Abuse of Science (warning: political thread)

[jim stone]

I don't think there's any moral obligation to care about such things; I just think that it would be a positive step in our cultural development to care. Culture is mostly about transcending our baser animal instincts, and one of our most deeply ingrained instincts is to maximize short-term self-interest at the expense of long-term public interest. It's "natural" for any species to despoil its own nest; this is how the process of ecological succession works. Plant species "pollute" their environment to the extent that it's no longer habitable for them. Pine trees colonize an open field, and eventually there are so many pines that young pine trees are shaded out and the more shade-tolerant hardwoods take over.

But human beings have a big advantage over pine trees: we can foresee the consequences of our actions and take steps to avoid them. I'm skeptical that we will do so in the case of climate change, because as a species we do not have a good track record of foregoing short-term pleasures for the sake of long-term health and safety. Just look at cigarettes and the millions of people who continue to smoke despite being fully aware of the potential consequences down the road. Global warming is such a difficult problem to attack precisely because the consequences are not immediate. We can continue to blithely burn fossil fuels and feel no ill effect for years to come. The situation isn't helped by the fact that, unlike cigarettes, we don't have certainty about what the consequences are likely to be.

So, while we don't necessarily have any moral obligation to care, I think we would be foolish not to.

I'm not a big fan of nature, but many of the things I care
about will outlast me, hopefully. I care about sentient
beings more than ecosystems, except as they affect
the former. Of course life makes more sense if
everything one values doesn't come to an end
with one's own death.

I think the essence of morality comes
down to being kindly and fair--benevolence and justice.
As a matter of benevolence, we ought to do what
we can to make the world a happier place in
the long run, which includes people and animals
not yet born. Also I think one can treat people
not yet born unfairly, by consuming for luxuries
what they will need to live; so they might look
back on us in their poverty and say with some
justice that we wronged them. On both grounds,
therefore, I think we have an obligation
to be concerned about environmental issues,
including problems that won't happen in
our own lifetimes.

I think a big problem for environmentalism is that
it has become too much a part of the counterculture
and Republican-bashing, and a form of moral posturing.
Repulicans who actually have tried to protect
the envonment get bashed just the same;
there's another agenda operating.

The level headed non-partisan scientific voice ismost welcome, however.
It's hard not to
view the others with suspicion. Also environmentalism
has tended to become a sort of paganism;
deep ecology and so on. I'm an atheist, about
nature too. Again the scientific voice that appeals
to people who see these issues as largely
engineering problems is welcome. Best

[GaryKelly]

*snippage* Global warming is such a difficult problem to attack precisely because the consequences are not immediate. */snippage*

That's just it. If we're told that an asteroid will hit the earth in, say 120 years time, well, that's a long way off and with a bit of luck 'science' will have found an answer by then. If we're told it's going to hit in 120 days, that's a different matter; time to suddenly find religion, or do whatever it was you've been putting off all these years. And if it's 12 hours, or 12 minutes, well, who ya gonna call?

Truth is, Nature is as indifferent to us as it was to the dinosaurs. We can turn our world into a toilet and wipe ourselves out, along with a great deal of other life we share the planet with. But *Something* will survive, life and Nature will go on. As far as Nature's concerned, we're a blip in the time-line.

It's all happened before, Geology tells us that. Whether there'll be anyone around to pick over our traces in a thousand years' time remains to be seen.

It's interesting though that Governments can sanction the planting "in the open" of GM crops (without really knowing what the ecological impact will be) and turn a blind eye to cloning experiments, and yet seem to wish to defer serious consideration of climate change on the grounds that it's something for future generations to worry about. Bit like the question of nuclear waste back in the sixties...something 'science' will fix by the time it becomes a problem...

Do we have a moral obligation to the future? I honestly don't know. History would seem to suggest not.

[bradhurley]

Thanks for the clarification. I still care, even if I don't understand why you do.

Here's why I care:

http://www.firescribble.net/acs/index.htm

[jim stone]

If I may take the opportunity to descend into
utter obscurity,

there are two views about time.
One, presentism, is that the present alone is real;
the past is no more and the future is yet to be.

This was stated by St. Augustine.

On this account only things that exist now are
real. As one might argue that obligations must
be to real things, it's harder for the presentist
to maintain we have obligations to anything
that isn't present.

