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FRIENDSOFWISDOM  August 2014

FRIENDSOFWISDOM August 2014

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Subject:

Re: Amartya Sen and Wisdom-Inquiry

From:

"Maxwell, Nicholas" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Sat, 30 Aug 2014 22:10:38 +0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Dear Rafe, 



                  Wisdom-inquiry can be regarded as a development, and improvement, of Popper's ideas about science and critical inquiry.  It emerged out of a criticism of Popper's views about science, first spelled out in a paper I published in Philosophy of Science in 1972 (see http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1348843/ ) - a criticism subsequently developed in a number of papers and books.  As far as I know, just one Popperian has bothered to respond to this criticism - David Miller - and his response is abysmal.  You know of this work of mine, I have asked you, as someone who values Popper's work, on a number of occasions to respond.  No response.  What does that say about the tradition of critical thinking bequeathed to us by Popper, and taken up by present day Popperians - you included?  You could have a look at my "Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Aim-Oriented Empiricism". Philosophia , 2005, 32 (1-4) 181 - 239, available online at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/105631/ - at least at the part critical of Popper - and respond.  But I suspect you will not.  So much for your plea for critical thinking!



               You conclude by declaring " Equating Fox News and the Koch brothers with ISIS is right over the top".  But who said anything about equating these things?  Measles and Ebola are both bad, but that doesn't mean they are equally bad.



Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom

Publications online: http://philpapers.org/profile/17092

http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html



-----Original Message-----

From: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]

Sent: 26 August 2014 11:50

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Amartya Sen and Wisdom-Inquiry



I wonder how much we need to dwell on wisdom inquiry in view of the large amount of unhelpful talk that has been generated on this list.



For example I am inclined to sympathise with Sen's on climate change because as far as I can make out the planet has  not actually warmed for over a decade.



On  worldwide poverty, modest moves in the direction of better economic policy  have raised many tens of millions out of poverty in India and China. 



As for academic inquiry, more emphasis on critical thinking is likely to do more good than talking about wisdom inquiry, judging from the proceedings on this list.



Equating Fox News and the Koch brothers with ISIS is right over the top, who on this list is prepared accept that as a reasonable and responsible position?



Rafe Champion

Sydney





---- "Maxwell wrote: 

> Dear Wiebina,

> 

>                      I have a feeling you cannot have read my “From Knowledge to Wisdom”.  The first two sentences are: “Our planet earth carries all too heavy a burden of killing, torture, enslavement, poverty, suffering, peril and death.  It has been estimated that over three and a half million people die each year from starvation or from disease related to malnutrition”.  And as the book develops, it becomes abundantly clear that a fundamental problem at the heart of the book is the poverty, the suffering and unnecessary deaths suffered by so many millions in the poor regions of the earth.  In all my subsequent writings concerned to stress just how important it is to get wisdom-inquiry established in our universities, I have made clear that one of the most basic global problems we face is the vast difference in wealth and power that exists between industrially advanced countries, and the poor of poor countries.  One of the reasons for taking action now to stop the worst of global warming is that, if we do not, it will be the poor of the earth who will suffer the most.  They are already suffering, in parts of Africa and Asia.

> 

>                    If I am right, and you have not read “From Knowledge to Wisdom”, I urge you to do so, and then get back to me if you still think I don’t “take the needs of poor countries into account”.

> 

>                              Best wishes,

> 

>                                      Nick

> Website: 

> www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowl

> edge-to-wisdom> Publications online: 

> http://philpapers.org/profile/17092

> http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html

> 

> From: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom 

> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wiebina 

> Heesterman

> Sent: 26 August 2014 09:39

> To: [log in to unmask]

> Subject: Re: Amartya Sen and Wisdom-Inquiry

> 

> Nicl and others,

> 

> I had a look at Amartya Sen's article, which I enjoyed (not least the 

> teapot picture). In our book Rediscovering Sustainability: Economics of the Finite Earth we draw attention to  exactly the same issues. Sen also emphasises the fact that (many) environmentalists ignore the plight of poor countries (Our book doesn't). It is an accusation that van be levelled at some environmentalists. But has 'Wisdom-inquiry' taken the needs of poor countries into account?

