Warwick Fox's Systems Ethics

Just reading a bit of Warwick Fox in the library today. He's an Australian philosopher who comes froma deep ecology background but has apparently since distanced himself from that sorta thing. Either way, his book, A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature and the Built Environment aims to develop a General Theory of Everything for ethics. From the brief bit I had time to read, tt's an interesting approach, not that nicely written, but quite powerful.

The basis is his distinction between three different types of relationships - fixed cohesion, responsive cohesion and discohesion.

Responsive Cohesion

“the relational quality of responsive cohesion may be said to exist whenever the elements or salient features of things can be things can be characterised in terms of interacting (either literally or metaphorically) with each other in mutually modifying ways such that these mutually modifying interactions serve (at least functionally if not intentionally) to generate or maintain an overall cohesive order” pp72

“responsive cohesion is cohesion that arises through the mutual responsiveness of the elements or salient features of the matter under consideration.” pp72

So this sort of mutually modifying relationship, to me, indicates that determining power is diffused among the various elements of the system (there is no necessary equality of power though), but maintains their interdependence. This is in contrast to fixed cohesion and discohesion.

“fixed forms of cohesion can also shatter or collapse into their apparent opposite, that is, discohesion. We see this in the domain of politics, for example, every time a dictatorship is overcome by a revolutionary movement that initiates a period of chaos and lawlessness. In fact we see it when any rigid structure is overwhelmed by internal or externally imposed forces and shatters into pieces. Thus, rather than representing any kind of “move in the direction of” discohestion, this kind of change from fixed cohesion to discohesion is typically abrupt...Equally, order can forcefully be imposed upon a chaotic situation, as, say, when a new dictatorial regime emerges from civil chaos and imposes a strict order overnight.” pp82-3

So fixed cohesion distributes power unequally, so that a strong hierarchy emerges, whereas discohesion disperses it, but via independence, creating a situation of anarchy.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea, but I think the divisions are mainly only useful conceptually. In reality, especially in social systems, there is always a form of responsive cohesion, but the distributions and methods of mediating this response differ. The state, though it would appear to be a classic fixed cohesion, exhibits responsive cohesion, both internally and externally. It must respond to the pressure of interest groups in order to maintain its legitimacy, although it does, on occasion, ignore these groups altogether (a la Balir in the Iraq War).In fact, the limited responsive cohesion of the state could be seen as the defining principle of its hegemony.

Self-Organisation and Emergence

Been looking over a few articles on modularity this evening (and being distracted from my work) and found one article with two particularly interesting definitions. I'll finish the article tomorrow and maybe write up some more. For now, here are my thoughts on the definitions.

Emergence

Emergence is a classical concept in systems theory, where it denotes the principle that the global properties defining higher order systems or "wholes" (e.g. boundaries, organization, control, ...) can in general not be reduced to the properties of the lower order subsystems or "parts". Such irreducible properties are called emergent.

Self-Organisation

Self-organization may be defined as a spontaneous (i.e. not steered or directed by an external system) process of organization, i.e. of the development of an organized structure. The spontaneous creation of an "organized whole" out of a "disordered" collection of interacting parts, as witnessed in self-organizing systems in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology ..., is a basic part of dynamical emergence.

So, now I'm thinking of writing a sci-fi novel where the revolution is referred to as The Emergence. It's even better than the Singularity!

But anyway, the second definition is particularly useful. If we see the capitalist system as a whole, and do not conceptualise the working class as a discrete, identifiable (i.e. ordered) element within this system, we can see the development of a socialist society as a process of organisation.

In this process, the working class moves from a "'disordered' collection of interacting parts" which share basic characteristics, to a highly ordered group. This group then engulfs particular elements of the system as a whole while discarding or destroying others, so that we can say that a new society emerges.

The role of the revolutionary organisation then becomes guiding this process of self-organisation in such a way that the new society can emerge.

Constructing a Story

A Story is constructed from a situation. It takes this complex situation and uses it to produce a wholly new form of content. It is a way in and thus contains all the practical and ideological baggage of accessing, understanding and expressing this situation, mediated by the formal necessity of expressing it as a story (or an opinion piece, etc.).

The formal necessity means that the publicising of the situation is mediated by a specific form that itself contains ideological elements, structural requirements and immediate practical concerns.

