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Assessing
Human Values - by Dr. Bruce Buchanan
This is a revised version of a presentation made to the 10th International Congress
on Systems and Cybernetics (held in Bucharest Romania, August 26-31, 1996); in the
session: Sociocybernetics and the Question of Quality in a Democratic Regime.
Published in the journal Kybernetes in September, 1997.
The inquiries described herein are on-going, and any comments, questions or
suggestions, or references to related work, would be greatly appreciated
Dr. B. H. Buchanan
4690 Dundas St. West
Toronto (Etobicoke), Ontario
M9A 1A6 CANADA
Phone and fax: (416) 231-6235
Internet:
Keywords
Sociocybernetics, Values, Ethics, Choice, Democracy, Freedom
Abstract
This essay considers the light thrown on values by cybernetics, the systems science
which deals with goal-directed behavior. Values function as criteria which govern goals at
various levels of organization. Higher level values influence the relevance and
availability of options for choice.
Purposive systems are enabled by negative feedback to liberate outputs, to some degree,
from random or contingent factors, so that relative constancy of action towards goals can
be maintained over time. Such relative freedom is vital for life, but depends upon an
enabling organization.
Such an account points to possibilities for a more objective account of the nature and
role of human values, with implications for epistemology, ethics and the philosophy of
mind. It also suggests that, in a politically free society, the structure of authority
must be a function of the needs and goals of the individuals within it.
Introduction
This essay explores grounds for a possible increase in objectivity, or scope for
consensual agreement, in approaching questions of value and ethics. It considers the light
that may be thrown on such question by cybernetics, the systems science which deals most
specifically with the organization of goal-directed behavior.(Weiner,1961) Questions
involving human values are of surpassing importance, and have implications for the
critical problem of how values might be kept relevant to changing human conditions.
As usually understood, values include the motives and ideals that govern our personal
life as well as societal issues. Problems in relation to crime, welfare, education,
programs for human rights and equity, and criteria for cost-cutting are well known
(Wattenburg,1995)). The values which shape such matters are facts of political life. The
sources of such values in religion, tradition and family life are usually simply accepted
as given, often in abstract terms ambiguous in application.
In addition, ideas associated with the philosophy of Descartes (Damasio,1994), a
dualism of mind and body which has led some to a view of human beings as objects, are
widely accepted and influence values today.
It may be useful to move beyond simple descriptions, surveys and classification of
values, and to consider possible criteria for their adequacy. For this a shared and
coherent intellectual framework is necessary. The thesis of this paper is that cybernetics
and systems sciences provide essential perspective on the nature of values and their
function.
Cybernetic
Considerations
Within a cybernetic framework, values can be seen as the decision criteria which inform
feedback. Values take on their meaning in relation to goals and organization. Value in
this sense refers to a measure or standard against which something is being compared, at
whatever level of organization.
A changing system is stabilized by negative feedback, in the course of which evaluation
and compensatory adjustments are made. The overall system is protected from the full
impact of random factors, and gains stability with some freedom from such contingencies.
Living organisms cannot exist without stabilized biochemical processes and homeostatic
mechanisms. All creatures interpret what they perceive, and respond in accordance with
innate dispositions and experience, seeking to maintain stability. Biological systems
involve complex hierarchies of means and ends, and when lower level conflicts arise, and
adjudication among these are required, higher level criteria are required. Such values may
help to coordinate action, and to resolve the paralysis of conflict. Such processes and
values involve error correction, allow for growth as well as stability, and make possible
increased adaptive potential.
To respond to a specific problem with immediate action may not be an optimal strategy.
This may require a more inclusive perspective, with a plan based on a higher or longer
term goal. To mitigate conflict and stress, higher level values may be modified and
logically compounded to frame and select for criteria designed to resolve problems.
Continuing tensions stimulate such an active search for new equilibria and alternatives.
The outcomes of such processes abound in daily life. Individuals organize for financial
security. Governments seek the support of the electorate through the promise of programs
and services, etc. Anticipatory plans lead to action guided by evaluation of progress and
results. At lower levels values tune perception to events that may make a difference, and
frame the pictures to which emotions may respond. It is the function of values at higher
levels to posit goals, identify errors and provide guidance.In this way values are prior
to emotion in shaping perception and in guiding response.
No advance knowledge can provide all the needed guidance in a changing environment. As
von Foerster has pointed out (von Foerster,1992), there are many questions which confront
human beings which are in principle undecidable in advance on abstract grounds, which
become in the event a uniquely human responsibility to decide.
Of course many values and purposes involve community interests and depend upon language
and shared meanings. And the management of joint projects requires coordination.
Appropriate values are needed to provide a stable basis for integrated action and to
adjudicate conflicts. Such values help to provide the conditions necessary for increased
ranges of choice and greater freedom.
