The Internet of Things (IoT) is a complicated system of systems that require a layered pluralistic ethical analysis. This paper beings by noting that the IoT cyber-physical system – it exists in both the physical and informational realms, and in order to give a comprehensive ethical analysis of the IoT, we have to be pluralistic in considering both physical and informational aspects. However, the paper will also suggest that the IoT requires a layered analysis. This is because the IoT is a range of integrated systems, in which three key relations emerge – person-to-person relations, citizen-to-state relations, and state-to-state relations. The IoT, for instance, may enable surveillance of people. But this surveillance might be impermissible for when considered at person-to-person, may be permissible when considered for state-to-citizen relations, and may be obligatory when considering state-to-state relations. My suggestion here is that each of these relations can – and indeed should – be ethically assessed differently. As such, we have three layers of ethical analysis. 

In response to this, an obvious challenge arises – how do we tell the difference between the different layers? The paper here introduces the idea of emergence, particularly focussing on the downwards-causal aspect of emergence, in which the system bears down upon its constituent parts. 

The paper finishes with two implications arising from this ‘ethics of emergence’. First, we have a tool which can recognise, describe, and delineate between different layers of ethical analysis. Second, the ethics of emergence prescribes an ethical pluralism by which different or even contradictory ethical assessments of the same act, when considered at different layers. This, I suggest, explains why something like IoT enabled surveillance can be simultaneously impermissible, permissible, and obligatory. Further, the IoT demonstrates that we need a layered pluralism to properly describe and navigate the ethics of these complicated systems.