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Citation:
Kenneth R. Conklin, "Privacy: Should There Be A Right To It?" EDUCATIONAL THEORY, XXVI, 3 (Summer, 1976), pp. 263-270.
Reprinted from Educational Theory Volume 26, Number 3, Summer 1976
Privacy: Should There Be A Right To It?
By Kenneth R. Conklin
Perhaps there have always been hermits. Certainly there is nothing new about the fact that most people feel a need for privacy, while some people
would like to avoid all relationships. (A few might even regret the
intimacy of contact they had with their mothers at the time of birth!)
Concern about privacy has grown rapidly over the past two decades,
probably in response to the growing scope and sophistication of
communication, computerization, and misbehavior by governments and
corporations. Violations of privacy are now so systematic and routine
that much of the privacy we continue to enjoy may be due to the sheer
size and ineptitude of information-processing bureaucracies.
Conversations about privacy invariably go through a ritual of
deploring the violations of people's rights. It is always assumed
that people have a right to privacy. This assumption is so deeply held
that it may seem pointless to challenge it. Such is the job of the
philosopher: to challenge fundamental assumptions. What follows is,
then, a philosophical inquiry into the question whether there is, or
should be, a right to privacy. This question comes to a focus in the
helping professions, where the nature of the helping relationship
requires a client to bare his body, mind, or soul to a doctor,
psychiatrist, or clergyman who may be a relative stranger. The issue
of privacy is particularly complex in the helping profession of
education. Clients are often too young to know or care about their
rights; furthermore, intimate information and records of the helping
relationship may become public at the request of the client
(transcripts, recommendations), his relatives (parents), or outside
institutions (scholarship donors, police, F.B.I., employers, credit
bureaus).
"Privacy" has various meanings, all of which are related to
a desire for autonomy of action within an unviolated living-space.
Even at a distance, we want information about us to remain limited,
particularly when it is unfavorable. More intimately, there are things
we wish to do without being observed at all (toilet functions), or
without being observed by persons not directly involved (sex). We
resist being touched, pushed, or restrained by strangers, and offer a
hand to be shaken as a token which signifies that another person is no
longer a stranger.
I shall use the term "informational privacy" to
mean freedom from outside knowledge. Information about us may be
written or electronically stored, so it can be used by complete
strangers at times and places far removed from the circumstances under
which it was generated. Such information consists entirely of verbal
or numerical descriptions, but as the term is being used here it does
not include actual samples of behavior such as films or tape
recordings. "Remote observational privacy" means freedom from
observation by an observer who is not physically present. We may be
observed by spy camera or eavesdropping radio transmitter. The
observer may watch or listen to a live performance, or may play back
recordings. "Direct observational privacy" means freedom from
observation by an observer who is physically present and who gathers
information about us directly through his own senses of sight, sound,
and smell. "Contact privacy" means freedom from touch, restraint, or
interference by others. Contact may be physical, or it could also
include any sort of interference by means of spoken language, legal
or administrative command, denial of customary rights or privileges,
economic manipulation, selective reinforcement of behavior (behavior
modification), etc.
The four types of privacy described above are
listed in an order which moves from remote and impersonal to direct
and intimate. The first three types of privacy are fundamentally
different from the fourth. Someone who violates informational or
observational privacy may be merely a passive gatherer of data, while
violations of contact privacy involve active interference in another
person's life. It may be that people worry about informational and
observational privacy primarily because people view these as
guarantors of contact privacy. Of course someone could interfere with
me even though he has no information about me. But so long as he isn't
told or
Kenneth J. Conklin teaches high school mathematics in Norwood,
Massachusetts.