Systems are abstract models of elements and relationships, so that properties under
question must be related to the organizational level of the model. Thus the values which
regulate feedback need to be specified with respect to the level of regulatory action.
This has significance for questions related to mind and the avoidance of reductionism (see
below).
Philosophy
It may be emphasized that the approach to values taken here, although it makes use of a
cybernetic frame of reference, is essentially descriptive. It is noted as a fact that
freedom of choice is a criterion of effective value. The view that values cannot be
derived from the facts of experience does not accord with actual experience. In fact
experience can only be interpreted in the light of values, and in particular in the light
of values of freedom of thought and inquiry.
The approaches taken by cybernetics to the clarification of complex systems has been
prefigured over many decades by many distinguished thinkers (4,5). And in our time a
clearer understanding based upon sociocybernetics also has implications for traditional
presuppositions of philosophy.
Karl Popper (6) has described the interaction and feedback relationships (if not in
this cybernetic terminology) between the external world and our views and theories about
that world, and the indeterminism of human thought in relation to the real world. Michael
Polanyi (7) described the structure of knowledge as including tacit components which
cannot be fully captured by formal concepts. Merleau-Ponty (8) emphasized the dependence
of all ideas on the prior phenomena of perception. David Bohm (9) has described
limitations upon what man can grasp, since our life and knowledge unfold from the deeper
structures that form the world and us within the world.
Sociocybernetics has implications which also resonate deeply with certain aspects of
humanistic and religious thought. Existential thinkers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,
as interpreted e.g. by Paul Tillich (10) and Karl Jaspers (11) among many others, have
emphasized the dependence of fallible man on deeper grounds of being, the role of anxiety
in human perception and thought, and the need to recognize the influence of limitations of
the human observer. Alan Watts (12) has described the foundations of religious thought in
metaphysical insights which relate man to the universe of which he is a part, ideas
perhaps similar to some already taught in ancient India. The conundrums of language, and
the conceptual tools through which we may construct a human world, have the reflexive and
self-referential aspects which are may be described in terms of sociocybernetic models.
The celebrated literary critic Northrop Frye, in a keynote address to a conference devoted
to computers, viewed literary theories not as competing with science but as different
programs for looking at the same reality.(13)
Management and business thought has also been profoundly shaped cf. the writings of
Peter Drucker (14), Stafford Beer (15), Peter Senge (16) and others in similar ways.
International relations and the problems of peace have not escaped intensive inquiry e.g.
by Anatol Rapoport and others.
So sociocybernetics, as considered in this paper, is not so much a specific theory as
it is a perspective which represents a kind of home and common ground for an immense and
gathering modern consensus about the relationships which join human lives within a
universe of which they are only a part.
If the common thread which links the levels of the hierarchy of being is the search for
increased freedom, for relative independence from arbitrary and contingent events, such a
model provides criteria by feedback from the very highest levels. As pointed out by Heinz
von Foerster (17) the criteria to be applied are those which promote an increased number
and diversity of options. Not all potentially useful options can be captured in advance by
words, or formalized in abstract concepts, much less rules of thumb. A productive future
depends upon openness to possibilities, and a balance based upon wisdom and creativity,
human capacities which by their nature are not amenable to formal characterization, for
the reason that they are not entirely conceptual skills.
Ethical questions involve decision-making processes, and point to methodology as a
primary concern. Many questions may arise: who should be involved, how should they
proceed, what processes of accountability are required, and what determines provisional
acceptance? None of these questions are new, but the need is to consider them
systematically in their relationship to criteria which support more rather than less
freedom in relation to circumstances.
Where the stakeholders include everyone in society, this type of inquiry may involve
some reconsideration of philosophical questions. The nature of truth, of knowledge versus
opinion and the nature of man himself are involved. These may be most usefully be
considered in relation to the requirements for freedom of inquiry.
In ordinary life, the questioning of fundamental beliefs is not ordinarily undertaken
by (so-called) well adjusted individuals, almost by definition, unless compelled by some
looming catastrophe. The stimulus required may be considerable discontent with things as
they are.
Even assumptions that we take most for granted may need to be reexamined. A key point
has to do with the nature of human knowledge, of epistemology. Many scientists perceive
the world in terms of scientific concepts and theories. Indeed it may be their
professional tasks to do this. It also seems that for many scientists the world of theory
is what they see as the Real World. On the terms of physical science, theories of ultimate
particles are considered to be Theories of Everything.
But theories cannot include everything. Any concept or theoretical construction, like
any abstract view of the world, is a selection from among the possibilities of perception.
Some things are included and some excluded, as choices are made on the basis of purposes
and values felt to be relevant at the moment.
