Rudolf Kaehr Dr.@
ThinkArt Lab Glasgow
Abstract
Ethic maxims, the human rights declaration, guidelines of comportment are all first of all texts, mostly written in sentences of a Western language. Hence, deconstructions and diamondizations of general maxims and human right declarations have to be risked to find a more acceptable framework of ethics for the 21st century.
From another story we might have experienced a first conflict involving ethics.
Without doubt, our fish had a knowledge that he was living in water and not a perception; there was nothing to see at all. What he could perceive was his complex world full of strange stuff, and this funny fish girl. But no water. What the fish girl didn’t know, neither Heinz, was that he properly acted according to Heinz’ CybernEthical Imperative:
Always act to augment the amount of possibilities of the others!
But he, our fish, not Heinz, didn’t accept the fish girl’s ignorance to try to reduce the necessities of his own insights. Therefore, intuitively, his dual imperative of Heinz’s altruistic maxim came into force.
Never contemplate to reduce the amount of necessities of yours!
This dual maxim has to be set into a complementary maxim to conflict the Golden Rule of ethics. This is not simply involving a negation of selfless altruism, hence selfishness, but a first step into a liberation of ethics from ontology.
Only if we accept the slavery of classical logics, which is declared as universal, natural and ultimate, again and again, we would have to believe that a rejection of altruism must necessarily be an affirmation of selfish egoism.
For classical logic, negation is necessarilly discrimination.
The fish was not selfish but true to the alter-ego of his fish girl.
This intricate togetherness of a dual imperative for actions, which always are a composition of actions and never occur in the majesty of a singularity, is highly intriguing and needs, thus, a formalization in an appropriate formalism, like the diamond category theory, which is offering additional space for the togetherness of complementary and antidromic statements.
Therefore, the two imperatives have to be embedded into a complementary and reflectional interplay:
Such a reflectional turn is abstracting from the object-relatedness of classical modalities. Modality in classical logics are modalities of truth. That is, a proposition is not only an assertion, but in a modal form, its assertivity is put into modalities. Hence, a proposition is necessarily (possibly, actually) true or false. That is, what is mentioned has to correspond the mentioned reality.
Reflectional propositions or statements tries to reflect on the modality as such and not on modal truth conditions of a proposition. Hence, their aim is not truth or falsehood of a proposition but the modalities of modalities, the necessity of necessity or the necessity of possibility, etc., not simply of a single proposition but of a textual complementarity. Such a reflectional turn is neither covered nor intended by the classical modal construction of multi-modal logics.
Table 1. Second-order modalities of classical modalities
| Modalities | necessity | possibility | actuality |
| necessity | necessity of necessity | necessity of possibility | necessity of possibility |
| possibility | possibility of necessity | possibility of possibility | possibility of actuality |
| actuality | actuality of necessity | actuality of possibility | actuality of actuality |
Hence, fish-maxims are always double-maxims, fish- and bird-maxims, water and air, both at once.
Immanuel Kant: “Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, daß sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde."
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
"The ethic of reciprocity or "The Golden Rule" is a fundamental moral principle which simply means ‘treat others as you would like to be treated.’ It is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights. Principal philosophers and religious figures have stated it in different ways."
It is a maxim or principle of deconstruction to question what principal philosophers have stated in what ever principal way.
As a consequence of the Golden Rule paradigm, other paradigms of ethics can not be accepted because they are violating the human rights canon.
Hence, societies with different ethics are under-developed and have to be educated and elevated to the standards of the Golden Rule paradigm. In other words, who is not following the Western ethics is in danger to be/come bad and evil.
The epistemological presupposition of the Golden Rule is quite simple: We are all the same; hence reciprocal. This is the symmetric Ego-Ego-concept of communication, which is excluding the asymmetry of the I-Thou-dialogical concept of interactionality. This Ego-Ego-concept of communication appears in a more noble form in all progressive sociologies as the Ego-Alter-Ego-difference of communication and interaction. The idea is that there is an Ego and an Alter-Ego, both interacting together and towards the world. But an Alter-Ego is still an Ego if the difference between Ego and Alter-Ego has no logical and epistemological consequences.
Between Ego and Alter-Ego a strict symmetry is imposed. Otherwise, that’s the fear of weak thinkers, an asymmetry would destroy the reciprocity of the Golden Rule, and with that contradict the Declaration of Human Rights.
But everybody who has taken the risk to do some more profound studies would have learned about the dialogical asymmetry between I and Thou. An asymmetry which is guaranteeing the autonomy of different subjects and is not suppressing them under the umbrella of unified subjectivity as Egos. An I-subjectivity is always only for itself an Ego, all other subjects are appearing in their multitude as Thou-subjects. This statement holds for all subjects, hence each Thou-subject is for itself an Ego and the former Ego appears as a Thou-subject. It seems to be clear that the dialogical asymmetry between I and Thou is based on a heterarchic distribution of subjectivity and has nothing to do with the classic form of hierarchy between Ego and its mirrored Alter.
Nevertheless, the classical Ego-Alter-Ego difference, is conceptually, as a duality, not handeled in a equal and symmetric way. Obviosly, Alter is modeled as a mirror of Ego, hence establishing an asymmetry between both. First there is Ego, then Alter. Even if the contrary is declared in sociological theories, there is no logic at hand which could scientifically support the propaganda.
