Is "Ethical Hacker" An Oxymoron? (part 1 of 2)

According to a recent Forbes piece, Exploding The Myth of The "Ethical Hacker", there have long been ongoing discussions and debates bearing upon the question whether that term or concept really makes sense.  Perhaps, like Martin Heidegger quipped about "Christian philosophy" (a stance, incidentally, whose flaws many pointed out) being as coherent as the notion of "wooden iron," there's something to the almost logical repugnance that many seem to feel arise when "ethical" and "hacker" are conjoined.

The article, contributed by Conrad Constantine and Dominique Karg -- the latter of whom bears the title "Chief Hacking Officer" -- makes some decent, well-articulated arguments against the propriety or prudence of speaking of some hackers as "ethical hackers."  They're raising, or spilling over into, some very interesting moral issues of wider scope, which are worth noting, even exploring a bit here.  The deeper question about connections between terminology, good or bad actions, personality and dispositions, and moral evaluation is one with a long history in moral theory -- addressed, explored, examined by philosophers ranging from Plato and Aristotle, to Confucius, Thomas Aquinas, and Jeremy Bentham.

How to Almost Get Moral Dispositions Right

This week, in two face-to-face installments, supplemented and supported by a variety of handouts, summaries located in our Course Management System, and even two lecture videos from previous Ethics classes (#1 and #2), I've been leading my students through the dully dry, compendiously ennumerational, Victorian-tinged prose of Jeremy Bentham's classic moral treatise Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation -- an exercise in demonstrating to them that a book ought not be judged by its cover, nor even by the style of its author -- that the merit of ideas remains to some degree independent of, unindexed by wordcraft, mode of arrangement, ease enabled or rather interest sustained in the reading.

Bentham is well worth the effort of wading through his preferred means of presentation:  seemingly interminable enumerations and exhaustive examples aiming at every step at making the same point -- Utilitarianism has covered every bet, examined every possible case, encompassed every exception or objection (suggestive of a dialogical panopticon).  Why?  Because the ideas conveyed are sound -- at least if not pushed too far -- and eminently worth thinking through, wrestling with, wrapping one's head around.  And today, they were Bentham's notions of intention, motive, and disposition.