By comparison, a key concept which seems to be entailed by a sociocybernetic point of
view is the following: our ideas and concepts are not representations of the world, but
are rather agencies by means of which, or through which, we are linked to the world. (This
idea has also been elucidated by many other writers, including Mortimer Adler (19), A.N.
Whitehead (4).)
A sociocybernetic perspective is consistent with a view of man as a being-in-the-world
in constant interaction with the totality of his surroundings, not as an isolated creature
who lives in an internally reconstructed model of the real world. This is not to deny the
importance of adequate conceptual models as tools with which to help us understand our
world.
So part of the paradigm shift required by the hypothesis being advanced here involves
the view of values not as abstractions in an ideal realm, but as operational criteria
designed to liberate purposive agents from the effects of random events and arbitrary
impositions.
Comments on Method
Methods appropriate for the study of value must deal with complexity, both of concepts
and of perceived meanings, and while at present may be seen as conjectural, are also
subject to refutation, as required of a scientific approach.
The term value, taken in isolation, may be used to refer to almost any idea or habit,
and differences in usage are important to recognize. Values are held by many to be beyond
question. Beliefs which involve ideological positions, and criteria held to be absolute,
are not open to clarification, even if vague or uncertain in application. Values may
involve contradictions and confusions, and thus subvert relevant feedback, either by
accident or by intention. Values which are entirely abstract, and provide no clear
criteria for practice, are confusing rather than helpful, and may interfere with
possibilities for identifying more useful alternatives.
Such so-called values may be the products of history, no longer understood in context,
or may be intended to serve fixed ideological goals. In either case they are likely to be
unhelpful or misleading.
In ordinary life, the questioning of fundamental beliefs is not usually undertaken by
(so-called) well adjusted individuals, unless compelled by some looming catastrophe. The
stimulus required for radical review must in any case be considerable discontent with
things as they are. In our time, however, even assumptions that we take most for granted
may need to be reexamined.
One key characteristic of human perception and knowledge requires careful examination:
The values with which we see the world, in particular as these involve assumptions about
change, freedom and creativity, both allow us to see and limit possible understanding.
The appropriateness of a particular perspective is a function of the requirements of
the situation at the time. The observer's perceptual world is a construction, a function
of methods and instruments employed, not simply a mirror of the world. What we see is a
mediated reflection formed by us in the image of its source.
While we may choose to focus upon any aspect of a complex situation, and our decisions
in this regard make each of us a crucial factor in the situation to be understood and in
the problems we may be confronting.
Scientists tend to perceive the world in terms of scientific concepts and theories. For
many scientists and abstract thinkers this world of theory is what they think of and see
as reality. Of course no theory can include everything, even in an arbitrarily bounded
area. Any concept or theoretical construction is an abstract view, which means that it is
based upon a selection of what is perceived. Some things are included and some excluded.
In fact choices are made at levels of primary processing below awareness, on the basis of
memories, current motivations and values felt as relevant at the moment. The scientist
also makes his or her observations in the framework of expectations and theories.
Ideas and concepts are not representations of things in the world. They are rather
agencies by means of which, and through which, we are enabled to deal with the
world.(Adler,1985) (Whitehead,1967) Such agencies of perception include values a fortiori.
A sociocybernetic perspective implies a view of man as a being-in-the-world, responding to
events and acting on his surroundings, not as a creature guided only by an internally
constructed model of the world.
To insist upon an impossible standard of perfection in any area of life is indicative
of values that require revision. The intellectual standards of inquiry must begin with
what is possible.
Since ethical questions involve decisions, criteria are of the essence. Optimal
criteria promote a diversity of options in the long run (von Foerster, 1992). Since
ethical questions are not primarily theoretical but involve responsible action, they
require openness to possibilities which are not amenable to conceptualization in advance.
Decisions will be influenced by changing current perceptions as well as unpremeditated
responses.
Thus values should be understood not as abstractions drawn from some ideal Platonic
realm, but as guides to responsible behavior in a complex world, justified in terms of
consequences, known and judged by their fruits.
Origins and Roles
of Value
Values are commonly seen in many different ways. It is a strength of the cybernetic
interpretation of values that it can place other value systems in perspective, whereas the
converse does not hold. Arbitrary systems of values tend to see a cybernetic approach as a
challenge to fixed beliefs.
An understanding of any value involves much more than mere verbal definition. Values as
ordinarily understood also mean many different things in concrete and emotionally held
terms. For adequate understanding it is necessary is to observe the effects of the
criteria used.
By ethical criteria we here mean those which reflect the systems of human nature and
the human condition, and apply in principle to all mankind. Morality is the term used to
denote the normative standards which are part of a particular culture and community.
