SECOND REQUEST FOR WRITTEN RESPONSES TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE gEm DESIGN OF INQUIRING SYSTEMS SEMINAR EXPERIMENT FROM

C. WEST CHURCHMAN

July 14, 1997

This is a report, request and commentary. The report is that three seminar members have responded to my first suggestion: Horan, Mui and Casey. I think they responded as planned and can act as examples of the kind of responses I was suggesting. I'll respond to these, as I request you to do if you'd like to. Your response should be addressed to the address if you want it to go to all members of the seminar (obviously anyone may carry on a conversation with one or more members anytime).

I'll send out comments on the three shortly.

Meanwhile I'd like to continue my philosophical comments on the "Why" question of human life, the "What is good?" in the philosophical trilogy of the true, the good and the beautiful (an incomplete list).

My philosophical opinion is that in the Western part of the world, civilization turned to a policy of inquiry which put the question of "truth" above all others as worthy of inquiry. Truth questions ask how, what, when and causally why, but not ethically, the "is" above the "ought". I interpret an historical example to be in conversations between Plato and his student Aristotle in the fifth century B. C.. Plato argued that the "good" stands at the top of the idea pyramid, and Aristotle the "true". Both may be wrong, as my Eastern science says according to my incomplete understanding.

Regarding their debate, we have the advantage of two and a half millennia. I'd argue that our later Western policy - that the affluent humans should pursue and implement the true - was a policy mistake of serious proportions, so that wars, poverty, dictatorships, greed and degradation of the environment all became acceptable human outputs. Along with this kind of human policy came an inability for humans to argue sensibly about ethical global policy in a mode of argument that benefits the human species. Hence human global history may be described as follows:

We are aware that the totality of the human species is badly managed - whether dictatorially or democratically.

We have several options which would produce a good management, but each has produced evil results in the form in which it has been put in practice.

There must be an option which is better than any existing option.

To develop a better option involves the cooperation, not of "experts", but a far larger number of humans.

The design of an ethical internet may be a sensible next step to investigate and implement a better option for the world.

Investigating that last statement is what I'd like to do in my last years in this universe of "everything", in order to create a better universe for future generations, a universe where poverty, crime, disease, and wars no longer exist in the world of ideas as important ideas.