Soziale Systeme 17 (2011), Heft 1, S.

186-210

Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart

Aldo Mascareo

The Function of Ethics from the Perspective of the Individual*

Zusammenfassung: Als Theorie der Moral wird die Ethik zu einer Reflexion darber, wie der moralische Code auf unterschiedliche gesellschaftliche Zusammenhnge angewendet wird. Dieser Aufsatz versteht ergnzend die Funktion der Ethik als eine lose Kopplung zwischen individueller Motivation und sozialer Selektivitt, i.e. zwischen einer individuell skizzierten gesellschaftlichen Projektion und der sachlichen Erfahrung in der Gesellschaft. Als eine lose Kopplung besteht die Funktion der Ethik darin, vor eventuellen Entkopplungen individueller Motivation und sozialer Selektivitt zu warnen, so dass eine institutionell nicht akzeptierte individuelle Wnschbarkeit zumindest in der Ethik Akzeptanz findet. Der Aufsatz illustriert dies anhand vier unterschiedlicher Inklusion/Exklusions-Konstellationen.

In a structurally differentiated and semantically pluralistic modern society, ethics mediates between moral requirements and social circumstances; it connects the factual constraints and enablements with moral norms in order to evaluate courses of action and avoid an over-moralization of social selectivity. Ethics might be in this sense called a reflexive theory of morality. In doing so, ethics assumes a monitoring position regarding how the moral code as a circulatory and fluid mode of communication is applied to systemic communication. Ethics becomes thus a theory of morality, a social device suited for the reflection and problematization of morality in a highly complex modern society (Luhmann 2008, 282ff.). The aim of this paper is to explore whether reflexive ethics may assume another function in contemporary society, namely a cognitive and normative role in the relationship between individuals and functional differentiation. My gene ral thesis is that individuals are coupled with society through a personal modus vivendi that links individual motivation to diverse options of social selectivity. This personal modus vivendi is a combination of normative and cognitive expectations while the former are composed of a prioritization of concerns, the latter are structured by alternative options of accomplishing expectations. In
* This article was possible thanks to financial support by the Chilean Council for Science and Technology (Grants 1110437 and 1110428). All translations of the following citations originally in German by A.M. The author should like to thank Daniel Chernilo and the anonymous reviewers of Soziale Systeme for their helpful comments. This article was possible thanks to financial support by the Chilean Council for Science and Technology (Grants 1110437 and 1110428).

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referring to options of social selectivity, a personal modus vivendi has to deal with structural constraints and enablements individuals meet alongside their relationship with systemic operations. As long as in certain situations such as inefficient institutional outcomes, exposure to dangers and increased exclusions individuals confront severe restrictions or even find no social options to realize their modus vivendi, ethics becomes a factor of motivation to either reestablish or reinforce the relationship with social selectivity. In this vein, the function of reflexive ethics is not to prevent an over-moralization of society but to prevent the decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity. Inequality, inequity, discrimination, coercion, poverty are sources of different levels of exclusion in contemporary society. Systemically seen, these exclusions reveal an uneven interpenetration of functional differentiation with structures and semantics of stratified and center/periphery-forms of social organization in different regions of the world society. From the perspective of the individuals however, those exclusions directly affect the instantiation of projects, desires and expectations of concrete individuals, regardless what kind of aspirations they have and the region they live in the world. In other words, exclusions universally affect the instantiation of the personal modus vivendi, and consequently a sense of distrust towards institutions and persons fractures the individual motivation to take part in social communication. My main argument is that ethics contributes to the reconstruction of this fractured motivation by offering justifications such as individual freedom, consensus, solidarity, equity, recognition, among others to fight against exclusions. Ethics helps in reestablishing the circularity between individual motivation and social selectivity, reinforces thus the communication in social systems, and prevents the reproduction of non-legitimate differences within them. In order to provide the central steps of this argument, I begin at the level of the psychic system with a reconstruction of the emergence of motivation and expectation in relation to the outer, social world (I). By elaborating on Margaret Archers theory of the internal conversation, I argue in a rather complementary way that psychic reflexivity is a pre-condition of the individual motivation towards social selectivity and consequently of the modus vivendi (II). Having this framework in mind, I reconstruct the function of ethics in terms of a loose coupling between individual motivation and social selectivity (III) and relate this function with the combination of motivation and selectivity in the theory of symbolic media (IV). Proceeding with this theoretical framework, I shall illustrate the function of ethics with regard to four constellations of inclusion: inclusion/self-exclusion, compensated inclusion, inclusion by risk/exclusion by danger, and sub-inclusion (V). Finally, I present some concluding remarks (VI).

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I. Reflexivity in psychic systems and the emergence of motivation

Reflexive processes are those that apply their own operations to themselves (Luhmann 1984). Psychic operations are a special case of system operations. Their fundamental elements are cogitations, and the continuous fluctuation of these elements between self-reference and hetero-reference constitutes its operative mode. This can be called reflexivity or autopoiesis of consciousness. Edmund Husserl (1982, 33) selected the concept of intentionality to represent this continuous fluctuation between self- and hetero-reference: Conscious processes are also called intentional; but then the word intentionality signifies nothing else than this universal fundamental property of consciousness: to be conscious of something; as a cogito, to bear within itself its cogitatum. After Luhmann, this intentionality of consciousness constitutes the operational unity of the psychic system; it is universal not in a transcendental but rather in an operative way: consciousness is always consciousness of phenomena that are linked to a continuous processing of self-reference (consciousness) and hetero-reference (phenomena), and intentionality is precisely the form which makes this difference operable as unity (Luhmann 2005a, 31). With that, consciousness can avoid to be described as an aggregation of its multiple outcomes: perception, thought, will, sensibility i.e. it is not the sum of the products of its own intentional operability, but rather a self-producing activity. Consciousness becomes reflexive: the difference between self- and heteroreference can be reproduced through intentionality as the fundamental operation of the psychic system. The consciousness of phenomena (the operation of intentionality) entails an observational mode by which the individuality of the psychic system can correlate its internal references with the social environment, namely with the constraints and enablements of function systems and the multiple options contained in the constellations of meaning of symbolic media. By means of the realityof the operation it can be sure that this correlation is not an illusion but the real context of its individuality: The intentional operation is a permanent oscillation between hetero- and self-reference, and prevents thus that consciousness ever disappears in the world or arrives at a standstill (Luhmann 1997a, 35). It is certainly true that, on the one hand, the operative oscillation between self- and hetero-reference affects every outcome of consciousness, but on the other, this oscillation neither anticipates what kind of distinction the observer will apply nor how she shall deal with the paradoxes of her observation for example, the individual herself may feel attracted to something, perceive that it is not recommendable, look for other alternatives, think that alternatives are not satisfactory enough, decide to postpone everything, and hope for better days ahead; or she may hold the expectation and insist against all odds. The bifurcation of self/hetero-reference generates this oscillation, but individuals deal with it when they reflexively confront the social world.

