Stan wrote:
.. At present I am considering that, if we allocate the same energies at
each level, then the remaining degrees of freedom in the higher levels will
benefit from having stronger embodiment than would have been possible in the
lower levels.That is to say that, e.g., behaviors which could only be weakly
supported in,
say, the biological level, become more possible to be manifested in, say,
the social level.
This reminds me of Konrad Loren'z conjecture expressed in his famous book
"The so called Evil", that moral rules in human societies arise as a
compensation for a weak suppressing mechanism for intra-species aggression
at the genetic level. Genetic mechanism for aggression suppression in animal
species is positively correlated with their naturally weaponry (strong claws
and teeth). As humans do not possess strong somatic weapons but have
developed in the course of cultural evolution a strong ensemble of
extrasomatic ones, their biological basis for aggression suppression has
been further enhanced at the social level.
The best
Igor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley N. Salthe" <ssalthe@binghamton.edu>
To: <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 10:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] The Identity of Ethics
> Replying to Pedro's query below, we can have:
>
> {physical / chemical affordances {biological behaviors {cultural norms
> {social guidance {personal past learnings {{{...{continuing process of
> individuation}}}}...}}}}}. Some of us would place ethics somewhere
> between
> social guidance and personal past learnings. An interesting question in
> this scheme is 'where is transcendence?' The problem is that there is
> added, with each integrative level, further constraints. At present I am
> considering that, if we allocate the same energies at each level, then
the
> remaining degrees of freedom in the higher levels will benefit from
having
> stronger embodiment than would have been possible in the lower levels.
> That
> is to say that, e.g., behaviors which could only be weakly supported in,
> say, the biological level, become more possible to be manifested in, say,
> the social level.
>
> STAN
>
>
>
>>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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>
>
>
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Received on Thu May 11 15:13:15 2006
