Dear Rafael, Jerry, and all
Perhaps another view of ethics (closer to Jerry's questions?) would revolve
around the tentative conciliation between the first person view and the
third person's. A recent fis session chaired by Stan and Koichiro dealt
with that very problem (addressed towards scientific description, the "endo
and "exo" perspectives). Say, once societies get sufficient complexity,
"ethical" problems erupt with increasing virulence as layers and layers of
complexity are added, and the "exo" environment gets more and more
untractable. Robinson Crusoe did not need any ethics in his solitary
island. Put several thousand (or million) people there, and the ethical
dilemmas will be a plague. Another way to treat that (in
evolutionary-economic terms) would be "the tragedy of the commons", and
also the "public goods problem". In the game-theoretical approaches, Nash's
equilibriums and quite a few other constructs, relate to the
conceptualization of this type of problems.... when the individual's
fitness depends on a considerable portion of a "healthy" wider group, but
at the same time he or she can "steal" good chunks from the common pot,
provided other parties do not cheat either. It is the "reputation" theme
too...
If the above is cogent, a fascinating body of theoretical stuff (in my
opinion, neatly "informational" applies to ethical foundations too.
best,
Pedro
_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
[email protected]
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
