Re: [Fis] The Identity of Ethics
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 ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] General Question: Definition of information
Title: Re: [Fis] General Question: Definition of information Lauri Gröhn wrote on 3/16/06: On 16.3.2006, at 12.16, Karl Javorszky wrote: Thank you for focusing on the core of the work. I have tried to find the main points of Marcin's general question, which in a way is an answer to Richard's wish for a definition of information. I just wonder this: Must one know the molecule structure of water before one can swim? But Lauri, it isn't about swimming but understanding what swimming is. I suppose there are all sorts of motivations for this, and I have pressed FIS to list them because I believe no useful "definitions" can result unless we scope to what use they are to be put. To stick with the swimming analogy, my own motivation is to cast the entire world in all dimensions as much into "swimming" as I can. This includes my own inept paddling as well as that of other organisms large and small, chemical and elementary, natural and artificial (using whatever definition of artificial you wish), in solitary and societal configurations (again using any notion of "society"). My hope is that the notion of the analogous "swimming" is so rich and amenable to codifications where necessary that it can serve as a basis for understanding and participating in the world. Swimming to me necessarily involves a certain lucidity about the medium. One can choose to just be blind, I suppose. But they won't be the folks you'd find here. So goes my first allowed message of the week. I use this part of my allowance because it segues into the ethics topic. The link between ethics and information for me is in the motivation. I choose to explore building a new science informed by information because in part it places my mind in the world as an agent in some way as a citizen. With this, I can then use the vehicle of whatever science of information that results to "carry" notions (presumably retailored ones) like ethics to cells and particles, and understand both why and how I swim in the world, but how it swims in me. Best, Ted -- __ Ted Goranson Sirius-Beta ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
[Fis] The Identity of ProtoEthics
Sorry to have been absent from the conversation. The topic puzzles me, and prompts me once again to suggest that FIS needs if not a single clean statement of why we come here, at least a few so we can refer to them. The presumption is - at least in the first posts - that information is something at the root of how the world works. Ethics in some form may be also, so it makes sense to consider the relationship between the two to glean insights into either. Subsequent comments have drifted into discussions of ethics outside this useful notion, which only Rafael's first question addresses. I rephrase that question here: What is it about the way that physics, chemistry, biology work (or how we model how they work) that can be seen as natural law and how does that relate as analogy (or closer) to ethics and morality? Karl's notion is based on autoregulated behavior, conflating the agent that conveys information with the one that regulates (and sets?) rules over that information. He then suggests that a mechanism can be built to rationally fold these responibilities, thereby assuring us that we need not think in terms of analogies, but constant principles that apply at all levels. Pedro suggests in contrast that whatever the mechanics of information and ethics, they are likely far apart. He implicitly assumes ethics is intrinsic to the external view and therefore human, so it can be applied only at the top level, what he calls closure. He later suggests a link in fittedness that percolates up and is seen looking down, then speculates on that fittedness (ethical constraints) driving Darwinian complexity and competence. A connection is made to ethics perhaps this informing the definitions of information conundrum. Still later, he avers that morals as the code may be more tenable as this informing the definitions of information task. Michael N makes the link to art and meaning, primarily speaking to other of Rafael's questions. Though he doesn't explicitly make the link with the first question there may be a connection between what he calls new technologies and new formal constructions to describe nonhuman information flows. Thus, we implicitly inherit some of the pandisciplinary perspectives from the prior conversation on art and whether molecules make art. Stan also sticks to the human side in worrying about how to re-engineer current trends in societal information flows to reinstate ethics, or the efficacy of ethics. If one extends this to all information flows (not Stan's intent to be sure), then the notion becomes truly interesting. John H (if I understand the formatting of the email correctly) suggests that independent of information, ethics requires a source/force beyond information that compels, and allows that it spans both the artificial and natural. In terms of information being that which makes a difference, ethics may be a difference, or indicate one. Jerry wonders if the notion of coding ethics is in the message or can be, or whether it conveys or is sustained by another means. Rafael reports the notion of a descriptive ethics which are in a key sense reflective and bridge the inside and outside of the message. Viktoras sustains Pedro's notion of fittedness, coming at it from the complementary perspective of glue of societies (which I would read as complex systems of all kinds). However, her notion is more severe than Pedro's in the sense that the elements each have agency sufficiently to know how they fit into the system and are ensured of the quality of their existence. In other words, the ethics provide the framework for the context and hence the assembly. Michael L chimes in with the obverse notion, Paraphrasing, he opines that each entity (he means human) can only be whole, integrated, in a context of ethics. He implies that ethics is essential to this (and sufficient?). Such integrated beings are already pre-assembled in a way to form societies as a byproduct. It is Michael's message that prompts me to enter. Naturally I agree with nearly everyone who has written on this. But there is a difference between being correct, insightful and true on this issue and being useful in a particular context. I am again at the beginning of a new project. This one will be more ambitious than the last, as is always the case. For those who don't know me, I design large synthetic worlds that interact with real ones (or one, as you prefer). You might think of this as AI, but it is hardly artificial. The goal is to replicate rather than model. Generally, this fails when using conventional means. It is only approachable if some new paradigm is used. The one I prefer sees the world in terms of functions or transforms instead of particles, objects, beings. With a talented colleague, we presented some elements of this approach at Jerry's very fine symposium last month. The point I wish to make is that functional interactions
