Dear Pedro,
very shortly: I would not be so pessimistic concerning
the advancement of ethics (as a scientific discipline) at
least if we take rationality as a basis for scientific research
also in the field of morals. But I am skeptical concerning
the moral advancement of humanity even if the influence
of rational (ethical) thinking is not marginal at least on a
middle or long term. Trying to found (good) reasons for
our desires is an important achievement in ethical thinking
(instead of searching for emotional, religious etc. grounds).
But, of course, this kind of reasoning presupposes that
the *measure* for the goodness of reasons and the will
to act conformingly is not identical to the reasoning process
itself (=intellectualism). And it presupposes also the
capacity to revise our options once we see that what we
considered as *good reason* has bad consequences.
kind regards
Rafael
Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro
Hochschule der Medien (HdM) University of Applied Sciences, Wolframstr. 32,
70191 Stuttgart, Germany
Private: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-Mail: rafael@capurro.de; capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de
Voice Stuttgart: + 49 - 711 - 25706 - 182
Voice private: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
Homepage: www.capurro.de
Homepage ICIE: http://icie.zkm.de
Homepage IRIE: http://www.i-r-i-e.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pedro Marijuan" <marijuan@unizar.es>
To: <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] The Identity of Ethics
> Dear FIS colleagues,
>
> The question recently raised by Luis, but also in a different way by
Karl,
> Stan and others, is a tough one. How do our formal
"disciplinary"
> approaches fare when confronting the "global" reality of social
life? My
> point is that most of knowledge impinging on social life matters is of
> informal, implicit, practical, experiential nature. How can one gain
> access to cognitive "stocks" of such volatile nature? Only by
living, by
> socializing, by a direct hands-on participation... Each new generation
> has to find its own way, to co-create its own socialization path. No
moral
> or ethical progress then!!! (contrarily to the advancement of other areas
> of knowledge). Obviously, learning machines or techno environments cannot
> substitute for a socialization process --a side note for
"prophets" of the
> computational.
>
> By the way, in those nice categorizations by Stan --it isn't logically
> awkward that the subject tries to be both subject and observer at the
same
> time? If it is so, the categorization process goes amok with social
> openness of relations and language open-endedness, I would put. Karl's
> logic is very strict, provided one remains strictly within the same set
of
> reference. Anyhow, it is a very intriguing discussion.
>
> best
>
> Pedro
>
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Received on Thu May 4 20:37:23 2006
