Abstract
An attempt is made to combine the concept of second order cybernetics, developed by Heinz von Foerster, with a modern concept of ethics. In this perspective, ethics has no privileged point of view. Ethics is not a stable, but a metastable set of rules, developed in a conversation between parties affecting and affected by actions or decisions (the stakeholders). Ethics is an example of "obervation of observation", accepting no metaphysical foundation, but open to change, relativism and pluralism. Ethics attempts to integrate conflicting points of view in a frame of shared and revisible values, thus balancing conflict and consensus. What is ethical depends on what the stakeholders rationally can accept. The content of ethics is unstable, while the form - the procedure - is stable. This concept of ethics is used to combine two different lines of thinking. On the one hand, ethics is seen as a second order morality, regulating the interaction between subcultures with different morals. On the second hand, ethics is seen as the "criteria of criteria" defined by Niklas Luhmann as a needed regulator of problems arising around the medium-controlled subsystems developed in modern society (such as economics, science, politics, and the arts). Finally, these two lines are combined in the presentation of The Ethical Accounting Statement, which tries to make ethics useful in modern organizations by increasing their sensitivity to environmental noise.
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