[note: The originally printed typographical error has been retained. The correct middle initial of author's name is "R" not "J"]
[end page 263, start page 264]
doesn't see or hear what I do, he is not likely to want to interfere with me
and will not know how to do so effectively. Fear of interference is
not the only reason we desire informational and observational
privacy. Would I ever be willing permanently to give up informational
and observational privacy? Suppose the entire world gave me a
guarantee that I would not be interfered with, and that I would
forever be treated precisely as I would have been if the extra
information had remained private. Under such conditions I might give
up informational privacy. I might even consider giving up remote
observational privacy. But somehow I could not bring myself to give up
direct observational privacy. Writing a letter to someone important
(informational) somehow makes me less nervous (and also seems to be
less of an intrusion upon him) than talking with him on the telephone
(remote observational), while seeing him face to face (direct
observational) could be very upsetting./1 Direct observational privacy
is a much stronger emotional need than remote observerational or
informational privacy. Perhaps the fact that somebody is watching
makes me worry that he might disapprove or interfere. My
socio-cultural background makes it impossible for me ever to believe
that adverse information about me will not eventually lead to action
or at least prejudice against me, especially when I am watched by
someone personally present. Even when I seem to be alone, religion
tells me there is a God watching my every action who will use his
infinite power to punish me for misdeeds. The personal presence of a
flesh-and-blood observer makes me feel more nervous and more subject
to immediate retribution than the remote and invisible presence of a
hypothetically more powerful God
Even if I am doing nothing wrong and
am guaranteed there will be no interference, still I don't want
people watching me. The fact that I am aware of being watched by
itself establishes a kind of contact. It interferes with my
flexibility, spontaneity, risk-taking, and authenticity. It may
motivate me to increase my socially-approved productivity (the
"Hawthorn Effect"). I wonder what "they" will think of me. I want them
to admire or appreciate me, or at least not to think of me as immoral,
clumsy, or stupid. Information recorded and used far away at a later
time doesn't bother me so much, but performing while someone else is
personally present and obviously paying attention disturbs me.
Even if I am not aware of being watched, still it seems objectionable in
principle to be watched at some activities, and I would object if I
found out later that I had been watched. It is as though the
sacredness of some sacrament was being profaned, or an intimate secret
was being exposed. Just as slaves had to avert their eyes so as not to
make eye contact with their masters; just as peasant subjects had to
lie prostrate with eyes closed when the King paraded by; so also there
are certain intimate thoughts and deeds over which I want to be lord
and King.
Nobody claims there could or should be total contact
privacy. Physics shows that every action eventually impinges upon
every object in the universe in at least a miniscule way. Sensory
deprivation experiments show that people and animals cannot go
without sensory stimulation for more than a few hours without
suffering neurosis, phsychosis, and eventual death. Thus, total
contact privacy is impossible and undesirable. But there is also
strong evidence that some contact privacy is a basic biological need.
All animals in good health seek exclusive control over a piece of
territory. Experiments have shown that when animals are crowded
together, even if they have plenty of food and water, they soon begin
to fight, to become neurotic, and die.
Arguments in favor of a right to choose temporary contact privacy are usually based on the right to freedom of action. So long as I do not violate the legal or moral rights of others, I should be free to choose what to do. My freedom of action is possible only if others are not restraining or interfering
with me. In view of territorial
-----------
1. In an interesting science fiction novel, Isaac Asimov describes a society whose strongest taboo is to violate contact privacy. Direct observation is severely frowned upon and extremely rare, but remote observation in the nude is perfectly proper. See Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun (New York: Doubleday, 1957).
[end page 264 / start page 265]
needs and crowding experiments, together with
the right to freedom of action, it is clear that there should be at
least a limited right to contact privacy. That is, there should be
some places I can go, and some activities in which I can engage, with
the guarantee that nobody will interfere with me.
But aside from a
right to limited territorial contact privacy, I shall argue that
ideally there should be no general right to informational or
observational privacy. I will try to show that in certain areas of
human activity privacy is automatically guaranteed by the nature of
the activity, so there is no need for a socially established right.
Outside of such areas the desire for privacy is something we learn
blindly as a cultural habit or something we develop as a defensive
response to an unjust society. If people and society were perfect
there would be no need or wish for privacy (except the limited
territorial contact type). Maintaining privacy may seem necessary to
protect genuinely good people against the bad reputations they might
acquire and the consequent harm they might suffer when partial
information about them is disclosed or when an unjust society makes
improper judgments. But maintaining privacy also serves to perpetuate
incompleteness of information and the resultant cognitive and
emotional dispositions which lead people to make improper judgments.
Thus, I will argue that the schools can help people become wiser and
society become more just by helping children grow away from a need for
informational and observational privacy.
Earlier it was mentioned that
there can never be total contact privacy, since physics tells us that
every action eventually impinges upon every object in the universe.
The impossibility of total contact privacy is absolute: no human law
can affect it. In a similar way, there is an absolute guarantee of
some degree of informational and observational privacy with regard to
some objects and activities such as ideas, perceptions, nuances of
emotion, thinking, and deciding. The proof that some degree of
informational and observational privacy is absolutely guaranteed in
such areas is complex, but its outlines can be sketched rather easily.