Because of the Ego-Ego-communication we are in the Golden Rule; and because of the reciprocality of the Golden Rule we are in an Ego-Ego-communication. Both together is well at home with classical logic, i.e. rationality and ontology, i.e. reality.
Hence, the Ego-Ego-communication model is presupposing a general reality and a general rationality, which are guaranteeing the reasonability of the Ego-Ego-communication for “everyone”. This constellation is modeled as world-model I.
It is still worth an effort to analyze the sociological theories of Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens, in respect to their presuposed Ego/Alter-Ego-based dialogism, to learn about their failure to develop a theory of interactionality and reflectionality compatible with the needs of contemporary societies.
Act this and that way!
Such a maxim is oriented to the objects of actions.
Firs-order maxims are embroild in heroic or tragic paradoxes:
"Hobson's Choice: Act selfishly and cause collective disaster, or act altruistically and aid someone else who is acting selfishly. Either way, selfishness wins.”
Shankar Vedantam said it agan:
Edella Schlager summed up neatly: "Rational individuals are trapped. To act rationally, to pursue one's self-interest, leads to collective ruin. To act irrationally, to place the collective interest above one's self-interest, exposes one to exploitation.
How would a second-order formulation of the Hobbes paradox change the scenario?
Ethical paradoxes are formulated in the framework of logic. It is still a taboo to question the logical framework used in ethical argumentations.
Augment the amount...
This formulation is still object-related. To augment the number of choices is presupposing the existence of a number of possibilities in a pre-given space of choices.
More profundelly, the augmentation advice is presuming an arithmetical system for the measurement of the augmentation, which might easily contradict the ethical intentions considered.
Both logic and arithmetic, are fundamental for ethics. Despite their proclaimed universality, they haven’t fallen from the ski. Both are implementations of the actions and interactions of counting and reasoning in a specific world model.
Second-order formulations are concerned with the modalities of actions. Modalities like possibility, necessity, actuality are abstracting from a direct object-related approach. But the quetion still remains: Modalities of what?
The general formulation for a modal logical proposition still is: “Necessarily (possibily, actualy) true."
The modality of actuality is understood by modal logic as reality. But reality in modal logic is not a modality. Modal logic fears to disconnect from ontology. E.g, the actuality of reality is a modality on the modal or reflexional level of the other modalities: necessity and possibility.
The ethics of modal logic shall be “Don’t lose contact to reality!”
Reflexivity Axiom: 
The Axiom of Distribution: 
(P 
P) 
(
P 
P)
The Axiom of Reflexivity - If necessarily P then (actually) P - is guaranteeing the connection between modality and propositionality, and the hegemony of propositional actuality.
The Axiom of Distribution is guaranteeing the homogeneity of the modal space. If the whole is modal, then the parts are modal, too. There is no rupture involved.
Technically, modal logic is an augmentation of logical possibilities based on propositional logic. Hence, the fundaments are guaranteeing classical rationality and its corresponding reality.
In this sense, modal logical axioms have two functions, one is to connect modalities with propositionality, the other is to develop the rules genuine to modalities.
Everybody is happy to be connected to reality. What is not mentioned is the simple fact that such a concept of reality, connected with its rationality, is excluding any trace of subjectivity. In its blindness it cannot see that the notion of reality is itself a human construction.
A first step to implement subjectivity into the very paradigm of classical rationality and reality, i.e. world-model I, could be achieved by the attempt to modalize the classical understanding of subjectivity, i.e. its Ego-based concept of human beings.
Second-order formulation would have to state modal constellations, like “necessarily possible” or “possibly actual” or “actually possibly necessary”, which would have their own realm of reasonability, independently of an anchor in semantics or ontology like it happens with modal logics based on propositional logic.
The whole hierarchy of modal logic could be deconstructed in the sense that the truth and falsehood of a logical proposition becomes itself a modality.
Hence, sentences like “the truth of possibility” in contrast to “the falsehood of necessity” would become formally accessible.
Grammatologically, what has to be tackled is the copula “is” in all those sentences: "X is actually (necessarily, possibly) true (false)".
Especially, if taken into consideration, that the copula “is” isn’t as natural and universal as we learnt to belief.
First, there are languages without such a copula and surely without the logical and ontological hegemony of the is-copula and its is-abstraction.
Second, there is space enough in liberated formal writing systems to develop formalisms beyond any connotation to the is-paradigm of ontology and logic.
All that would fit better together with the constructivist idea that reality itself is not pe-given but a societal construction.
Existential (or eksistential) modalities are relating to the existence of the subject in question.
Existential questions are basic for existential maxims, which are beyond object- and modality-relatedness. (PolySystemics)
In reduced terms, we could say, Heideggers project of a ‘destruction’ of classical ontology was involved in a modalization of Being. A first step towards a formalization of some aspects of Heidegger’s intentions had been undertaken by Oskar Becker.
Ethical behavior - in world-model IV - is neither action-, nor object-based.
This situation of an ontology-free ethics might occur if all possible restrictions of human rights will be resolved and stripped off from their objectivists threads, the declaration fulfilled and becoming superfluous. What then will be the positive and prospective declaration of being a human being beyond “reason and conscience” and the “spirit of brotherhood."?
