Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 294

Whenever I reflect on these two alternatives, I'm surprised by the depth
of the abyss that separates the two fundamentally different worlds that can
be created by such a choice. That is to see myself as a citizen of an inde-
pendent universe, whose regulations, rules and customs I may eventually
discover; or to see myself as a participant in a conspiracy, whose customs,
rules, and regulations we are now inventing.
Whenever I speak to those who have made their decision to be either
discovers or inventors, I'm impressed by the fact that neither of them real-
izes that they have ever made that decision. Moreover, when challenged to
justify their position, a conceptual framework is constructed which itself
turns out to be the result of a decision upon an in principle undecidable
question.
It seems as though I'm telling you a detective story while keeping quiet
about who is the good guy and who is the bad guy; or who is sane and who
is insane; or who is right and who is wrong. Since these are in principle
undecidable questions, it is for each of us to decide, and then take respon-
sibility for. There is a murderer. I submit that it is unknowable whether he
is or was insane. The only thing we know is what I say, what you say, or
what the expert says he is. And what I say, what you say, and what the expert
says about his sanity or insanity is my, is your, and is the expert's responsi-
bility. Again, the point here is not the question “Who's right and who's
wrong?” This is an in principle undecidable question. The point here is
freedom; freedom of choice. It is José Ortega y Gasset's point:
Man does not have a nature, but a history. Man is nothing but a drama. His life is
something that has to be chosen, made up as he goes along. And a human consists
in that choice and invention. Each human being is the novelist of himself, and
though he may choose between being an original writer and a plagiarist, he cannot
escape choosing. He is condemned to be free.
You may have become suspicious of me qualifying all questions as being
in principle undecidable questions. This is by no means the case. I was once
asked how the inhabitants of such different worlds as I sketched before,
(the inhabitants of the world they discover, and the inhabitants of a world
they invent) can ever live together. Answering that is not a problem. The
discovers will most likely become astronomers, physicists and engineers; the
inventors family therapists, poets, and biologists. And living together won't
be a problem either, as long as the discoverers discover inventors, and the
inventors invent discoverers. Should difficulties develop, fortunately we
have this full house of family therapists who may help to bring sanity to the
human family.
I have a dear friend who grew up in Marakesh. The house of his family
stood on the street that divides the Jewish and the Arabic quarters. As a
boy, he played with all the others, listened to what they thought and said,
and learned of their fundamentally different views. When I asked him once
who was right he said, “They are both right.”