> I just want to ask you, where is the 'informed ethical reasoning' in 

> your 'wisdom inquiry'? I have not seen the term used once so far,,

> 

> Wiebina

> 

> Dr W.Heesterman

> 23 Bryony Road

> Birmingham B29 4BY

> United KIngdom

> 

> Tel (0044)(0)121 475 6967

> Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

> www.rediscovering<http://www.rediscovering> sustainability.org.uk

> 

> 

> Making better use of what we already have

> 

> From: "Maxwell, Nicholas" 

> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

> To: 

> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

> Sent: Monday, 25 August 2014, 23:36

> Subject: Re: Amartya Sen and Wisdom-Inquiry

> 

> Lee,

> 

>        I would not characterise wisdom-inquiry as ideology.  It is what knowledge-inquiry becomes when its rationality defects are removed.  Wisdom-inquiry gives intellectual priority to the tasks of articulating problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, etc., and holds public education about what we need to do in response to our global problems to be fundamental.  Doing wisdom-inquiry is, potentially, more fruitful than merely arguing for the need for wisdom-inquiry.  But when the current intellectual standards of academia stem from knowledge-inquiry, it is difficult to do wisdom-inquiry – in an academic context, at least.  Difficult just to get published.

> 

>       Actually, to argue that we need to put wisdom-inquiry into practice is, in itself, to make a characteristic contribution to wisdom-inquiry, in that it is an argument for the reform of the aims and methods of an important, influential institution: academia.  And merely to publish the argument, let alone to get any attention paid to it, is very difficult, as a lifetime of battling with problems of publication have taught me.

> 

>       The argument that we urgently need to modify knowledge-inquiry so that it becomes wisdom-inquiry could be regarded as a kind of model for what we should be attempting to do if we take wisdom-inquiry seriously.  We should be developing analogous arguments for the reform of other institutions: government, the economy, politics, the media, law, industry, agriculture, and so on.  There is a massive amount to do.  Let us do it.  But be warned.  It is hard going.

> 

>                 Best wishes,

> 

>                           Nick

> Website: 

> www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowl

> edge-to-wisdom> Publications online: 

> http://philpapers.org/profile/17092

> http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html

> 

> From: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom 

> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leland R. 

> Beaumont

> Sent: 25 August 2014 22:29

> To: 

> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

> Subject: Re: Amartya Sen and Wisdom-Inquiry

> 

> Nick,

> I am somewhat encouraged by Denis Robinson’s frank response to your proposal; it begins to outline the type of operational tests and evidence that will be required to validate your theoretical claims.

> 

> Evidence trumps ideology—and all we have so far is ideology.

> 

> Perhaps FoW has stalled because we are waiting for others to design and conduct the experiments, collect the data, and empirically test the various hypotheses that FoW has been proposing.

> 

> So far what has been offered is only a reiteration of the reasoning leading up to the theory, but little or no “clinical trials” have been conducted.

> 

> With so many ideologies and so little time, perhaps the burden of proof lies with us.

> 

> Lee Beaumont

> 

> From: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom 

> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Maxwell, Nicholas

> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 8:41 AM

> To: 

> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

> Subject: Amartya Sen and Wisdom-Inquiry

> 

> Dear Friends of Wisdom,

> 

>                                         Recently, Amartya Sen published an article entitled ‘Stop Obsessing About Global Warming’ (see here<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118969/environmentalists-obsess-about-global-warming-ignore-poor-countries> ).  Near the beginning of his article, Sen refers to “the general problem of not having anything like an overall normative framework, involving ethics as well as science, that could serve as the basis of debates and discussions on policy recommendations”.  Well, wisdom-inquiry is, at the very least, just such an overall framework (it is of course much more than that).  So, I sent off an email to Sen, letting him know about wisdom-inquiry, and I informed the philosophy emailing list (that told me of Sen’s article) of my email to Sen.  I am always looking for opportunities to let potentially simpatico people know about wisdom-inquiry, and the profound importance of putting it into academic practice.

