Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 290

This was the easy part of my presentation. Now comes the difficult
part. I am supposed to talk about ethics. How to go about this? Where to
begin?
In my search for a beginning I came across the lovely poem by Yveline
Rey and Bernard Prieur that embellishes the first page of our program. Let
me read to you the first few lines:
“Vous avez dit Ethique?”
Déjà le murmur s'amplifie en rumeur.
Soudain les roses ne montrent plus des épines.
Sans doute le sujet est-il brûlant.
Il est aussi d'actualité.
Let me begin with epines - with the thorns - and I hope, a rose will
emerge. The thorns I begin with are Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections upon
ethics in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. If I were to provide a title for
this tractatus, I would call it Tractatus Ethico-Philosophicus. However, I am
not going to defend this choice, I rather tell you what prompts me to refer
to Wittgenstein's reflections in order to present my own.
I'm referring to point Number 6 in his Tractatus where he discusses the
general form of propositions. Near the end of this discussion he turns to the
problem of values in the world and their expression in propositions. In his
famous point Number 6.421 he comes to a conclusion which I will read to
you in the original German, “Es ist Klar, dass sich Ethik nicht aussprechen
laesst.” I wish I knew a French translation. I only know two English trans-
lations which are both incorrect. Therefore, I will present my translation
into English, with my conviction that the simultaneous translators will do
a superb job of presenting Wittgenstein's point in French. Here is my
English version of 6.421, “It is clear that ethics cannot be articulated.”
Now you understand why earlier I said, “My beginning will be thorns.”
Here is an International Congress on Ethics, and the first speaker says
something to the effect that it is impossible to speak about ethics! But
please be patient for a moment. I quoted Wittgenstein's thesis in isolation.
Therefore it is not yet clear what he wanted to say.
Fortunately, the next point 6.422, which I will read in a moment, provides
a larger context for 6.421. To prepare for what you are about to hear, you
should remember that Wittgenstein was a Viennese. So am I. Therefore there
is a kind of underground understanding which I sense you Parisians will share
with us Viennese. Let me try to explain. Here now is point 6.422 in the English
translation by Pears and McGuinness; “When an ethical law of the form
“Thou shalt...”is laid down, one's first thought is, 'And what if I do not do
it?' ” When I first read this, my thought was that not everybody will share
Wittgenstein's view. I think that this reflects his cultural background.
Let me continue with Wittgenstein, “It is clear however, that ethics has
nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms.
Nevertheless, there must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and pun-
ishment, but they must reside in the action itself.”