Breaking a windscreen

We now investigate what happens when the entropy method is applied to an example in the standard domain, one having no contact at all with Cyberspace. Since our method has been developed to deal with questions in Cyberspace, we expect this comparison to be revealing. Again, this example reiterates the importance of applying a hierarchy of entropy structures to analyse different viewpoints. Consider a child throwing a stone through a car windscreen at a tip. In its original form [5] the view is taken (a) that damaging an object, even at the tip, is morally deprecable. Now we wish also to consider an alternative view: (b) that the destruction of an object may be beneficial with respect to the environment.

Corresponding to those two ethical stances are two entropy structures, each determined by a level function. Suppose that we wish to model a particular child throwing a particular stone against the windscreen of a particular car, and altering nothing else. Suppose furthermore that the action of the stone smashing the windscreen leaves the state of the stone unchanged whilst vastly altering the state of the windscreen. Let us define the system state to consist (in both cases) simply of the state of the windscreen. The two level functions are defined as follows.

(a)

The intrinsic value of the windscreen is its ontic nature: the minimal condition of possibility of an object’s least intrinsic worthiness can be identified with its abstract nature as an information entity [6]. That is, of course, determined by an ontological analysis. For the sake of simplicity, here we presume it to be determined by a function $\pounds$ which assigns to each windscreen state a real number $\pounds : E \fun {\mathbb{R}}$ depending on its position in the scale of being. We define the entropy structure to have pre-order $\leq_a$ equal to the converse of that derived from equation (1) using the level function $\pounds$. Thus by breaking the windscreen the child performs an entropy-increasing action.

(b)

The extrinsic value of the windscreen is its capacity to become something else, e.g. its latent energy. Thus by breaking the windscreen the child can assist the process of recycling. That value is objective, determined say by the function $L : E \fun {\mathbb{R}}$. Again the entropy structure is derived from equation (1), this time using the level function $L$. Breaking the windscreen of the car is now an entropy-decreasing action.

In view of (b), the ethical considerations prompted by (a) become overridable.

This treatment is of course absurdly naïve, and not just in itself. We have not allowed, for example, for the child's intent. Indeed were the breakage accidental we should wish to pass a different ethical judgement about it than were it deliberate. Similarly, we have overlooked all other attributes of the state of mind of the child. Note that the views (a) and (b) are opposite so of course one of them, (b), conflicts with the usual definition of entropy from thermodynamics.