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Self- and hetero-reference enact the irritability of individual consciousness either through its own cogitations about cogitations or through cogitations regarding external events. In the first case, recursive identities of the self about herself are produced, i.e. a condensation shaped by the reiteration of the self-observation: the reiteration is regarded as the same for the self, although it does not need to be ontologically the same. Identities are thus produced, not discovered (see Luhmann 2005b, 15f.). In the second case, such identities are operatively and, therefore, reflexively monitored regarding their adjustment to the conditions of the outer social world. The reflexivity of individual consciousness is thus also socially scrutinized (see Giddens 1986; Sandywell 2003). The individual can assess whether these self-produced identities are also identifiable in the outer social world, whether they can expect to be confirmed by specified or generalized others or not. By means of this reflexive operation of constructing recursive identities (selfreference) and by drawing internal correlations with the social world (hetero-reference), individuals are able to identify their own motivations. Motivations emerge as a type of self-produced identity with a social substrate and a guiding function: they are temporarily stabilized condensations that perform the operation of individual consciousness in terms of expectations (see Parsons 2007).1 A new bifurcation thus arises depending on how individual consciousness experiences the concretization of expectations: The fulfillment of expectations shall be deemed to be a normal case, and deviations shall be experienced as abnormality: The difference normal/abnormal may be broadly and unspecifically applied, and includes distinctions such as correct/incorrect or secure/insecure in a rudimentary form. One side of this dichotomy, the normal, correct, secure one, gives the opportunity to continue with the auto poiesis alongside the representation. The other side has an alarming function. It suggests now that it is time to come to terms with the deviation and either to renormalize the expectation or to change it (Luhmann 2005c, 74). That being the case, the internal normality correlates with socially stabilized normative expectations: the world confirms the individual expectations about the world (e.g., to get a job after years of professional training, to receive medi cal attention in case of illness, to get a legally sanctioned compensation when rights of ones own have been infringed by others). Abnormality is however a problematic case, because incorrectness, insecurity, and deviation ask for preestablished social requirements to cope with uncertainty (e.g., institutional support when discrimination leads to exclusion, another opportunity to get a job when the first application fails, equal education opportunities despite poverty conditions). Under abnormal conditions, individuals may reject the lack of fulfillment and constantly insist on the concretization of the expectation, or they may also simply renounce to it. In the first case, a sufficiently stabilized
1 With reference to personality Valsiner (1998, 386) speaks here of independent dependence.

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institutional framework is required an institutional framework which can deal with the disappointments and assist the individuals in compensating for the losses they experience (rule of law, fundamental rights, public policies, assistant networks). In the second case, the institutional framework must offer a suitably structured social situation where abnormality can be individually experienced as socially normal because the possibilities of fulfillment of expectations are rapidly and easily available when it comes to disappointments (market alternatives, educational opportunities, scientific options, technical choices) (see Luhmann 2005d). As long as this institutional framework successfully deals with the psychic experience of normality/abnormality, the individual motivation may be successfully connected with social selectivity, which means, the ontological distance between psychic and social operation can be bridged through expectation. The emergence of individual motivation is thus a matter of circular alignment of both psychic operation and options of social selectivity: the more the social world can deal with expectations (whether normative or cognitive), the stronger the correspondence between internally produced identities and their factual correlates in the outer social world. Through motivation individuals may manage normal situations without doing a great deal to get things done: someone is willing to sell something, another one willing to buy; someone is looking for a job, another one is looking for a trained professional; someone is claiming for justice, another one is willing to revise the case. Something similar applies to abnormal situations. In those cases, motivation moves the individual to normalize abnormality by taking alternative options into account: if another one gets the job, another post, elsewhere, could be still open; if injustice happens, the right to compensation is protected by law. Individuals thus reflexively process normality and abnormality alternatively as normative and cognitive expectations: Expectations are experienced and treated as cognitive when they are adapted to reality in the case of disappointment. For normative expectations the opposite holds: that one does not reject them if someone acts against them (Luhmann 1985, 33). As stated, adaptation to reality in the case of cognitive expectations requires easy-access options from the institutional framework (another place to work, to study, another investment option); and in the case of normative expectations the individual insistence requires restabilizing social structures (tribunals, welfare institutions, assistance networks). Functionally differentiated societies have developed both kinds of institutional outcomes to cope with normative and cognitive expectations and in doing so, they can stabilize the individual motivation. Another question is how individuals internally manage the abnormality of expectations. The conscious experience of abnormality of expectations can take place with either socially stabilized normative or cognitive expectations. Everything depends on the constraints and enablements of social systems; too many constraints and a small number of enablements for the fulfillment of expecta-

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tions, either normative or cognitive, reinforce the individual experience of abnormality, especially because of the cumulative nature of constraints: discrimination based on appearance, aging, provenience, reputation, ethnicity or gender leads to a precarious job-offer and consequently to prolonged periods of poverty particularly in regions with inefficient support networks or with a weak institutional development. From a structural perspective, an abundance of constraints and a reduction of enablements produce a decoupling of individual expectations and options for social selectivity: there is not enough social space (options, alternatives, contingency) for the fulfillment of individual expectations. Accordingly, from a semantic perspective, and especially when the normality of the other one seems to be more stable than ones own normality, a social valuation of the problem is produced by ethical semantics such as fairness, equity, justice, non-discrimination or in other cases individual interest, survival, convenience, accommodation. In such cases, individual motivation comes into question as reflexive mechanism in deciding either to insist or to change the prioritization of individual plans, and the ethics is the first social device where this individual motivation finds resonance. Such a function of ethics must rely on a connection of psychic and social reflexivity. The question now is how individual reflexivity constructs this orientation to society, and how the function of ethics emerges from this. By elaborating on Margaret Archers concept of reflexivity, I explore the former, and, at the same time, pave the way for the latter, namely, for a complementary understanding of ethics as a reflexive evaluation of decouplings between individual motivation and social selectivity.

