“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
“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
“'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
“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
“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
“Climate scientists think of nothing but climate and then express their concerns in terms of constructs such as global mean surface temperature. But we live in a world in which all sorts of change is happening all the time, and the only way to understand what climate change will bring is to tell stories about how it manifests in people's lives.” PeopleThinkingWorldWayMeanStoriesTermHappeningsConcernScientistClimateClimate ChangeSurfaceConstructsTemperature Author:Dale Jamieson
“Many environmental questions are in a deep way philosophical, despite our penchant for treating them as if they were only technological, economic, or whatever.” IfsWayEconomicPhilosophicalEnvironmentalDespiteTechnological Author:Dale Jamieson
“The idea that we would raise billions of sentient animals, treat them horribly, pollute our waterways with their waste, compromise the effectiveness of our antibiotics so that they grow faster, and then slaughter them with little regard to their suffering so that we can feed off their corpses, will seem to most people unthinkably cruel and barbarous - sort of in the way that we think of medieval punishments, or Europeans today think of the death penalty.” PeopleThinkingWayLittlesIdeasSeemsTodaySufferingGrowsAnimalWasteTreatsRegardRaisesBillionsPunishmentCompromiseFasterPenaltiesDeath PenaltyCorpsesEffectivenessMedievalSlaughterThink Of MeAntibiotics Author:Dale Jamieson
“Some philosophers have begun writing sympathetically about predator elimination as a way of reducing animal suffering. From an environmental perspective this is somewhere between naïve and potentially disastrous.” WayWritingSufferingAnimalPerspectiveEnvironmentalPhilosopherReducingPredatorEliminationAnimal Suffering Author:Dale Jamieson
“A common rhetorical strategy of politicians and others is to frame their opponents' views in the worst possible light, tacitly suggesting that all versions of the view must be committed to some particularly deplorable conclusion. Philosophers are not immune to this way of arguing.” WayLightViewsCommonWorstPoliticianStrategyPhilosopherCommittedArguingVersionsConclusionOpponentsImmuneSuggestingRhetoricalRhetorical Strategies Author:Dale Jamieson
“Kantians are saddled with absolutist views, Aristotelians are accused of vagueness, and there is almost no horror to which Consequentialists are innocent of, according to some critics. While all these families of views have been victimized in these ways, Consequentialists have gotten the worst of it. I think this may have something to do with the fact that Kant and Aristotle are acknowledged to be great philosophers, and we tend to read the greats sympathetically, while Consequentialism is a family of views not rooted in the work of a single great man to whom this kind of deference is owed.” ThinkingMenWayKindMayHas BeensFactsViewsWorstHorrorCriticsPhilosopherInnocentGreat MenRootedAccusedDeferenceVaguenessGreat PhilosophersConsequentialism Author:Dale Jamieson
“The Consequentialist trinity is typically regarded in this way: Bentham is crude, Mill's writings are full of howlers and inconsistencies, and Sidgwick was too smart to fully embrace Consequentialism. All of these great traditions in moral philosophy express strands of our moral consciousness and they should all be treated as research programs rather than as fully determinate views that can be leveled by a counterexample or by a clever argument.” WayShouldWritingPhilosophyViewsConsciousnessMoralSmartResearchProgramArgumentTraditionEmbraceCleverTreatedCrudeMillsTrinityStrandsInconsistencyMoral PhilosophyConsequentialism Author:Dale Jamieson
“What most forms of Consequentialism cannot do is require us to act in such a way as to make the world worse, yet many of the objections to Consequentialism purport to show that Consequentialism requires us to make the world a stinking, bloody mess. The ubiquity of these kinds of arguments shows you just how unseriously many of the critics take Consequentialism.” WorldWayKindShowsFormArgumentCriticsMessBloodyObjectionsUbiquityConsequentialism 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
“People and countries have done an enormous amount of damage in their attempts to bring about the best possible world. Communism is an obvious example. But so is British imperialism, which was not grubby self-interest all the way down, but at least in part a sincere attempt on the part of people who felt they were superior to other people to magnanimously improve the lot of their inferiors.” PeopleWorldWaySelfCountryDoneFeltInterestExampleAmountObviousBritishEnormousSuperiorsCommunismDamageSincereInferiorsImperialismSelf Interest Author:Dale Jamieson