Hence there should be a new, say, trans-humanistic maxim, to create possibilities for such a situation beyond humanity as we know it today.
I’m not talking here about politics and the industrial-military complex. Neither about the blinded fantasies of the Ethics of Synthetic Biology.
Costas Douzinas, THE END OF HUMAN RIGHTS
‘If the twentieth century is the epoch of human rights’, Professor Costas Douzinas writes in his book The End of Human Rights, ‘their triumph is, to say the least, something of a paradox. Our age has witnessed more violations of their principles than any of the previous and less “enlightened” epochs’. ‘No degree of progress’, in the words of famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida, ‘allows one to ignore that never before in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on earth’.
After all, there is no reason to accept this misery as a paradox. It seems to be in harmony with the Declaration of the Human Rights as they are presupposing a ("brotherhood") logic of exclusion and discrimination.
Chez Maxime, the rules are different. There is no maître de cuisine which is dictating the staff, nor is it the costumer, which is dictating his/hers special desires to the restaurant. Everyone is costumer and maître of each other. Therefore, Chez Maxime, a new kind of Awareness Marketing, with its new esthetics of Awareness Fashion, is risked in the bid against the hierarchical dumbiness of local competitors.
The new saison started Chez Maxime’s with the experiment of double maxims. If successful, the next challenge the maître will risk will be the speciality of the diamondization of maxims.
Hence, customers had, as it is written on the invitation cards, to agree to the double maxim:
To the very surprise of the costumers, the courses of the menue explained in detail and with great raffinement the secrete ingredients and their combinations how to compose the new contract.
In fact, the mechanism of diamondization of Heinz’s CybernEthic maxim towards its complementary formule is simple but not without risks. In technical terms, it is a direct application of the diamond strategies to Heinz’s maxim.
First step: Dualization
always - never,
act - contemplate,
augment - reduce,
possibilities - necessities,
others - yours.
Second Step: Acception and rejection
There is only a little jump to find the diamond form of the two complementary maxims:
- first, reject the dualities as differences,
- second, accept the dualities as unities.
That is, neither "always" nor "never" is accepted for the rejectional position; and both-at-once of "always" and "never" of the rejection are accepted for the acceptional position. And this applies to all differences involved.
With such a rejectional decision, the duality of altruism/selfishness is moved out of relevancy.
Hence, the question, put in abbreviated form, is: what is neither altruism nor egoism?
And: what is at once both, altruism and egoism?
Obviously, we are back to the simple, but in no way inocent question of the meaning of the copula “is"? It is in fact, not about egoism and altruism, it is about “is".
Transitions between modality in classical modal logic are ruled by negation.
♦ P <-> ¬ O ¬ P: The possibility of P is equal the negation of the necessity of not- P.
O P <-> ¬ ♦ ¬ P: The necessity of P is equal the negation of the possibility of not-P.
In other words, necessity (O) and possibility (♦) form together a dual pair of modal operators.
Hence, the diamond complementarity of the maxims is not represented by a conjunction of classical modalities. Simply, because diamond complementarity is not (logical) duality. Complementarity means, that both parts holds at once. Logically, a contradiction for dualities.
Maxime’s exiting program doesn't end with the double seance. Things have developed much further. After the logically and ethically intriguing trans-gender shows a deconstructionist debate started in the transhumanist lodge.
Kantian and Second-order cybernetic ethics, CybernEthics, which are, en vogue with avantgarde thinkers in Germany and some parts of Scandinavia, Japan and Taiwan, are ego-based conceptions related by the singularity of the maxim to anonymous others, which could be ourself. If we want to be generous, they may even involve a dialogical I-Thou-Encounter (Buber), at least as a projection, and surely as an intention. But they are in no way including, structurally, the ours- and the others-positions, necessarily to build a real-world dialogical understanding of interactionality and reflectionality of human actions.
Hence, in what ever disguise they dominate the academic circus, there shows are not achieving the slightest irritation among experienced spectators and temporary involved actors.
Second-order cybernethics is Kantian based and is dreaming together with Martin Buber and Victor Frankel of a dialogical paradigm of ethics.
It is a direct conclusion of the I-Thou-relationship, as it was conceived by the philosopher Gotthard Gunther, which is in fact a trichotomic relationship of I, Thou and It, to introduce a complementarity of the maxims. My maxim is different from your maxim, even if it has the exact same wording, because it is positioned at a different position in the grid of contexturality, which just marks the difference between me and you. By negotiation we can, if necessary, agree to a common position, mediating My- and Your-position together, constructing Our-position. The complementary position to Our-position is the Others-positions, which is the place where the otherness of Others can take place.
And further more, it is a direct conclusion, of the I-Thou-Ours-Others-interaction to introduce as the necessarily kernel of ethics in the 21st century the diamond form of maxims. That is, ethical sentences, in this paradigm of ethical orientation, are necessarily 4-fold and antidromic, at least.
Dialogical systems are able to balance the differences between different points of view, different world-models, different cultures, towards a kind of a harmony in the Pythagorean, Confucian or Cybernetic sense. But they are closed to harmony; no surprise, or undefinable and undecidable event, the Other, is positively welcomed by a structural place to happen as such. What remains in such a world-view is fear and demonization of the unknown. Harmonic systems have to harmonize and to defend against disturbance and disruptions.
