“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
“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 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
“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
“People will suffer and so will nature, but life is likely to go on with a great deal of loss and mourning. Human adaptability and resilience will still be alive, and so will that great need and resource of ours called love.” PeopleNeedsHumansStillsLife IsSufferingLossDealsAliveGoes OnResourcesResilienceMourningLife Is LikeAdaptability Author:Dale Jamieson
“Environmental problems provoke challenges about what kind of world we want, how important we think it is if something is brought about by human action or by brute nature, what we think of the value of human life compared to that of other living things.” IfsThinkingWorldWantHumansKindImportantProblemActionValuesChallengesEnvironmentalHuman LifeProvokingLiving ThingsBrutesHuman ActionsEnvironmental ProblemsValue Of Human Life Author:Dale Jamieson
“It's obvious that there are vast variety of consequentialist views, depending on what we think goodness consists in, what our notion of consequence is, and what level (or levels) of human action we think the principle should be applied.” ThinkingShouldHumansActionLevelsViewsPrinciplesGoodnessConsequenceNotionObviousVarietyHuman Actions Author:Dale Jamieson
“I begin with human psychology and then see what we can say about ethics.” HumansPsychologyEthics Author:Dale Jamieson
“Since for me moral demands necessarily flow from human psychology, I don't think we can be obliged to do something that we are not motivated in any way to do. In other words, I'm an "internalist" about morality.” ThinkingWayHumansMoralPsychologyMoralityDemandFlowMotivatedObliged Author:Dale Jamieson