II. Personal modus vivendi

Archers theory aims to explain the emergence of the social world as a continuous interplay (analytical dualism) between agency and structure. Since individuals are born in a given context, their agential powers confront a preexisting social structure which they cannot create but certainly maintain and eventually transform in the present. Structures are thus time-precedent in relation to action; there is a temporal gap between both structure and agency that fosters autonomy on both sides of the form: autonomous causal powers of structures upon agents and of actors in transforming structures. This is called the double morphogenesis of structure and agency (Archer 1995). Society results from this interplay. I am neither interested here in assessing such a theoretical framework (see Mascareo 2008) nor in her assessment of the possibility of a systemic reflexivity (see Archer 2007, 30ff.). Yet, I shall pay attention to Archers concept of modus vivendi in order to expand the systemic conceptual basis for a reflexive ethics from the individual perspective.

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In contradistinction to the concept of modus vivendi in political philosophy,2 modus vivendi here refers to a constellation of concerns individuals construct alongside their experience with/in society. It is precisely this experience which leads them to prioritize concerns (interests, needs, aspirations, future images of the self in society, in a word: expectations) given the structural constraints and enablements they meet in different social situations (Archer 2007, 62ff.; 2000, 222ff.). As interests, needs, aspirations cannot be concretized simultaneously, and as the correlation between constraints and enablements changes materially, socially and temporarily from system to system, a modus vivendi becomes a matter of prioritization. The question How do I go about it? has to be answered continuously in order to decide courses of action for the instantiation of concerns in a suitable modus vivendi. Choosing courses of action in a given social situation (or projects in Archers terminology) entails individual reflexivity to decide what kind of motivation may be correspondingly instantiated. This presupposes both, the social desirability of the institutional framework (the role expectation in Parsonian terms) and individual desirability of the recursively self-produced personal identity (or motivation as seen in Section 1). In Archers words: Through such a modus vivendi a subjects personal identity is aligned with her social identity. Arriving at this alignment is a dialectical process, generally requiring adjustment and accommodation between the personal and the social. It is rarely optimal, it is frequently revisable, but it is always reflexive in nature (Archer 2007, 88). In analyzing such a reflexive nature of the modus vivendi, Archer deploys her argument in three steps. The first step is to place reflexivity at the operative level of the psychic system the domain of mental privacy in her words (Archer 2003). She distinguishes between first-order and second-order mental activities. While the former are composed of beliefs, desires, ideas and thoughts (observations of consciousness), the second order of mental activity is par excellence reflexivity itself (operation of consciousness, as stated in Section 1). Beliefs, desires, ideas and thoughts may be seen as either social expectations (public domain) or as internal observations of the self. In contradistinction, reflexivity originates in the private domain and cannot become public: it is a matter of pure contingency whether it is given public articulation or any determinate behavioral manifestation (Archer 2003, 25). If reflexive means processes which apply their own operations to themselves, through reflexiv2 Broadly speaking, the concept of modus vivendi in political philosophy refers to the constitution of a public order in which individuals may establish political compromises with each other without renouncing their substantial values. The political realm becomes thus neutral (Larmore 1992, 70ff.); it suppresses-preserves (aufhebt) what individuals may feel or believe is the ultimate nature of the good or the supreme moral value of moral conduct (McCabe 2010, 124ff.). This does not mean detachment toward these values, but it means that the public order depends on political discussions (see also Cherry 2009; Rawls 1996; MacIntyre 2008). I do not follow this analysis here. However, if the concept of contingency characterizes the modern social world, then a public idea of modus vivendi is more than an attractive alternative for a post-metaphysical politics (see Thornhill 2007).

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ity individuals are aware of their first-order mental activities, can revise them and decide whether they are worth being transformed into communications at any given moment. Reflexivity becomes thus an operation of alter that connects the first selection of information (first order mental activities in Archers view) and the second selection of a reflexively selected utterance to engage in communicative events that instantiate the modus vivendi. Archers second step is to explain the outcomes of reflexivity for the psychic system. Since reflexivity entails deliberation between meaningful and contingent alternatives of information (different beliefs, desires, ideas and thoughts), the main outcome of reflexivity is the prioritization of individual concerns an individual motivational scale suited for action in the social world. Simultaneously, this gives the individual a continuous sense of self through the function of memory (Archer 2003, 45). Metaphorically, Archer defines this reflexive deliberation as an internal conversation.3 In contradistinction to the concept of introspection as a mere observation of internal states of mind, the concept of internal conversation aims to differentiate operation (reflexivity) from information by simultaneously relating them inside the domain of mental privacy. As a third and last step in the explanation of psychic reflexivity and its orientation to society, Archer aims to specify internal conversation by analyzing Pierces operational difference between I and Me. While the Me is made up of internal stabilizations (expectations) acquired in interpretative efforts of the past a repertory of well-known possibilities or habits in Pierces words (1958) , the I is capable of selection (Archer 2003, 73ff.). Selections of the I involve both the self-monitoring of the Me and the innovative responses of the I to the contingent social environment of the psychic system (the future you) in other words, the I-selections include the responses of the self to its engagement in communicative events, alternatively as alter or as ego. Reflexivity is therefore not only a systematic relationship between I and Me, but it also makes possible an active coupling with the contingent outer world and produces a mediated act of balance between both psychic and social autonomy. The mediatory function is assumed and performed by the modus vivendi.
3 The roots of the concept of internal conversation can be traced back to American pragmatism, mainly to William James (1987), Charles Pierce (1958) and George Herbert Mead (1932). Even though Mead is best known for his work on internal conversation, Archer arguably rejects the over-socialization of the self implied in Meads concept of generalized other an image of society in the psychic system that cancels its autonomy and restricts its operational reflexivity to a secondary role (Archer 2003, 83ff.). James rather rudimentary contribution to a theory of psychic reflexivity is, after Archer, threefold: Firstly, the notion of thought as internal speech; a movement from inchoate premonitions to articulate utterances. Secondly, the insight that to accomplish this internal speech we have to listen to ourselves as we phrase our thoughts. Thirdly, the appreciation that the articulation of what we mean entails self-monitoring, in which some words are welcomed as appropriate and others rejected as inapposite expressions (Archer 2003, 63-64). In opposition to Mead, the problem here seems to be the absence of social irritability of consciousness; the absence of coupling or interpenetration in systemic terms. Archer then constructs her view on internal conversation in Piercian terms (see below).