Diamond systems have to harmonize harmonic systems with the “complementarity” of their self-understanding.
Hence, the time of ethics as a narration, written and based in “clara & distincta perciperem” (Descartes) and logical deduction has to come to a closure. Leibniz’s dream of a lingua universalis and a calculator rationis might serve as a hint to use polycontextural scriptural systems to formulate in languages and calculate within game-based poly-algorithms ethical constellations, surpassing any narrational and mathematical configurations, of post-modern challenges.
"The written form creates in the law a difference between sign and meaning, between text and interpretation: ‘All law set down in writing is...law that has to be interpreted’”. (Luhmann)
To sum up the debate of the last meeting a Chez Maxime’s clandestine circle, I will give a short sketch of what I could understand in the darkness of the club athmosphère. It all turns about the anthropological metaphor of I, You, We and Others in the game of ethics and its logics. Some voices strongly emphasized the metaphorical character of the proposed models, and insisted, that, especially, from the positions of the Others, there is no need at all, to restrict the considerations to anthropology and human beings at all. One member of this clandestine circle made it clear that the idea of distributed subjectivity is a cosmological approach and that an application onto human beings and society is only a very special case and it would be a dangerous restriction. In respect of the category of the Others such a restriction to humanity only could easily become dangerously provincial and not prepared to meet other, say, extra-terrestrial species.
Ego-based ethics for human beings are codified in the Universal Declaration for Human Rights. Human rights are declared as universal. So are logical laws; they are declared as natural and universal.
Such an Ego-based type of ethics relies, in its reasonability, on classic logic, codified by a system of affirmation of truth. Logical laws are ruling ethical laws. It wouldn’t be of much help to declare ”Human beings are free and are not free”. By logical laws this would be a contradiction, hence useless.
Because logic is declared as universal it holds for everybody, i.e. for every human being in the same way.
Each empirical subject as a human being has to accept to be subordinated under this Ego-centered rationality and its general rules of logic. There are no different logical laws, one for me and one for you. The empirical differences between me and you have no impact on logic and ethics. This is without doubt a great achievement in the liberation of the subject from tyranny.
Hence, the epistemological configuration of such a rationality and its corresponding reality is an Ego-It-relationship.
How does reasonable and ethical communication between empirical subjects in an I-It-model happen?
Communication between empirical subjects about empirical reality happens under the silent agreement of a general rationality and a general reality. There is no need for negotiation about these pre-given agreements to built a common Our-domain, the common Our-domain is pre-given as cultural framework. Communication happens in this framework on an informational level, technically as information processing with all its technology.
Ethics for human beings, based on the I-It-difference, is asking for permanent adjusting empirical actions of subjects to meet the rules, laws and principles of the pre-given Our-domain of rationality and reality.
Not only European philosophers but also Japanese thinkers have developed a concept of subjectivity and rationality which is not depending on a nivillation of the I-Thou-difference to an Ego-Alter-Ego configuration.
Especially Gotthard Gunther and Nishida Kitaro have developed a deep understanding into the trans-logical relevance of the I-Thou-difference by distributing it over different places, Kitaro’s topoi, logic of basho (Japanese: 場所) and Gunther’s grid of kenograms (Greek: κϵνο, γραμμη).
"To sum it up: A non-Aristotelian or trans-classical logic is a system of distributed rationality. Our traditional logic presents human rationality in a non-distributed form. This means: the tradition recognizes only one single universal subject as the carrier of logical operations. A non-Aristotelian logic, however, takes into account the fact that subjectivity is ontologically distributed over a plurality of subject-centres.” Gunther, 1962
The acceptance of the I-Thou-difference as a difference in the notion of subjectivity has profound consequences for the very concept of logic. As much as subjectivity is understood as distributed over I-subjectivity and Thou-subjectivity, each position of subjectivity is entitled an own and autonomous logic.
Communication between different subjects is not presuming a general subjectivity like in the I-It case but demands for a mediation of the different positions. Such a mediation is not a sublimation of both positions into a third position but the creation of a new, from both loci accepted, logical place of localizing the togetherness of the Ours. This new locus is localizing the Our-position into the matrix of the whole constellation.
Because such a system of a plurality of interacting logics, like polycontextural logics, necessary for a new ethics, are not yet established as accepted formal systems, ethics today is mainly reduced logically to the I-It-constellation by different applicative logical systems (deontics) and may add some ideological sugar to it by referring to an I-Thou-Our- or Ego-Alter-Ego-philosophy.
How does reasonable and ethical communication between empirical subjects in an I-Thou-It-world-view happen?
Communication between empirical subjects about empirical reality happens under the silent agreement of a general rationality and a questionable reality. There is no need for negotiation about the pre-given agreement about logic and rationality. But the understanding of reality has to be negotiated between the empirical subjects. Communication happens in this framework on an informational and a epistemological level.
Technically, such negotiations and their aim of mediation can be modeled and computationally supported by polycontextural logics. The Our-domain, hence is achieved by negotiation and mediation of different logical systems, representing different subject-centers, on the base a presupposed general rationality.
Ethics for human beings, based on the I-Thou-difference, is asking for permanent negotiation to create and construct the common Our-position.