Wholes are composed of parts. But a whole is an organization of parts,
not merely a collection of unrelated parts. For example, a whole could
be a philosophic theory composed of logically interconnected
doctrines, or a molecule composed of individual atoms interconnected
by means of electron orbits and force-fields. When one person knows a
whole, he cannot express his knowledge completely or directly. Rather,
the knower must communicate by sequentially listing some of the
separate pieces of his knowledge. The knower can never guaranteee that
someone listening to the sequence of some of the pieces will infer the
unlisted pieces and assemble all available pieces "correctly" so as to
grasp the whole which they are intended to designate. Thus, a knower
can never completely describe his knowledge, even if he wishes to do
so. I have explained elsewhere some of the consequences of this for
educational theory and practice./2
Since a knower can never completely
describe his knowledge even if he wishes to do so, it follows that an
observer can never be sure that he is correctly interpreting what is
in the mind or heart of the knower, no matter how many clues the
observer gathers. Whether information is gathered impersonally at a
distance through printed records, or by remote observational means
such as "bugs" and cameras, or by direct personal observation; such
information will always be incomplete, and inferences may always be
incorrect. By analogy to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in
physics, which says we can never be certain about the exact position
and velocity of an object, we have here an uncertainty principle for
communication, as follows: No knower can completey or accurately
express what he knows, and no observer can be certain about what it is
in the mind of a knower by relying upon observations of the knower's
actions. As an old German folk song gleefully proclaims:
Die Gedanken sind frei.
Wer kann sie erraten?
2. Kenneth R. Conklin, "Wholes and Parts in Teaching," The Elementary School Journal, LXXIV, 3 (December 1973), pp. 165-171. See also Conklin, "Why Are Lesson Plans Always Incomplete?" Educational Forum, XL, 1 (November, 1975), pp. 67-71.
[end page 265 / start page 266]
Sie fliehen vorbei
Wie nachtliche Schatten.
Man kann ja im Herzen
Stets lachen und scherzen
Und meinen dabei,
Die Gedanken sind frei!
The fact that no observer
can completely probe my mind or be certain that he is correctly
inferring what I know or feel does not imply that I am always the best
authority on what I know or feel. A number of philosophers and
psychologists have argued persuasively that sometimes another person
is a better judge of my thoughts and feelings than I am. Joseph Agassi
has summarized some of the most important of these arguments, as
follows:/3 Wittgenstein shows there can be no private languages; Freud
shows that a psychiatrist can interpret my dreams better than I can;
Duhem shows that a philosopher can know a scientists's methods better
than the scientist himself; Malinowski shows that sociologists can be
more accurate about the customs and habits of a society than the
members of that society; and psychologists who study perception are
able to make us see things which aren't real and can describe our
perceptions better than we can.
All these philosophers and
psychologists show that there are times when an observer may be more
complete and correct in knowing my thoughts and feelings than I am.
But these results do not contradict the uncertainty principle stated
earlier. It remains true that no thought or feeling can be completely
expressed, so that no observer can be completely certain about what is
in someone's mind or heart by relying upon observations of him. Most
of the time I am the best authority on what I know and feel, if only
because I am the only one who has access to what is not expressed, and
I am usually the only one who takes the time to be aware of my
activities in detail over a period of years. Since I live inside my
behaviors, I am able to integrate their joint meaning faster and more
sensitively than any observer, except when unusual stress paralyzes or
distorts my indwelling.
The fact that expression must always be
incomplete and observers can never be certain of the accuracy of their
inferences not only guarantees a minimal amount of privacyÑit is
probably one of the main reasons why people want substantially more
privacy than is minimally guaranteed! If information about me is
incomplete or inaccurate, I worry that negative information may be
over-represented and negative inferences will be drawn. Indeed, a
kind of Gresham's Law operates here: negative information and
inferences seem more interesting or titillating than positive ones.
Knowing that whatever seems negative draws most attention, and
sometimes being unable to decide which information will be considered
negative, I try to keep all information unavailable for routine
scrutiny and I release selectively whatever I am sure will be regarded
favorably. I behave like a public relations executive or White House
information officer, seeking to publicize virtues and minimize vices.
The desire to control access to personal information is not innate.
