The Evolution of Ethics: An Introduction to Cybernetic Ethics
Unedited comments regarding the linkage of ethics to genetics by way of behavior templates.These are random answers to issues associated with evolutionary ethics. Visit the front page first at www.evolutionaryethics.com
Visceral MoralityVisceral morality addresses the seminal ground of social morality It profoundly shapes the evolution of ethical systems. It is not morality learned from a book rather it is morality that is learned from experience. For example, you have been standing in a long line on a hot day at the supermarket. As you approach the check-out someone cuts in front of you. Depending on the amount of stress and fatigue in your daily life, you react with annoyance or outrage. When you react to a a perceived "wrong" such as this you experience visceral morality.
Here, to say that a person has done something "wrong" is to say that they know the difference between right and wrong—or should know the difference. People generally learn right and wrong from the painful effects of the social feedbacks that scorn certain behaviors. An immature person might get away with cutting in line without noticeable reproach a few times. After a while, the people he or she is cutting in front of will speak up. It is only a matter of time before such confrontations will escalate to the point of heated confrontations. With time even the most insensitive person gets the idea it is easier to follow convention and custom than fight it. Here, the focus is on a person's behavior rather than on the words "right" and "wrong." Formal ethical theories focus on the words right and wrong rather on the situations in which they defined. Formal theory does not recognize that moral knowledge, does or can exist, yet it is quite evident in everyday life.
Visceral morality is not always fair and reasonable reaction to a social situation such as this. However, "perceived wrongs" that have some inherent wisdom are remembered in the social customs and laws. For example, alcohol abuse has a long history in the social memory. Each time someone abuses alcohol and cause problems that action reinforces and perpetuates the belief that alcohol abuse is wrong (bad behavior).
Moral Knowledge
Visceral morality is an expression of "moral knowledge" at the lowest level of its genesis in any society. When a person is offended their reaction plays an important part in a larger civilizing (teaching) process. From the very first time a person does something inappropriate they experience unpleasant forms of feedback. The feedback may be very subtle, it may be embarrassment or humiliation but it is a feeling that leave people uneasy and unsatisfied. There are perhaps thousands of potential areas of human conduct that can generate unpleasant responses. With time, people develop a sense of propriety in unfamiliar settings. Becoming an adult requires acquiring a certain amount of skill in ferreting out the boundaries of behavior. (Think of the dynamic interplay of responses and feelings that are elicited when one person inappropriately touches another).
Cultural BoundariesCustoms and personal etiquette define the nature of social propriety. They defines the lines of conduct that are acceptable or unacceptable for people to cross. People do not ordinarily learn where the lines of propriety are from a book, rather they learn it from experience. When people cross boundaries of acceptable behavior that imprudent action can trigger a visceral reaction in the lives of other people to counteract the intrusion. Violent and poisonous remarks can come of inappropriate actions that can trigger a series of escalating responses leading to injury or death. In cybernetic terms this is known as positive feedback that leads to systemic breakdown or failure.
It important to understand visceral and the important role it plays as a cybernetic trigger that sustains the positive effects of social fission. The idea that visceral morality can exists runs counter to the conventional teachings of ethics, in general, deny that moral knowledge can exist. Visceral morality is a form of moral knowledge however inaccurate it may be at times. Scientists could design a credible study to determine its existence by analyzing the hidden boundaries of social intercourse.
Another illustration of this might be two sorority sisters conversing in a video rental store about their night on the town. A middle-aged man who has no interest in the academic life is drawn to the conversation. He has an urge to interrupt the conversation because of some sexual attraction to the women or because he is immature and simply blurts out something, thus interrupting the conversation. On the one hand are the culturally and intellectually refined women encounter a less refine man, who lacking sensitivity and experience, lets his emotions decide his actions. The reaction of the women might be sharp and distasteful to the intruding man. In ordinary social life when the quiet enjoyment of people is violated the harmony of their life is temporally shattered. This triggers a visceral response (Informational feedback) that can be gentle or outright poisonous.see impedance matching
Transgressing boundaries has a productive side to it. Human being are also biological machines that have wired-in reactive tendencies. A person genes and acculturation illustrate this wired in aspect of people. There is no resonance, no vibrancy to a society that is dead. A living society generates an immense amount of interpersonal feedbacks to the point of social fission. Everyone in that society is learning boundaries, overstepping themselves, pulling back and dealing with the situation in a civilized way. It is not the violation of a particular boundary that is so important as how it is done and what it brings to the positive energy of an encounter. An immature or sexually desirous male who is aggressive in refined circumstances will generate a more poisoned response to his actions than a more worldly and charming man interrupting the women. If the interruption of someone "brings to the table: an increase in harmony, understanding and enjoyment the situation can work. This again can be described mathematically in the electronic term known as impedance matching. Codes of etiquette help facilitate or "match" people and situations to maximized social interaction and minimize friction and conflict in the process. There is a protocol for every possible social situation. The refinement execution of the protocol can be analyzed in terms of it decorum. Knowledge of this which is learned by experience allows a person to successfully enter an leave conversations with many types of people. Protocols and decorum reflect the need to keep "social systems integral." Thus, the two women ideally should be able to exist in a bubble that insulates them from intrusion from the outer world to maximize their quiet enjoyment at the video store. Societies can grow and prospers given that their subsystems are integral. In a large city there are thousands of integral and insulated subsystems at work in any given area of town.