To accept the otherness of the Others is a great challenge to humanity. Even if the ideal aim of full harmony between human beings and their organizations would have been achieved, say by negotiations and establishing the Our-world, it would be a dangerous restriction not to think about the structural possibility of the unpredictable otherness of such a harmonic togetherness. Even if both, rationality and reality, are liberated from their blindness and are not anymore in the role of silent presuppositions, there is no reason to get blinded by the structural possibility of the otherness of others.
The otherness is what cannot be predicted. What we can know is that we always have to count with it as the surprise of unpredictable events. What can be anticipated has a model in an acceptional domain and has lost, therefore, its unpredictable otherness.
Communicationally accessible are the Your/My-parts and the common Our-part of the interactional scheme. These communicational relationships, i.e., interactions, can be made as transparent as possible.
Further questioning of what could be the Others-part would clear some expectations. But everything what can be anticipated is losing its unpredictability. If the surprising new happened and after new experiences with it have been made, it can be asked about their aspects of unpredictibility, which happened despite the anticipating explorations.
These unpredictable experiences can be considered as belonging to the rejectional part of the system, only if its matching conditions, defined by the difference-relations, are realized. That is, if something totally different to the system happens, say an earthquake, then this experience is not a rejectional part of the communicational system of You-and-Me in question, but at least at first, something else.
After the unpredictible happened, it might be domesticated and modelled as a new acceptional part of the system. Hence the complexity of the system as a whole has been augmented by the domestication of the new experiences. It also has to be questioned what made the experience such different that it couldn’t be appreciated.
Hence, the rejectional part of the diamond can be questioned in advance and in retrospect by a new aspect of the general diamond format to be constructed.
How does reasonable and ethical communication between empirical subjects in an We-Others-model happen?
With all interactions and reflections inside and between communities as created Our-systems, the possibility of the unknown and undecidable beyond any harmony, the Otherness of Others, has to be acknowledged and structural space has to be given to let it happen without destroying the harmonic system.
Ageism is nothing what couldn’t easily be predicted. It is simply one item more in the growing list of recognized discriminations. The interesting question which remains is, how can it be predicted which existing discriminations are becoming a topic of awareness for the society and its laws.
What makes Chez Maxime’s so superbe is its clear refusal of any kind of ageist discrimination.
As far as I experience the consequences of Western ageism I have to apologies the academic reader to not to serve him or her or it with the intellectual treasures well saved in the tresors of knowledge, which he or she or it would deserve.
Because of that, I will feel free to use my own approach of post-academic research and thinking. As a consequence of such discriminations I cannot know if someone else behind the walls has developed similar ideas to mines and might have exposed them in a much better way. My own work, therefore, could easily turn out to be nothing more than a plagiat of my own thoughts.
"ageism ” in the postmodern economy.
American Anthropologist
June 1998, Vol. 100, No. 2, pp. 565-566
Posted online on January 27, 2005.
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Review: [untitled]
Peter Dear
Reviewed work(s): Lingua universalis: Kryptologie und Theorie der Universal-sprachen im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert by Gerhard F. Strasser
Isis, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 185-186 (review consists of 2 pages)
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator:: An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy
(Jaakko Hintikka Selected Papers)
J. Hintikka
Hardcover: 296 pages
Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (November 13, 1996)
Price: $189.00
Only 1 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Product Description
"Twentieth-century philosophy has tacitly been dominated by a deep contrast between universalist and model-theoretical visions of language. The role of this contrast is studied here in Peirce, Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Husserl, Heidegger and in the development of logical theory. Hintikka also develops a new approach to truth-definitions which strongly supports the model-theoretical view."
I don’t know if there is still 1 copy left, but thanks to Amazon ‘s generosity I’m entitled to have a wee glance. Also copyrighted, I will give a citation .
To my surprise the master of analytic philosophy and modern logic is mentioning Jacques Derrida and is developing an interesting comparison between his own work and Derrida’s deconstruction.
Jaakko Hintikka: Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator:: An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy (1996)
"And even though I am not a fan of Derrida's, a few comparative comments on the methodology of the study of historical as well as contemporary ideas is in order.” [...] As a slogan, I could therefore say that like Derrida I believe that contemporary philosophy and large parts of the history of philosophy are ripe to be deconstructed.
I nevertheless have three main objections to deconstructivism.
First, I will argue that there is no valid reason to think that the job that the deconstructivists are trying to do cannot be done equally well and better by means of traditional historical and logical means.
Second, I see no reason why deconstruction cannot be followed by reconstruction. [...].
Third, my most specific criticism of Derrida is that he is a largely unsuccessfull deconstructivist. He has never been able to deconstruct successfully a single truely significand centrally philosophical (logical, epistemological or metaphysical) idea, concentrating instead on half-baked suggestions on the social context of philosophical ideas. [...]
Later in this paper I will indicate how to deconstruct and reconstruct even the idea of elementary logic. [...]
This type of motivation of the ineffability thesis nevertheless relies on presuppositions of semantical context independence (compositionality, atomicity) which are far from obvious and in my considered judgment are in the last analysis unacceptable.” pp.2 , 9 (Copyrighted Material)
Unfortunately, I couldn’t learn about Hintikka’s deconstruction of the “so-called principle of compositionality”. Despite the fact that Derrida never understood himself as a deconstructionist, I have the feeling that Hintikka is (ab)using his name, according to academic usage, simply as a “Papiertiger”. At least, it is a relief to have left the Twentieth-Century for the 21st.
