Levinas provides the interpersonal and motivational foundation while Greene’s utilitarianism provides the systemic and deliberative framework. In this sense, Greene’s framework can be read as the rational extension of Levinasian care, translating the ethical responsibility that arises in face-to-face encounters into policies and institutions. The third approach therefore assumes a layered structure of ethics: empathy grounds our personal sense of moral obligation, while rational deliberation guides how that obligation is implemented at scale.

Levinas

Levinas can be interpreted as framing empathy as the result of a personal and embodied ethical experience with other people. His radical interpretation of reality divides human experience into two spheres: a totalitarian sphere in which we are objects that can be labeled and manipulated, and a metaphysical relation in which humans meet another person face-to-face and open themselves up to this other person to the point that they escape the totalitarian realm and enter an ethical realm of responsibility and care for that individual. This ethical sphere is the precondition for empathy, not as a voluntary feeling but as an ethical task.

While it may seem impossible to imagine a Levinasian empathy within administrative systems, it is not entirely so. It would indeed be impossible if we understood administrations solely as impersonal institutions and processes. Yet administrations are composed of individuals, and each of these individuals is capable of encountering others face-to-face and, at least momentarily, entering into a metaphysical relation with them. When members of an administration step outside the totalizing logic of bureaucracy to respond to another person ethically, they open a space where responsibility and care can circulate. The individuals who are met in this way may, in turn, extend that openness to others, allowing a fragile network of non-totalitarian relations to emerge within, and sometimes even against, the administrative order.

Greene’s utilitarianism

According to experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher Joshua Greene, most moralities are group moralities that only make sense within a group but not between groups. These moralities were born as adaptive mechanisms to ensure group cohesion and rest on our automatic and quick brain thinking mode that is shaped by our collectively shaped and evolutionarily biased experiences. Greene, in contrast, describes a morality based on our other brain thinking mode: the rational or deliberate mode. By employing this mode, we can take a more impartial view and focus on what really matters. And what really matters for all individuals, from any group, is aggregate well-being. Therefore, Greene proposes a morality that strives for the greatest aggregate well-being for the greatest amount of people. Actions that implement this morality should be accountable to evidence.

Resilience

Resilience (see blog posts four and forty-six) can be seen as the fulfillment of core human needs - experiences of autonomy, belonging, and achievement, alongside the basic condition of safety, and perhaps, following Jonathan Haidt, the sense of contact with something higher. As such, it can function as the bridge between the personal ethics following a metaphysical encounter and the systemic pursuit of well-being: it translates the subjective experience of care and responsibility into measurable conditions of collective flourishing.

The third approach

The third approach consists of the interlocking layers of care and responsibility (Levinas), deliberation and evidence (Greene), and the connective layer of resilience. This approach is capable of serving administrations as well as other organisations, and even individuals - which makes it a potential foundation for a true all-of-society approach.

The third approach is valid only regarding humans, thus excluding bots and other synthetic entities. It applies to all humans from any group, no matter whether they are in-group or out-group.

What the approach stipulates is that administrations should strive to bring about a maximum experience of autonomy, belonging, achievement, and safety for a maximum amount of people. This means both counteracting against those who undermine this experience - by promoting polarisation, alienation, learned helplessness, relativism, and nihilism, and that stress threats to our physical and psychological health (see: blog post four) – and implementing policies to promote inclusivity, a growth-oriented framing of ability and adversity, and predictable and responsive communication that avoids being judgmental (see: blog post forty-six). Both types of administration activities should be evaluated by measuring impact.

For individuals within administrations who enter an ethical sphere of encounter, an additional layer of personal responsibility and care arises. The meeting space provides a profound experience with something higher, thus enhancing a deeper layer of resilience, a layer that should not be touched by administrations in an ideological or religious way.

The layered essence of the third approach places it far away from the Hobbesian pole on the Levinas-Hobbes ethical spectrum, and in special cases exactly on the Levinasian extreme.

Relation to the two dominant approaches

The third approach has a troubled relation with the human rights perspective since it is based on intragroup moralistic, and non-measurable concepts. Its relation with evolutionary psychology is equally problematic because this approach is based on the cynical premise of hypocrisy and pitting randomly defined out-groups and in-groups against each other.

A difficult question, however, is how this framework should engage with actors who reject its premises and actively seek to undermine well-being. In these defensive situations, it may be necessary to adopt a philosophically uncomfortable concession. The cynical transactionalism of the two other approaches might offer a limited, last-resort tool. A strategy from game theory like ‘tit-for-tat,’ always initiated in good faith, could serve not as an ethical ideal, but as a pragmatic line of defense against destructive behavior. On the other hand, while the welding of Levinas deeply anti-systemic thinking with Greene’s rational approach is already ambitious, adding a game theory strategic component to the mix might be a bridge too far.

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