Dear
Steve,
One of the reasons it is so important to get the decent
intellectual
standards of wisdom-inquiry established is just the one you in
effect
indicate. As long as the (harmful, irrational) intellectual
standards
of knowledge-inquiry prevail, excellent work such as yours will
tend to be
cut back in times of financial hardship. Given
knowledge-inquiry, the
work of your School of Applied Global Ethics is on
the fringes, not central
to the pursuit of knowledge; it thus, it seems,
deserves to be cut
back. Given wisdom-inquiry, the work of your School
comes out as being
of central importance. One must look elsewhere to make
cuts. Lee
Shulman made the point, commenting on my work, long ago at a
conference in
New Orleans in 1994. The intellectual standards that prevail
and are
taken for granted by the majority, exercise a major influence over
what
flourishes, and what withers. It is in part for this reason that it is
so important that these effective intellectual standards are reasonably OK,
and not disastrously irrational, as at present (3 of the 4 most elementary
rules of rational problem solving being
violated).
Scientists, scholars and teachers are limited in what
they can do in
opposition to the military actions of governments, whether
undemocratic like
China and Russia, or democratic like the US and the UK.
But we should not
inflict upon ourselves a profoundly damaging and
intellectually defective
conception of science, and of inquiry more
generally, which serve only to
increase our impotence, and hand over to
governments and their servants
power to cut back what is potentially of most
value in our intellectual
endeavours.
Best
wishes,
Nick
www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.ukDear
Nick,
What you say is of course absolutely valid and prescient. Alas, the
truth
hat should be is very different from the truth that is. I
work in a School
of Applied Global ethics where such considerations are meat
and drink.
However, units such as this are always vulnerable to being
restructured out
when major financial crises hit. My current
specialist focus covers the
deployment of paralysing and incapacitating
weapons to prevent future
migration whether it is conflict or
climate change induced. I fully expect
such research as mine to be culled in
the rush for quality control across
our university which demands a
premium on conformity and homogeneity.
However, after twenty years of field
work looking at the spread of new
weapons of political control from Africa
to China, from the US to Russia, I
can confidently say it is one of the
biggest growth areas and will be far
more accessible to the
authorities than wisdom as he current crisis deepens.
Lets compare notes
again in a decade when I fully expect to continue
self -funding this
research...but by that time I think the fault lines will
be more
visible but the learning curve during such periods is threatenley
steep.
Best
wishes,
Steve
________________________________________
From:
Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [
[log in to unmask]] on
behalf
of Nicholas Maxwell [
[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 31 January 2011
09:49
To:
[log in to unmask]Subject:
Re: New opinion poll on climate change
Dear
Steve,
You say "universities if properly harnessed could yield
new knowledge to help
us through the looming crisis". But my argument is
that the basic task
of universities ought to be to put forward and
critically assess proposals
for action - possible solutions to our problems
of living - policies,
political programmes, philosophies of life.
Restricting academic inquiry to
acquiring knowledge - which is what your
remark implicitly takes for granted
- is what is wrong with the status quo.
The revolution we need would
transform universities so that their
fundamental task would become to explore
ideas as to how we might live, what
we might do, what institutions and social
arrangements we might develop,
what political programmes we might seek to
implement, what philosophies of
life we might live by. None of this is
knowledge. It is, if it meets with
success, "good ideas as to what we
can do to solve our problems of living,
realize what is of value in
life". The outcome of the revolution we require
would be a kind of
academic inquiry that has, as its basic aim, to seek and
promote wisdom -
wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in
life for oneself and
others. Wisdom, in this sense, includes knowledge,
technological
know-how and understanding, but much else besides. It is
primarily the
capacity to act, to live, so as to achieve what is of value
in
life.
What matters is what a system, or institution, does, not what
we think it
does - as you say. Nevertheless, current orthodox
conceptions of science
and academic inquiry - standard empiricism and
knowledge-inquiry - exercise
a massive influence over what goes on in
academia. Publications, careers,
prizes, education (or perhaps one
should say "training") are all massively
influenced. Have a look at
chapter six of my "From Knowledge to Wisdom: A
Revolution for Science and the
Humanities", where this question is examined
in some detail. This book
was first published in 1984; chapter six was
brought up to date in the 2007
revised and extended edition.
In my view, the overwhelming need is to get
across to scientists and
academics who care about such things that science,
and academic inquiry more
generally, suffer from a gross, structural
irrationality when judged from
the standpoint of contributing to human
welfare, this being at the root of
our current global problems, it being a
matter of immense importance, for
the long-term future of humanity, to bring
about a revolution in science,
and in academia, so that universities come to
put what I have called
"wisdom-inquiry" into practice. As you indicate,
our only hope of tackling
our immense problems successfully is to tackle them
democratically. But
that requires electorates to be aware of what our
problems are, and what we
need to do about them. (We can't expect
democratic governments to be much
more enlightened than electorates.)