The Cybernetic Trigger
Crossing a boundary triggers a cybernetic reaction (social feedback). Vibrant societies need a finite amount of crossing held within controllable limits. This is much like the necessary doping of transistor junctions with small amounts of impurities to maximize its performance. When human beings are viewed as biological machines cybernetic triggers play an important role at notifying a relative reactive machine in a change of state or an intrusion. Crossing a perceived boundary will trigger a wide spectrum of responses given differences in genes and acculturation. Scientifically this could be defined as a person's "reactivity" or predisposition to react to specific stimuli. A person's genes produce a wired-in response that with time is tempered with another wired-in response that derives from acculturation. A people mature they learn to forcefully restrain the powerful impulses reactivity can produce. Emotions can undershoot their intended target, they can overshoot their mark or they can be well-balanced responses. A culturally sophisticated person is able to precisely responded to social stimuli in a way that minimizes conflict and maximizes social harmony and productive relationships. A balanced response does not trigger a cybernetic cycle. However, because it is so precise it communicates information and a civilizing force that becomes the model behavior for others to strive for. Each personal encounter sets up a cycle of actions and consequent reactions. The relationships of immature people are often fought with intense emotions that trigger other strong emotions in a endless cycle that is slowly tempered with the wisdom and insight of age to the point they become more and more balanced. This illustrates the powerful force that acculturation has on a person's genetic (wired-in) impulses to act in ways that would be counter-productive to social and personal growth.
Behavioral Templates: The Relationship Between Ethics and Genetics
Human behavior generally follows what could be called "behavioral templates." Living is much more enjoyable if a person does not have to be alert to every danger; every detail of existence, every minute of the day. For example, you board an airliner with hundreds of people onboard. You are traveling with your friends. Your reactions are contingent on the actions and emotions of the other passengers. Your behavior is not focused, rather it loosely follows a behavioral template of "how to behave in public on an airliner." The pilot, on the other hand is expected to be fully "present" at the controls of the airliner. He or she must be focused, thinking and alert to any an all possible dangers that could affect the lives of hundreds of people. The pilot's routine derives from a very disciplined set of procedures. The contingent reality of the passengers has no place in the environment of the cockpit. The pilot's actions and reactions are finely tuned to be precise and well-balanced. Any over-reaction or an under-reaction might cause the airplane to crash.
The existence of behavior templates (genetic predispositions) creates yet another problem. If a person's actions and reactions can be predicted, then they can be exploited by an unscrupulous person. Again, one must think of the human being, first and foremost, as a biological machine. This is to say that most of the actions and reactions of a human are exercised at the subconscious level following this or that behavioral template. Only a small percentage of human experience is disciplined; well-planned and thought-out. Because people are so predictable they invite exploitation Children invite exploitation from more mature adults in many ways, thus there are very strict laws to prevent this occurring. People are vulnerable biological machines that need to have their identities expressed within the context of some larger more protective organization. Moral and religions codes of conduct fill the needs of people to belong to something that can guide them through the treacherous waters of life. The urge to survive in its many ways inspires the growth of moral and legal systems to protect the very vulnerable human machine from the excesses of itself.
Visceral Reactivity (emotional reactivity)A new born child responds to the world viscerally. As the child grows older visceral responses are replaces with other types of responses more appropriate to the civilized world.
Cultural Reactivity (In terms of stages of maturation, childhood, adolescence, adulthood.) Level 1 behaviorHere raw urges and passions are shaped and refined. A child will express an urge at will such as blurting out a need in the middle of a conversation with several people. With time they learn the consequences of acting on their impulses in relation to achieving important goals (i.e. not being inappropriate during a job interview).. If a person has aged but not matured staying out of jail might be an important goal. For a person seeking acceptance in high-society the goal might be avoiding offending an important person.Moral Reactivity: level 2 behaviorMoral and religious training incalculates certain responses to moral situations. Lying or attempting to deceive such a person might provoke a response of disgust and disdain. Such a world view might provoke a person to react strongly to inappropriate language or dress
.Disciplined Reactions: Level 3 behaviorTo optimally reach ones goals both moral reactivity and cultural reactivity must be tempered with disciplined reactions that tightly follow professional codes or instructions, formal training, education, or years of experience. The pilot of an aircraft is unburdened by his visceral fears when flying through a violent storm because his or her reactions correspond to a set of procedures set out in early training. Disciplined responses maximize survival at all levels of existence. Through training and discipline people are able to exist outside the food chain that depends on unrefined responses to thrive. Here, a person exists beyond mere genetic definition.
