being technically informed is not technocratic

Shortly after I did a short acknowledgement of the Vatican encyclical on climate change, I discovered that a philosopher whose doctoral background was intimately Habermasian criticizes the encylical—a mere one day after the encyclical was published—because he wants to promote his mastery of the economics of carbon credits (Joseph Heath, NYTimes, June 19).

Actually, his article is self-undermining (misreads the encyclical, thus doing a knee-jerk critique of a straw man, as they say). Also, carbon credits are not recommended by some leading policy researchers, such as Jeffrey Sachs; so, the matter has nothing to do with Catholic theology, contrary to Heath’s opinion.

Sachs notes, in his book:

Emissions permits may (or may not) give more predictability to the future quantities of emissions....[B]ut in fact permit systems are often not very credible, since an expected scarcity of permits (driving up their price) frequently leads governments to increase the allotment of permits. Taxes in general are much easier to administer, while permit systems are in principle easier to configure to meet special interests (e.g., specific favored industries can be given permits for free in order to delay their adjustment to alternative energy sources). [p. 436]

But Heath provides a good context for addressing the distance between pastoral appeal (bottom up, so to speak) and mechanics of expert public policy. Yet, the distance is appropriately large, and philosophical theory should need to comprehensively appreciate that distance. The hermeneutical challenge seems vertiginous.

I don’t know when I’ll take time to elaborate about this (importances of technological knowledge that don’t make public policy technocratic), but I’ve archived the “NYTimes Picks” of comments on Heath’s improvisation; so, there’s a good amount of material to work with, besides the very long encyclical.

dialogue won't save “Our Common Home”

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The Anthropocene results from everyone's ancestors. Its future belongs to everyone's children. Obviously: One Earth, one ultimately shared horizon.

The Vatican's Encyclical last month on climate change—"On Care for Our Common Home"—urges dialogue (35 instances of the term), whereas vital need is for trans-continental leadership between governments, which has been too slow for decades. It's nice, though, that the Encyclical was issued on Habermas' birthday, June 18. Happy trails, Jürgen!

The encyclical is complex. I won't give a knee-jerk reaction like some "experts" have done, a day after its publication. (I have in mind a particular philosopher's self-undermining view of the Vatican on carbon credits).

pointing man in a pointillistic land

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Firstly, imagine a large-scale landscape, with rolling hills let’s say, but generally level—except that it has high hills, here and there, and a few that are very, very high: peaks. Now imagine this as a 3-dimensional graph of the flow of liquid, with vectors all over, like a weather map showing winds—concentrations of flows, when lots of vectors from distant points set up flows that tend to converge, and the more the convergence, the higher the hill or peak. Not a chaos of winds, but a higher concentration of flows that creates more serenity. The greater the flow toward one point, the higher the serenity. And the gods create the weather.

being a spirited democrat

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March 8 update

Here I’m just moving some spontaneous notes from my home page, preliminary to a page that gives credence and elaboration to the spontaneity below. That page is now done. Getting beyond the Feb. 8, 10, and 15 meditations below included important kinds of issues, worthy of elaboration—at book length, which I won’t make time to do. But I usefully got beyond the spontaneity. This posting is just a record of a week-earlier inspiration.

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February 23

Whatever one’s critical insight (e.g., Critical Theoretical, deconstructive, Analytical), traditional terms may remain highly important, deserving to be advanced in new ways.

On not treating cultural resources as capital

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The PBS News Hour today had an interesting video story titled “Investing in America’s cultural capital,” which was an interview of the chairpersons of the National Endowment for the Arts (Julia Chu) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (William Adams—who has a PhD in philosophy).

Below, Part 1, I extract the passages from the interview which most interest me; then, Part 2 is a copy of my extended “Comment” online at the transcript, which is the motivation for this posting. Part 1 provides context.

My very short Part 3, “progressive pragmatism as grounded idealism,” links to Adams’ NEH policy speech, Nov. 2014 (whose mid-parts I recommend), which I discuss briefly. And I link to the new NEH “Common Good” project, which I want to discuss later.

fundamentalism and philosophy (as therapeutic)

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Firstly, I want to distinguish fundamentalism from extremism. Fundamentalism is a way of understanding that’s not necessarily pathological, though it’s inviting to pathological persons because fundamentalism is simplistic.

Yet, good might be done by bringing extremism back from the jungle to a non-violent fundamentalism—which implies that violent mental illness can be healed. I would not claim that extremism is best healed through fundamentalism! But fundamentalism is not inherently disposed to violence. Extremism is best healed through, first, standard psychiatry (if not correctional services), then through long-tern psychotherapy, maturation of self understanding, and realistic education. Gaining (or re-gaining) authentic spirituality is a normal aspect of professional psychotherapy. Yet, fundamentalism isn’t yet authentically spiritual, I would argue.

drawing thought beyond transcendentalism

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This long posting has seven sections.
1 | a short note on sociocentrism and psychocentrism: conceptual foci
2 | being drawn to Piet Strydom’s “The latent cognitive sociology in Habermas...”
3 | December 20: beginning an essay letter to Piet Strydom
4 | Habermas and cognitive sociology
5 | An issue of ontological radicalization
6 | Note of Habermas’ sense of the community of inquiry (with mine)
7 | re: Strydom’s comments about my Dec. 19 portion of discussion here.

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