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The internal conversation entails time in order to continuously achieve internal condensations of expectations. The self is in itself subject (the I) and object (the Me) of a sequential turn-taking whose main outcome is a future individual project (the you). This project leads to prioritizing concerns in the form of a personal modus vivendi with which we think we can live (Archer 2003, 102). This is not only a cognitive matter, but also an emotional one; they are best guesses about the desirable; a condensation of fundamental individual motivations produced in relation to society. These concerns may be more or less successful, more or less altered, more or less temporarily deferred according to the constraints (exclusions, asymmetries and disappointments) and enablements (inclusions, possibilities, accomplishments) individuals confront in society. A personal modus vivendi is not a fixed model of action; it cannot be, because it is a prioritization of individual concerns and motivations that has to be able to reorganize priorities and projected courses of action when exclusions, asymmetries and disappointments jeopardize the desirable inclusions, possibilities and accomplishments. A modus vivendi is therefore composed by both normative and cognitive expectations; the former aim to concretize the future image of the You while the latter look reflexively for alternatives of doing this in a sequential turn-taking that includes the selections and social irritability of the I as well as the reconstruction of the past organized by the Me. A modus vivendi is, so to speak, a medium for individuality in society; it is a changing prioritization of concerns and motivations, in which prioritization is the individual side of the story and changing means adaptation through projects to social constraints and enablements. The question is now, what is the role of ethics in this context, and how it relates with the modus vivendi.

III. The function of reflexive ethics

As argued above, ethics is the reflexive side of morality, i.e. it assumes the function of being a theory of how the moral code esteem/disesteem is applied to different contexts of systemic communication, preventing thus an overmoralization of society (see Luhmann 1990a; 1996a; 2008). In this regard, the primary reference of ethics is the social system. Because an over-moralization of society could produce an artificial distortion in the systemic codes namely that payments are good and non-payments bad, that being in the government is good and being in the opposition is bad, that transcendence is good and immanence bad, and so on the function of ethics relies on how social systems can reflexively deal with such a state of affairs. Certainly, this could be a function of a reflexive ethics when its main reference in a differentiated society is the social system. Yet, self-descriptively, ethics refers continuously to the evaluation of individual actions. Consequently, when

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the reference is the individual, another path for the analysis of the function of ethics must be followed. With a primary reference to individuals (and not to social systems), I shall deploy my argument regarding the function of ethics in four steps. First, considering the autonomy of the psychic system (Section 1) and the conditions of construction of the modus vivendi (Section 2), there is no equivalence between individual expectations and social expectations. If internal reflexivity is an operational modus of the psychic system, then internal expectations are not primarily subordinated to the social, but to individual reflexivity itself to the autopoiesis of consciousness in Luhmannian terms. Certainly, individuals may reflect upon their possibilities in confronting socio-structural constraints and enablements regarding the concretization of their modus vivendi, but in doing so, they express the desirability of their concerns in the world. Desirability is another word for motivation. It entails the expectation that the structurally stabilized social situations (systems) can transform internal motivations into social acceptance, either in normative terms (namely, that a given institutional framework deals with the disappointments and compensates the eventual losses) or in cognitive terms (namely, that this institutional framework also offers rapidly and easily available options when it comes to disappointments). Desirability is in this sense the individual expression of an externally envisaged society (a meaningful projection of society by the psychic system) where the modus vivendi might be effectively deployed and instantiated. Second, despite the desirability of a projected society consisting of an institutional framework that deals with disappointments and offers alternative options, this depiction is not the society. In dealing with disappointments, a normatively-driven institutional framework takes generally more time than expected in transforming desirability into acceptance; the temporality of procedures is not the temporality of the individual expectation: many become poorer waiting for social welfare, many have died waiting for justice to come. One can trust in procedures, but this must be renewed every time a clause of the procedure is accomplished; the concluding social acceptance of ones own desirability is not secured in each step, but step by step (Luhmann 2000, 71f.). Therefore, it is always possible that another applicant obtains the post, that the other party wins the case, that the compensations do not match the losses, or that in spite of the existence of compensating mechanisms, they cannot absorb the increasing demands of the public. On the other hand, the existence of rapidly and easily available options in cognitively-driven institutional frameworks is not a matter of fact from the perspective of the individual. Options must not only exist; they must be accessible to individuals, and social semantics always plays a crucial role in defining differences of accessibility to those options through distinctions based on appearance, aging, provenience, reputation, ethnicity or gender (see Benhabib 2002). They fill up the constellations of inclusion/exclusion with a lot of crosscutting symbolic presupposi-

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tions that reduce everyones access to options in different ranges. Under these circumstances, switching rapidly and easily from one alternative to another in order to cope with cognitive disappointments is rather an improbable undertaking because discrimination tends towards a cancellation of contingency, i.e. an elimination of alternative possibilities. Third, the aforementioned situations reveal an oscillating trajectory between the individual depiction of society and the factual disappointments and fulfillments of expectations. My hypothesis here is that in such cases, reflexive ethics accomplishes the function of preventing the decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity in a dual manner: by producing legitimate modes of criticizing society and by changing the prioritization of individual concerns inside the modus vivendi. With these two strategies, reflexive ethics aims to manage the oscillation between the internal projections of society and the factual experience in society, so that disappointments, either normative or cognitive, may be channeled through some social source when the institutional framework fails in providing effective procedures, satisfactory compensations or rapidly and easily available options to fulfill ones expectations. In other words, when individual desirability finds no immediate institutional acceptance, it finds a kind of acceptance in ethics. Ethics then is a source of motivation to express disagreement, to demand urgent decisions, to protest publicly or privately, but also to reflexively modify the prioritization of individual concerns when constraints override the alternative enablements. Ethics and modus vivendi are thus loosely coupled, namely they refer to each other but preserve their own autonomy (see Weick 1976; 1989; Orton/Weick 1990). Critical decouplings between individual motivation and social selectivity are thereby prevented, and the transformation of individual desirability into social acceptance may be regained precisely by strengthening the acceptance of the ethical unacceptability of the situation of exclusion. Fourth, because of the reflexive nature of the ethical evaluations, courses of action or personal projects change in time. Their holders may have the experience of success and then undertake another plan, or may postpone, alter or even change their own concerns while reflecting on their expectations by means of ethical evaluations such as accommodation, convenience, interpersonal reciprocity, decency, fairness (Archer 2003, 235ff.). Individuals may also be incapable of transforming reflexivity into projects having therefore no other choice but to act passively towards the social constraints and enablements they meet (298ff.). These alternative possibilities make clear that the question of moral norms and their ethical assessment is a matter of continuous interplay between individual and society. While moral norms emerge in society through evolutionary stabilization, they are confronted in everyday life with ethical evaluations of the desirable made by different individuals trying to adapt their own expectations to the circumstances within which they become involved. Subsequently, this affects the production and continuity of

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social norms. Ethical reflexivity means, in this regard, structural coupling of both psychic and social systems through the performance of a personal modus vivendi. Reflexive ethics entails, therefore, more than the Luhmannian informational function: speaker of morality and translator of social requirements towards morality (Luhmann 2008). Its complementary function, from the perspective of the individual, seems to be a reflexive evaluation of the conditions of adjustment of the personal modus vivendi to the external circumstances, so that, in spite of exclusions, asymmetries and disappointments, the motivation for social selectivity remains coupled with the individual motivation enclosed in the personal modus vivendi.