Intellectual Reactivity: Level 4 behaviorLevel 3 behavior is closely aligned with level 4 behavior. Here a person does not always respond immediately to a set of codes, training, or social obligations. These are reasoned, intelligent responses. Intelligence can, for arguments sake, can be divided into two parts. 1. Optimizing intelligence: Being brilliant or smart but self-serving Here a person bootstraps themselves by their emotions to high levels of cultural, religious, or intellectual achievement. 2. Non-optimizing intelligence (being smart but not self-serving in thought or deed.) The use of genetic or behavioral templates to guide responses are rare here. Achievement in this world is slow, deliberate and well-reasoned. Passions and pleasures play a minor role in motivating a person here, but they remain to a significant degree.*religious morality not covered hereCybernetic ethics is about the evolution of rule systems. As rule systems have evolved they all seen to share similar characteristics no matter how diverse they are. Apart from the strictly moral considerations rule systems tend to maximize systemic efficiency and minimize conflict to survive the system they serve. A society or societies are systems. Formal ethics and more loosely defined moral beliefs and sentiments are rule systems that have the effect, if not the intension of surviving social systems. Morals and ethics more or less represent algorithms of efficiency. Efficiency maximizes systemic "flow" harmony and prosperity and minimizes conflict and the threat of systematic extinction.
Rule systems are important from the perspective that organisms, insects, animals and human beings are first and foremost biological machines that maximize survival by reacting in certain productive and efficient ways. Life forms as such are programmable and adaptive as the environment constantly changes providing new opportunities for both prey and predator to use. Humans, broadly speaking, are emotionally reactive, intellectually reactive, or reasoning entities. In earlier times they can be seen as almost completely emotionally reactive life-forms and later proportionally more intellectually reactive and reasoning life-forms. The involuntarily compulsion for most to survive forces the evolution of human activity away from purely emotional reactions to environmental stimulus towards intellectual reactive responses and adapt ion by reasoning.
Rule systems can be viewed as going well beyond the ordinary descriptions of mortality and ethical right and wrong into the areas of customs, manners, and legal systems of rules. Such systems help stabilize a rapidly moving and evolving world of people and technologies. Without rules, humans would soon tear themselves apart, thus if survivability is an issue in ordinary human affairs it is imperative the study of ethics direct some of its attentions towards the systematic evolution of ethical systems to assure that survivability. This writing does not involve itself in genetics, however, genetics by way of the concepts of emotional and intellectual templates of behavior is ultimately where cybernetic ethics goes in much detail.
Genetics comes into play when one considers the relationship between the evolution of emotional and intellectual reactivity and the survival of the human species. It is by way of a theory of reactivity that ethics (as a system of maximizing survival) and genetics combine.
Evolution of Ethics
An Introduction to Cybernetic Ethics
S. E. Bromberg
325,914 hits to this site, 151,730 unique visitorsRelated Issues summarized here, followed by the book
Chapters 1-4 present an easy to read theory of ethical evolution.
There are web links to other writers on evolution at the bottom of the page.The Evolution of Ethics attempts to construct a conceptual bridge between biology and human behavior by examining the cultural and biological feedback system that inspires the evolution of social rules. In theory, at the heart of developing ethical systems is a cybernetic process that arises between the interaction of biology and culture using the informational feedback between the two to further human adaptation and survival.
1 Ethics merges with science in cybernetic ethics. This book presents a credible theory of how the evolution of ethical systems can be linked to science and mathematics. Cybernetics in this context means informational feedback in dynamic systems that sustains or redirects a behavior. Cybernetics is an important building block of biological adaptation and a prior condition to its existence.
2. When the subject of ethics arises, reasonable people often ask, "Who is to say what is right or wrong?" When ethical development is viewed as a science, it is not so much who's to say an action is morally right or wrong, but rather "what is to say an action is right or wrong," defined by inherent limitations of the physical and psychological worlds that make it impractical or imprudent to pursue certain behaviors, attitudes, or methods of reasoning regarding personal circumstances. Some of these limitations are illustrated in the evolution of traffic laws, street signs and stop lights which show how a system of law which came into being to minimize pain, suffering and death and to maximize societal efficiency, harmony and prosperity.
3. There is long-standing belief that all moral knowledge is inherent in the words of a language. This idea is reflected in the "is-ought dichotomy" of David Hume and the "naturalistic fallacy" of G.E. Moore. This thinking leads to the belief that human experience does not play an important role in the development of ethical language. For example, if millions of people are injured or killed by the excesses of drinking alcohol and driving an automobile one cannot reason by the formal logics of Hume and Moore that one "ought not" drink and drive. This because formal ethical reasoning stresses an analysis of the language, and not scientific facts or experience. In meta-ethical thinking, drinking while driving is neither right nor wrong. One can only wonder by this logic how intoxication ever became a moral issue.
