Dear Rafael & Michael,
Thanks for the thoughtful opening text. Given that apparently ethics is far
away from an informational perspective (and that they can only be
reproached through the contraption "info ethics"), perhaps a preliminary
discussion on the evolution of social complexity might be in order. Let me
try with a few basic ideas.
If we go to the most primitive human societies, e.g., following Jared
Diamond, to those proto-groups (hunter-gatherer "bands") of 60 to 100
people, there we find the enactment of your "bios" (see below in R & M
text), and only that. Behaving into that close-knit group goes mostly as a
direct gift from our genome, supposing that a regular epigenesis and a
regular social group are embracing the individual. In this "natural"
setting, the morality is pretty strict. No ethics needed.
With husbandry, agriculture, villages, etc. (artificial ecosystems), we
have a different and far more complex social environment ---not readily
accessible like the previous one. Some social inventions are needed,
including norms of behavior regarding people not directly connected
(conflicts, extended parenthood), plus the forging of a collective
identity, ceremonies, counting, calendars, etc. Indeed this has to be made
coherently, more or less rationally, and overall this appears as the social
creation of the "ethos" (see below) terribly dependent on the concrete
artificial ecosystems which support social life.
In a common view of both bios & ethos, one could emphasize that crossing a
critical threshold of complexity in the social network is at stake. Beyond
that, our evolutionary genotype-phenotype--"sociotype" cannot provide
anymore the behavioral guidance. From the instinctive "moral" we need
additional "ethics" (as Rafael implies, the latter often putting into
question big portions of the former). Given that any stage in social
evolution, social complexity is tantamount to the overlap of dynamic social
networks (or networks of social "bonds"), which are built, maintained,
dissolved, etc., by information exchange ---one arrives with some relative
easiness to the notion that indeed there is deep connection between
information and ethics.
Let me boldly argue that ethics means but the conditions for "collective
closure" of a viable, complex society. So, previous "informational
revolutions" in societies have always needed to put in a different light
the ethical dimension, irrespective of the concrete "doctrine" which has
torn asunder the preexisting fabric. And nowadays it is the turn for the
genuine "information society (as questions Q2 -- Q5 clearly imply).
best regards
Pedro
PS. I have just received Karl's and cannot include comments on it.
At 14:05 03/03/2006, you wrote:
>Ethics is, like any other field of scientific and philosophic research,
>not only controversial concerning its methodology and goals but also
>concerning its very nature. Philosophers have been developing ethical
>theories for thousands of years in different cultures. One starting point
>for our discussions could be the difference between "life" in a
biological
>sense and "life" or "human existence". This difference
was basic in Greek
>philosophy. The ancient Greek used two different words for life, namely
>"zoe" and "bios". Ethics is basically about
"bios," i.e., about the
>'design' of human existence or of the place where we live
("ethos"). This
>presupposes that we do not only live within open possibilities (this is
>the case of other living beings too), but that we are aware of them. In
>classic terms, this is the question of freedom in the sense not only of
>freedom "from" but of freedom "for". But things are of
course more
>complex, since we are not only living beings in the sense of
"bios" but
>also of "zoe" so that our options for "good life" are
intertwined with the
>possibilities given by nature as well as with the ones we artificially
>create by ourselves.
>......
>We usually make a difference between ethics and morality, where ethics (or
>"techne ethik�") is the science of morals ("ethos"),
morals being the
>phenomenon we study. This is an important difference because in normal
>life people use both words (and even both concepts!) as synonyms. It is
>also important to grasp ethics as the place where morality can be
>(theoretically) questioned. In other words, an ethical discussion arises
>when given moral laws governing our behavior are not any more obvious.
>
>As you know, Kant suggested that moral laws should be conceived in analogy
>to natural laws from a formal standpoint. Kant also made a strong
>difference between human beings as far as they belong to nature and as far
>as they are "ends in themselves." These (and other) Kantian are
part of
>our Western culture, including our legal norms. They were Kant's answer to
>Newton, i.e., to a universe conceived as deterministic in which there was
>no place for freedom. We have not a similar fundamental philosophic answer
>to modern science (evolution, quantum physics, molecular biology etc.).
>So, our suggestion is to start discussing this matter.
>
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Received on Tue Mar 7 14:10:40 2006
