Complex-Information Ethics Theory

Abstract

If ethics is of any interest to big historians, it might be primarily for analyzing the “ought to haves” and the “ought not to haves” of prior large scale human actions, e.g., does an agriculture-based lifestyle cause more harms to humans overall as compared with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle? However, big historians are also often concerned about the future events of Earth that can be influenced by humans, such as climate change, mass extinctions, and the predicted technological singularity. Because those concerns encompass both human and non-human complex systems such as the biosphere and possible future advanced artificial intelligence, big history requires an ethical framework that addresses anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric concerns and perspectives.

The Problem with the Concept of Complexity

“…Information theory is a huge and complicated field on its own, but Ken has noted that definitions of information get muddied by there being three different kinds: syntactic, semantic, and surprise. 32 Syntactic information is how the universe is physically arranged, semantic information is relational, arising only once it has been processed by agents, and surprise information captures unknowns that are discovered as information gathering "reduces uncertainty." 33 While more clarity is needed around information, there appear to be some similarities between syntactic information and Complex Physical Systems, between semantic information and Complex Adaptive Systems, and between surprise information and the principle of emergence.…”

“…big historians are no strangers to discussing normative questions about the present and future of humankind and beyond. In the past five years, big historians have used complexity theory to foray into discussions about ethics, 40 SETI, 41 the singularity, 42 and the Anthropocene. 43 It is, in practice, very difficult to disentangle describing increasing complexity from value judgements, express or implied, about whether rising or higher complexity is a positive outcome for a system.…”

Cosmic Humanism: A Vision of Humanism from Big History

“…Beck's color spiral dynamics theory and Ken Wilber's Integral theory. Complexity approaches find intrinsic value of a thing in its complexity, such as Ken Solis's complex-information ethics theory (Solis, 2022) and C. Vidal/J.-P. Delahaye's organizing complexity (Vidal & Delahaye, 2019). Although these approaches overlap each other, we could hypothetically divide them into two such approaches, depending on whether they emphasize evolution or complexity.…”

Philosophical discourse of information ethics of the future

“…She opposes the ethical approach to such areas of "human improvement" based on such values as the cult of the ideal body, the cult of youth, the cult of beauty, and the superpowers of the human body. Solis (2022) proposes a theory of complex-information ethics. Its main idea is that moral agents should perpetuate and enhance net positive deep informational artifacts and processes.…”