Whether we are born with the universal animal need for limited
territorial contact privacy is not clear. Infants love to be cuddled
and nursed. Many psychiatrists believe the greatest wish of an infant
is to return to the womb (where territorial contact privacy itself is
nil). Perhaps territorial needs, like Piaget's cognitive stages, are
the result of biological maturational processes combined wtih
environmental influences. But aside from any possibly-innate or
maturational need for limited territorial contact privacy, all other
needs for privacy are learned.
As children grow in our culture, they
learn the principle that negative information and inferences attract
the most attention. They learn that one must be a successful
competitor, and part of the competition involves creating a public
image that brings good will and rewards. They learn to hide their
financial status, sexual preferences, drinking habits, and any
significantly deviant physical, emotional, or intellectual blemish or
imperfection. The result is the development and maintenance of
cultural
-------------
3. Joseph Agassi, "Privileged Access," Inquiry, XII, 4 (Winter, 1969), pp. 420-426.
[end page 266 / start page 267]
patterns based upon people's systematically inaccurate and distorted images of each other. Not long ago it was taboo to discuss sex; yet sexual activity
was probably about as widespread and routine as today. Surveys and
even direct observation of sexual activity have started to become
acceptable,/4 and the result is a wealth of information which helps
people feel more normal about what they do and enables them to get
well-informed medical or psychiatric advice when difficulties occur.
Currently there are efforts underway to legalize the so-called
"victimless crimes" such as gambling, homosexuality, and prostitution.
The elimination of penalties for such activities would probably be
hastened if everyone knew how widespread they are and how respectable
and socially productive many of the unknown "criminals" are.
The net social effect of maintaining a right to privacy is often to punish
people for harmless deviance from standard behavior while enabling
harmful deviations to go undetected. Punishment for harmless deviance
results because information is disclosed only partially or because
privacy enables society to maintain a false facade concerning what is
normal (as in the case of sexual behaviors discussed above). There are
a number of ways in which harmful deviations go undetected or privacy
makes it impossible to tell whether a deviation is harmful.
Consider the "right" to privacy of criminal, financial, and academic records.
The fact that someone has a record of previous criminal convictions,
financial indiscretions, or academic failure may or may not be
significant. If such difficulties occurred in early youth or in the
remote past, the person may now have quite a different character.
Everyone should understand that remote virtues or vices do not predict
current behavior. Such public understanding can be developed only if
the public has plenty of information about numerous ordinary people
who exhibit character change. While long-term character change is
quite possible, short-term change is less likely. Recent criminal
behavior, financial problems, or academic failure may be more or less
reliable predictors of similar difficulties in the near future. To the
extent the recent past is a reliable predictor of the near future, we
do a severe injustice when we allow unsuspecting people or
institutions to suffer losses through placing too much reliance upon
the anticipated performance of people whose recent difficulties have
been concealed. Of course people should have the right to challenge
and correct false information, and to be sure their own interpretation
accompanies other people's interpretations. But people should not have
the right to suppress or conceal accurate information.
Surely one of the characteristics of an ideal society must be that each person could feel free to do whatever he wishes so long as he remains productive and does not harm others, and that each person will be protected
against harm from others. In such a society people would have no
desire for privacy, since they know that no amount of observation of
their activities will ever result in interference with those
activities unless harm to others is likely. Everyone's blemishes and
perfections are so easily known that people learn to tolerate harmless
deviations. There is no particular motive for people to pry into other
people's affairs because there could be no titillation in exposing a
secret which is not secret. Each person is protected against any
harmful consequences that might result from another person's
unfavorable opinion, with protection coming both from the social
guarantee against interference and from the availability of
information about that other person's activities.
In our society, which is not ideal, people want informational and observational
privacy. Guarantees of such privacy are needed to protect people
against the bad reputations they might acquire and the consequent harm
they might suffer when partial information about them is disclosed or
when an unjust society makes improper judgments. Yet, as we have seen,
the maintenance of informational and observational privacy will
prevent people from learning the truth about each other. Society
cannot
---------
4. The pioneer book in public disclosure of direct observation
of sexual activity was William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson,
Human Sexual Response (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966).
[end page 267 / start page 268]
become open and tolerant unless we increase the access that institutions and individuals have to information about (and observation of) each other.
