Good for you, Alan--and may you continue to pursue your independent
quest as a fellow contrarian, in the face of unified resistance.
I agree when you say, so cogently:
> "Values ... cannot validly be used as an a priori basis for defining
> wisdom."
There you have it. That's the core problem, as I see it.
Very few of us care to become (even if possible) clean slates. We not
merely find psychic security in our acquired cultural values, but often
cherish them.
There are many levels of cultural conditioning, of course, formed in
the home, the local community, the nation--and increasingly by global
media. We in the university have our subculture, and this (as you and
I know) may be constraining as well as comforting. There is, as
conveniently identified, this quality of "PC"--Political Correctness.
Conformity is the cement of society, and maverick non-conformity
certainly is not a virtue per se (much as I admire Nietzsche--but
remember that he didn't survive in the faculty as Basel). I have seen
considerable pressure in the university for young faculty to be "team
players," falling into line with the "old boys" who control tenure
decisions. Certainly some conformity is a matter of genuine agreement,
but much of it may be a matter of deference.
More broadly, we seem to be seeing increasing factionalization of
cultural values due to the mass media. Here in the 'States we find
differing positions entrenched in certain TV networks and publications,
which process information to fit a prescribed idological stance.
Information is collected selectively to substantiate a priori
intentions, processed for the most favorable "spin" to use as evidence
in support of a case. Our culture is becoming increasingly
adversarial, especially our political culture here in the US.
Rational decision making, or objective discussion of issues, is become
more difficult as allegience to "values" becomes paramount. It is PC
run amok.
Those on the left tend to think that ideologically slanted media is a
phenomenon of the right, characterized by the wide influence of
conservative talk-radio commentators, followed by the growing dominance
of several conservative TV networks. But the print media tends to be
left-leaning, as evidenced by the selective articles appearing in fine
journals such as the New York Review of Books, the Atlantic, the New
Yorker, and even (to a lesser degree) the New York Times (which gives
at least some "equal time" to counter editorial views).
Following current events in these programs of the left and right, it
appears that there is less interest in seeking rational courses than in
"playing to the base," by confirming a priori values of a sector of the
audience, and confirming a priori prejudices. Reason becomes
policitized, when "winning" or "scoring a point" in the adversarial
debate becomes the principle objective.
As I've mentioned to Nick, my reservation about his proposition is that
it might prove to be simply another PC academic exercise, providing a
soap box for familiar rhetoric devoted to views conventional in the
academy--scoring points by playing to our grandstand of colleagues.
As I asked before, would we welcome Nietzsche to this club, or
Christopher Hitchens?
Can we--any of us--really become clean slates, shedding acquired values
that predispose us to certain evaluations? Can we in the academy do
so any more than others? Perhaps those of us who deal in ideas are
even less likely to relinquish any of them. I recall one symposium,
not a public lecture but strictly a conversation among collegues, when
a distinguishing visiting scholar presented a challenging (and
persuasive, in my view) alternative to some views prevalent among the
resident faculty. It was very revealing when one professor commented
(off the record, of course), "I really couldn't consider that. I have
too much invested in my own work."
We who are known for certain positions, having committed them to print
(or even to this sort of electronic communication--some forums being
archived) find it difficult to change our public views. I have never
regarded the university to be in the forefront of change. We have too
many old dogs, like me, who are not about to learn new tricks.
Keep up the good work, Alan.
Paul
On Oct 13, 2005, at 6:14 AM, Alan Rayner wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> This question of 'education' is very dear to my heart. In the last few
> years I have developed a transdisciplinary course, which I call 'Life,
> Environment and People' for final year undergraduate students studying
> Biology, Natural Sciences, Psychology and Management. It has been
> extremely well received by students, but I have also had to endure
> much grievous comment from external examiners and my own colleagues in
> Biology, who have leapt to out-of-context conclusions about its
> intentions and content that are untrue.