Meta-ethics significantly dominates formal ethical study, yet for the last two thousand years it has inspired little insight into the nature of morality. Meta-ethics has a polemical aspect to it in which it never quite answers anything while raising a whole host of new questions in the process that cannot be resolved. To some extent, the logics of formal ethics have built a "house of cards." As evolutionary science expands and becomes a more credible way to reason ethics and biology, the more pressure evolutionary science puts on these unstable philosophical reasoning's This theoretically leads to what has long been thought possible—a major paradigm shift in philosophical thinking. Once the study of ethics involves science, theoretical problems of the past such as solving the puzzle of first principles and relativity become easier to explain. link to: the distinction between logic and reason in evolutionary theory
4. Cybernetic ethics does not necessarily clash with religious belief. For example, adultery to a religious person might seem "wrong" because it goes against the command of God. On the other hand, adultery might also be reasoned to be "wrong" by a moral scientist in a secular way. A scientist might draw their conclusions from the science of conflict analysis. Such an analysis probably would spell out, in an understandable terms, how adultery violates the law of efficient action and therefore should be discouraged as generative human behavior. This is because human social systems must also be stable systems to survive in the long-term, therefore, efficient action is an important factor in deciding human conduct. The scientist and the religious believer do have common interests. link to stable systems.
5. In conventional sociobiology (such as that of Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson), an important "moral referent" is altruism. Altruism is the integrative term that joins their theory of ethics to biology. However, this approach is a cumbersome and impractical way to reason an ethical system. It can work, but it raises more questions than it answers. On the other hand, the moral referent in cybernetic ethics is a mathematically based cybernetic process. This is a more solidly scientific approach to reasoning ethical evolution. Link to altruism
6. Morality can be described in terms of static or dynamic systems, and stable and unstable systems. The dynamics of morality involve behavior. When morality is described in dynamic terms of cybernetics, it becomes a calculus that reduces the enormous complexity of morality to simpler terms. Calculus did for engineering what cybernetics will do for ethical analysis. Moral science, thus becomes social engineering. For instance, a large building has constantly shifting loads requires calculus to pin down exactly how much pressure is on a beam at any given moment. A structural engineer calls this load calculation its "moment" Likewise, a moral scientist might determine the "ethical moment" of a given action or behavior. The language of conventional morality is too simple to deal with complex and ever changing moral conditions. Notes on the scientific search for morality
7. The foundation of ethical evolution can be shown to rest on reason rather than relativity. Human morality, and the ethical systems it gives rise to, are to some extent relative to time and place. However, there are deeper forces at work in ethical evolution than relativity. When the evolution of ethical systems becomes centered on cybernetic science it becomes easier to understand how first principles of ethics and moral and cultural relativity can coexist. Notes on relativism & first principles8. There has been considerable debate concerning the existence of an objective foundation of reason or fact supporting a theory of evolutionary ethics. In cybernetic ethics the visible existence of social feedback supports the idea that there is an objective foundation. Human beings are part of a larger biological system that like most systems seeks a high level of systemic efficiency in order to promote its survival. The evolution of laws and morals evidences the hand of efficiency at work sustaining the human race. The foundation of ethics is not some static entity or idea, rather it is a dynamic and changing phenomena. The answer to why there exists a compulsion to survive is not important in constructing a theory of ethics based on survival. The fact is that people prioritize their values consistently and over centuries of time along the lines of minimizing pain, suffering and death and maximizing peace, prosperity, and productivity, which evidences the cardinal value of survival guiding the destiny of human endeavor. defining survival
9. There is a method to the emergence to morals that revolves around making choices. Some choices are discernibly better than others. In physics there is the Heisenberg Principle that notes that you can measure the speed of an electron but not its mass; or its mass, and not its speed at the same time. Making ethical choices is much the same thing because there are situations where a person cannot have it both ways. You cannot drive at high speed through crowded city traffic and be safe at the same time. You can have one but not the other. Thus, we see the emergence of moral sentiments that prescribe what you ought to do based on this observable principle.
Questions to ask your ethics professor click here
Comment and suggested improvements contact e-mail v8.7 12/12/2004
(The Book)
Preface to the Evolution of EthicsThis book develops the idea that there is a rational basis for the existence of ethics. Such an approach is daunting because the idea of reason or rational causes at work in the formation of ethics has been seriously challenged since the eighteenth century Enlightenment. However, there have been developments in biology and cybernetics that lead to a comprehensive theory of morality in which the rational nature of ethics can more easily be explained. Not only can the rise of ethical systems be linked to biological concepts, but ethics can be tied to mathematical concepts as well by way of cybernetic science. When ethics and cybernetics are combined, the resulting theory turns on scientific principles instead of philosophical speculations.