Due to the competitive nature of our society, and the fact that part of the
competition is based upon each competitor's ability to keep certain
information private, it would be both unfair and unworkable to ask
some people or institutions to give up privacy more rapidly than
others. It is also inconceivable how we might design and implement a
"mutual and balanced" step by step reduction in privacy. Finally, it
would be psychologically and legally impossible to eliminate privacy
totally and suddenly.
Is there any way to maintain the right of
privacy for today's society while working toward a better society
where privacy is not wanted or needed? People who have already become
accustomed to privacy will not be able to give up very much of it
without serious negative consequences. But young children have not yet
become accustomed to privacy. As Rousseau might say, they have not yet
been corrupted by social folkways.
Within the school children should
have no right to privacy except for a place where they can retreat
alone for some temporary "time out." By allowing temporary retreat to
"time out" we recognize the biological need for limited territorial
contact privacy. By denying children privacy in their relations with
each other we help them become accustomed to living in a society
without observational or informational privacy. By denying children
privacy in their relations with teachers and school officials we help
children feel comfortable about being observed by powerful
institutions and governments. Furthermore, the absence of privacy
ensures that teachers have access to the full information needed to
design nurturing activities in accord with each child's uncensored
wants and needs. The fact that teachers insist on some informational
and observational privacy for themselves will alert the children to
the fact that the current outside social situation recognizes privacy
rights. Children will unite with each other in challenging and
rebelling against such privacy.
While children should have no right to
privacy within the school (except for temporary withdrawal to "time
out"), their outside social rights must be protected by guaranteeing
that in-school activities have a large measure of privacy from
scrutiny by the external society. Intimate information will be freely
offered and exchanged in the protected environment of the school,
where great tolerance is based on accurate interpersonal perceptions.
But that same information would become distorted and misjudged if
released to the external society as presently constituted.
There have been some exhaustive expert studies to develop rules for protecting school children's privacy rights. Some proposed rules deal with the confidentiality of the teacher-pupil or counselor-pupil relationship.
Other rules would govern school record-keeping, and the availability
of school records to outside agencies./5 But these proposals might not
be appropriate in view of the gap envisioned here between privacy
rights inside the school and privacy rights in the external society of
the present.
A total absence of informational and observational
privacy for students inside the school would be accompanied by a
thorough system of information storage and retrieval for internal use.
The unedited, detailed records should be available only to students,
teachers, adminstrators, and scholars (note that students have access
to information about other students). Parents would have access only
to information about their own children, and as the age of a child
increases the right of parental access would become increasingly
limited. In most cases parents should be given information orally,
with accompanying explanations and interpretations by school
officials. Outsiders would be given only an edited transcript of
essential scholastic data, and only with the permission of the student
or (in the case of younger children) his parents.
The proposal to make
the records of all students available to every student is unusual, but
is obviously justified by the arguments presented earlier. Our
objective is to help each person avoid acquiring a need for privacy.
In the miniature society of the
----------
5. Russell Sage Foundation, Guidelines for the Collection, Maintenance, and Dissemination of Pupil Records (Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Printers, Inc., 1970).
[end page 268 / start page 269]
school, the next generation is obtaining accurate
observations of human nature as a basis for future revisions in the
social code. Wide tolerance for harmless intellectual and behavioral
deviations will become universal, as everyone realizes their actual frequency and observable harmlessness. Secretiveness, unfairly damaged
reputations, and unrealistic expectations of other people's virtues
are eliminated.
The proposal to restrict outside access to school
records is necessary to protect students against the inevitable
misuse of complete information about them that would occur in the
outside society. Current social standards have been established on the
basis of systematic distortions in perception which accompany the
maintenance of privacy. Hence, a student's failure to exercise privacy
rights in the outside society could cause his behaviors to be labeled
intolerably deviant and would put him at a disadvantage in competition
against those whose "blemishes" remain secret. Perhaps after several
generations, when the bulk of the adult population has been educated
in privacy-free schools, there would be no need for such restrictions.
The proposal to restrict outside access to school records is already
largely established by law. At the Federal level in the United States,
the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 provides that
between the ages of 14 and 18 both students and parents have access to
school records, and after age 18 only the student has access (the
parent then requires the student's permission!). Except in cases of a
court order, outsiders (employers, police, F.B.I., etc.) are not
allowed to see school records without the permission of the student or
his parent (if the student is less than 18).
