Tool no. 20 - Quadratic Ethics

A four-fold, self-inclusive, 3D modeling system for mapping ethical relations

Today, consumer-oriented, individual rights-centred codes tend to be humanistic.
How can ethics work beyond the oversimplified language of 'individual rights'?
Many people still follow religions that present moral codes as simple imperatives (e.g. one 'ought' to, or 'must' do x or y).
At worst, these fundamentalist doctrines are commandments in which the context has been lost or forgotten.
This means that they have also lost their 'dimensionality'.
The tacit, situated, or embodied relations on which the stories were based has been flattened into one dimension, i.e. the individual's obligation to a rule, or code.

While a context, purpose, or beneficiary can often be inferred, they are seldom stated.
What is needed is a method of mapping more dimensions that reconcile all the salient factors.
This tool can be used to enrich existing codes of morality.

By reducing a vast array of agents to four relational elements it is easier to manage them (why four?).
It enables professionals and citizens to visualise their situation in a self-reflexive way.
It is a subtle tool that needs careful explaining and reflection.
It has proved highly successful, especially when used in design education at graduate level.

Looking at relations between things is a more systemic approach that may enable better results.
But this level of description is usually too subtle and complex for creative individuals, and teams
Western codes, and discussions, of morality usually become deontological, therefore one-dimensional
This has been unfortunate, because actions tend to be discussed in terms of propriety, rather than effectiveness
A suitable tool would need to be understandable and accessible, yet complex enough to be practically effective
A successful tool would encourage the user to achieve a sophisticated and effective level of self-reflexivity
This tool will be offered to United Nations when it is sufficiently developed

Four (rather than any other number) has been chosen because tetrahedral logic has auspicious properties

It is also handy because it can be used as a four-dimensional fractal ethics that reconciles the needs of:
- a) ME - (could signify one's role as a designer, creative agent, manager or worker)
- b) PROPOSITION - (could signify work done, a service, a design or an idea)
- c) CLIENT - (could signify a stakeholder, recipient or customer)
- d) CONTEXT - (e.g. could signify the locality, constraints, or natural environment, etc.)

John Ruskin's notion of craft as a whole system can easily be mapped using this tool
In the above illustration, the relations between the four players/agents are represented by the 6 edges:

1) The employer's relationship with/experience of the community and Nature
2) The craftsman's relationship with/experience of the community and Nature
3) The craftsman's experience of the act of working
4) The employer's experience of the work itself
5) The relationship between the work carried out and the community and environment
6) The employer's relationship with the craftsman

Much of the (tetrahedron's topology) history is explained in the tetrahedral logic tool
Rudolph Laban used the tetrahedron as a body-oriented constant within his Labanotation method of 1928
Wood (1995) critique of academic rigour
Wood (2000) notion of mapping relations in a space-time continuum
Wood (2005) emphasis on ethical issues that would emerge from a less deontological, linear

Wood, J., (1995), "The idea of academic rigour in 4-D space": paper delivered at the "4-D Dynamics" conference, Design Research Society, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, (September 1995),
Wood, J., (2000),"2-D Writing in a 4-D World", paper given at the "New Kinds of Writing in the Academy; ESAP in the Humanities" Conference, Goldsmiths College, 26 February, 2000
Wood, J., (2005) ‘The Tetrahedron Can Encourage Designers To Formalise More Responsible Strategies’, for the ‘Journal of Art, Design & Communication’, Volume 3 Issue 3, Editor, Linda Drew, UK, ISSN: 1474-273X, pp. 175-192