There are several important ideas linked to the emergence of ethical systems: first, that ethical systems evolve in response to the human need to survive in an environment where they are competing with many other organisms for scarce resources; second, that humans survive and flourish by efficiently using their resources and energies; and third, that the evolution of ethical systems is a function of an ongoing cybernetic process involving all humans, animals, and organisms.
Human experiences accumulate as a reservoir of knowledge, which influences the societal perception of which behaviors benefit people and which act counterproductive to their health and welfare. When people deviate from behaviors that are known to be productive, feedback arises that affects their lives in both subtle and obvious ways. Thus, the way in which people write laws and attach moral significance to certain behaviors is linked to a cybernetic process that maximizes human survival, minimizes social conflicts, and increases the meaningfulness of the human experience. Feedback that inspires change enhances the human ability to survive and to compete with other animals and organisms. This is important in the sense that some biologists believe that ninety-nine percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct.
In order to build a bridge between the biological world of organic struggles for survival and the moral world of right and wrong, a simplified explanation of the evolutionary process is presented. This is necessary to illustrate how survival inspires a cybernetic process leading to the rise of ethical systems. The resulting theory sounds similar to some of the ideas of Thomas Hobbes. Where the two systems differ greatly is that the evolution of ethical systems here is viewed as an extension of a biological process, grounded in cybernetic principles, whereas Hobbesian philosophy derives from traditional ethical thinking touching on linguistic and metaethical aspects of reasoning.
What is important to note is how conflicts and potential conflicts act as a form of cybernetic feedback to society that alerts people to make changes in the way they behave. Feedback is an essential ingredient in evolutionary growth. Traffic laws vividly illustrate how the forces of human survival and the need for the synchronization of many parts work.
While the ideas of individual philosophers are not discussed directly, their relevance is implicit in the writing. Biological perspectives likewise do not address biological theory directly on a technical level. Books such as Living Systems, by James Grier Miller; The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins; and Mankind Evolving, by Theodosius Dobzhansky are more appropriate sources, in a field of many good books, for understanding biological phenomena. These three books illuminate the complexity of biological systems in a way that ultimately leads to ethical questions. For instance, the idea of incorporating the notion of organization and efficiency in ethical theory has its analog in Miller's living systems theory. Here it seems evident that successful organic strategies for survival have created extremely complex and efficient hierarchies of order in nature. The principles governing the evolution and survival of lower organisms seem much the same as the forces driving the development of moral systems. Living systems theory invites the question that if organic systems are so incredibly diverse and complex, why would the nature of moral systems be any different, suggesting that philosophical conundrums of the past regarding the nature of morality stem from underestimating the complexity of moral science.
In Richard Dawkins' writings there are illustrations of how pervasive the struggle for survival is. Such struggle involves not only humans but lower organisms, all competing with each other for scarce resources. Dawkins' ideas are important in realizing that humans, after all, still act involuntarily on a biological level. Like it or not, struggles manifest in elegant and concealed forms have endured and proliferated to this day in human societies. Both Miller's and Dawkins' writings lend visual texture to the sense of complex systems uniting in cooperative strategies to further their mutual survival. The rise of ethical systems in this sense is a cooperative effort of humanity that has the effect of optimizing its energies and resources in an ever increasing dynamic of survival guided by cybernetic principles.Dobzhansky's work is crucial to understanding how human beings adapt to a hostile environment by changing the way their cultures are structured. The idea that human culture is an instrument of biological adaptation is central to perceiving how Dobzhansky, and those who followed him, were perhaps unknowingly the first to establish credible bridge points linking ethics with biology.
Foreword
The Evolution of Ethics attempts to construct a conceptual bridge between biology and human behavior by examining the cultural and biological feedback system that inspires the evolution of social rules. In theory, at the heart of developing ethical systems is a cybernetic process that arises between the interaction of biology and culture using the informational feedback between the two to further human adaptation and survival.
Living systems of all descriptions have evolved both cooperatively and competitively for more than a billion years. Since biological systems have been intertwined for so long, a change in one system can cause a change in many others. In theory, these changes disperse through the environment like waves generated by an object hitting the surface of a quiet pond. Biological interrelatedness extends to human social systems as well, thereby imposing limits upon what people can reasonably do. Human beings are not at liberty to do as they wish because personal actions often inspire consequent reactions and sometimes overreactions that need regulating by way of laws and morals. This regulation affects individuals as well as large groups. An example of this might be seen in the careless use of fluorocarbons that thin the ozone layer, allowing harmful radiation to reach the earth and threaten the survival of all humans and organisms. Such a dangerous situation forces humans to choose between doing what they freely wish to do (risking pain, suffering, and death in the process) or setting limits on their behavior. The demonstrable effects of pollutants on people appears to force the formation of laws and enlightened moral attitudes that discourage the practice of releasing dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere. These kinds of laws cannot be said to have emerged from some abstract philosophical theory of right and wrong. Instead, they appear to have evolved from real life situations in which human beings are forced to adapt to threatening circumstances in order to maintain their health and quality of life.Morality is sometimes viewed in a negative context because it is associated with self-serving political and religious causes. In spite of this fact, the imposition of rules in the main does not lower the quality of human life. To the contrary, carefully laid out rules have the greater potential to improve its quality. Broadly imposing guidelines through the promotion of statutory laws as well as moral, manner, and customary rule systems, redirects social priorities in an efficient way. In turn, there is an increase in societal organization and efficiency that enhances cultural peace, prosperity, and productivity. Social evolution in this light acts as an extension of the same biological processes observed in lower organisms where it appears that tight hierarchical organization and efficient survival strategies further the life of many types of organisms.
