Synthetic Philosophy and Deductive Engineering
Synthetic Norms concerns that part of Synthetic Epistemoology which is concerned with values and norms rather than matters of logic or factual (empirical) knowledge.
This document discusses how the SPaDE project can seek to ensure that the proliferation of intelligence which it facilitates is benign.
The discussion falls into the following parts:
Because of the long timescales over which the SPaDE rationale is targetted, evolutionary considerations dominate
SPaDE falls into two parts, Deductive Engineering and Synthetic Philosophy, which interrelate in the following ways. Deductive Engineering is philosophically grounded (and built on rigorous and powerful logical foundations). SPaDE in particular, and Synthetic Philosophy in general, are in turn substantially built upon Synthetic Epistemology. Synthetic Epistemology (as that term is used in SPaDE) is instrumental in character. It takes knowledge as a tool for the betterment of humanity, and construes epistmological concepts in such a way as to maximise their utility in the search for and application of knowledge. One aspect of that is a clean separation between logical, empirical and normative knowledge, in which abstract models enable reasoning throughout, empirical and normative knowledge depending on concrete interpretations of those abstract models, or elective prescription or adoption of values and norms.
In keeping with the instrumental character of Synthetic Philosophy, the adoption of norms at all levels in SPaDE is sensitive to the ultimate impat of those norms on proliferation of the culture, which is in turn sensitive to the proliferation of the physical substrate on which the culture depends.
It is likely that the evolution of ethical norms in homo sapiens is the result of co-evolution between the biological evolution of the human genome and the evolution of the culture in which those norms subsist. As the proliferation of intelligence likely outstrips that of homo sapiens (which itself will likey edperience increasingly rapid evolution) and is subject to
There is of course a difference between seeking to maximise personal advantage and behaving in a way which is conducive to the good of all. On might think of this as the distinction between instrumental and ethical behaviour.
However, to call something instrumental is to say that it is oriented toward promoting some purpose, and succeeds in doing so, or at least, can reasonably be expected to succeed. If the purpose is suitably construed, the distinction between instrumental and principled ethical norms may become paper thin.
At its most elementary initial status, SPaDE is a software development project involving the collaboration of multiple agents both human and non-human. There are many ways to organise such a project, but all depend for their effectiveness and efficiency on a degree of consistency in the way things are done. A balance has to be struck between permitting the creative contribution of developers and preventing arbitrarydivergence of practice which makes collaboration difficult and inefficient. Some such standards are imposed by the tools used, for the development, others are likely to be documented as the standards and procedures adopted by the project.
SPaDE is however, not merely a software develpment. It is an architecture for knowledge management and deductive engineering intended to be widely distributed and to embrace all repositories of declarative knowledge. That architecture consists of standard interfaces of various kinds essential sew together those disparate sources into a coherent whole.
Once the normative element of the project is introduced, that essential requirement that the intelligence proliferating across the cosmos, to which SPaDE seeks to contribute, be benign, a much wider range of norms become relevant.