The notion that parents might be restricted from full acess to information about school records is not new. Until recently it was routine to keep I.Q. scores and psychiatric findings secret from both parents and students on the grounds that such information could not be interpreted properly by
them and that misinterpretation (or even correct interpretation!)
might lead to unfortunate labeling or stereotyping. Such an argument
is strikingly similar to the argument advanced in this paper, which
is, that the general adult population (including parents) has
systematic distortions of perception and needs help in interpreting
the meaning of starkly accurate information. (It is precisely to avoid
such systematic distortions in a child's perception that we open all
student records, including his own, to the child himself.) School is a
place where children should have some freedom to try out new behaviors
for the future without fear of automatic retribution from parents
whose views were formed in the past. As children grow toward maturity
they deserve increasing independence from their parents. Finally, we
note the legal and moral tradition which recognizes that a child is a
social creature and that both society and a child have rights against
a parent (e.g., healthy home environment, compulsory schooling,
freedom from forced labor).
The proposal that school records be given
to outsiders only in an edited version conforms well with current
practice. Recent legislation provides that students and parents can
insert comments and corrections into the record, request deletions of
inaccurate information, and can grant permission for access to student
records on a selective basis, specifying which items are included in
the scope of the permission. Schools do commonly distinguish between
the permanent transcript and the temporary record. In Massachusetts,
for example, the transcript must be kept on file for sixty years (it
can be used as proof of age when applying for retirement benefits),
and includes the bare essentials of name, date of birth, address,
courses, grades, year of school completed, and graduation date.
According to Massachusetts law, the temporary record must be
destroyed not later than five years after a student leaves school.
This includes disciplinary record, scores on standardized tests
(especially personality inventories), personal evaluations by
teachers, etc. Thus, outsiders can be provided with essential
information about a student's academic performance while personality
problems from the remote past will not continue to haunt an adult
years after graduation.
Before closing it seems important to
emphasize the limited scope of these proposals. Neither social
reconstruction in general, nor the problem of privacy, is the main
focus of education. The proposals in this paper can be implemented in
the context of virtually any curriculum content or teaching method,
without regard to
[end page 269 / start page 270]
whether we envision a traditional or "free" school. Adoption of these
proposals might have little visible impact on the day-to-day operation
of any school, except that teachers and counselors would make all
student records, conversations, and activities totally open to all
students. We have seen that how strongly a person feels a need for
privacy may be a measure of how fearful he is that society is unjust
or his neighbors are brutish. Yet the maintenance of privacy fosters
systematically distorted perceptions and social codes. We have seen
that the need for privacy is learned, except perhaps for a limited
biological need for territorial possession. If children avoid
acquiring the need for privacy, they will grow into adults whose
accurate perceptions and open conduct will make more likely the
development of individual wisdom and social justice. Privacy will then
be regarded as a curious historical symptom of alienation, mistrust,
and injustice.
A personal note: I feel somewhat pained and perplexed
by my own conclusions. Privacy is important to me, both in the conduct
of my practical affairs and as a seemingly necessary condition for
personal intimacy and spiritual integrity. The arguments in this
paper lead me to the conclusion that my need for privacy is the result
of my upbringing; that I would be better off in practice without
privacy, and there is no metaphysical or moral basis for privacy. Yet
I cannot help wondering whether my need for privacy is warranted by
some deeper reality whose demands are more powerful than my abilities
to intellectualize. For example, it might be claimed that privacy is
necessary to guarantee that thinkers or inventors can copyright or
patent their creations, and that society gains by providing a profit
incentive for creativity. (The arguments of Ayn Rand come to mind.)
Yet I think a creator will create for the sheer joy of making the
beauty of his creation manifest. Furthermore, the profit incentive
could be maintained by using the absence of privacy to discover (and
reward) the full extent of each individual's contribution to the
conceptualization, production, and distribution of useful or
interesting things. The process of dissemination would be faster, and
the products perfected better, when people do not need to keep their
best ideas secret to protect their economic and social rewards. But
this argument concerning the economics of creativity is only an
example of what I am talking about in this personal note. My feeling
of unhappiness with the position taken in this paper prompts me to
persist in raising all sorts of arguments in favor of privacy; yet, I
can always find stronger arguments to show that privacy is superfluous
and pernicious. I believe that reason is an important tool for
understanding that which lies beyond reason. So I must follow where
reason leads until "clear and distinct" intuition, or someone else's
superior reasoning, is powerful enough to vitiate these arguments.
[end of article]
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