In theory, nature provides human beings with the means to motivate themselves and create great things by giving them passion and sensitivity. At the same time, it appears to endow them with an extraordinary intelligence to limit the excesses of their emotions. Unfortunately, while people strive to be rational, their actions are still governed by strong emotions. When they respond to emotions that are a derivative of physiology, behavioral excesses inspiring a host of problems manifest themselves. When emotions run high, there needs to be some mechanism present to keep passions from getting out of hand and causing harm to people or the societies they have spent so many years building. In much the same way that circuit breakers in a house prevent an overloaded circuit from melting the wires and causing a fire, moral restraints naturally arise and intervene as reasons (or a reason) to break up the vicious circles of conflict that passions can produce. The emergence of moral laws and sentiments, shaping the course of history, is therefore an extension of human physiology that stabilizes relationships so that people grow and prosper instead of conflicting to the point of extinction.
Go to chapter 1 click here
Darwin on the Evolution of Morality, Soshichi Uchii, Kyoto University
(It's in english so you do not need to install language pack)Book Review. The Resurgence of Evolutionary Ethics. An excellent summary of the major issues in evolutionary ethics by Richard Weikart. Click Here
Evolution and Ethics: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? Part 1
Evolution and Ethics: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? Part 2
Here is one of the better evolutionary ethics web sites. Dr. Corning presents an insightful and knowledgeable summary of important ideas concerning evolutionary ethics from the time of ancient Greece to the present. The arguments are very precise, abstracted and presented with few words, however his approach is unique and notable. This analysis was written in the course of reviewing the essays of other evolutionary ethics writers. (Part I) Peter A. Corning, Ph.D. Institute for the Study of Complex Systems. biographical info
The History of Cybernetics. The American Society for Cybernetics
This site is highly recommended http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history.htmEarly theories of ethics and cybernetics: Cybernetics & Human Knowing, from A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics
The Biological Basis of Morality by Edward..O. Wilson
This link is an interesting philosophical synopsis
of biology and morality.
click hereProfessor Wilson hypotheses that scientifically breaking down the moral sentiments might lead to a more scientific knowledge of morality. To the contrary, in cybernetic ethics the linkage to science is not an analysis of the sentiments rather an analysis of a cybernetic process. The following quote from the Atlantic Monthly.
Little wonder, then, that ethics is the most publicly contested of all philosophical enterprises. Or that political science, which at its foundation is primarily the study of applied ethics, is so frequently problematic. Neither is informed by anything that would be recognizable as authentic theory in the natural sciences. Both ethics and political science lack a foundation of verifiable knowledge of human nature sufficient to produce cause-and-effect predictions and sound judgments based on them. Surely closer attention must be paid to the deep springs of ethical behavior. The greatest void in knowledge for such a venture is the biology of moral sentiments. In time this subject can be understood, I believe, by paying attention to the following topics:
* The definition of moral sentiments, first by precise descriptions from experimental psychology and then by analysis of the underlying neural and endocrine responses.* The genetics of moral sentiments, most easily approached through measurements of the heritability of the psychological and physiological processes of ethical behavior, and eventually, with difficulty, through identification of the prescribing genes.
* The development of moral sentiments as products of the interactions of genes and the environment. Research is most effective when conducted at two levels: the histories of ethical systems as part of the emergence of different cultures, and the cognitive development of individuals living in a variety of cultures. Such investigations are already well along in anthropology and psychology. In the future they will be augmented by contributions from biology.
* The deep history of moral sentiments -- why they exist in the first place. Presumably they contributed to survival and reproductive success during the long periods of prehistoric time in which they genetically evolved.
From a convergence of these several approaches the true origin and meaning of ethical behavior may come into focus. If so, a more certain measure can then be taken of the strength and flexibility of the epigenetic rules composing the various moral sentiments. From that knowledge it should be possible to adapt ancient moral sentiments more wisely to the swiftly changing conditions of modern life into which, willy-nilly and largely in ignorance, we have plunged.
It would seem that Wilson's sociobiology would be the definitive work touching on biology and ethics had he incorporated cybernetics. His sociobiology is so close to being the great work that it is.
