“[This approach] displays the characteristic philosophical lust to vanquish the skeptic by arguing him out of his skepticism, without appeal to moral and political considerations or to the facts of everyday life. [...] But more often than not, if you give the skeptic everything he wants, then he will be successful in repulsing your attacks and terrorizing your position.” IfsWantGivingFactsPoliticalMoralSuccessfulPositionApproachPhilosophicalEverydayArguingLustAppealsCharacteristicsBeing SuccessfulConsiderationDisplaySkepticismEveryday LifeSkepticVanquish Author:Dale Jamieson
“I grew up as an only child of two parents who had dropped out of high school. They had enormous respect for education and encouraged me as a child when I had strong interests in both math and science, but we really didn't have much by way of educational role modeling in our family.” WayChildrenTwoSchoolStrongParentInterestRolesGrewGrew UpHigh SchoolEducationalMathEnormousOur FamilyRole ModelsModelingOnly ChildMath And Science Author:Dale Jamieson
“I became religious and at 14 went to a boarding school 500 miles from home to begin theological studies. By the time I started university, politics had replaced religion in the economy of my enthusiasms but I had no idea what to study. My boarding school emphasized languages which I was bad at, and deemphasized math and science which I was good at.” IdeasHomeSchoolLanguageReligiousEconomyStudyUniversityMathMilesEnthusiasmNo IdeaReplacedTheologicalMath And Science Author:Dale Jamieson
“I played with English and Sociology in college but dropped out to work in the anti-war movement. I was going around denouncing the Viet Nam war as immoral but one day it dawned on me that I didn't know what that meant. I signed up for an ethics class at San Francisco State to find out the answer.” KnowsWarStatesAnswersClassMovementCollegeOne DayEthicsAnti WarSociologyImmoralSan FranciscoAnti War Movement Author:Dale Jamieson
“A great deal of our math, science, philosophy, and everyday behavior presupposes that stability and equilibria are the "default" states, and everything else involves some "perturbation." This is a mental model, a conceptual frame, a tacit belief, a presupposition - whatever you want to call it.” WantStatesPhilosophyBeliefDealsBehaviorModelsEverydayMathStabilityEquilibriumDefaultTacit Author:Dale Jamieson
“We live on a restless planet in a violent universe.” UniversePlanetsViolentRestless Author:Dale Jamieson
“Most of what we think of as distinctively human has occurred in the last 10,000 years in the Holocene - a period in which the Earth was abnormally quiet.” ThinkingYearsHumansEarthLastsPeriodsQuiet Author:Dale Jamieson
“If we're interested in the continuation of the human experiment we need to focus on resilience and coping with change (whether natural or anthropogenic) rather than living as if God or nature has given us a nice, orderly, calm, Babbit-like existence.” IfsNeedsHumansGivenNaturalExistenceFocusNiceCalmResilienceExperimentsCopingOrderlyContinuation Author:Dale Jamieson
“Most "process" philosophy is historicist (e.g., Hegel) and not concerned with "deep time." Maybe Whitehead is an exception. He may be a really important philosopher for all I know. I've never been able to read him.” KnowsMayImportantPhilosophyAbleProcessConcernedPhilosopherExceptionHegel Author:Dale Jamieson
“The Enlightenment dream is a good one. The idea that people should rationally appreciate their place in nature, assess threats and possibilities, and regulate their behavior in response is inspiring.” PeopleShouldIdeasDreamPossibilityBehaviorEnlightenmentAppreciateThreatResponse Author:Dale Jamieson
“The very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact.” CultureApproachHappeningsEssenceImpactVariousDevicesCivilizedEmergenciesInstituteContingencyProtecting Ourselves Author:Dale Jamieson
“The problem is that the Enlightenment dream may make too many demands on poor African apes like us. We may just not be up to it.” MayProblemDreamPoorDemandEnlightenmentApes Author:Dale Jamieson
“In the last few centuries we've managed to reduce how much we kill each other, we've learned some basic lessons about public health, and life is relatively good for more people than ever before.” PeopleLastsLife IsCenturyLessonsPublic HealthHealth And Life Author:Dale Jamieson
“Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.” PeopleLife IsVery GoodReproduction Author:Dale Jamieson
“The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction.” HumansSelfProblemGivenPowerfulTechnologyPossibilitySeriousDevelopmentPopulationExtinctionDensityHuman Population Author:Dale Jamieson
“Aristotle thought that humans are rational animals and Hobbes thought that we act on the basis of rational self-interest. If only! It's not that we never do these things, it's that they are hardly constituative of who and what we are.” IfsHumansSelfInterestAnimalBasesRationalSelf InterestHobbes Author:Dale Jamieson
“The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!” EnlightenmentAspirationNightmare Author:Dale Jamieson
“We live in a world in which everyone wants solutions. But we can't find solutions if we don't understand the problems, and we can't understand the problems without knowing how we got here.” IfsWorldWantProblemKnowingSolutions Author:Dale Jamieson
“One of the real dangers of our time is people's indifference to history.” PeopleRealDangerIndifferenceOur Time Author:Dale Jamieson