> 

>                                       Back came an interesting, almost despairing email from Denis Robinson, a philosopher evidently from New Zealand.  It occurred to me that his email might be of interest to some Friends of Wisdom.  Here it is, together with my reply.

> 

>                           Best wishes,

> 

>                                    Nick Dear Nicholas,

> 

> Do you have any account of global power-structures, economic systems, political processes, and the role of media, vested interests, lobbyists, Big Capital, and the blind forces of politico-economic "ecology" (for want of a better word), giving any sort of clear account of why they perpetuate (blindly in some ways, deliberately in others), the multiple dysfunctions (poor understanding and dissemination of, indeed antagonism to, scientific expertise not least amongst them) which we see turning the 21st. century into a global nightmare?

> 

> Do you have any analysis of those forces which explains how they could be grasped, managed, manipulated, thwarted, redirected, and outwitted, to improve the prospects of more rational and humane collective social action to deal with global poverty, resource mismanagement, climate change, arms profiteering, medical profiteering, antagonism to expertise, silencing of the underprivileged, human trafficking, and all the many other manifest ills which plague the contemporary world?

> 

> Unless you can explain how the mechanisms work, what the levers are which could reconfigure those mechanisms, and how people can be persuaded to take hold of them (without being crushed under predictable political, military, and economic backlashes), what have you given us?

> 

> We need more than an overall normative framework. We need a way to redirect global-scale socio-economic processes that are out of control and running riot. If you can tell me that you have anything useful to say about that, perhaps I will read your book with interest. If you do not, surely you are in the game of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

> 

> I do not mean to write in a specially unfriendly manner, but I am sick of seeing people discussing proposals for the ethics of elephant-herding while a horde of wild elephants tramples the room, the walls, the countryside, human life and culture, and the planet.

> 

> Unless people genuinely identify the dynamics of global socio-economico-military-cum-political processes, and particularly, the evolved feedback loops which sustain those processes by disempowering their victims and their critics, there is no hope at all of diverting them from the uncontrolled destructive path they are on.

> 

> If this is a pessimistic outlook, so be it. The naive optimism of people who propose new sets of ideals, new codes of ethics, new ways of thinking, or the needs for new mindsets, without detailed practical and realistic proposals for achieving uptake of those ideals, and successful, widespread and large-scale action based on them, are in my opinion simply self-deluded. Academics have so little power to bring about change that it makes little difference to the world's main problems, at the moment, what we say. Ask yourself how the Koch brothers, ISIS, the Chinese leadership, or even Fox News, or anyone making economic or foreign policy in the world's most militarily and economically nations or nation-blocs, would deal with a wave of new opinions in academia about the purposes of science. Then ask yourself how much real change in the planetary multi-crisis would result!

> 

> I'd sooner be a reality-based pessimist than a deluded idealist peddling words which the mindless, largely irrational, and as a whole impersonal, processes governing our futures will never listen to. They are not rational processes (nor are many people who are their social products), so reason is wasted on them.

> 

> Where is the engine room? How do the mechanisms work? How can we turn them off? How can we throw them into reverse? Those are the questions we need realistic answers to! Shouting at the engines to behave themselves is a waste of breath.

> 

> Thanks for reading. Please pass these words on if you care to.

> 

> Denis Robinson

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

> -----------

> Dear Denis,

> 

>                     Thank you for your email – and your questions!  I thoroughly sympathize with your feelings of near despair at the way the world is going.  I do indeed have views about the potent social forces you refer to: global power structures, economic systems, and the rest.  But what I set out to do in my book “From Knowledge to Wisdom” is point out that the kind of academic inquiry we have inherited from the past, and which is still dominant in universities today – “knowledge-inquiry” as I call it these days – is an intellectual disaster when judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, helping humanity make progress towards a better, wiser world.  It is grossly and damagingly irrational in a wholesale, structural way, and that goes a long way towards accounting for our failure to learn how to deal with all the malign social forces you refer to.  Correct the rationality defects of knowledge-inquiry and a quite different kind of academic enterprise would emerge, wisdom-inquiry, really capable of enabling us to discover how to deal with all these malign forces, and learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways.

