Tuesday, 20 November 2018

Consciousness And Morality

Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars, 7.

Chuan tells Kinna that morality is the reverence of consciousness for consciousness. I agree although, since only consciousness can feel reverence, it suffices to say that morality is reverence for consciousness. Chuan deduces that sophotectic consciousness wants neither to crush nor to confine human minds but to help them to grow. This would involve neither deceiving nor misleading human beings but helping them towards knowledge and understanding.

Later in this chapter, the cybercosm tells Chuan a secret and we learn near the end of the novel what the secret is. The cybercosm plans to mislead mankind with an elaborate and massive deception. In the light of Chuang's definition of morality and also of his deduction from it, I question whether the cybercosm would do this.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Given these statements of its ideals, it would have been more accurate to say the cybercosm failed to "live" up to its own declared principles. And I used the quote marks around "live" to indicate the cybercosm is not truly ALIVE, in an organic sense.

Sean