(Pedro: Please post this for me; I have a new email address.)
Dear Pedro and Rafael:
I am deeply puzzled by the content of your two messages.
Could both of you expand your positions substantially? The threads of your
reasonings are not clear to me.
Are both of you proposing a constructivist mode for the genesis of ethics?
Pedro, what is your intent is using the term "viable" in conjunction with the
term "ethics"?
Rafael, do you reject the concept that a code of ethics is possible, code here
being used in the sense of a logical code that allows decisions among symbol
systems?
Rafael, are you proposing that the genesis of ethical behavior is associated
with natural principles or that it is fully independent of cultural
constraints?
Or, perhaps you have a line of reasoning that does not require an encoding of
ethics into symbols?
On further reflection, perhaps the encoding / decoding schema of messaging is
not important to your views of the genesis of ethical behaviors during
childhood and enculturations?
Cheers
Jerry
1. social opacity (Pedro Marijuan)
2. Re: social opacity (Rafael Capurro)
From: Pedro Marijuan
<<http://webmail.east.cox.net/agent/MobNewMsg?to=marijuan@unizar.es>marijuan@unizar.es>
Date: April 7, 2006 8:53:44 AM EDT
To:
<http://webmail.east.cox.net/agent/MobNewMsg?to=fis@listas.unizar.es>fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] social opacity
Dear FIS colleagues,
I have the impression that a serious attempt to establish informational
foundations for ethics is not viable, at the time being. Although we can
produce discourses about different threads involved ---traditional
philosophic,
evolutionary, postmodern, politico-economic, technologic, theoretical science,
etc.-- finally we have to deal with real people living their own lives, and
this "vitalism" does not accept reduction within any disciplinary grid. In
ethics, like in the arts, we can make provisional constructs and keep them
afloat as long as they are useful.
However, "morals", taking them in the sense of basic-guidelines coming out
from
our human nature, appear as very permanent bodies, susceptible of being put
into codes, which traditionally have been elaborated by religions. This means
that religions are highly relevant for the debate of ethics: they handle the
transcendent aspect of our lives.
In my opinion, the info foundations of ethics imply a similar problem to
establishing the concepts of meaning, value, and fitness at the cellular realm
---and in the recent discussion we couldn't. It is a pity that Maturana and
Varela's autopoietic views have not been updated, as I think that the
stumbling
block that presumably we confront ("social opacity") implies revisiting some
of their tenets.
best regards
Pedro
From: "Rafael Capurro"
<<http://webmail.east.cox.net/agent/MobNewMsg?to=capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de>capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de>
Date: April 7, 2006 12:58:31 PM EDT
To:
<<http://webmail.east.cox.net/agent/MobNewMsg?to=fis@listas.unizar.es>fis@listas.unizar.es>,
"Pedro Marijuan"
<<http://webmail.east.cox.net/agent/MobNewMsg?to=marijuan@unizar.es>marijuan@unizar.es>
Subject: Re: [Fis] social opacity
Dear Pedro and all,
ethics as a scientific discipline is viable at all times. It has been so for
thousands of years in our tradition. I see no reason why we should/could stop
reflecting on morals. This would mean a re-action that would block (or intend
to block) the process of giving ourselves reasons for our actions. The
foundation of ethics is itself not the same as the foundations of morals,
if we
compare ethics with physics (and morals with nature) then the foundations of
ethics corresponds to the foundations of physics (which is not a physical
but a
philosophical matter).
Regarding Maturana and Varela: As you probably know, Varela published a very
remarkable book on ethics "Un know-how per l'etica" (Roma 1992) in which he
describes how morality (!) is "enacted" in bodily reactions, i.e. as bodily
"know how".
This is similar to what Aristotle says about "habits" ("hexis"). Varela's book
is a reflection on morality, i.e. it is a book on ethics but ethics is not
itself a foundation of moral action (at
least not directly). The question of the sources (or "forces") for moral action
is a deep and very controversial (ethical) question not only in Western
thought
(think about the difference between Rousseau and Hobbes concerning human
nature).
kind regards
Rafael
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Received on Tue Apr 18 11:59:05 2006
