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:
ArialDear Babette,
Arial Some
further thoughts concerning whether knowledge-inquiry or greed is
responsible for our current problems.
Arial 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.
Arial 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
Arial0000,0000,EEEEhttp://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:
Arial"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)
Arial That
still seems to me to be correct.
Arial
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.
Arial 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.
Arial
Arial
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.
Arial
Best wishes,
Arial
Nick
Arial* 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.
0000,0000,EEEEwww.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk
Arial----- Original
Message -----
ArialFrom:Arial
0000,0000,EEEE[log in to unmask]
ArialSent:Arial
Monday, October 10, 2005 3:45 PM
ArialSubject:Arial
Re: Suggestion for Web Site
Times New RomanTo Nick, and All,
Verdana
Times New RomanIt 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.
Times New Roman
Times New RomanBut 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.
Times New Roman
Times New RomanTake 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.
Times New RomanAnyone 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?
Times New Roman
Times New RomanAcademia 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).
Times New RomanThe 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.
Verdana
Times New RomanGlobal 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).
Times New Roman
Times New RomanYou 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.
Verdana
Times New RomanWith best regards from New
York,
VerdanaBabette E. Babich
Verdana Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University
Verdana & Adj. Research Prof., Georgetown University
VerdanaWeb page address: http://0000,0000,EEEEwww.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/babich/babich.htm
Verdana Address:
Verdana
Verdana Professor Babette E. Babich
Verdana Executive Editor, New Nietzsche Studies
Verdana Department of Philosophy | Fordham University
Verdana 113 West 60th Street, 925H or 914 | New York, NY 10023 | USA
Verdana Office: (212) 636-6297 | Fax: (212) 927-7551
Verdana Email: 0000,0000,EEEE[log in to unmask]
Verdana
VerdanaNew Nietzsche Studies Web Page Address:
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Verdana