>
> The course revolves around my view (rather than definition) of
> 'wisdom' simply as understanding of nature and human nature. This does
> not mean I think that I understand nature and human nature, only that
> that is what I regard as wisdom, and my intellectual and emotional
> enquiries have all been directed towards such understanding. Values,
> to me, emerge from perceptions and so cannot validly be used as an a
> priori basis for defining wisdom. I try to relate my values to my
> understanding and human experience, and in so doing often become aware
> of painful contradictions between what I am required to do by the
> culture I am inextricably immersed in and how I would prefer to relate
> myself with my neighbourhood. The open-minded search for
> understanding, and preparedness to consider even the most frightening
> possibilities and questions from as wide a range of angles as
> possible, for me is what the Academy and Education should be all
> about. But, perhaps increasingly, our Education systems have become
> training systems, providing instruction in 'received wisdom' rather
> than encouraging creative and critical enquiry. Subtleties are
> increasingly overlooked in the quest for the lowest common denominator
> 'word-byte' that convinces the majority. Superficial, sharply defined
> simplisticity is mistaken for profound simplicity (as per Republican
> success in America?). 'Keep it simplistic stupid' might be the
> buzz-phrase of the moment.
>
> For the first time, this summer, the external examiners in Biology
> actually conceded that my course does indeed encourage creative and
> critical enquiry, and for that reason should be applauded (but they
> still expressed disquiet about the assessment of students' work). I'm
> attaching a copy of the course introduction for your possible
> interest, and can supply the full set of accompanying notes to any of
> you who would like to see them.
>
>
> Best
>
> Alan
>
>
> --On 11 October 2005 20:52 -0400 Paul Malo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> As a further thought, we have seen, here in the 'States, the
>> remarkable
>> influence on public policy of "think tanks." Some commentators view
>> the
>> recent success of the Republican Party to derive in large part from
>> the
>> investment some years back in foundations and institutes that engaged
>> sharp minds. Today we see the result in the regular appearance on
>> national television of spokesmen for the agenda of these quasi public
>> organizations. For better or for worse, some of these bright minds
>> have
>> become key policy makers in the current administration.
>>
>> Belatedly, I understand, the opposing party is recognizing the value
>> of
>> this sort of investment inlong-term public education. It may be less
>> effective in the short haul than expending huge budgets on media
>> advertising at campaign time, but as a long-term investment,
>> generating
>> ideas pays dividends. It's interesting that few of our universities
>> seem
>> to have the same sort of effective "think tanks." Why? Probably
>> faculty
>> is too competitive, too concerned with self-promotion and advancement,
>> too inclined to one-up-manship, to pull together in a concerted,
>> focused
>> endeavor according to an a priori agenda. Fellows of institutes
>> generally get paid for working together towards some shared objective;
>> faculty often are rewarded for diverging from the activities of
>> colleagues--getting their own grants for their own projects.
>>
>> Maybe we need more collegiate institutes, not merely to subsidize
>> research and scholarship generally, but to focus on issues of public
>> policy. Why do we allow self-serving private interests to dominate
>> this
>> sort of public education?
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
>>
>> My point, of course, is that we educators do have great potential to
>> affect the course of events
>>
>> On Oct 11, 2005, at 8:16 PM, Paul Malo wrote:
>>
>> But, Babette, certainly cigarette smokers continue to sustain the
>> cigarette industry and contribute to local air pollution--both of
>> which
>> are real health menaces (less so now, when here in New York we no
>> longer
>> have smokers in restuarants, most public places, and many workplaces).
>> How has the menace been reduced? Public education. The government
>> has
>> not probited manufacture of cigarettes by fiat, but has promoted
>> public
>> campaign to dissuade smokers, particularly young ones, from tobacco
>> use.
>> I suspect that educators in the secondary schools have contributed.
>> Certainly journalists have. Similarly, I could foresee use of meat
>> reduced by cultural influence, should this be regarded as an equally
>> national high priority. It is not, however, but remains a matter of
>> personal preference.
>>
>> I suspect that the power of ideas is greater than the power of the
>> state.