Click here for Wilson's article
Also, comments on Wilson's sociobiology and ethicsBiology as a Moral Guide by Eric J. Winter, including E.O. Wilson's observations. click here
Link to Michael Ruse (Quote from the link) "It is indeed true that you cannot deduce moral claims (about) origins). However, using factual claims about origins, you can give moral claims the only foundational claim they might possibly have." In cybernetic ethics, the science of cybernetics form a foundation from which you can deduce moral claims about origins. Certainly such an idea of moving from a factual "is" to a moral "ought" or "ought not" goes against conventional philosophy. But, conventional ethical reasoning has not yet come to understand the power of cybernetics to explain complex systems. Review click here Michael Ruse's recent book touching on evolution and morality click here
Link to
Biology and the Foundation of Ethics.
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.Maienschein, Jane & Ruse, Michael (eds).
There appears to be an impassable barrier between science and ethics. Herbert Dingle (1946) has stated that this barrier exists because science is based on absolute certainty, while ethics has no general basis at all. Science is also capable of advancement, where ethics is not because science can repair its mistakes through reason and experience. Ethics only collapses when its foundations are uprooted. Because of this inefficiency regarding the understanding of ethics it is necessary that we observe and study moral behavior from a scientific perspective. The understanding of ethics goes both ways though, in that morality needs to be looked at biologically and biologists need to explain their ethical views more philosophically. (link temporarily not working)
Arguments against Michael Ruse
Evolutionary Ethics: A Crack in the Foundation of Ethics?Evolution and Ethics
The Evolution of Conscience, The Evolution of Moral Codes by C.D. Broad
A Short History of Evolutionary Ethics and its Critic by Paul Lawrence Faber
Evolution and Ethics by T. H. Huxley
Evolution and Ethics by Sir Arthur KeithEvolution and Ethics by Edward Stein
The Correlation Between Evolution and Ethics by Adam BarbhartIntervening in Evolution: Ethics and Actions by Paul R. Ehrlich
Evolutionary Ethics and Biologically Supportable Morality by Michael Byron
Doris Schroeder: Evolutionary Ethics. "The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy"
Brief outline of the arguments from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Ethics and Evolution, MITECS abstracts
Evolutionary Theory and the Foundation of Moral Principles by Bart Voorzanger
Philosophy: Evolution and EthicsProblems in deriving an ethical system from science
Peter Singer Ethics in the Age of Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary ethics: history & critique ~ part I
Evolutionary ethics: Ruse & Sober ~ part II
Evolution and Ethics
The Great Debate: Philosophical Responses to EvolutionEvolution & Ethics, Huxley 1894
Monkey Morality, Gregory Koukl, derivation of the evolution of ethical systems
The Ethical Aspects of EvolutionIntroduction to the Science of Ethics by Theodore De Laguna
Evolution and Ethics by Beth K. Lamont
Intervening in Evolution: Ethics and Actions by Paul R. Ehrlich by Paul R. Ehrlich "The evolution of ethics appears to be a product of a complex brain that evolved for, among other things, dealing with other smart individuals living in the same social groups. The roots of ethics seem to trace to the evolution of empathy—the ability to imagine another’s viewpoint..."
The Evolution of MoralityDarwin on the Evolution of Morality, Soshichi Uchii, Kyoto University This and several of the following links found on Vivisimo.com a good search engine.
Additional Soshichi, and Abstracts
Sociobiology, Evolution, Genes and Morality by Raymond Bohlin Ph.D.The Evolution of Morality Chapter 1: The Orgin of Personal Morality By Durant Drake
The Evolution of Morality Chapter II: The Orgin of social Morality
The Evolution of Morality and FairnessMorals, More than Nice, They're Evolution
Moral Psychology and Evolution
How Morals Evolve by Gregory Koukl. Monkey Morality: Can Evolution Explain Morality?
Evolutionary Ethics Resource and Reference Material
The Philosophy of Biology: A selection of Readings by Tim Lewens
Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics
Links for Evolution and Philosophy
The History of Evolution
Links for Evolution and PhilosophyEvolutionary Ethics: Biology as a Moral Guide By Eric J. Winter
The Light of Reason: Evolutionary Psychology and Ethics
The Naturalistic Fallacy
Bruce Thompson on the naturalistic fallacy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
An overview of evolutionary ethics including the naturalistic fallacy and the is/ought dichotomy
The Naturalistic Fallacy & Paul Lawrence Faber
Hume & Moore "Resources in Ethics and Moral Philosophy
The Naturalistic Fallacy: The Logic of its Refutation
Comments on the Naturalistic Fallacy by Mortimer J. Adler Ph.D.Problems in deriving an ethical system from science
Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectivism, and Moral Cognition by William D. Casebeer e
On the Naturalistic Fallacy: A Conceptual Basis for Evolutionary Ethics by John Teehan, Hofstra University
The Is-Ought Dichotomy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The is/ought dichotomy
The is-ought Debate by Peter SingerIs/Ought by Robert Bass
The Nature of Language and Logic by Douglas Glen Whitman
The is ought Problem by Gerhard Schurz
Remembering the is-ought Distinction by Linda A NicolosiNatural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectivism, and Moral
Cognition by William D. CasebeerNaturalism & Non-naturalism
Ethical Non-Naturalism
Naturalism & Non-naturalism in MetaethicsParadigm Shift
The Process of Paradigm Shift by Michael Ray
Evolutionary Ethics: A Crack in the Foundation by John Mizzoni
Definitions
GoodLinks to the definition and history of Cybernetics
The History of Cybernetics. The American Society for Cybernetics.
