BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

MORALITY 4)

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"In a social system, the totality of the conditions for deciding the bestowal of esteem or disdain within the system "(K. BAUSCH, Glossary, Pers. comm., 2002)

This definition has been inspired by N. LUHMANN's views. It clearly describes morality as a socio-cultural values defining code, most generally based on non-rational mythical beliefs or religious faith. Morality is a symbolic generalization that reduces the full reflexive complexity of double contingent ego/alter relations… and by this generalization opens up 1) room for the freeplay of conditionings, and 2) the possibility of reconstructing complexity through the binary schematism esteem/disdain".

Morality is thus essentially a social set of constraints. However, it is clear that the obedience to these constraints is basically a mere insurance against getting in trouble.

Ethics on the contrary engages personal responsibility for one's own behavior, and may in some cases lead to a rebellion against social constraints imposed by moral in the meaning of LUHMANN.

Consequently, morality is not universal in an absolute sense. Some specific behavior can easily be praised, or even made obligatory in one culture and abhored and even prohibited in another. Examples abound.

Any morality, specific to a culture, is transmitted by conditioning, generally since the most tender age. It thus becomes ingrained and escapes any critical reappraisal.

This leads to a set of standardized behaviors, not anymore discusses by anybody (in German "Gleichschaltung")

In this way many possible conflicts are avoided eliminated or at least made infrequent and much more easily evaluated and reduced within a community that obey stable and clear rules and prescriptions.

Morality is, or better, moralities are thus basically social devices and as such quite different and more limited in scope than ethics, which is more concerned with the deepest human nature, man's relation with his living the deepest human nature, man's relation with his living and non-living environment and the most existencial question marks. (See H.von FOERSTER and M. BRÖCKER, 2002)

→ Ethics and Morality

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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