“People with long memories and a vivid sense of the past have an immediate understanding of politicians like Donald Trump. They are not surprised by the behavior of Google, a corporation that notionally (until recently anyway) espoused the slogan "don't be evil" and then runs over individual people and even entire nations in the pursuit of profit.” PeopleLongRunningPastEvilIndividualNationsUnderstandingMemoriesTrumpPoliticianBehaviorProfitPursuitCorporationsGoogleVividSlogans Author:Dale Jamieson
“We think of history as another specialization, like philosophy of language, rather than as something that informs everything we do and think.” ThinkingPhilosophyLanguageSpecialization Author:Dale Jamieson
“Even those who specialize in the history of philosophy often ignore the political and cultural context, and the natural world in which their philosophers were philosophizing. This has consequences both trivial and important. If you systematically read the last fifty years of the major journals in our discipline you would be amazed at the amount of redundancy. Most of this is unacknowledged because most of us know so little about the history of our discipline and even the subfields in which we work.” IfsKnowsWorldYearsLittlesImportantPhilosophyWould BeLastsPoliticalNaturalAmountDisciplineMajorsConsequencePhilosopherFiftyAmazedJournalNatural WorldRedundancy Author:Dale Jamieson
“We know the "great men" and a handful of heavily cited papers in our specialization. When there is a historical frame around a paper it's often a caricature that has become canonical.” KnowsMenPaperHistoricalGreat MenPapersHandfulCaricaturesSpecialization Author:Dale Jamieson
“If we don't have historical consciousness we can't really understand problems in all their dimensions, and if we can't understand problems than we can't find solutions.” IfsProblemConsciousnessSolutionsHistoricalDimensions Author:Dale Jamieson
“When it comes to climate change it's all the usual barriers: greed, mendacity, ignorance, short-sightedness and so on, manifest in the extreme power of corporations, the weakness of government, and the indifference of citizens.” GovernmentIgnoranceCitizensWeaknessClimateGreedClimate ChangeExtremesCorporationsIndifferenceBarriersManifestUsualMendacity Author:Dale Jamieson
“It's true that climate change is an unprecedented problem so it's not surprising that it's so difficult to address.” ProblemDifficultClimateClimate ChangeAddressesSurprisingUnprecedented Author:Dale Jamieson
“Our traditional systems of decision-making are just not up to preventing changes in fundamental earth systems that are driven by a constant barrage of individually negligible emissions of an invisible, odorless gas, by billions of people all over the world.” PeopleWorldEarthDecisionFundamentalsConstantDrivenBillionsInvisibleTraditionalGasDecision MakingEmissionsPreventing Author:Dale Jamieson
“We need to use economic instruments such as carbon taxes, cap and trade, tax and dividend and whatever else to help incentivize behavior that will move us to a post-carbon, post-animal agriculture world, and make our societies more resilient to the shocks that are already baked into the system. But that doesn't make climate change an "economic issue."” WorldNeedsHelpingUseMovingAnimalIssuesEconomicTaxesBehaviorInstrumentsTradeClimateClimate ChangePostsShockOur SocietyAgricultureCarbonCapsResilientDividendsEconomic IssuesAnimal AgricultureCarbon Tax Author:Dale Jamieson
“Climate change involves fundamental choices about how we want to live and what kind of world we want.” WorldWantKindChoicesFundamentalsClimateClimate Change Author:Dale Jamieson
“We can use economic instruments to help realize our goals but economics does not tell us what our goals should be.” ShouldDoeHelpingUseGoalRealizingEconomicEconomicsInstruments Author:Dale Jamieson
“Ethics is prescriptive and can change behavior, but usually only at the margins.” BehaviorEthicsMargins Author:Dale Jamieson
“Ethical systems are fundamentally conservative and primarily directed towards regulating interactions within communities.” CommunityConservativeEthicalInteraction Author:Dale Jamieson
“Climate change involves behaviors that are individually negligible, whose impacts go far beyond the spatial and temporal constraints that define our sense of community.” CommunityBehaviorImpactClimateClimate ChangeConstraintsSpatial Author:Dale Jamieson
“People who go around saying that it is wrong to fly and to eat meat are not so much making appeals to us from within our shared morality, but engaging in something more like "persuasive definition." They want us to look at the world and ourselves in a different way. Someday these prohibitions against flying and eating meat may be written into our moral psychology, but it will only be after there are viable, widely shared alternatives that are beginning to be widely adopted.” PeopleWorldWayWantLooksMayDifferentMoralPsychologyWrittenMoralityEatingDefinitionsFlyingAlternativesAppealsMeatDifferent WaysSomedayEngagingAdoptedWant UProhibitionPersuasiveEating Meat Author:Dale Jamieson
“Moral revolutions are typically seen retrospectively. Prospectively, the revolutionaries tend to look like crazy people, and sometimes they are.” PeopleLooksSometimesMoralCrazyRevolutionRevolutionaryCrazy People Author:Dale Jamieson
“'The anthropocene' refers to the way we live now, in a highly globalized world, characterized by a large human population and powerful technologies that allow for "action at a distance" that aggregate apparently negligible acts into powerful forces that are transforming fundamental planetary systems. In this sense 'the anthropocene' refers to a period in which nature as an independent autonomous domain comes to an end or is under serious threat.” WorldWayHumansEndsActionForcePowerfulTechnologySeriousPeriodsIndependentFundamentalsDistanceThreatPopulationDomainTransformingAutonomousHuman Population Author:Dale Jamieson
