Local Event: Lecture on Science and Religion

Are some readers of this blog local to western New York?

PZ Meyers of the liberal, godless, and hilarious Pharyngula blog is speaking on the RIT campus this Thursday, April 1 at 8:30 pm in the Webb Auditorium. The topic is "The Irreconcilability of Science and Religion."

And the very next day at 3pm the philosophy department is sponsoring a philosophy of science lecture on quantum mechanics by Steve Weinstein of the University of Waterloo--should be a thought-provoking accompaniment to the seminar I'm teaching on "Physics and Metaphysics."

RIT Conference on the Ethics of Sustainability

Friday, May 1st, Carlson Auditorium

8:45-9 Opening Remarks

9-10 Braden Allenby (Lincoln Professor of Engineering & Ethics, Arizona State University)

10-11 Bryan Norton (Distinguished Professor in Public Policy at Georgia Tech)

11-12 David Orr (Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics,
Oberlin College)

1-2 Paul Thompson (W. K. Kellog Chair in Agricultural, Food, & Community Ethics,
Michigan State University)

2-3 William Shutkin (Director, Initiative for Sustainable Development and Chair in
Sustainable Development, University of Colorado at Boulder)

3-4 Panel of Commentators, Moderator: Robert Ulin, Dean, Liberal Arts
Randall Curren (University of Rochester), Sarah Pralle (Syracuse University), and
Erin Taylor (Cornell University)

4-5:30 Panel of Presenters, Moderator, Jeremy Haefner, Provost
Braden Allenby, Bryan Norton, David Orr, Paul Thompson, & William Shutkin

These presentations are free and open to all.
Directors: Ryne Raffaelle, Wade Robison, Evan Selinger
For details go to http://www.rit.edu/cla/ethics/Sustainability.html

Is it getting hot in here?

Today is the National Global Warming Teach-In!

RIT is living up to its newly developed self-image as a leader in educating for a green economy. In just the last month, we revved up our program from 0 to this.

I'm participating in two ways:
1. in my philosophy of science class, we're discussing Wendy Parker's article "Understanding Pluralism in Climate Modeling" (Foundations of Science 2006, vol. 11, pp. 349-368).
2. a panel discussion with colleagues from the social sciences. Our comments will be directed by questions from our dean on the ways in which the liberal arts contributes to conceptualizing and addressing global warming.

Ethical frameworks and sustainability

I'm teaching an Introduction to Ethics course with an emphasis on examining environmental sustainability. Although I've assigned a textbook that has some collected readings on ethical theories, the class is relying predominately on reading about environmental issues as they come up in non-philosophical venues.

I've had some difficulty illustrating the usefulness of Kantian ethics in the context of environmental problems. Any suggestions that readers have for how to apply Kantian ethics to such problems would be appreciated!

For instance, the class did work through the problem of overpopulation, achieving the insight that if everyone had large families, the human population would quickly exceed the earth's carrying capacity. But the implication that each and every one of us has a duty to limit family size to 2 children or fewer did little to guide recommendations for how that duty should be enforced or encouraged. Utilitarianism, by contrast, seems well suited to problems of global scope; increasingly, environmental and economic problems do have that scope.

Another problem that loomed was how to give theoretical ethical support to the lifestyle recommendations in Bill McKibben's Deep Economy. I happened across Peter Singer's recent book The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, which provides utilitarian support to some, but not all, of McKibben's views (a review here).

Singer, for instance, does not find an ethical justification for buying locally-grown foods. He acknowledges the environmental reasons to support buying foods grown nearby rather than those transported across the US. But he also believes that we are doing more good for others by buying foods imported from poverty-stricken countries than buying US-produced food, even when products are not the result of fair trade practices. Also, I find the utilitarian argument against speciesism to be, well, specious.

I think virtue ethics, though, is ideal for justifying the kinds of actions that McKibben endorses. Even its derivative, care ethics, can make sense of why people choose to buy local: people who have definable relationships to us, who live in our communities, have a greater claim on our consideration.

Peter Singer, by the way, is speaking at RIT tomorrow on "A Better, More Sustainable World" at 2:30 pm in Golisano Auditorium. All are invited.

Creativity and Innovation

RIT, where I teach, is hosting a big festival this coming Saturday: the 1st Annual Innovation + Creativity Festival. It's expected to draw a crowd in the range of 30,000 people (okay, that seems pretty optimistic).

© Steve Miller

The Philosophy Department is providing support to a student project, and I'm the faculty coordinator. The project is a sculptural installation that's subtitled "A Philosophical Analysis of Creativity and Innovation." We solicited short reflections (poems, etc.) on the topic of creativity and have recorded them. They'll be played back through speakers on the sculpture. The project website is here, containing photos, video, the submitted creativity statements, and an artist's description of the intent of the project.

© Steve Miller

What's noteworthy about the pieces written by philosophers is how each person's "reflection on creativity" is as much a statement of their philosophical perspective: a poetic response to Dogen from the specialist in Asian philosophy, pragmatic guidance from the American philosopher, cryptic skepticism from the Pre-Socratic expert, wistful optimism from the retired philosopher of religion, and dark metaphysical speculation from the resident German Romantic. Does our training so shape our psyches, or are we drawn to a specialty that coincides with our personalities?

Here is my short piece on creativity:

The Life of Ideas

The evolution of new creatures is a magnificently creative process. Animals, plants, bacteria, fungi—we live in a world teeming with unique lifeforms.

The creation of new life has two stages. First is the creation of novelty. This happens through mutation, which creates untested changes to the genetic code and also through sexual reproduction, which puts genetic material together in new combinations. The second stage is the brutal process of selection, which puts to death nearly all of those experimental ways of living. The new life that does survive is a better fit with its surroundings, able to solve some problem that its forebears could not.

Likewise, our culture improves by the creative generation of newness. We can foster and accelerate creativity on the model of sexual reproduction by encouraging communication between diverse people with diverse interests, identities, abilities, and life experiences. Their exchange of ideas will lead to innovation.

But most innovations will not survive. Again, we can help the process along by nurturing fragile ideas, and by not pre-judging them until they have had a chance to prove themselves.

Together with open-mindedness to new ideas, giving them a chance to find their niche, it’s appropriate to practice critical evaluation. Communities of inquiry should judge ideas on their merit. Our standards should be fair and themselves subject to criticism and change. In this way, we innovate both new ideas and the process that nurtures them.

Darwin Day coming up...

February 12 is celebrated as Darwin Day, and although events are planned in many countries for 2008, the big celebrations are being planned for Darwin Day 2009. Why, you ask? Because 2/19/09 will mark Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

Is it a sad state of affairs that I hesitate, even briefly, to say these are days worth celebrating? Yes, it is. If I have any cowardly qualms, and I do, about calling attention to upcoming celebrations of the life and influence of such a major figure in intellectual history, I hope I overcome my own shameful vulnerability to the disapproval of irrational anti-intellectuals with this small act of bloggery.

(And if one can't note the upcoming anniversary of Darwin's birthday on a philosophy of science-related blog, where can one?)