What is declared as a universal law is always excluding everyone else, which is not included into such a universal paradigm. This sentence is trivial only if we don’t have an idea of a concept of universality, which is surpassing its own singularity towards a multitude of universes, hence acknowledging a complexion of multi-verses.
In the 50s it would have been the aliens, today things are more terrestrial, the happy ones are now the Chinese.
Media and academics, like Michio Kaku1, are focused in their blindness on Muslim Fundamentalism, as everyone knows.
From an actional point of view, actions have to be composed. The maxims don’t tell yet much, how actions could be composed. It easily could be possible that the underlying rules of composition are just denying the possibility to realize the maxims.
Actions have to be composed in a reasonable way. With that, logic enters the game. And with that, Jaakko Hintikka’s de-/re-constructional studies of compositionability would be welcomed. My local public library didn’t got the finacial support to be a proud owner of Hintikka’s important work.
Antidromic aspects of thinking are not elicited by natural language or speech-act analysis. On a language level, linguistic games like palindromes, are a kind of an approximation to antidromy in the sense of diamond theory.
Logic and ethics behind human rights declaration and definitions are based on Indo-Germanic language analysis and its logic.
Transivity of actions: If A act B, B act C, then A act C.
Or nontransitivity of actions:
If A act B, B act C, then:
A act C || non(A act C) || neither-nor (A act C)
Some more differentiation of the action rule is possible.
Depending on the underlying logic, those "metaphoric" formal action rules, can be concretized and developed to a formal action calculus.
Depending on the context of actions, i.e., their semi-formal semantics, different rules have to be considered. The pure transitivity rule is working only for strictly formal relations, thus intransitivity or non-transitivity of action composition has to be considered, too.
Only if the composition of actions is realized, antidromic complementary actions have to be considered (1). If composition is not happening, no antidromic action is involved (2). In this case, composition of actions is intransitive. “An intransitive action either 
or 
or both.” (Kohout)
I don’t see, why the neither-nor case of the intransitive composition 
, i.e., 
has to be excluded (3). It occurs as the dual of Kohout’s 
∨ 
. In other words, in a non-transitive interaction either action f or action g or both action f and g together, (f ∧ g), might happen. But for systematic reasons also none action at all might happen, i.e., neither action f nor action g, i.e.,( ¬ f ∧ ¬ g). Otherwise, with the exclusion of the neither-nor case, the composition would not be determining the reduction results. The reduction results simply would be a formal combinatorics of the premises.
Despite the fact that two action are presumed in the premises, nil action can result from the composition. That is, a combination of actions can either affirm the interactivity of the actions, i.e., the ∨-case, or deny any interactivity between the actions, i.e., the neither-nor case.
Hence, the rationality of the composition of actions, i.e., their compositional interactivity, is not covered by classical logical laws alone. As a consequence, ethics in the framework of logic, say deontolocical or in other settings, is not adequate for a post-modern concept of ethics, which would have to belong to world-model IV.
A sequence of actions f, g, h might result in a transitive or a non-transitive composition and a rejection of transitivity between A and D. This happens for both, the acceptional and the rejectional parts of the diamond formula.
One of the most basic logical rules in legal systems is surely the classical rule of deduction, modus ponens. Nobody at Chez Maxime’s had the sligthest doubt about that. On the other hand, we have not to establish to much of the apparatus of polycontextural logics to introduce some significant differences between the concept of the classical modus ponens and its appearance in polycontextural logics.
According to the wordings of theoreticians of post-modern legal systems (Luhmann, Teubner) the world is conceived as pluri-centric and polycontextural. It is easy to grasp, if we take the post-modernist statements for serious, that the logical concept of the modus ponens is too hardly challenged by the post-modern complexity it would have to manage deductively.
Polycontextural logics are disseminating, i.e. distributing and mediating, logical systems to form a cluster of a complex logical system. In such a complexion, each contexture is domesticating a full-fledged logical system, including its modus ponens. Additionally, structural rules of interactionality and reflectionality between the contextures are trans-logically defined.
Hence, complex interacting and reflecting forms of modi ponens, building not a linear succession but a dynamic grid, are at service to help the lost souls of modern post-traditional thinking and feeling to find orientation in the overwhelming chaos of postmodern worlds.
Discussions in the debating circle Chez Maxime’s are higly aware about the delicate decisions in which niche of the club they are debating and about the fragility of how the signifcance of their topics is changing by transgressing them from one ambience to another scenario.
Logical deductions, like done with our simple modus ponens, are fundamentally transitive. That is:
Intransitivity as it is usual in ordinary life, would produce dilemmas and circular paradoxes applied to deduction rules.
A situation like, “team A wins against team B, B wins against C, hence team A wins against C” would be the end of the betting business, like our book makers.
But the same would happen for the jobs of logicians, if the intransitive situation would hold:
Nonetheless, such problems are well known in theoretical economy and ethics.
A plausible explanation is given with the hint of context-change. If an actor is arguing, deductively in one context, then changing the context of his argumentation for another context with other priorities, situations like intransitivity are appearing as no surprise.
This can be formalized in many ways by applicative logics. But it will not touch the fundamental transitivity of the deduction rule.