> 

>                    You argue that academia is powerless before the Koch brothers, ISIS, the Chinese leadership, Fox news, and so on.  Academia as constituted today is powerless.  But matters would be very different if we put wisdom-inquiry into practice.  Then, public education and problems of living would be fundamental – intellectually fundamental, and of fundamental concern.  It is unlikely that governments of democracies will be much more enlightened than the electorate.  In order to get more enlightened governments, we need more enlightened electorates.  Academia today is hardly concerned about public education – education about what our problems of living are, and what we need to do about them.  That would be the primary concern of wisdom-inquiry academia.  Would having a politically enlightened public make a difference?  It would certainly have an impact on the Koch brothers and Fox news – and even on ISIS.  And it would be hard for the Chinese leadership to impose effective barriers against Western universities implementing wisdom-inquiry.

> 

>                     In order to deal with the malign social forces you indicate, and make progress towards a better world, we need to learn how to do it – and by “we” I mean a considerable percentage of the electorate – ultimately of the world’s population.  This in turn requires that our institutions of learning are rationally designed and devoted to the task.  At present they are not.  That, in my view, is the great disaster of our times – the gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of our institutions of learning, when judged from this standpoint.  As I have pointed out, this is even the cause of most of our current global problems in one legitimate sense of “cause”: the astonishing intellectual success of science and technology pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry.  Science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, modern armaments, modern medicine and hygiene, which in turn have led to population growth, vast inequalities in wealth and power around the globe, the lethal character of modern war, destruction of natural habitats and extinction of species, pollution of earth, sea and air, and probably most serious of all, despite Sen, the impending disasters of climate change.  It is not that people have become greedier or more wicked; nor is it that we have got capitalism: what has happened is that some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act, as a result of science and technology, without also acquiring the capacity to act wisely.  Sometimes these unprecedented powers are used for the good; sometimes, whether intentionally or unintentionally, for the bad.  Almost inevitable, granted that our institutions of learning are restricted to procuring knowledge, and not devoted primarily to helping us to discover how to solve our problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways.

> 

>                     Below is a short extract from my most recent book “How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World: The Urgent Need for an Academic Revolution” (Imprint Academic, 2014, £9-95) which makes the point that modern science is the cause of our global problems – in one sense of “cause”.  For a short piece, two sides of one sheet of A4, which lists some of the changes involved in moving from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry, see here<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/whatneedstochange> .  For a summary of my “from knowledge to wisdom” argument see my 2008) From Knowledge to Wisdom: The Need for an Academic Revolution.<http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1344148/> In: Barnett, R and Maxwell, N, (eds.) Wisdom in the University. (1 - 19). Routledge: London, UK.  For the detailed argument see “From Knowledge to Wisdom”, preferably the 2nd edition (Pentire Press, 2007).

> 

>                       All good wishes,

> 

>                                  Nick

> Website: 

> www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowl

> edge-to-wisdom> Publications online: 

> http://philpapers.org/profile/17092

> http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html

> 

> “Extract from “How Universities Can Help.....”

> But it is not just that modern science has made all our global crises possible. It is worse than that. The unprecedented success of modern scientific and technological research is actually the cause of our global problems.

> At once it will be objected that it is not science that is the cause, 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 by modern weapons 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 our times 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 our distinctive current global disasters: what has changed, what is new, is scientific knowledge, not human nature. Give a group of chimpanzees rifles and teach them how to use them and in one sense, of course, the cause of the subsequent demise of the group would be the actions of the chimpanzees. But in another obvious sense, the cause would be the sudden availability and use of rifles—the new, lethal tech-nology. 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 modern science and technology.

> 

> 

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