Cultural norms are self-maintaining patterns grounded in habit and traditional
practices which may be reinforced by ideals and mythic beliefs. Thus values are part and
parcel of any epistemological stance, and involved in complex ways in the world view of
any society.
Many formally accepted values are derived from a tradition handed down from antiquity
which has become a cultural habit, maintained by myth and doctrine. Some existential
writers (e.g. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard) have argued that human beings, if they are to
complete their development and reach their potential, must be prepared to reevaluate their
values.
We may contrast two perspectives,which represent the opposite poles of a continuum: (A)
to tend one's own garden, limit one's view to one's own tradition, focus only on isolated
(e.g."researchable") problems, emphasizing reason, analysis and what is
established i.e. what is clearly known, secure and accepted; or (B) to recognize one's
participation in the universe, the potential of relationships and growth, the inevitable
uncertainty of the future, the need to anticipate and accept risk, to have some trust in
empathic understanding and fleeting insights which are less than exact and secure.
Of course these attitudes are not always mutually exclusive, and may be suited to
different times and events. But there can be no fixed answers, so that freedom of inquiry
and discussion is essential. In this sense the second view (B) may be held to include the
first (A), but not vice versa, a significant ethical advantage for (B).
Mind and the World
>From a psychobiological point of view, the human mind is a set of complex
processes, not well understood, by means of which the human organism attends to and
manages the affairs of a complex life. Of course there are many ways in which mind may be
understood for special purposes. However, a psycho-socio-biological view provides a useful
perspective a variety of mental and emotional events and experiences which may or may not
be expressed in words, but which may be evident in attitude, behavior, relationships,
family life and social contributions. It is a view which has been useful in the practice
of medicine and psychiatry.
>From the point of view of cognitive sciences, minds may be seen as dependent upon
bodily and neural structures,including the motivations which drive us, the memories and
experiences which link us to the world, and the goals in terms of which we organize our
lives (Varela, Thompson and Rosch,1993).
We do not ordinarily base decisions on mental representations of the world. We think
rather in terms of objectives within the systems we perceive the world to be, and of
responding in the light of our values, to feedback related to our activity (Powers, 1973).
Most of what happens is quite outside of human awareness. We may be aware of hazardous
road conditions but not aware of all the factors which cause these, and a full grasp of
all relevant factors is beyond human capacities. The physicist David Bohm describes an
'implicate order', or 'holographic paradigm', in which the parts of the world, as well as
of the brain and mind, are seen as reflecting the larger aspects of the whole which
contains them. (Bohm, 1987) The memory and perspective of cultural history is required to
arrive at even limited descriptions of such processes when they are large in scale, of
great complexity, and span long periods of time (Artigiani,1992).
Human consciousness does have unique contributions to make, as are revealed in new
scientific concepts, artistic productions, philosophical insights, and wise statecraft.
These are not the products of clearly formalized processes of thought, although we resort
to formal models after the fact in trying to describe them. While we may perhaps improve
our understanding of such creative processes, we can approach but never reach such limits.
It is clear that capacities for creativity depend in part upon values which hold up
previous criteria to question, allowing opportunities for freedom and change.
There appear to be properties of minding processes related specifically to values at
the level of the whole organism, not reducible to any part function. Notably these include
mental and physiological reactions to the loss of value, whether represented by an
abstract ideal, a goal, a person, or an object etc., the reation being that of grief -
which may overwhelm thought, feeling and involve tears, sobbing and difficult breathing.
This reaction to the loss of an integrative and organizing value is one involving the
total human being, which may be described but cannot be reduced to its various aspects.
Reactions to the degrading or belittling of values, whether of those held by self or
society is one of humour and laughter, similarly a reaction of the whole system to a
paradox or implicit questioning of customary values.
Freedom in Human Affairs
To recapitulate: the values which govern life involve maximizing relative independence
from contingency over the long term. Increasing degrees of freedom may be made possible by
a revaluation of purposes and methods, which permits adaptive reorganization and learning.
It is the specific thesis of this paper that human freedom, unlike the degrees of
freedom of motion of physical objects, does not consist of the absence of constraints.
Human freedom is rather an increased scope of possible action made possible by
appropriately creative organizing values and goals.
History as well as sociocybernetics indicate that liberty requires not only vigilance
but great inventiveness, and both may require awareness of all the important factors at
work. The invisible hand of the market, or the technological promise of the World Wide
Web, must be understood and shaped by human purposes, not only to include all relevant
factors but to be open to unforeseeable possibilities.
Many questions are undecidable in terms of prior experience and rules of logic.
Particularly at the highest levels, value criteria cannot always be formalized in advance,
and require that openness and freedom for search and recombination which makes creativity
possible.
Human Freedom
& Cybernetic Principles
part 1 of
"Assessing Human Values"
part 2 of "Assessing
Human Values"