IV. Individual motivation and social selectivity

Combined with selection, motivation is a key word in Luhmanns theory of symbolically generalized communication media (Luhmann 1997, 316ff.). By conditioning the selection through successfully achieved communication the symbolic media become a factor of motivation. In this framework, selection and motivation are deemed to be social constructions rather than psychic states. Symbolic media such as truth, values, love, money, power, operate as constellations of coordinated selectivity that provide a repertory of common understandings, complementary expectations and differentiated topics of communication (Luhmann 1998). Tightly coupled with the structures and semantics of function systems, the symbolic media are dense fields of meaning whose self-regulation does not really need to take into account the psychic activity of individuals, their motivation or the conditions of selectivity of their own personal modus vivendi. Communication is enough when it comes to the functioning of symbolic media. These constellations of meaning are filled up with evolutionary presuppositions about a wide (but also limited) range of possibilities to classify social selections onto different fields by ascribing them to specific positions and functions (at the level of interactions, organizations, and function systems, or even to the environment). They are structural limitations of the possible (Luhmann 2005e). This is the reason why consensual legitimacy, individual utility functions or psychic internalization do not contribute in a crucial way to the explanation of social autopoiesis. In contradistinction, in Luhmannian terms: The motives for acceptance must be rather included in the selectivity itself (2005e, 220). If a reflexive ethics has also to do with the reflexively adaptive evaluation of the personal modus vivendi to external circumstances, then the ethical question must be how internal motivations enclosed in the modus vivendi cope with the evolutionarily developed presuppositions contained in the constellations of meaning of symbolic media. There is no doubt that the construction

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of a personal modus vivendi keeps an eye on society in terms of independent dependence (Valsiner 1998). It is impossible to conceive a modus vivendi devoid from stabilized social possibilities. Whoever wants to develop a modus vivendi aiming to a transformation of social conditions must confront, in the first place, highly stabilized structural couplings between economy, politics and law that prevent radical changes. Nonetheless, if the thesis of the reflexive autonomy of the psychic system is accurate, and if this includes the reflexive construction of a personal modus vivendi, then there are no reasons to assume a direct continuity between individual motivations and the social selectivity of symbolic media. In other words, highly stabilized social expectations do not positively define individual motivations; from the perspective of the individual, they are rather an open field to connect individual motivation and social selectivity in order to instantiate the modus vivendi. Since symbolic media can be understood as a structural limitation of the possible, and as they open up possibilities of successful communication in different fields of meaning, there is a wide range of available options in social selectivity to which individual motivation can be coupled. In doing this, each individual motivation may contribute to the morphogenesis of social selectivity namely to modify conditions of selection as well as to its morphostasis that is, to reproduce already existing conditions. In turn, the successfully realized communicative options available by the symbolic media allow the individual to fulfill her modus vivendi, or slightly change her prioritization of concerns if social selectivity in the symbolic media offers more constraints than enablements in a given situation. From this perspective, individuals not only experience social facts and meanings, but they also reflexively define their actions from their own experiences. In Archers words: On the one hand, the direct effect of the outer world upon the inner consists in experience, much of which impinges involuntarily upon the subject. On the other hand, the indirect effect of the inner world upon the outer consists in mental deliberation, whose resultant actions impinge upon the world voluntaristically (Archer 2003, 78 my italics). Voluntaristically is a delicate word. It resembles not only an over-individualization of society, but also of the individual herself. On the other side, individual experiences and actions are also attributed positions in the theory of the symbolically generalized communication media. They are unavoidable attributions regarding the orientation of the communication process to specific structural positions, and also an important one for individuals since reflexivity furthers variation in the prioritization of concerns by making ethical considerations of the desirable vis--vis these positions. In this sense, the ethically assessed expectations of the desirable (whether normative or cognitive) can be coupled with the successfully realized communicative options of symbolic media. Given that the personal modus viven di may be reflexively postponed, altered or even changed by individuals in confronting social constraints and enablements, they move through a wide

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range of social selectivity. This means that analogous modi vivendi may be performed through different paths of successfully realized communication. It follows from this that: a) personal modi vivendi are not pure imagination or voluntarism; they can (or cannot) be concretely carried out in society, and b) since they are reflexively constructed, they may be altered (according to the constraints and enablements they deal with) without losing the prioritization of concerns, or even slightly changing it on the basis of ethical evaluations of the desirable. From the perspective of a reflexive ethics, a decoupling between individual and society takes place when the individual motivation cannot correlate with options for selectivity provided in systems and symbolic media, namely as long as in extreme situations the coupling between the personal modus viven di and the successfully realized communication possibilities dissolves. This problem arises when in spite of reflexive efforts there is no chance at all to instantiate the individual perspective of the desirable: when political arbitrariness is not processed by legally stabilized institutional frameworks, when extreme poverty is not compensated by inclusion policies, when a general economic crisis leaves no other option than to start all over again, or in a broader sense, when the distinction between constraints and enablements, between inclusion and exclusion possibilities, implodes in itself and individual motivation decouples from social selectivity. Yet, the question rises if in the modern world society individuals experience this problem. This can be illustrated by means of the distinction inclusion/exclusion.

V. Inclusion, exclusion and decouplings

Inclusion is the opportunity of social consideration of persons in functionally differentiated systems; exclusion refers to its negative side: What is meant here is that social systems presuppose persons and assign them places within which they can act with complementary expectations; it can be romantically said: individuals feel at home (Luhmann 1997b, 621). Inclusion implies participation of persons in the operations and outputs of systemically differentiated systems. Because systems and outputs are diverse, the scope of participations consists of a wide range of possibilities. In this regard, I would like to suggest that these possibilities could be brought together in four dimensions: a) inclusion/self-exclusion; b) compensated inclusion; c) inclusion by risk/exclusion by danger; and d) and sub-inclusion. The distinction inclusion/self-exclusion is crucial in order to focus on the instantiation of the modus vivendi. The definition of the desirable implies the identification of the non-desirable, or at least a conscious indifference towards non-actualized options. The non-desirable is whatever does not match with