Another approach is given with polycontextural logic. Here, contexts are radicalized to contextures, and each contexture is running its own logic and deduction rules.
Hence, there is no need for paradoxes, if in one contexture, deduction is running the opposite way. Simply because polycontexturality is offering structural space enough to separate the interacting deductional systems. Therefore, changes in points of view, context-changes, can be logically modeled as contexture-changes on the very level of logical deduction and not secondarily as a modeling in an applicative logic.
The offered formula below is intending not more than to give a simple hint or metaphor how intransitivity of deduction rules, crucial for post-modern ethical systems, could be implemented in the framework of polycontextural logic.
If 
, then 
Article 1.
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Application:
Article 2.
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. [...]."
The declaration is done in a neutral way. The subjects are human beings as such.
Distinctions are object- and behavioral-oriented.
Problems: ontologism, endlessness of the list.
The Declarations are prospective and not perspective. That is, the Human Rights are written against the abuse of achieved fundamental rights for human beings, hence still defensive.
"Human rights are, at their most basic level, rights to which everyone human being is entitled simply for because he or she is a human being.”
Philosophically, it is not as “simply” be given, but instead a highly intricate question and not as naturally evidently answered, what human beings are understanding by human beings.
The Declaration’s solution is highly circular: Human beings are belonging to the family of human beings.
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,”
It seems to be too philosophical, futuristic and trans-humanistic to ask for a complementary declaration for the future of humanity; beyond, altruism and egoism; and family.
As much as it would be absurd under such a neutral definition of human beings to ask for siterhood, it is not only absurd but ideological, to ask for brotherhood.
This Short Study is not denying the catastrophic consequences of brotherhood.
Universal human rights are declared as universally valid and fundamental; as holding univer4.1.1.
sally. What to do, if we don’t belief in a universe in which human rights could hold. What if we belief, instead, not in a uni-verse but in a pluri-verse or a multi-verse or even neither in a uni-/pluri- nor in any -verse at all? Are we then still entitled to be respected by the intentions of the Human Rights? And if we still are entitled to be respected by the human rights, do we really want to be honored by an idea of humanity, which is stupidifying its members in such a radical way?
Another point which occurred in the debates was the question “How might the declaration be conceptually restricted by its insistence on the fundamental rights and not on the duality of fundamental rights and fundamental obligations?”. It seems to be natural to think of a duality of rights and obligations. It may be that a proclamation of the fundamental obligations would have too much impact on a future oriented approach in contrast to the past oriented liberalization interest of the rights.
One idea was, that the opposite of rights is not obligation but the lack of rights, i.e. no rights. But such a negational opposition seems not to be the end of the diamond strategies. An interesting idea occurred, that obligation is not necessarily an opposite but that obligation might be prior to the concept of rights. Simply because it is an obligation for human beings and governments to realize the declared human rights.
Then debate got some temper when it was insisted that this way of questioning the duality and complementarity of rights and obligations is not fundamental enough. It is denying the chances of a future oriented approach to rights and obligations in favor of classical ethics and moral.
Some strong sentences had been declared: It is an obligation for human beings to realize the human rights declaration. But more, it is an obligation to surpass the limits of the self-definition of human beings towards transhumanity.
Very late in the night, a final agreement could be achieved in the double transhumanist maxim: 
An other variant appeared: "
"
The framework of logic is not denying the duality of rights and obligations. But there is always a hierarchical order between dual terms. Logic, with its dualities “true/false” or “correct/incorrect”, is preferring true or correct. My slogan is: Logical negation is discrimination. For our case, the preference lies on the rights and not on the obligations.
Wouldn’t it be a better choice to search for chances of post-technological trans-humanism?
Diamond strategies are always starting with heterarchical dualities, hence, rights and obligations are considered of equal importance, significance and relevance. Any restriction of heterarchical interactions of terms is supporting conceptual hierarchy, which leads necessarilly, not only in the conceptual world, to suppression, discrimination and exploitation.
It was a hard night Chez Maxime’s to break trough to the sinistre insight that the renowned Declarations are actually based on an ideology of hierarchy, hence opposing fundamentally their own intensions. It was mentioned too, that this hierarchical constitution of the Declaration was implicitly given from the very beginning by their commitment to the family of man.
Hence, try for a starter a diamond version of the fundamentals of the Declaration:
"Everybody has the right to be a human being. No human being has the obligation to remain as a human being."
Co-Article-0: 
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.[...]
No human beings are born unfree. No free born being is human. No born being is human. All human beings are different in dignity and rights. All dignities and rights are equal to different human beings. All dignities and rights are different to equal human beings. No dignities and rights are equal to different human beings.
Co-Article-1: 
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration [...].
Nobody is entitled to all rights and freedoms in this Declaration. There is no Declaration for everyone to be entitled to all rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration. There is nothing set forth for the rights and freedoms of everyone.
Everyone is free. Nobody is free. Nobody is unfree. No free one is everybody.
Co-Articel-2: 
Even for human beings it might not be a big deal to learn and enjoy the dual form of Article 1. In fact, the Diamond Strategies are not as alien as it may appear. They are well at work in the Christian world, albeit not many Christians are aware of them. Take the ordinary constellation: In this mundane world there is good and evil, only; tertium non datur. What is evil and what is good at once, is suffering in hell. Only the ones in heaven are enjoying the liberation from both, neither good nor evil, but eternal happiness.