>> The state, in fact, is dependent on ideas. My point is that we
>> educators
>> really should focus on what we do best, influence the culture by
>> disseminating ideas, rather than demand that the state ("they") do
>> something.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
>> On Oct 11, 2005, at 7:26 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>
>> One small remark Paul, according to your logic, not only do cigarette
>> smokers "cause" cigarette but also air polution. There is a matter of
>> scale. Your family with its four automobiles hardly account for only
>> demand for automobiles. Things are a wee bit more complicated --- I
>> recommend you read one the state of the world yearbooks, it may be
>> useful
>> (if sobering) By the same token, vegetarians have no impact whatever
>> on
>> the beef or horsemeat industry. You may choose not to eat meet but
>> this
>> has little effect on the market. Thus the ideology of boycott has
>> more
>> effect than impacting "demand"
>> Then again, economics is not quite a "science" I am told.
>>
>> With respectful regards and admiration for the complexity of the
>> scheme
>> you argue,
>>
>>
>> Babette E. Babich
>> Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University
>> & Adj. Research Prof., Georgetown University
>>
>> Web page address: http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/babich/babich.htm
>>
>> Address:
>>
>> Professor Babette E. Babich
>> Executive Editor, New Nietzsche Studies
>> Department of Philosophy | Fordham University
>> 113 West 60th Street, 925H or 914 | New York, NY 10023 | USA
>> Office: (212) 636-6297 | Fax: (212) 927-7551
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> New Nietzsche Studies Web Page Address:
>> http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/nns/nns_journal_description.html
>>
>> -----Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote: -----
>>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> From: Paul Malo <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent by: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom
>> <[log in to unmask]> Date: 10-11-2005 05:32PM
>> Subject: Re: Global Crises caused by Greed or long-standing Failure to
>> Implement Wisdom-Inquiry?
>>
>> If environmental degregation is the particular "crisis" to be
>> addressed
>> (although it does not seem to me to loom as the most critical), we
>> probably should recognize that this is a dynamic process, at any point
>> of which there is an equilibrium between supply and demand. It is
>> easy to fault the suppliers, for they are the "they," not the "us."
>> As
>> I suggested before, "they" drill for oil because "we" (my family) have
>> several automobiles.
>>
>> Such an equilibrium between two forces may be changed by altering
>> either the supply or the demand. Are we to suppose that universities
>> may educate suppliers to drill less for oil to fulfill demand? Are we
>> to suppose that we may prevail upon governments to restrict production
>> (at a time when rising energy costs already threaten political
>> survival
>> of some governments)? What is the function of education, and the role
>> of educators, in addressing this issue?
>>
>> I suggest that we may more readily affect the demand side--not
>> immediately, of course, but in the long haul--by educating the public
>> in such practical matters as use of contrception to control population
>> growth (contra some guardians of public morality), but even more in
>> changing cultural values. Consumerism and material trophy collecting
>> is rampant, devouring resources at an alarming rate while producing
>> monsterous exess of waste material. Plastic wrapping of products
>> alone uses vast quantities of the diminishing oil supply.
>>
>> I think it is in the realm of values, rather than of governmental
>> regulation, that educators may be most effective.
>>
>>
>> On Oct 11, 2005, at 12:07 PM, Nicholas Maxwell wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Babette,
>>>
>>> Some further thoughts concerning whether
>>> knowledge-inquiry or greed is responsible for our current problems.
>>>
>>> I agree with you, of course, that today's
>>> academics cannot be held responsible for our current global
>>> problems.
>>> But then that is not what I said. What I did say is that modern
>>> science and technology have made our current global crises possible.
>>> If the scientific revolution of the 17th century had never happened,
>>> then or later, we would not now have global warming, lethal modern
>>> warfare, rapid extinction of species, etc.
