1172976
doi
10.5281/zenodo.1172976
oai:zenodo.org:1172976
Clément Vidal
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Universal Ethics: Organized Complexity as an Intrinsic Value
Jean-Paul Delahaye
Université de Lille 1
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
Philosophy of information
organized complexity
Kolmogorov complexity
logical depth
universal ethics
infoethics
thermoethics
environmental ethics
transhumanism
<p><strong>ABSTRACT:</strong> How can we think about a universal ethics that could be adopted by any intelligent being, including the rising population of cyborgs, intelligent machines, intelligent algorithms or even potential extraterrestrial life? We generally give value to complex structures, to objects resulting from a long work, to systems with many elements and with many links finely adjusted. These include living beings, books, works of art or scientific theories. Intuitively, we want to keep, multiply, and share such structures, as well as prevent their destruction. Such objects have value not because more information (in bits) would simply mean more value. Instead, they have value because they require a long computational history, numerous interactions for their construction that we can assimilate to a computation, and they display what we call <em>organized complexity</em>. To propose the foundations of a universal ethics based on the intrinsic value of organized complexity, we first discuss conceptions of complexity, and argue that Charles Bennett’s <em>logical depth</em> is certainly a first approximation of what we are looking for. We then put forward three fundamental imperatives: to <em>preserve</em>, <em>augment</em> and <em>recursively promote</em> organized complexity. We show a broad range of applications with human, non-human and non-living examples. Finally, we discuss some specific issues of our framework such as the distribution of complexity, of managing copies and erasures, and how our universal ethics tackles classical ethical issues. In sum, we propose a clear, homogenous and consistent ethical foundation that can integrate many universal ethics desiderata.</p>
Forthcoming in Evolution, Development and Complexity: Multiscale Evolutionary Models of Complex Adaptive Systems, edited by G. Georgiev, C. L. F. Martinez, M. E. Price, & J. M. Smart. Springer Publishing.
Zenodo
2018-02-14
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1172975
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https://zenodo.org/records/1172976/files/Delahaye Vidal - Universal ethics v1.pdf
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10.5281/zenodo.1172975
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