The second view, eternalism, is that the past and
the future are as real as the present. Time is like space; just as
all sorts of people and things that are elsewhere
are as real as I am (e.g. Iraqis), future generations
are as real as we are.
There's nothing special about the present,
it's just where we happen to be in the river
of time; WWII is really back there and so is
the future ahead of us.

This second view is more congenial to our having
obligations to future generations. This would be
like having obligations to people in Africa,
whose lives we can affect.

I used to favor the first view; now I favor the
second, because it seems to better fit physics.
A consequence of general relativity is that there
are entities, tachyons, that go backwards in
time. If the present alone is real, time travel
is impossible; there's nowhere to go.
It seems that metaphysical theories about time
can actually make a difference to what we
ought to do; also, they can be disconfirmed,
at least to some extent, by science. Best

[jim stone]

Thanks for the clarification. I still care, even if I don't understand why you do.

Here's why I care:

http://www.firescribble.net/acs/index.htm

Very nice, indeed.

[elendil]

Brad, I think I understand where you're coming from. A lot of people wouldn't believe it, but I had a childhood, too. I grew up swimming in springfed lakes that were so clean you could drink from them, and I spent every spare waking hour walking the hills and wandering in our woods, watching the birds and other animals. I spent countless hours drawing pictures of all this and as I grew older I even tried to write poetry about it.

But in my posts here I was looking for articulable reasons, rather than emotions. That's all. I have my own reasons for caring and, yes, I, too, get emotional about it. But I think it's still necessary to have reasons.

Take care.

[jim stone]

Hey, I gave reasons above, for what they're worth.
And what's this about your having been a child?

P.S. In addition, you're Catholic. It's God's creation,
it's holy, you're its steward. Environmental flows
easily from Catholicism.

[Wombat]

Anyway, 'nuf said. I guess the main reason to be concerned about climate change is for future generations, if we care about them. And if you're someone like me who cares about the environment as much as about people, you'll also be concerned about climate change's effects on natural ecosystems and wildlife.

Oh, I never said I don't care about such things, and I do have children. My question was, as a matter of theory, why should anyone care about such things? Is it just a matter of personal choice or preference? If so, why should anyone else care? Is it a moral imperative for one and all? If so, how does one know that? I'm curious about how people justify their moral positions, beyond reductio ad absurdam arguments (absurdum?? what's happened to my latin these days?!). This area (the environment) seems to be a moral hot button for a certain number of people and I'm curious as to how it fits into the rest of their moral vision of the world. Did I mention that I'm pro life?

OK. Here's a quick introduction. You're asking, I think, for a theoretical justification of a practical stance of concern for future generations. Arguments that, if we don't do something to change our ways, they'll inherit a rather sad environment aren't what you are immediatley concerned about; what you want to know is why you should care about that.

You're not going to get a theory neutral reason for caring so forget bout that. This is the business of normative eithics and this is one of the most underconstrained areas of philosophy—everybody does it but nobody can really tell you what exactly it is. Given that you'll need a theory, what kind of theory do you want? Do you want a Utilitarian theory, a Kantian theory, a virtue ethics theory, a neo-Rossian rights and duties approach, an eco-feminist theory .... or what?

Each normative theory has as one of its foundations a view about what is intrinsically valuable. For utilitarians it's happy states for people, animals, satisfied preferences or whatever the particular brand you favour fixes on. For Kantians it's (very roughly) doing one's duty and so on. I have never, ever, seen a convincing argument for one particular choice of intrinsic value over another. Bentham, for example, just asserts that what matters is avoidance of suffering. So, why shouldn't care for future generations be sui generis, someone who thinks it is a fundamental value but hasn't an argument for that view is no worse off than anyone else in this area? I myself can't see how it could be a fundamental value but think that it is intuitively so obviously important that accounting for the intuition that future generations matter is one of the ways we test moral theories for credibility.

Just let me give you one example of a theory that can acount for the moral significance of future generations. One form of Utilitarians holds that the group of people (or animals) whose satisfied states are intrinsically valuable includes not just the present generation and past generations but also all future generations. Obviously we can't have much idea what distant future generations will want, nor how many ther will be, but we can safely assume that they won't want to inherit an environmentally trashed and resource-depleted planet.

