Center for Complexity Studies:

 

Re-interpretation of Ethics. A Self-organizing System Perspective

The Cross-Disciplinary Research Group[1] of Center for Complexity Studies, Bucharest

Ethical Mastery of Innovative Technologies

(Serban Broché and Costea Munteanu)

 

Overviews

 

The first paper focuses on the concept of self-organization which is at the heart of the theory of complex systems, describing how order can emerge from disorder.

The starting point of the paper is inspired by Eduared Zwierleing’s logical anthropomorphism applied to the relation between ethics and self-organization.

Epistemologically: self-organization is in the end a term of self-interpretation of human beings trying to get acquainted with the world they live in and is originally based on their self-experience and self-awareness, i.e. based on anthropology within the ultimate context or metaparadigm of the so-called “ Lebenswelt” (“Life-World”)

Ethically: to find out the importance of self-organization for a good and just life demands as a first step to elucidate what we can call a just survival and a good life of human beings co-evolving with  other living beings.

In this light, it becomes possible to look at self-organization as an instrument or a way of the “Life-World” which makes possible the morphogen-ethical evolution of the society. It follows that we can ask the next leading questions.

 

Is it possible to use the new scientific and technological acquisitions for enabling the using of self-organization as an instrument able to catalyze the creation of ethical value in the society? In the context of the emergence of the Knowledge Based Society, is it possible to speak about an ethical capital creation as a core component of the process of social capital creation?

 

The philosophical and epistemological approaches are not enough for answering these questions.

 

Ethics requires the using of the entire cognitive potential of the mankind. The logic of parts and totalities of Jean Piaget gives us a way to make the connection between the philosophical approach and the science of complexity. Equally, ethics requires the assent of the human will. It requires conscious agreement, and conscious cultivation. It follows that comprehensive advances in the art and science of ethics-building must include advances in the understanding of conscious human behavior. The maieutic approach of Cox, the elicitive questions of Lederach, and the codification of themes of Freire are three such advances. [*]

 

In the first paper we show that all of these acquisitions of the science, epistemology and philosophy lead to the possibility of using the computational sciences for building instruments able to catalyze the creation of ethical value in the society. In our opinion the first step towards building such instruments would be the creation of an eticometry. In order to show that this step became just a real possibility, we present also a practical application.

 

The second paper, Ethical Mastery of Innovative Technologies focuses on the challenge of the ethical rules.

 

According to conventional wisdom, economic activity is part of society, and therefore, the economic actions of people are subject to ethical rules and can be evaluated from the moral point of view, just as any other human activity can be so evaluated. There is hardly an ethical problem, in fact, without its economic aspect; human daily ethical decisions are in the main economic decisions, and nearly all people’s daily economic decisions have, in turn, an ethical aspect. Ethical conclusions cannot be arrived at independently of, or in isolation from, analysis of the economic consequences of institutions, principles, or rules of action. Ethics and Economics are intimately related, as both of them study human action, choices, and valuation, though from different points of view.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that, particularly during the last decades, research works situated at the interface between Economics and Ethics have proliferated and a new field, Economic (Business) Ethics, has emerged. It is now a firmly established field, defined by a set of interrelated problems with which it deals. In fact, Economic Ethics typically involves four main kinds of activities [De George - 1986, pp.18-19]. The first is the applying of general ethical principles to particular cases or practices in business. The second kind of activity is metaethical: investigation of whether moral terms that are generally used to describe individuals and the actions they perform can also be applied to organizations, corporations, businesses, and other collective entities. A third conventional activity of Economic Ethics is the analysis of the presuppositions - both moral presuppositions and presuppositions from a moral point of view - of economic activity. Fourthly, it deals with macro-moral issues, such as whether rich countries have any moral obligations to poor countries or transnational corporations to host countries. In brief, the traditional approach to Economic Ethics suggests that this field can help people address moral issues in business more systematically, and with better tools than they might otherwise use.

 

 

 

We need new criteria as the next one: .... to exercise a negative selection against the nonintegrable and nonintegrative technological innovations.  This means that among many technological innovations that extend the field of the possibilities only those that prove to be integrative and able to ameliorate the adaptation process will be chosen and preserved. Ethical Mastery of Innovative Technologies

The ethical controversy is the core tool of the cross-disciplinary approach (which synthetizes the horizontal coordination between sciences with the vertical coordination of their epistemologies). Only such type of prospective approach could be considered ethical as it realizes the principle of ameliorative equilibration and harmonizes the technological innovation process with the processes of the ecosystem. Ethical Mastery of Innovative Technologies

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