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the prioritization of the personal modus vivendi: to go to the church being agnostic, to take part in the government being in the opposition, to buy a car if one is engaged against global warming. Self-exclusion knows that there are other possibilities, but the instantiated ones are deemed to be the most appropriate in order to carry out the prioritization of individual concerns. Self-exclusion is therefore always inclusion. The individual pattern of inclusion is varied enough to select an option from a set of equivalent alternatives without affecting the prioritization of concerns in the modus vivendi: if someone else gets the job, another equal or better post may be eligible; if share prices fall, another section of the portfolio may compensate the eventual and transitory losses; if the neighborhood becomes unsafe for children, another zone or region, even abroad, becomes a real option to live. The lifestyle condensed in the modus vivendi is secured by the wide range of options of the individual (or familial) pattern of inclusion, so that excluded alternatives are certainly recognized but not considered as eligible in order to instantiate the own modus vi vendi: public health is not an option when private health care is a better, though expensive, solution; the immigrants quarter is not a real option to live, despite low-priced and bigger properties; market consumption is not only a matter of utility, but also a symbolic identification and self-positioning inside the social stratification map: it is not only a computer, it is Mac-lifestyle; it is not only a car, it is the universal symbol of Mercedes; it is not only vacations, but exo tic places in faraway places though never Miami nor Mallorca. In terms of class analysis, the distinction inclusion/self-exclusion refers mainly to global upper and upper middle classes in which the autonomous pattern of inclusion allows self-exclusion from significant alternatives because these are already well-covered inside the modus vivendi. As long as structural constraints in some of the selected inclusion possibilities come into being, other alternative enablements can be activated. Eventual decouplings between modus vivendi and social selectivity are in this case short-term events and do not severely affect the prioritization of individual concerns, because individuals can move towards other options of social selectivity in cognitively-driven social systems or they can re-establish their expectations in normatively-driven systems. We can speak here of an either-or model of inclusion, that means: this and that option are equally useful for the instantiation of the modus vivendi. Especially ethics semantics such as individual freedom, free will, freedom of choice, and their semantic counterpart in attitudes such as tolerance, play a salient role in this case, since the former confer the selection a symbol of generalized legitimacy and the latter transform the indifference (exclusion) towards the nonselected options into tolerance (inclusion).4
4 Classical liberal arguments are here the most suitable semantic discourses. Along with property, freedom is a fundamental, rather natural right in liberal philosophy. This emphasis on freedom is counterbalanced by tolerance as in J. Locke (2003), and, with a different conceptual structure, also by self-preservation in T. Hobbes (2003) and sympathy in A. Smith

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Compensated inclusion functions on the basis of the either-or-model as well. However, in this case the perspective of the desirable must be adjusted to additional institutional conditions coming from systemic outputs of political, economic, and legal nature. Social security institutions, regulating agencies, public organizations of protection of rights (consumers rights, human rights, ombudsmen), state interventions, civil society networks, and international organizations count as compensatory mechanisms aiming to protect the contingency of options for social selectivity. In these cases, the prioritization of individual concerns can be preserved through an adjustment to the available opportunities. Nevertheless, these available opportunities are reduced to public outcomes or to the marginal contribution of civil society networks. Compared with the first case (inclusion/self-exclusion), compensated inclusion entails a restriction of choices. In a weak sense, it means already an overlimitation of the structural limitation of the possible provided by the symbolic media. Not the whole symbolic range is available for the individual, but the more homogeneous and restricted institutional range of options especially offered by the public institutional framework and the private subprime consumption market. The modus vivendi still remains, even though the form that its instantiation adopts is not the most desirable: there are options available for others that I would have also selected if I could a private, better school for the children, a house with a white picket fence in the suburbs instead of a council flat in the margins, a stronger credit in an investment bank instead of a development project of the Ministry for Cooperation. Certainly, a risk of decoupling between personal modus vivendi and social selectivity takes place here, however the compensatory mechanisms foster its recoupling in a middle-term horizon with the above mentioned restrictions. In any case, it remains still doubtful whether this recoupling can restabilize the modus vivendi or not, because the either-or-alternatives become indexed with the institutional outputs. This produces a closed circularity of expectations between personal modus vivendi and institutional outputs. Since these outputs are crucial for the instantiation of the modus vivendi, individuals may either adapt to them cognitively by changing the prioritization of concerns, or, normatively, not learn from the fact that they are relatively, but continuously disappointed by the offered alternatives. Thus, they can either demand an improvement of public policies (coverage, efficiency, efficacy) or look for non-institutional, informal options (see Mascareo 2012). The compensating mechanisms aim, in turn, to multiply the formal either-or-options in order to counterbalance the exclusions constraints, and they periodically and publicly

(2004). The same configuration can be found in Rawls (1999): the first principle of justice refers to freedom of selection; the second one, to the empathy toward the most disadvantaged. However, the synthesis of the two principles brings Rawls nearer to the consequences of compensated inclusion (see below).

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announce revolutionary plans and programs that make the individuals far more dependent on these political expectations. The problems confronted in this case are the classical paradoxes of the American and Central European welfare states. In Luhmanns words: The welfare state produces instability to the extent that it is faced with a necessity of reaction that it self creates but cannot foresee, i.e. to the extent that it invokes the competence to compensate for incompetence and to the extent that its measures are absorbed by this fact (Luhmann 1990b, 68). This case becomes a standard situation in different regions of the world society in which the democratically conceived and formally designed compensatory institutions can no longer cope with the increasing demands for inclusion (see Deffner 2007; Grzymala-Busse 2008; Ledeneva 2009; Dewey 2011). No wonder then that in particular regions of the world society democracy turns into populism, dictatorship or totalitarianism (see Germani 1978). Regarding the individuals, the compensation with new policies for the problems produced by previous policies leads to compulsory adaptations of the modus vivendi and, thus, to a generalized instability in its internal configuration: political promises increase the individual expectations for better options, and political reality brings the expectations all the way back down to the bottom. In turn, the modus vivendi handles with real options, hoping in the meantime the promises become real. In those cases a sense of frustration and inequity emerges, and ethics semantics such as fairness, equality, equal opportunities, solidarity, assume a central place in the discussions about the compensating role of public institutions. The social availability of these ethics aspirations compensate the individual frustration by appealing to a future representation of an improved inclusion, on the one hand, and motivate in the present to hold the expectation that this is still possible, on the other. In a word, they prevent a decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity.5 As advanced, this is closely related to the difference of risk and danger. Inclusion by risk has its counterpart in the exclusion by danger. The distinction between risk and danger depends on how the occurrence of future damages is attributed: if they are ascribed to ones own decisions (namely, to a selection from contingent options), then the future damages are deemed to be risks of the decision maker; if they are attributed to the decisions of others (namely, to an external, undetermined source of selection), then the future damages
5 In terms of ethics stances, among others, the combination of public and private autonomy in a deliberative democracy (Habermas 2006) deals with the question of inequity and justice, as well as the Rawlsian general conception of equal distribution and opportunities (Rawls 1999), and the proposition of a subsidiary state after the negative interchange of liberties (Hffe 1995). In this vein, the claims for solidarity (Brunkhorst 2005), recognition (Honneth 1995), responsibility (Jonas 1979), and cosmopolitanism (Fine 2007; Chernilo 2010) play also a role in public demands. Generally, Kantian and Neo-Kantian models can be understood as responding directly to constellations of compensated inclusion and exclusions by danger (see below).

