International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

Heinz von FÖRSTER wrote in a letter to Monika BRÖCKER "As you know, it is for me of decided importance to separate ethics and morality once and for all. Morality is characterized, as you will remember, by two points. The first being that every statement, every rule, every law of morality is directed to the other. The decalog is a good example: "thou shall not kill", "thou shall I not covet thy neighbor's wife", etc. etc.

The second point being that the authorities, that postulate these laws, are themselves not subject to these laws"(H.von Förster & M. Bröcker, p. xix, 2002) (In the german original)

About the first point, von Förster observes that it reflects the self-organizing nature in any society. And as to the second point, enforced obedience is the mechanism that forever in the past guaranteed the maintenance of self-organizing society.

However when it comes to ethics, von Förster is generally quite elusive: "Ethics is implicit in what I say". Which apparently means ethical responsability is not merely to comply with rules by obedience, but to decide for oneself what should be said or done, i.e. to take the full personal responsability for one's behavior and actions. von Forster concludes: "I just remembered that perhaps the best analogy to the problem of speaking about ethics appears in Chinese philosophy, where they have the difficulty of speaking about the Tao"(Ibid) and "Ethics do not contain guidelines"(p. 14)

It could possibly be said that morality is compulsive within a prescriptive view of an autopoietic Society, while ethics delegates decisions to individuals endowed with a deeper understanding of their relations within society whose global survival is the only guarantee for everybody's personal survival.

And, after quite - long soul- searching, Heinz von Förster concludes "Ethics is the behavior with which I make myself responsible for my actions"(p. 49, 2002)

The known psychiatrist and logotherapist Victor FRANKL considers that "moral"can survive only if it becomes rooted in existencial and phenomenological experience. This is again transfers us from a top-down autocratic concept of morality (implying mere pasive compliance) to a bottom-up constructive ethics based on individual and personal evaluations of the effective or potential consequences of one's own behavior.

Even so, it is still very probable that such evaluations will be tainted by psychological constraints of cultural origin and even group membership (the much praised "esprit de corps" or "spirit of the hive")

The whole matter remains, even in systemic terms, an elusive conundrum.

→ Autopoiesis; Commons; Conversation; Decision making; Free will