Example: the famed Jan Moir article on Stephen Gately

The situation was that SG had been found dead in his apartment. He had died (in his sleep I think) after returning home from a night out. Himself and his civil partner had invited another man to stay with them that night. The coroner had preliminarily announced that the death was natural. The family had stated that there was a history of congenital heart problems.

The story constructed brought together these facts, and ordered them into an opinion piece, with a specific aim - to provoke sensations of disturbed moral conscience in the readers.

It did this by emphasising the aspects of the situation that suited a moralistic reading - homosexuality, civil partnerships, drugs - and discounting the elements that undermined this - coroner's statement, family's statement.

So, elements of the situation are worked into a coherent piece in such a way as to produce a particular effect upon the readers. In this case, Moir misjudged her readers, and what was produced was outrage against her, not a sneaking reinforcement of homophobia.

The key distinction between Red-tops and broadsheets is what range of responses they attempt to elicit in the readership. Redtops favour strong emotions like outrage, fear, disgust, scorn, etc., while the broadsheets confirm their readers' self perception as alert observers of the world around them, able to grasp all sides of complex situations, etc.

The Producers

The starting point for the analysis of any cultural product (call it text, or whatever you please) is to see it as a productive system. It aims to produce a certain complex of effects upon the person who receives it, views it, interacts with it.

A work that can be said to fail, is a work that does not produce the effects for which it was intended. Artaud. Melville. Bialystock & Bloom.

When we talk about genre films, or genre fiction, we are referring to the effects that the work will visit upon us, the reason that we pick it up, go to the cinema. Action, romance. Each of these words conveys, in a broad sense, the set, or range of personal responses upon which the work will play. Failure then, is also a frustration of our expectation.

When we identify this range, we can then discuss technical and ideological issues. A certain method of montage, cinematographic style, etc., or gender roles, construction of space, etc. these can be assessed, broken up, and reinserted into the understanding as a whole. But technical and ideological are not separate. Not at all. Psycho-cam in Halloween, strong arms in Mills & Boon.

We must ask why our expected responses are played on in specific ways, what modes of behaviour this presumes, and what this (often publically enacted) call-response principle reinforces. Aka, why do boring people like stupid movies & why do artschool wankers like lame-ass pretentious movies?

Modular organisation

Another useful quote from Linked, this time on modular organisation in complex networks, a particular focus of mine these days:

Hartwell and colleagues jumped into the middle of this debate by proposing that cells sustain a multitude of functions - i.e., multitask - thanks to a discrete modular organisation. According to this view, the network behind the cell is fragmented into groups of diverse molecules, or modules, each module being responsible for a different cellular function. As modules are connected via a few links to other modules, the network behind the cell is similar to Granovetter's circle of friends, where those within the same circle know each other well and communication with other circles is maintained by a few weak ties...Modularity is a defining feature of most complex systems. Indeed, departmentalisation allows large companies to create relatively secluded groups of employees who work together to solve specific tasks; the Web is fragmented into heavily interlinked communities of Webpages whose creators share common interests; modularity in our intellectual and professional interests allows Amazon to offer book recommendations inspired by the reading patters of people within a comparable intellectual module; a modular computer design allows us to replace the old bulky screen with a flat panel display without redesigning the whole computer. Yet, a modular architecture is at odds with everything we have learned so far about complex networks. Most networks, from the cell to the World Wide Web, are scale free, held together by a few hubs. By virtue of the many links hubs possess, they must be in contact with nodes from numerous modules. Therefore modules cannot be that isolated after all, resulting in a fundamental conflict between the known scale-free architecture and the modular hypothesis.
(pp231-2)

So the obvious question for me is how to model a modular architecture for da wissum, so it can do specialised tasks more effectively. Answers (with diagrams) on a postcard.

Linked

Currently reading Linked, a book about networks, mainly an introduction to the work behind all that hoo-ha. Interesting and easy to read, and starting to provide some useful nuggets. Like this

The surprising discovery of power laws in the Web forced us to acknowledge the hubs. The slowly decaying power law distribution accomodates such highly linked anomalies in a natural way. It predicts that each scale-free network will have several large hubs that will fundamentally define the network's topology. The finding that most networks of conceptual importance, ranging from the World Wide Web to the network within the cell, are scale-free gave legitimacy to hubs. We would come to see that they determine the structural stability, dynamic behavious, robustness, and error and attack tolerance of real networks. They stand as proof of the highly important organising principles that govern network evolution.

(pp71-71)