International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

"Code of conduct and responsability that agents of change ought to follow when designing systems" (J.van GIGCH, 1978, p.590).

van GIGCH states: "The ethics of systems is concerned with the values held by the planners and the designers of systems and the consonance of these values with those of the recipients. These issues also revolve around the problem of obtaining consensus for the implementation of systems acceptable to all" (p.75).

However, this is still the "ought of the ought". Besides, general acceptability is necessary, but not sufficient. While in systemic ethics, values are basic, so are however, for all stakeholders, sound knowledge and understanding of why the situation is as it is, and which are the real (i.e., factual, not merely based on idealism or ideology) possibilities to modify it, if needed. No sound systemic ethics is possible without well informed understanding. In this century, we constructed many hells paved with good intentions. In this sense, see for example J. WARFIELD on Global Design and underconceptualization.

van GIGCH himself takes good care to study what he calls the "ethics of spillover effects". He shows how advantages and disadvantages of any change should be pondered. He also defines a comparative ethics of goals and extends himself to the ethics of social responsibility and general conservation. He ends up with some reflections about the "realist versus the idealist" (p.145-68).

The crux of systemic ethics is that, notwithstanding some important contributions, their precise content has not yet been clearly expressed, nor unanimously accepted.

According to A. BAHM (1992), ethics is the "science of the ought". Systemics do indeed reveal some aspects of general organization (in ecosystems, in sociosystems, etc…) which formerly were widely ignored or undervalued.

In this perspective, some disorganizing activities, even when unwittingly pursued, may be judged unethical. We should become aware of our new responsability to manage organizations and natural and artificial systems in non-destructive or damaging ways.

It becomes obvious that such situations cannot be correctly (i.e. ethically) managed without a good understanding of complexity. The systemic view thus amplifies our ethical commitment by introducing a critical new dimension to our worldview.

While until now ethics related only to relationships among humans, it becomes now urgent to extend it to a concern for life in general in an ecological perspective, would it even be merely to maintain the survival potential of mankind itself and of many human groups in particular.

J.van GIGCH formulated the basics of what he calls "Metaethics" (1990). He thus distinguishes three ethical levels:

1. The inferior level, i.e. the user's one, i. e. of individual rights and duties, regulated through legal rules and norms;

2. The normative level, established by theologians and social scientists, wherein concepts like "good", "bad", "correct", "incorrect", etc… are produced in relation to behavior standards;

3. The metalevel, where epistemological and logical aspects are considered and ethical judgements are evaluated as "true" or "false ".

Even at that upper level, we still need criteria… and mankind accelerated evolution itself tend to extend these criteria. Metaethics should correspond to metasystems.

Some very general tentative systemic ethical principles may be formulated in the following ways:

- What is good for the system should also be good for its parts.

- No part has the right to inflict damage to the system to which it belongs.

- What is good for the system should not be nocive or destructive for the metasystem, or subsystems.

- What is good for the system should not be nocive or destructive for another system.

- Act always so as to increase the number of choices (von FOERSTER).

Systemic ethics should also explore the following ethical problems:

- What are the limits of the system's right to fight for its survival? Which criteria should be established and by whom?

- Has the system the right to destroy one of its parts, if dangerous for its own survival? Which criteria should be established and by whom?

Systemic ethics is thus many-dimensional, including bio-ethics, ecological ethics, economical ethics, socio-ethics, etc., all of which becomes translated into the ethics of personal behavior, and also should become integrated in the law system, both in law itself and in the judge's ethics, who, apart of a purely legal viewpoint, should take responsability for the positive and, or negative consequences of his/ her decisions (E. GRÜN, 1995, p.66).

Systemic ethics is becoming an urgent must in an ever more complex and integrated world and should be applied to ecological, economic, political, social and scientific research situations, if gigantic disasters are to be avoided.

With the progressive self-construction of a man-planet system, the relations between individual and groups ethics with a planetary eco-ethics start to loom larger and larger. The following comments by G. HARDIN help to make the point:

- "The disadvantages of each new intervention in the web of life increase with population size (1976, p. 65)

- "One of the principal aims of the automation is to purge control systems of ego (p.1 05)

- "Beyond the limits of his confining skin, no man can own anything. ''Property'' refers not to things owned by the rights granted by society; they must periodically be re-examined in the light of social justice (p. 127)

- "We are not free to violate the laws of nature. We become free when we recognize their necessity"(p. 132)

This last comment becomes crystal clear in systemic terms with the following quote:

- "The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time the act is performed"(p. 134)

Of course, there are at least two fundamental difficulties arising from HARDIN's "ecological ethics":

1. A satisfactory knowledge and understanding of the "state of the system"(at village, or at planetary level) is quite difficult to obtain individually, still more difficult to reach at the community level…and still more so at the global mankind level

2. Naked greed is in most cases a much more powerful motive than yearning for common good. An it leads ultimately to global mankind parasitism on its cosmic home

Both factors could easily become the ingredients for global disaster