When an engineer must decide what the size and composition of structural materials must be used to build a skyscraper, he or she must determine the "load" of one structural member on all other structural members. But the loads in a building of any description are constantly changing as people walk through the building, the winds pushes on the building and the ground moves. Simple algebra cannot do the task of determining for the engineer what size and composition each structural member should be. It was not until the advent of calculus and differential equations that builders could accurately calculate materials sizes, weights, and composition for buildings. When the loads are constantly changing all the engineer can do is calculate an instant in time, given certain loads. This instant in time is called a "moment." Thus, an engineer is not simply calculating some static state of affairs rather a dynamic state of affairs. Calculating what could be called an "ethical" moment shares the same degree of complexity as engineering. The logical methods of the past are ill-equipped to describe the complexities of ethical evolution. Either formal reasoning adapts and includes a higher form of analysis or it will fade away because of its irrelevance.

home page  The Evolution of Ethics: An Introduction to Cybernetic Ethics

7. A major paradigm shift (i.e. a revolution) is occurring in ethics. Biologist Edward O. Wilson says of the state of ethics "scientists and humanists should consider the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of philosophers and biologicized."  There are three significant "untenable fictions" that well-known philosophers have embraced for hundreds of years. These fictions have obstructed the reasoned progress of ethical theory. The first is that all moral knowledge comes from the analysis of words. Second, that morality is not a significant product of human experience; Third, natural laws do not exist which can determine the course of ethical development. Morality, in traditional philosophy is more an idea of the mind than a fact of experience. In doing so, the contemporary philosopher denies the inherent limitations of human physiology that would decide right action from wrong action. Meta-ethical reasoning excludes observation, analysis, and experience in its determination of the structuring of moral systems. Science is based upon direct evidence, or in the case of quantum physics on plausible theory that integrates well over a broad spectrums of knowledge of the physical world. Since meta-ethical approaches are so narrow in their approach to reasoning ethics it is not surprising that ethicists are unable to define good, goodness, right and wrong actions. This is the equivalent of an engineer or architect designing a skyscraper without the use of calculus and differential equations. The integration of cybernetic theory into evolutionary theory gives ethics the calculus it needs to understand itself. see link

*Note the term self licking ice cream cone is a term of Chuck Skinny, a Pentagon analysis who was using it to describe the budgetary and appropriations process at the Pentagon