>>>
>>> Actually, in one of my publications I go further
>>> ("Can Humanity Learn to Become Civilized?", Journal of Applied
>>> Philosophy 17, 2000, pp. 29-44; and
>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001709/). There, I declare
>>> that humanity is faced with two great problems of learning: learning
>>> about the nature of the universe, and learning how to become
>>> civilized. And I go on to argue that we have solved the first great
>>> problem of learning (when we created modern science) but have not yet
>>> solved the second one. "All our distinctively 20th century
>>> disasters"
>>> I go on to argue, "have one underlying cause: we have solved the
>>> first
>>> great problem of learning without also having solved the second
>>> problem" (p. 30). And in a footnote I say this:
>>>
>>> "It may be objected: it is not science that is the cause of our
>>> global
>>> problems but rather the things that we do, made possible by science
>>> and technology. This is obviously correct. But it is also correct to
>>> say that scientific and technological progress is the cause. The
>>> meaning of "cause" is ambiguous. By "the cause" of event E we may
>>> mean something like "the most obvious observable events preceding E
>>> that figure in the common sense explanation for the occurrence of
>>> E".
>>> In this sense, human actions (made possible by science) are the cause
>>> of such things as people being killed in war, destruction of tropical
>>> rain forests. On the other hand, by the "cause" of E we may mean
>>> "that prior change in the environment of E which led to the
>>> occurrence
>>> of E, and without which E would not have occurred". If we put the
>>> 20th century into the context of human history, then it is entirely
>>> correct to say that, in this sense, scientific-and-technological
>>> progress is the cause of distinctively 20th century disasters: what
>>> has changed, what is new, is scientific knowledge, not human
>>> nature.
>>> Yet again, from the standpoint of theoretical physics, "the cause" of
>>> E might be interpreted to mean something like "the physical state of
>>> affairs prior to E, throughout a sufficiently large spatial region
>>> surrounding the place where E occurs". In this third sense, the sun
>>> continuing to shine is as much a part of the cause of war and
>>> pollution as human action or human science and technology." (p. 42)
>>>
>>> That still seems to me to be correct.
>>>
>>> The really important point, however, in my
>>> view, is this. If we are to create a better world, we need to learn
>>> how to do it. And that in turn requires that we have institutions of
>>> learning rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to do it.
>>> It requires, in other words, that we have universities and schools of
>>> just the kind Friends of Wisdom hope to help bring into existence.
>>> If
>>> we are to tackle our immense global problems in wiser, more
>>> cooperatively rational ways than we do at present, we need to learn
>>> how to do it, which in turn requires (as a necessary, not a
>>> sufficient
>>> condition) that we have universities and schools which give priority
>>> to learning how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in
>>> wiser, more cooperatively rational ways than we do at present.
>>>
>>> The dreadful fact is that this kind of
>>> wisdom-inquiry does not exist, and has not ever existed. Instead, as
>>> I have argued at length elsewhere (see for example my From Knowledge
>>> to Wisdom, chapter 6), what we have had, for the last couple of
>>> centuries or so, is inquiry devoted, first, to acquiring knowledge
>>> and
>>> then, secondarily, applying it to help solve social problems (what I
>>> have called "knowledge-inquiry"). Once upon a time, in
>>> Europe, inquiry was based on a Christian ethos. As academia became
>>> secularized, after the Enlightenment, knowledge-inquiry came to
>>> dominate - at least on those parts of inquiry claiming to be
>>> rational.* It is this long-standing failure of academia to develop
>>> and implement wisdom-inquiry that implicates academia in some
>>> responsibility for our current situation. One can imagine
>>> wisdom-inquiry being created in the 18th century, and still our
>>> current global crises emerge. Nevertheless, failure to develop a
>>> kind
>>> of genuinely rational inquiry necessary for humanity to learn how to
>>> come to grips with our global problems does mean, in my view, that
>>> academia, over the centuries, does bear some portion of
>>> responsibility
>>> for the current situation. Especially when inquiry as it has been
>>> pursued, devoted to the acquisition of knowledge, has made current
>>> crises possible. And it means, of course, that academics today have
>>> all the more acute a responsibility to do something about the
>>> current academic situation.
