ABSTRACT
It is clear, Bateson said, that our conceptions of ethics, and of esthetics, are going to have to change. But we don't know enough to know how to change them, or what direction these changes will or should take. However, what systems theory requires is that we redefine the ethical unit. When we do so, we see that the system includes both the self and something external to the self. If we were looking at a blind man, for example, would we want to say that he begins half-way up his cane? Or does he begin and include, systemically, that which his cane touches? The concept of "person" is no longer adequate for discussing matters of ethics; "person" is not an independent unit in terms of the epistemology we need for discussing ethics. A habit includes not only what is in my head and in my muscles, but what is around me which I involve in my habitual actions. In cybernetic terms, it makes no difference where you begin in your description of a man chopping down a tree. The unit is the complete system, of which the man is but a part. So the unit for what is sometimes called "personal ethics" includes not only me but other people as well. What is at issue is not what one man does, but the relations between him and all of those with whom he relates. The ethic must be based on the relating. Given our present technologies, it is clear that the pseudo-epistemology of the separate self as over-against others' selves and the larger environment of which it is a part is not only wrong but dangerous.