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can be recognized as dangers (see Luhmann 2003). The one who decides is included through the risk of the decision, i.e. through the multiple possibilities of decision from which just one is selected; the one that observes this, is exposed to the danger of others decisions that means, to consequences upon whose origin she has no influence. Consequently, the decision maker moves in an environment of selection, in an either-or model of inclusion in which she can connect the individual perspective of the desirable with different options for social selectivity. In contradistinction, the observer, as soon as she is excluded from decision making, has only two options, whether to accept the consequences of the others decision or not. Luhmann (2003, 112ff.) distinguishes here between decision maker and affected persons. Because there are decisions on all sides, decision makers and affected persons cannot be brought into a clear differentiation of social groups or institutional roles as if the government consisted from the decision makers and the opposition from the affected persons. On the other hand, being affected by the decisions of others is not always a problematic matter. As long as the selected decision does not interfere with the prioritization of individual concerns, and as long as the one who is eventually an affected person might move rapidly and easily to other available options offered by a cognitively-driven institutional framework or find compensations that effectively deal with the disappointments in a normatively-driven institutional framework, the either-or model of inclusion may remain intact for those affected by the decision. If that is not possible, then the affected one falls into a whether-or-not model of inclusion, which cancels the contingency of options for selection and produces a decoupling between individual motivation and social selectivity (decisions, in this case). A whether-or-not model of inclusion is a type of take it or leave it pattern of inclusion. It does not deny all possibilities of selection for a given problem, but it just presents one alternative as eligible: a specific type of subsidized property, a marginal subsistence job, a monopolistic inefficient health service, a low-quality public education. There is actually no alternative, or more precisely, the alternative is whether or not to accept the only inclusion possibility. From the perspective of the individual, the contingency of social life is thus cancelled, for at least two equivalent options (the minimal expression of the either-or model) are required to make a real choice. If contingency is cancelled, the instantiation of the personal modus vivendi becomes instable and the individual motivation towards social selectivity weakens. If the function of reflexive ethics relies on preventing the decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity, then here is where ethics becomes crucial. By means of the critique of society and the modification of individual concerns, individuals are willing to transform the whether-or-not model of inclusion into an either-or model. They look for a restabilization of available options, for a new production of contingency which deals with the cancellation of contingency of the whether-or-not model and avoids the decoupling of individual motivation

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and social selectivity by alerting society that precisely this is happening. This can be called an ethics of contingency. Concretely, that means: a) either to protest against the incompetence of compensatory institutions (inefficient social policies, stagnating bureaucracy, inequity, patrimonial privileges) and against the unilateral exposure to damages and dangers of others decisions that affect ones own modus vivendi (non-participative public and private plans, traffic of influences, corruption), or b) to reflexively modify the prioritization of individual concerns in order to adjust them to the prevailing constellation of constraints and enablements without losing the orientation of the modus vivendi. In the first case, the protest deals with an expression of dissatisfaction, with a representation of injury and discrimination, and often with wild desires (Luhmann 2003, 136). Protests aim to pay attention to different kinds of realities by registering contradictions (Luhmann 1996b, 195), and in doing so, they force the acceptance of the ethical unacceptability of the exclusion situation by appealing to values and principles such as fairness, equity, equality, justice, non-discrimination, solidarity, integration, namely through socially stabilized ethical expectations that constitute, thus, a first step towards a recoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity (see note 4). On the other hand, particular cultural values and communitarian ethical commitments become also crucial here.6 They support demands coming from different groups and ranging from gay to animal rights, from indigenous compensations to gremial privileges, from neighborhood improvements to commitments against global warming and financial crises. All of these demands feel at home in ethical considerations. Ethics provides a visible and including stage either to play the role of the socially conscious outsider or to stress public attention when exclusions are critical. Regarding political inclusion, Luhmann argues as follows: The protesters refer to ethical principles, and if one has chosen an ethical point of view, it is a secondary question whether one is in the majority or in the minority (1996b, 206). The recoupling takes place, at least, in the form of an ethically motivated protest; at best, by activating structural variations through ethically integrated social movements. Another question is whether the structural variations are systemically selected and restabilized, and quite another theme how far the systemic restabilizations drift apart from the initial demands: social movements fight for democracy and fundamental rights and what they get is a military transition to nowhere, as in Egypt; students protest for a high-quality education and what they receive are diffuse promises of
6 A wide spectrum of ethics theories can be included here. With different views: the semantics of authenticity in communitarian thinking (see Taylor 2003), the significance of the life world in phenomenological approaches (Blumenberg 2006; Ricoeur 2000), the inevitability of traditions in anthropological conceptions (Marquard 2003; Lbbe 2004), the increasing circles of loyalties in pragmatic proposals (Rorty 1995), and even the immanent value of diversity in postcolonial and postmodern propositions (Gilroy 1994).

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future reforms, as in Chile; people protest against the irrational exuberance of financial markets and the answer is another crisis, as in USA and Europa. In other words, there is always a distance between individuals and society, between individual motivation and structural constraints. However, as stated, when individual desirability finds no immediate institutional acceptance, it finds it in ethics. For individuals ethics means the possibility of maintaining the expectation of concretization of the personal modus vivendi; and for society it means that contingency must be increased, that an extremely high reduction of complexity to whether-or-not alternatives becomes uncomfortable, undesirable or even unacceptable in certain social situations. Ethics reminds society that it would not exist without individual motivation, and that a generalized decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity would be not a risk, but a danger for social selectivity and autopoiesis. In the second case, the adjustment of personal concerns entails a plan or project which mediates between individual motivation and social selectivity, between modus vivendi and systems (see Archer 2007). Projects are personal expectations that, in the form of courses of action, confront socially stabilized structural constraints and enablements and concretize those concerns. When a project fails, the modus vivendi may remain intact as long as another project can undertake the role of transforming motivation into socially accepted selectivity. This presupposes an either-or model of inclusion, namely a set of rapidly and easily available options to either reorient or recreate the project and realize personal concerns. On the contrary, when the available options have been reduced to whether-or-not alternatives, individuals may fall into situations of sub-inclusion to restore the either-or options (see below), or they can temporarily change the prioritization of concerns in the modus vivendi and simultaneously enact an alternative concern while they wait for a better constellation to realize the original plan: to migrate instead of waiting for job opportunities in the local area, to continue working instead of studying, to postpone the idea of having another child as long as the economic conditions do not get any better, or to tolerate an oppressive political situation instead of protesting against it because the danger of incoming damages is greater than the risk of the decision to engage in hostile actions. In doing this, ethics semantics such as conveni ence, adaptation, and accommodation are deemed to be the supporting justification. They express the failure in being successful with the originally intended project (exclusion), but also the expectation that by momentarily changing the prioritization of concerns, something is still to be done (inclusion).7 These eth7 Technically, this can be viewed as a shift from value-oriented to end-oriented actions (Weber 2004), as a rationally selected utility function (Coleman 1994), as a negotiation of the self with herself between the future present and the present future (see Luhmann 1997b), or as displacements inside the integrated and non-integrated dimensions of the different regimes of justification (see Boltanski/Thvenot 2006).