>>>
>>> Suppose you are right, and the problem is
>>> greed. If the bad consequences of greed are to be dealt with
>>> democratically, this requires an electorate that knows what these bad
>>> consequences are, what needs to be done about them, and cares
>>> sufficiently to ensure that only those governments get elected that
>>> are going to deal with the problems. A properly educated electorate
>>> is essential, and that is where universities and schools implementing
>>> wisdom-inquiry come in. We need institutions of learning that put
>>> education of electorates about what we need to do about our global
>>> crises at a high level of priority. It is this which, for historical
>>> reasons, we do not at present have. That's what, in part, in my
>>> view,
>>> we should be striving to help create.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>> Nick
>>> * What this misses out is Romanticism, what Isaiah Berlin has called
>>> the Counter-Enlightenment, and Romantic anti-rationalism, so
>>> influential on parts of the humanities today. But in objecting to
>>> the
>>> rationalism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism made a terrible
>>> mistake. What they were objecting to was not rationalism, but a
>>> characteristic kind of irrationality masquerading as rationalism.
>>> Romanticism, in emphasizing integrity about aims, motivations and
>>> feelings, stressed vital aspects of genuine rationality, which the
>>> Enlightenment, and what it resulted in, ignored, to its cost. As I
>>> have argued elsewhere (I must stop saying that), if the Enlightenment
>>> had been implemented properly in the 18th century, in such a way as
>>> to
>>> create wisdom-inquiry, there would have been no need for the Romantic
>>> movement as something opposed to the Enlightenment. Wisdom-inquiry
>>> is
>>> a synthesis of traditional Rationalism and Romanticism, and an
>>> improvement over both.
>>> www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 3:45 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: Suggestion for Web Site
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> To Nick, and All,
>>>>
>>>> It does not seem to me to be true that it is academia that may be
>>>> held responsible for the current global crises Nick so thoughtfully
>>>> outlines. It is true that elements of industrial engineering
>>>> advances are aided by academic research but, at least in the US, it
>>>> is also true that industry financially supports such research at the
>>>> university level and therefore directs the direction of the same.
>>>> In
>>>> part this distinction between thus directed or influenced research
>>>> speaks in the distinction between ?pure? and applied research.
>>>>
>>>> But what Nick, for want of a better word, is naming a ?lack of
>>>> wisdom? (though imprudence is possibly more apt here) is really a
>>>> result of selfish greed.
>>>>
>>>> Take the environmental damage that has been wreaked by industrial
>>>> development, one can think of oil drilling at sea and in the arctic
>>>> and one can certainly think of transport, where oil tankers do not
>>>> only occasionally but routinely fail, wasting oil and killing
>>>> sea-life not just in the immediate wake of a spill, but, new
>>>> research
>>>> shows, for years to come. Think of the irrationality of continually
>>>> using aging tankers to transport oil across the globe. Why is this
>>>> prima facie irrational thing done? Is it because academics have been
>>>> remiss in failing to point out that this irrational? Indeed, no
>>>> materials engineering assessment would prescrie current industry
>>>> practice. Nevertheless and in practice, the oil industry continues
>>>> to
>>>> push the limits of its fleet because it is cheaper to use existing
>>>> tankers until they fail. In other, more practical language: in the
>>>> real world one does not retire a tanker before it fails, if one has
>>>> a
>>>> choice, but rather *when* it fails and when one has, conveniently,
>>>> enough, no choice. Prognostication in these areas is an art: such
>>>> vessels often survive many more journeys than one would have
>>>> predicted for them and that very same fuzzy interval is worth a
>>>> great
>>>> deal to industry: it is a risk worth taking precisely because
>>>> environmental damage and spillage can be written off and need not
>>>> be,
>>>> as it is not, taken into account. The value here is not a supposed
>>>> inquiry into the repeated seaworthiness of overloaded tankers.
>>>> Academics are not at fault as there is no pursuit of knowledge that
>>>> stands behind such decisions (how long can the old ship hold out?)
>>>> but there is a pursuit of profit at any price. Industrial
>>>> innovations have developed fishing trawlers of immense scope,
>>>> capable
>>>> of strip-mining the ocean of every living thing in the wake of nets
>>>> that effectively work as bottom rakes/scoops, attached to ships
>>>> themselves with new technology for processing the catch and spewing
>>>> out thousands of tons of wasted, that is: dead sea-life.
