Dear Michael and colleagues,
Am afraid I cannot make such elegant a response to your comments as Stan
has done. Both the "integrity" of the individual and his/her
"contemplation" of the natural environment appear indeed as crucial factors
for the ethical standpoint. I do not see very clearly how to connect
them--but will try. Who would deny that the ethical discourse on the
environment is so much central, appreciated and concerned nowadays? (Even
solitary Mr. Robinson would be judged ethically by contemporary ecologists
on how respectfully he behaved and afforded his living upon the island
environment.) Cultural, economic, religious factors may be invoked in more
general terms, but perhaps the personal decorum around the "complete"
individual has been the basic engine in the development of social ethics.
It is part of the ideal of scholarship in science. Visionary individuals
who have sculpted the subtle system of rewards and punishments --on
personal reputations basically-- that propel organizational networks and
maintain cooperation in complex societies. It is not that most people are
"good" per se, but that a relatively well-designed social order makes
cheating behaviors unattractive --taking for free group's benefits and
running away.
Thus, apart from its inherent aesthetical aspects, "integrity" would convey
an untractable informational problem about the individual's behavioral
evaluation of the total milieu. The discussion on ethics, pushing it at its
most impossible or "Quixotic" extremes, takes us to impossible or
"foundational problems" of information science. Seemingly, in order to
grasp them, it is necessary that we break away from quite a few obsolete
ways of thinking and disciplinary walls.
best
Pedro
At 10:35 25/04/2006, you wrote:
Dear Pedro,
I find your statement, that Robinson Crusoe did not need
any ethics in his solitary island, very intellectually stimulating.
I actually take the opposite view of ethics. I believe that
the ethical individual is one who has INTEGRITY.
Integrity means completeness. An individual's completeness
is tested most by their capacity to be alone.
If an individual can be alone, indeed prefers to be alone,
then they are complete. This will mean that they have
no need to use another person, steal from them, exploit them,
and generally have an existence that is parasitic on
another person.
A complete individual, one with integrity, can enter society
without the need to use others, exploit them, etc.
I argue therefore that, paradoxically, ethics towards others
actually begins with the capacity for aloneness.
The unethical individual is empty - and strives always to
maintain that emptiness, by avoiding internal growth,
inward examination and self-understanding.
This constant flight from self sends them continually
in search for others upon whom they are entirely dependent.
They have no identity other than what they can steal from others.
It is the relation that an individual has to themselves,
when alone, that determines their relation to others.
By the way, Pedro, thank you so much for creating
such an interesting debate on ethics.
best
Michael
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