[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

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Received on Fri Apr 7 14:47:02 2006