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ics stances contribute to make personal renunciations and misleading decisions socially acceptable and, in turn, they hold the renounced project as a latent structure of the modus vivendi, which can be actualized in a better situation. In this respect, those ethics semantics are both: a form of front-line discursive inclusion regarding the risk of a structural decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity, and a way to increase the contingency of social possibilities without losing meaningful options. Finally, the problem of sub-inclusion is the most extreme limitation of the either-or-model. Persons in this situation are lacking the necessary conditions to exercise their constitutional fundamental rights [but] they are not free from the duties and responsibilities to which the state order submits them (Neves 2007, 262). The main concern then becomes mere subsistence: refugees, migrants in war zones, the politically persecuted, extreme poverty. This can be recognized not only with regard to hard cases such as Iraq, Haiti, Bangladesh, but also in particular cases in Latin America, Africa or even Eastern Europe (see Domingues 2008; Gyekye 1997; Georgiev 2008). Persons under conditions of sub-inclusion are confronted to an acute decoupling between individual motivation and social selectivity. In these cases, the concept of fractured reflexivity in which individual passiveness prevails and a factual drift replaces the modus vivendi, could be applicable (Archer 2003, 298ff.).8 However, a decision must be taken: either the factual drift continues or individuals give it a try in order to reestablish the either-or-model. Since a modus vivendi is composed of normative and cognitive expectations, the most probable path to follow is the search for possibilities to instantiate the personal modus vivendi. Because sub-inclusion denies fundamental rights and leads to oppressive situations at the same time, individuals may appeal to all of the ethics stances applicable to the other constellations of inclusion/exclusion. This is also the reason why extreme poverty, marginalization, geno cide, xenophobia, institutional violence and coercion are not the crucial reference of just one or a few ethics assessments, but of all of them. The diverse ethics stances reveal the unacceptability of the exclusion situation from different angles (absence of individual freedom, destruction of community bonds, annihilation of virtues, obscene structural inequalities, inhumane conditions) and foster different inclusion strategies (individual efforts, cultural tolerance, increasing circles of loyalties, institutionally controlled change or revolution, democratization and instantiation of human rights) to reconstruct the coupling between individual motivation and social selectivity. In doing so, ethics offers a multivariate framework where sub-included individuals may find either semantic or even structural support for their expectations, as well as some justifications for
8 Even the concept of empirical motivation in Habermas theory of symbolic media (1988) does not help too much here. With regard to the personal modus vivendi, empirical motivation could be better understood as an instantiation of either power-oriented or economical motives.

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the transgression of legal norms and for social action, even beyond the limits of formally institutionalized mechanisms for example, by joining informal networks or by achieving formal inclusion through bribes, favors, violence, and intimidation, i.e. by adopting the situation of sub-inclusion as ones own personal modus vivendi (see Araujo 2009; Mascareo 2010). Sub-inclusion is an outcome of the institutional framework to build convertibility barriers against exclusion (Stichweh 2005), that is, to constrain an exponential growth of exclusions coming from a particular exclusion and alternatively produce the options the modus vivendi needs for its instantiation. Actually, functional differentiation regularly does it this way: it limits the snowball effect of exclusions with normative and cognitive mechanisms of inclusion. Indeed, systems have no built-in normative motivation to deny the access to benefits and goods to any specific individual, human group or community (Mascareo/Chernilo 2009). Rather the opposite: they need the individual motivation in order to preserve the selectivity of their autopoiesis. For this reason functional differentiation has succeeded as the prevailing differentiation form of modern society. It has shown a high flexibility to adopt local and regional variations, and to transform the whether-or-not model of inclusion into either-or alternatives. But problems still remain at the level of the compensatory institutional framework, of affected persons in constellations of risk and danger, and in situations of sub-inclusion. Precisely there lie the roots of critical decouplings between individual motivation and social selectivity in several regions of world society, which, in turn, makes highly uncertain and difficult at least the continuity of systemic communication. The more this gap widens, the less likely systems are to sustain their autopoietic operation and individuals to instantiate their modus vivendi.

VI. Contingency
Sociologically as seen the problem lies in the over-limitation of the structural limitation of the possible as long as in given situations particular alternatives are presented as either necessary or impossible. This can be conceptualized as cancellation of contingency and must be distinguished from reduction of complexity which is carried out in different forms by function systems (Luhmann 1971). Cancellation of contingency suggests the transformation of specific existing alternatives into a necessity and the denial of others invoking their impossibility. For example: it is necessary to accept the incompetence of compensatory institutions because no other alternative is offered; it is necessary to accept the danger of others decisions because the political system elides protests demands; it is impossible to avoid discrimination due to insuperable cultural differences; it is impossible to overcome sub-inclusion due to economic macro-balances. Cancellation of contingency means thus unfeasibility of in-

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dividuals decisions. A decision is due but cannot be rendered, to paraphrase Kosellecks (1973; 2006) concept of crisis now at an individual level. This might be one of the main concerns of ethics as a reflexive theory: to open a gate towards the increase of contingency when individual options are reduced to a whether-or-not model of inclusion. In providing a set of values and principles for action, ethics becomes a factor of inclusion when a decoupling of individual motivation and social selectivity takes place because the institutional framework fails in producing and maintaining an either-or model of inclusion. Against the exclusion by dangers, inefficient institutional outcomes and subinclusion, individuals might be initially included in the ethics. That means, they may maintain their modus vivendi as soon as they find a way to reconnect motivation and social selectivity. The ethics is the first step in that process.

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