That in turn requires that we possess
institutions of learning actively
engaged in public education about what our
problems are, and what we need to
do about them, by means of discussion and
debate. This is what our
universities ought to be doing but, at present,
they are not. They
devote themselves - almost restrict themselves - to the
pursuit of
knowledge. Relevant knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient.
It is
what we do, or refrain from doing, that really matters, that
invariably
solves problems of living. Knowledge and technological
know-how,
however relevant, will not on their own solve problems of global
warming.
Best
wishes,
Nick Maxwell
www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.ukDear
Nick,
It is hard to disagree with what you say as an ideal type...but I
remember
Prof Stafford Beer talking about systems as a system is what a
system does,
not necessarily what we think it is or does. He analysed the NHS
which most
of us would assume has been designed to produce health but he
found that in
systemic terms it was more focused to service the career
aspirations of
senior staff. I suspect universities are no so much different
in that
regard.
It is true, universities if properly harnessed
could yield new knowledge to
help us through the looming crisis. But at a
time when we are facing 85%
funding cuts across the humanities in the UK, I
will not hold my breath. But
we should hold your vision of an applied global
ethics as a lodestone goal
for our future orientation.
My point
about Egypt was not a call to revolution and the siren song
of
taking to the streets. Just a perception of that
reality being a
potential model of many of our futures where
increasingly authoritarian
states hand their most intractable social,
political and environmental
problems over to the state security forces
for resolution. In that
scenario, white collar mercenaries in the
military, police security,
university, media, entertainment complex will find
welcome research grant
opportunities to create new tool boxes to help
these authoritarian
regimes....It is an issue that Scientists for Global
Responsibility have
been grappling with since many of our scientific
colleagues have no
grounding in ethics and social responsibility. Yet
they will continue to
acquire a sizeable proportion of new research budgets
whereas many of the
scholars who share the clarity of your vision
will be forced to self fund
their research....The Crisis Forum is
probably a good case in point, so
perhaps a key task in realizing any
such vision is to find wise funders who
can fertilize our dreaming before the
season of nightmares
begins.
Steve
________________________________________
From:
Nicholas Maxwell [
[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 30 January 2011
20:37
To: Wright, Steve;
[log in to unmask]Subject:
Re: New opinion poll on climate change
Dear
Steve,
Your remark about all swans are white being refuted by
one black swan is not
really to the point. In my writings I repeatedly
emphasize that good
work goes on done by individuals and individual
departments at odds with
orthodoxy. My point is that we have inherited from
the past the view -
still dominant in academia today - that, in order to
help promote human
welfare, academic inquiry must devote itself, in the
first instance, to the
acquisition of knowledge. First, knowledge is to be
acquired; then it
can be applied to help solve social problems. This is
still massively
influential on what goes on in universities - although some
of what goes on
is at odds with it. This orthodox view is, however, grossly
and very
damagingly irrational. It violates three of the four rules of
rational
problem solving conceivable. Granted that the basic aim of
academia is
to help promote human welfare, then the basic problems academia
needs to try
to help solve are problems of living, not problems of
knowledge. The
proper fundamental intellectual tasks of academic inquiry
are to (1)
articulate, and try to improve the articulation of, our problems
of living,
and (2) propose and critically assess possible solutions -
possible actions,
policies, political programmes, philosophies of life.
Academia would need
also to (3) tackle specialized problems of knowledge and
technological
know-how, but would need (4) to let fundamental and
specialized problem
solving interact, so that each influences the
other.
Academia today, giving priority to the pursuit of
knowledge, puts (3) into
practice to splendid effect, but violates (1), (2)
and (4). Some
thinking about policy problems and options does go on, but
very much at the
periphery, not as the central, fundamental intellectual
activity - not even
in the social sciences and humanities. Academia as at
present constituted,
giving priority to the pursuit of knowledge, violates
three of the four most
fundamental, elementary rules of reason conceivable,
in a wholesale,
structural way, and it is this utterly disastrous
long-standing structural
irrationality in our best institutions of learning
which is responsible for
our lamentable failure to learn how to tackle our
problems of living a bit
more intelligently, humanely and effectively - a
bit more wisely - than we
have managed up to
now.
Before we rush out onto the streets and attempt to provoke,
here in the UK,
an Egypt-style revolution, I suggest it would be better to
go the root of the
problem: the very damaging, long-standing, structural
irrationality in our
best institutions of learning - our universities - and
get off the ground a
vocal, high profile movement to change the status quo:
a campaign to make
those changes needed to bring into existence universities
rationally
organized and devoted to helping humanity realize what is of
value, and make
progress to towards as good a world as possible. This is
something that
we can do. Few concerned with the grave problems facing
humanity are
even aware of the urgent need to do it. Egypt-style rebellions
will not
help.
Best
wishes,
Nick
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