Cybernetics and Ecological Ethics “The Real-living-system” approach Gihan Sami Soliman [*] University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences g.ssoliman@hotmail.co.uk Submitted to the United Nation Post2015 Preparatory publication to the
Sustainability Cybernetics Journal© ISSN 2057-0430 http://icea-academic-resources.co.uk
It’s impossible to go through ecological
- leaves no space for environmental
ethics debate without ever wondering;
ethics. One of them, respectively, is
but what is nature? In an attempt to
reductional of species and landscapes
reach a balanced position that would
while the other might deem all ethical
work
ethics,
choices as morally “good” in a “natural
Peterson (1999) suggested a sort of
fallacy”. The solution according to
“productive tension between realism
Peterson would be a “constrained”
and
For
realism" which, as attractive as it
constructivists, nature is appreciated
seems, lacks justification through a
as a cultural product. It is either
mono-speciality perspective.
for
environmental
constructivism”.
structured linguistic
exclusively interpretation
through of
the
All systems according to James G.
objects,
or
Miller’s (1978) Living System Theory
physically structured by and through
(cited in Umpleby, 2004) process data,
human cultures. Naturalists, on the
energy and/or matter. This applies to
other hand, regard human beings as
biological systems; such as cells,
one species among millions of other
molecules, organs and organism, as
living organisms and natural objects
well as self-regulatory machines and
contributing to the structure of life on
social entities such as corporates and
earth. Peterson did not challenge any
nations (Umpleby, 2004). Energy and
of such “appreciations” in principle but
matter are inter-reversible and often
rather in praxis: Adopting any of such
treated as “one entity” in biology, while
views in their extremes - as she notes
in physics the law regulating them is
correspondent
natural