This site is highly recommended
http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history.htmA conventional definition of cybernetics
Second-order definition of cybernetics including the mathematics of cybernetic systems. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Cybernetics-EPST.pdf
Definition from Principa Cybernetica
Second-order cybernetics definition. Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied epistemology".
Ethics of Cybernetics by Kevin Warwick.
A new definition. Cybernetics here is defined as "The study of the interaction between man, machine, and animals." Insert the name Kevin Warwick in the search box that appears to access this file. While the subject is not strictly on ethics this definition seems appropriate in the context of cybernetic ethics.Norbert Wiener the father of cybernetics
What is Cybernetics? American Society for Cybernetics
Behavioral Cybernetics
Cybernetics and the Social Behavior Sciences by Gregory Bateson
Cybernetics and behaviors, Judy LombardiEvolutionary Cybernetics
Evolutionary Cybernetics, Principa Cybernetica Web
Evolutionary systems and cybernetics
Evolutionary Ethics: Principa Cybernetic WebCybernetics and System Dynamics, Calresco
Miscellaneous Cybernetics
Bacterial Cybernetics Bacterial Wisdom: The general conclusion we draw from such examples, the implications to
evolutionary theory and even the implications to philosophy, are presented in the paper Bacterial Wisdom, Gödel's
Theorem and Creative Genomic Webs.Cybernetics and Human Knowing A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics
Soziale Systeme Heinz von Foerster http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/sozsys/pdf/glanville.pdfCybernetics — What? http://www.pangaro.com/designsummit/
Social Engineering
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball. An inspiring history of ideas searching for the mathematics of social order.
Formal and Informal Fallacies
Ethics and Mathematics
Elegant nonsense in math similar to formalism in ethics
A Review of Ethics and Ethical Terminology
Where do ethics come from? Paul R. EhrlichEthics: survey and observations an intro to evolutionary biology by Anthony Aaby
A fun, but not related theory: The Idle Theory of Evolution by Chris Davis
Evolutionary Biology
Introduction to Evolutionary Biology By Chris Colby
Ethics Web Sites
CalResco Ethics and Self-organizing systems
Issues in evolution
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/index.htmlEvolution, Behavior & Genetics
Evolution and Human Behavior JournalEvolution and Behavior Search Engines
Behavior and the General Evolutionary Process by William M Baum Includes a discussion of informational feedback in genetic and biological systems.
Altruism
Altruistic is not the same as good.
Biology Lurks Beneath: Bioliterary Explorations of the Individual versus Society By David P. Barash, Department of Psychology, University of Washington.
Visceral Morality (text link)
Objective Morality by Robin Allot "...one can see why emotions were at the origin of the development of morality..."
In Defense of a Dialectical Ethic Beyond Postmodern Morality by
Mark MasonHere Visceral Morality conflicts with Ethical Formalism
Moral Judgments by Peter B. Lloyd, University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.
A Critique of the Pragmatic Assigning of Monetary Values to Ecological Goods and Services by By Kate Farall This is a pdf. Look for the binocular icon in the upper right corner, click and enter the search term visceral morality. Here, evolutionary economics merges into evolutionary ethics.
Books on Evolution
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/KVC/evolphi.htm
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/KVC/evolphi.htmPilosophy and Ethics Web Sites
Internet Ethics LibraryThe Evolution of Ethics: An Introduction to Cybernetic Ethics
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Revised edition ©1999-2004.Any portion of this web site may be reproduced by college and university professors or government agencies on eight and one-half by eleven sheets of Xerox paper in spiral or velo bound form only. Copyright must be acknowledged in copies and course readers that are intended for sale. Permission to resell in this form not required. This license to copy expires May 1, 2005.
The Evolution of Ethics: An Introduction to Cybernetic Ethics Soft cover edition ISBN 0-9610450-0-0 $11.65.key Notes: ords: evolutionary ethics, A theroy of ethical evolution, A theory od genetics and ethics, Additions to the text by Sarah Bromberg April 18, 2004 at 12:48 PM Send this version out for editing. Check onther links not part of the book for errors.
unedited notes on first principles and ethical relatity
The Evolution of Ethics
Unedited Comments and definitions
Updated 1/29/05
version 9.1