>>>> Ichthyologists have been telling fisheries industries since the
>>>> early
>>>> sixties --- not just in industry specific organs but as popularly as
>>>> publication in the *Scientific American*, that the practice of
>>>> taking
>>>> as much fish as possible was irrational, in today's language
>>>> unsustainable. The industry responded by intensifying capacity to
>>>> its present day ?efficiency? ? imprudent and unsustainable, but
>>>> ongoing. (In the sixties, when the industry was more frank, it
>>>> responded to criticism by suggesting that once a specific fish had
>>>> been fished to exhaustion it would of course fish a different fish.
>>>> A thoughtless, insensitive, but, please note, perfectly rational
>>>> response.) When, today, the Canadian government approves a barbaric
>>>> culling of seals (for fur and penises, both holdovers of an
>>>> uncharming past, and one wonders why Asian men have evidently not
>>>> yet
>>>> heard have not heard, as any western man with an email account, has
>>>> heard, of viagra, which, unlike seal penises, actually works), it
>>>> does so to cover the wastage of over-fishing, casting blame for its
>>>> effects onto the seals (irrational as that is, the putative
>>>> suggestion is believed, especially by the fishermen) but it also
>>>> does
>>>> so and this is the practical point of the madness and why it will
>>>> not
>>>> stop until there are no seals, in order to provide work for
>>>> fishermen
>>>> whose livelihood is vanishing with the every advance in trawler
>>>> technology: The better the boats, the less work there is: good news
>>>> for the fisheries, bad news for the fishermen, and far, far worse
>>>> for
>>>> the fish. When the culling takes place as it does after the new
>>>> seals are born, what is significant is that unlike ordinary
>>>> predation
>>>> in nature and not-at-all-accidentally akin to the strip-mining
>>>> tactics of today?s fishing practice, the hunters (these are
>>>> fishermen
>>>> earning money for the first job of the year available to them) kill
>>>> every single baby seal they see, that is: they kill all of them. The
>>>> only seals that survive are the ones on ice-floes not visited by the
>>>> hunters and financial incentives insure that these are only
>>>> accidental oversights. Fishermen today, after all, need to be able
>>>> to afford a lifestyle like that of anyone else in a developed nation
>>>> and Canada?s government seeks to guarantee that to them, no matter
>>>> that environmental scientists underscore that this cannot be
>>>> sustained. The idea, apparently, is that when all the seals have
>>>> been killed and the herring does not return, as the herring will not
>>>> return, that one will find a different fish.
>>>> Anyone who dines on fish is well aware that new fish are featured on
>>>> the menu. This is not due to new science, this is due to eating
>>>> fish
>>>> that one formerly did not eat, in part of course because one did not
>>>> have the techniques to catch them, but in far greater part (this is
>>>> the real-life detail) because they were not considered optimum for
>>>> consumption. But new cooking techniques sauce even such fish today
>>>> and diners enjoy them with gusto. Orange roughy anyone?
>>>>
>>>> Academia is not responsible for environmental damage but industry is
>>>> and this culpability is not a result of a failure of wisdom or
>>>> prudence but rather to plain and routine non-concern. The damage
>>>> done to the Arctic by the oil industry is not at all unintentional,
>>>> it is deliberate if it is also thoughtless, in the way small boys
>>>> can
>>>> go off on an expedition into the wilderness and leave a mess behind
>>>> (if unsupervised), not at all unintentionally but exactly carelessly
>>>> (boys who might know better, who might know that one should remove
>>>> one?s detritus, taking one?s garbage with one, can choose to leave
>>>> it
>>>> anyway out of laziness).
>>>> The cause in the case of small boys (and grown-ups too, to judge by
>>>> the state of some public areas in the US) is indolence. In the case
>>>> of industry the cause is selfish greed: cleaning up after oneself is
>>>> expensive; controlling the fish harvest is expensive and seems
>>>> pointless where other fisheries might not be so idealistically
>>>> minded. (Note that one does not see that it is rational to be
>>>> prudent.) The effects of global warming have been predicted for
>>>> decades only to have industry pay scientists to debunk such
>>>> predictions with all due rationality, even, to use Nick's language
>>>> here, imaginatively and critically. All those predictions were
>>>> useless, deflected and refused, but now we find ourselves in the
>>>> middle of it and few scientists can be found to say what many were
>>>> saying only two years ago, that weather patterns were normal.