Prepared with such experiences, the next step of diamondiziation could be risked. What is the neither-nor “All human beings are equal” and “No equal is a human being” of the double maxim? How can we reject this double sentenced maxim?
Non-Humans are different to equals and humans. They are neither equals nor humans. Their existence is not-being. Their being and not-being is existence. Neither their being nor their non-being is existence.
What is the both-at-once of the double maxim of Article1? How can we accept at once the double sentenced maxim?
To accept this complementary Co-Article 1, the “common” equality as a property or activity of human beings and equality as a property or activity surpassing human beings, shall be generalized, say to similarity, familiarity or technically, to bisimilarity.
Hence, the acceptance of the complementarity of the double maxim is represented by the bisimilarity of the maxim. The concept of bisimilarity is surpassing the concept of equality.
To chose the concept of an isomorphism between the accepted duality of the double maxim would deny the dynamism of the complementarity.
Rejectance, again
Because of the complementarity of acceptance and rejectance, the question of rejectionality can be reposed: What is the complementarity of bisimilarity?
Technically, the answer is pointing to morphograms. A morphogram is the form of the processuality of a structure. In other words, the form, μορϕη (morphe), of a dynamical structure, i.e. the activity of a structure, its structuration, localized in the rejectional domain of a diamond, is inscribed as a morphogram.
A morphogram is the inscription of the pattern of a structuration.
In terms of diamond category theory, the answer is given by the hetero-morphisms of a diamond. Hetero-morphisms are for the rejectional saltatories, what are morphisms for the acceptional categories.
Hence, the structure of acceptance is written as bisimulations, and the structure of rejectance is inscribed as morphograms.
Therefore, for a better understanding of the drama of the definition of the Human Rights and its transitions, some technical terms should enter the game:
equality,
isomorphism,
bisimularity,
morphogrammatics.
Thus, we would have to start a new round or séance for the deconstruction game of the Human Rights Declaration. What still has to be questioned is: What do we understand by equal? How is this term used globally, in other languages? How does this understanding determine the definition of humanity and human beings? Especially, in connection to the different world-models, equality appears with radically different definitions.
Someone couldn’t stop here and asked about the restrictive consequences implied in the term “Declaration”.
All that sounds awfully abstract and annoying. Nevertheless, the nicety of harmless logical and analytical common sense formulations is not helping to avoid the self-destruction of humanity.
Diamond strategies consists of 4 operations applied on a chosen start term:
This questioner starts with the positioning of suppression.
What is the opposition of suppression (slavery)? Freedom (emancipation)!
What is the acceptance of suppression and freedom ? Humanity!
What is the rejectance of suppression and freedom? Trans-humanity!
These are the 2 relationships between the 4 terms. But there are 4 more relations to consider, hence all together:
To summarize the different approaches for the sommer break until the next meeting, the following pattern of humanity was detected and sketched on the new invitation cards to be contemplated:
Because we are preparing for futures and not fighting anymore against a sinister past, new questions, opening up horizons, are emerging. For each position in the diamond or diamond grid the 4 enabling/disabling questions are helping a step further.
Hence, for X = suppression, the following 4 questions have to be worked out. Then, each answer can be taken as a new starting point for further questioning. Obviously, the term “enabling” is taken as position and “disabling” as opposition in the sense of the diamond strategies.
How is X enabling futures?
How is X disabling futures?
How is X neither enabling nor disabling futures?
How is X at once enabling and disabling futures?
A more individualistic version of the enabling/disabling questions is known as:
What is X enabling me for my futures?
What is X disabling me for my futures?
What is X neither enabling nor disabling me for my futures?
What is X at once enabling and disabling me for my futures?
The German wording is more close to existential modalities and their polycontexturality.
"Wie er-möglicht X Zukünfte?”, “Wie ent-möglicht X Zukünfte?”
Unfortunately, Chez Maxime’s had to be closed shortly after it became known. The reason wasn't the trans-gender cabaret. Obviously, the dinner discussions and their Séparé, Café philosophique, didn't fit into the government's commitment to the Human Rights Declaration, neither did Chez Maxime’s licensing regulations conform with the government's definition of an établissement.
Nevertheless, there are rumors in town of an opening of a new venue for post-human entertainments.
| 1 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7FVjATcqvc |
List of links
CybernEthical
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html
Golden Rule
http://www.answers.com/topic/ethic-of-reciprocity
vedantam
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042701660.html?nav=rss_print/asection
hobson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson's_choice
clara
http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/meditation3l.html
palindrom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome
ageism
http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/ageism.html
ageism
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/aa.1998.100.2.565.2
citation
http:/www.springerlink.com/index/UM63103757463QX6.pdf
Jaakko Hintikka
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0792342461/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
Human Rigths
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
human
http://www.aboutequalopportunities.co.uk/what-are-human-rights.html
declaration
http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/08/pamphlet.html
brotherhood
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barbaric-honour-killings-become-the-weapon-to-subjugate-women-in-iraq-816649.html
post-technological
http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/rudys-chinese-challenge.html
trans-humanism
http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/
asymmetry
www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/archive/Cyberphilosophy.pdf
Ladislav Kohout
A perspective on intelligent systems. Chapman and Hall Computing, 1990