“In this era of globalization we are witnessing struggles within individual states about what their identity and interests consist in.” StatesIndividualInterestStruggleIdentityErasGlobalization Author:Dale Jamieson
“Is it in the interests of Britain to leave or remain in the EU? As we saw in the referendum, there are different Britains and they see their interests in different ways. For a lot of everyday blokes the EU affected their sense of identity in ways they disliked, and they were right in thinking that the EU didn't return much to them by way of economic benefits.” ThinkingWayDifferentInterestSawsEconomicIdentityReturnBenefitsEverydayDifferent WaysBritainAffectedBlokesReferendums Author:Dale Jamieson
“It is probably true that the economic benefits of being in the EU are a net positive to the UK, but a large number of people do not share in these benefits and the result is increasing inequality.” PeopleResultsNumbersShareEconomicBenefitsInequalityLarge Numbers Author:Dale Jamieson
“Is it in the UK's interests to leave the EU? It depends on your values. The answer can't be read off of GDP statistics under various scenarios or some measures of global influence.” ValuesInterestAnswersInfluenceDependsVariousStatisticsScenariosGdp Author:Dale Jamieson
“Citizens often think of a state's interests in terms of the promotion of ideals such as democracy, a particular way of life, or other values which they endorse or see as part of their historical continuity and identity. In this domain as in others values are not fixed, and so a state's interests are dynamic and in a constant state of negotiation and construction.” ThinkingWayStatesValuesTermInterestDemocracyIdentityParticularCitizensIdealsConstantHistoricalFixedConstructionNegotiationDomainPromotionContinuity Author:Dale Jamieson
“If you have a flat, fixed view of state interest then it is difficult to understand why some states adopt aggressive climate change policies, even when that risks economically disadvantaging them, and other states do not even when it would be in their economic interests to do so.” IfsStatesWould BeDifficultInterestViewsRiskEconomicPolicyClimateClimate ChangeFixedFlatsAggressive Author:Dale Jamieson
“If you look globally you see a patchwork of jurisdictions (nations, states, provinces, cities) that have taken aggressive action on climate change, and a patchwork of jurisdictions that have not. These various policies reflect the politics of each jurisdiction and the values of its citizens.” IfsLooksStatesActionValuesNationsCitiesTakenPolicyCitizensClimateClimate ChangeVariousAggressiveProvincesJurisdictionPatchwork Author:Dale Jamieson
“The Paris climate conference in December, 2015 was a recognition that countries bring their climate policies to international meetings rather than create them during the negotiations (much less do they receive orders from the international community and then go home and implement them).” CountryHomeOrderCommunityPolicyMeetingsClimateInternationalRecognitionParisNegotiationConferencesDecemberInternational Community Author:Dale Jamieson
“Every country now has its own domestic political debate about how to respond to climate change. This is where the action is.” CountryActionPoliticalClimateClimate ChangeDebatePolitical Debates Author:Dale Jamieson
“The most fundamental challenge of the anthropocene concerns agency. For those who lived the Enlightenment dream (always a minority but an influential one), agency was taken for granted. There were existential threats to agency (e.g., determinism) but philosophy mobilized to refute these threats (e.g., by defending libertarianism) or to defuse them (e.g., by showing that they were compatible with agency).” PhilosophyDreamChallengesTakenEnlightenmentConcernFundamentalsThreatGrantedAgencyMinoritiesLibertarianismExistentialInfluentialCompatibleDeterminismTaken For Granted Author:Dale Jamieson
“The bizarre thing about the anthropocene is that never has humanity been more powerful and never have individual humans felt so powerless. This is because so much that drives the circumstances of the anthropocene is the aggregation of apparently negligible acts, often amplified by technology, rather than decisive acts by autonomous decision-makers.” HumansHumanityIndividualFeltDecisionPowerfulTechnologyCircumstancesMakersPowerlessBizarreAutonomousDecision Makers Author:Dale Jamieson
“The erosion of agency has consequences for our politics. As a result of all this, the fundamental ethical challenge of the anthropocene is the recovery of agency, or alternatively to come to terms with its loss and to understand how to go on.” TermChallengesLossResultsGoes OnConsequenceFundamentalsRecoveryAgencyEthicalErosion Author:Dale Jamieson
“Climate change is not going to be prevented. It's not even going to be mitigated to the degree a rational person would want. As a result we're going to have to live with climate change and try to reduce the extent and rate of change as much as possible. This is not an inspiring or sexy project.” WantTryingPersonsResultsDegreesProjectsClimateRateClimate ChangeSexyRationalRate Of Change Author:Dale Jamieson
“The seas will continue to rise no matter who gets elected president.” MatterPresidentSea Author:Dale Jamieson