>>>>
>>>> Global warming, such as it is and such as will continue, has been
>>>> caused by human actions. Rationally, one would think, having done
>>>> this damage, one might make haste to undo it. But rationality will
>>>> get one nowhere because the powers that be have no intention of
>>>> stopping anything while there is still money to be made (that means:
>>>> stopping industry, not stopping academia, my Dean for all his faults
>>>> has done nothing to cause these problems, and in the case of war, of
>>>> course, military engagement supports industry in environmental
>>>> devastation in the name of aid and development). Sadly enough,
>>>> with
>>>> increasing chaos there are more opportunities for damage and
>>>> thoughtless development (rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina on the
>>>> American Gulf Coast has not sparked an outburst of rationality but
>>>> wild speculation and there is money to be had as there always is in
>>>> the wake of the suffering of thousands).
>>>>
>>>> You may say, and I think I hear this well-articulated in Nick?s
>>>> thoughts as the inspiration for this call for a revolution in
>>>> academe, that even if the result were, contrary to fact, a call to
>>>> implement rationality that the sad truth is that rational plans for
>>>> the same would not be on the table. This is, in part, true
>>>> however,
>>>> and as the engineers on board have been quick to point out (though
>>>> engineers more than any other academic are collusive with industry,
>>>> of course, of course), it is also in part inaccurate. For academics
>>>> lack power to act on their own and academics are not asked by those
>>>> in power to provide plans for actions or remedies to problems.
>>>> Therefore there is no point in engendering such schemes, which has
>>>> not stopped some theorists from spinning precisely such plans. From
>>>> Plato to Bacon and Machiavelli, Marx and Henry George, academics
>>>> have
>>>> theorized how societies ought to be run, well reasoned and sometimes
>>>> in thorough detail. With the exception of Marx (in woefully limited
>>>> and badly deformed efforts), none of these prescriptive schemes have
>>>> had any effect. Those that have had some influence, Popper and
>>>> C.I.Lewis come to mind, may be said to work not because such
>>>> rationality is more compelling than antecedent efforts but because
>>>> business schools have been able to use inherent amphibolies to their
>>>> advantage for the sake of advancing the interests of industry not
>>>> rationality. Apart from such coopted uses, academics themselves, by
>>>> and large, are out of the loop. Nor is this likely to change, nor
>>>> is
>>>> there a crying need. Indeed, money-making concerns are already
>>>> well-entrenched in such advisory roles as there are and, jealous of
>>>> their expert roles (and income), are loathe to have additional
>>>> experts on board, especially not those with seemingly better
>>>> ?credentials? as experts. To boot, I note that when academics do
>>>> work as consultants they learn that a consultant is not even an
>>>> advisor but rather a facilitator. In other words those who keep
>>>> their jobs learn that industry wants to be told what it wants to
>>>> hear
>>>> and it doesn?t want/need any other kind of advice. We need an
>>>> old-fashioned revolution, and not just in the academy, I fear.
>>>>
>>>> With best regards from New York,
>>>>
>>>> Babette E. Babich
>>>> Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University
>>>> & Adj. Research Prof., Georgetown University
>>>>
>>>> Web page address: http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/babich/
>>>> babich.htm
>>>>
>>>> Address:
>>>>
>>>> Professor Babette E. Babich
>>>> Executive Editor, New Nietzsche Studies
>>>> Department of Philosophy | Fordham University
>>>> 113 West 60th Street, 925H or 914 | New York, NY 10023 | USA
>>>> Office: (212) 636-6297 | Fax: (212) 927-7551
>>>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>>>>
>>>> New Nietzsche Studies Web Page Address:
>>>> http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/nns/nns_journal_description.html
>>>>
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