If you want a Judeo-Christian warrant for caring then it is highly plausible that the Torah urges an attitude of stewardship towards nature and implicit in this idea is care and protectiveness. What the underlying intrinsic values are that underpin this injunction I leave to you to figure out.

One last remark. On questions like overpopulation, do not look to traditional normative theories to talk sense about the current situation. Arguably, until the last 50 years, nobody could have anticipated the current crisis and it would be, IMO, foolhardy to think that traditional brands of moral theory contain the wisdom we'll need to solve this problem. 'Be good stewards' is no longer compatible with 'go forth and multiply' now that we have gone forth and exponentiated.

[bradhurley]

But in my posts here I was looking for articulable reasons, rather than emotions. That's all. I have my own reasons for caring and, yes, I, too, get emotional about it. But I think it's still necessary to have reasons.

So it's not an "articulable reason" to say that you love nature, plain and simple?

Why does anyone care about anything? Usually it's because there's some emotion attached. If there's no emotional connection then you don't care. Right? So if your question is "why should we care," there must be an implicit emotional component to the answer, regardless of how much impartial evidence you can martial to support it.

[jim stone]

I think nature sucks, personally, but here's
a moral ground for caring. If we care to
be moral, we should care about the
environment:

I think the essence of morality comes
down to being kindly and fair--benevolence and justice.
As a matter of benevolence, we ought to do what
we can to make the world a happier place in
the long run, which includes people and animals
not yet born. Also I think one can treat people
not yet born unfairly, by consuming for luxuries
what they will need to live; so they might look
back on us in their poverty and say with some
justice that we wronged them. On both grounds,
therefore, I think we have an obligation
to be concerned about environmental issues,
including problems that won't happen in
our own lifetimes.

[Jerry Freeman]

I think a big problem for environmentalism is that
it has become too much a part of the counterculture
and Republican-bashing, and a form of moral posturing.
Repulicans who actually have tried to protect
the envonment get bashed just the same;
there's another agenda operating.

I think you're right that in the long view, Republicans are getting a bad rap on this one. President Nixon could rightly be called the father of the modern government's policies to protect the environment, and President Ford carried on in the same vein.

However, I believe President Reagan could be characterized as anti-environmentalist, and the Bush admisistration is extremely hostile to environmental interests, to a degree that's unprecedented in recent history.

So I agree that it isn't inherently a Republican thing, but two recent Republican presidents have contributed to the public's perception that Republicans are dogmatically anti-environment. I wouldn't be surprised if a comparison of Clinton's environmental record to those of Nixon and Ford would show Clinton to have been comparatively more anti-environment; however, a comparison of Clinton's record with those of Reagan and Bush would show the opposite.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[bradhurley]

Bush Sr. was actually pretty good when it came to environmental policy. Most of the voluntary greenhouse gas reduction programs in the Clinton Administration's climate action plan were actually created during the Bush administration, such as Energy Star. Bush Sr.'s administration also supported strengthening the Montreal Protocol on protecting the ozone layer, which Bush Jr. is currently trying to weaken.

[bradhurley]

I think nature sucks, personally.

So much for the biophilia hypothesis.

[jim stone]

Bush Sr. was actually pretty good when it came to environmental policy. Most of the voluntary greenhouse gas reduction programs in the Clinton Administration's climate action plan were actually created during the Bush administration, such as Energy Star. Bush Sr.'s administration also supported strengthening the Montreal Protocol on protecting the ozone layer, which Bush Jr. is currently trying to weaken.

Thanks so much; you've made my day.
Bush Sr. ran as an environmentalist president,
and strengthened the Clean Air and Water Act,
for which he earned the undying contempt
and ridicule of environmentalists.
I was in the company of large numbers
of environmentalists at the time, both
in universities and in Buddhist retreats,
and I was amazed how little their
environmentalist Bush-bashing counted
reality. Whatever Bush Jr. is now up to, and why,
what happened to his father probably hasn't
been lost on him. If environmentalists
are going to hate Republicans no matter what
they do, Republicans are likely to cater
to people who don't hate them
if they give them what they want. Best

[nowakb]

Since this is a political thread, I thought it would be a good place to post this link...the Centrist Forum...good stuff there...

http://www.centristcoalition.com/module ... um&forum=5

Anyway, toodles...