In the debate between those who think the human species is doomed due to this or that environmental problem and those who are more optimistic, one often gets the impression from pessimistic environmentalists that optimism is motivated solely by faith. In fact, something like the reverse is true.
Rationalism and liberalism both depend on the notion that all problems, including environmental problems, are solvable. If they are not, then there are some problems worth solving that we cannot solve, which means that rationality is severely limited. And those same problems will cause intractable conflicts between the interests of different people. They will have differing opinions about how best to proceed in the face of those problems and there will be no way to settle this conflict because the problem has no solution. So that problem couldn’t be settled by rational discussion and we would have to resort to violence or fraud, i.e. – to illiberal policies, to get past it.
Faith depends on some problems being unsolvable. For example, if we could solve the problem of whether or not God exists, then either we could know he exists or we could know he doesn’t exist, and in either case faith in God would be pointless. So the notion of faith presupposes the notion of unsolvable problems, and faith is anti-rational and anti-liberal.
The pessimistic environmentalist notion that some environmental problems are unsolvable depends on being able to predict the growth of knowledge – that is, being able to predict that it will not solve problem X. This is an historicist prophecy. If we could predict what knowledge we will have tomorrow we would already have it. We can’t predict our future knowledge and so can’t predict that we will fail to solve problem X. Adopting a pessimistic environmentalist position then amounts to adopting a position in the face of arguments against it, which sounds a lot like faith.
But isn’t the position that problems are solvable also a prophecy? No. It states that problems can be solved, but we may fail to solve them. A big rock might smash into the Earth tomorrow and wipe out the human species, but that would be a result of failing to solve problems, not of those problems being unsolvable.
This is a peculiar post, and I do not know what to make of it. What motivated this post? And is it a response to something? It seems as though context is missing.
I also do not believe that faith depends on some problems being unsolvable — I can hardly make sense of this claim. Perhaps I just have a different notion of faith.
I’ve just sat through the film “Collapse” and left severely demoralized. While some problems may in principle be solvable (the problem of peak oil and the possible solution of transitioning over to alternative energy sources, for instance), optimism, science and technology will only go so far.
As science as an institution is wrapped in the blanket of the state to become Big Science (something Popper warned about in his later writings), the unintended consequences of the actions of the state in the past fifty years, and its refusal to hear out other possibilities, may have left us with very few possible solutions, none of which are that palatable. To botch metaphors, we’re dancing on the knife’s edge, but all we need is to slip just once and the house of cards will come tumbling down.
I hope I’m wrong on this one.
“This is a peculiar post, and I do not know what to make of it. What motivated this post? And is it a response to something? It seems as though context is missing.”
I have heard many assertions of the following form:
“We’re going to run out of molybdenum (or oil or whatever). So we’ll have to drastically cut the population and all live in unheated caves eating cold mud for breakfast every day.” [I exaggerate slightly.]
This is anti-rational and historicist.
As an example see the movie quoted in the next post http://www.collapsemovie.com/.
“I also do not believe that faith depends on some problems being unsolvable — I can hardly make sense of this claim. Perhaps I just have a different notion of faith.”
Faith is believing in something without having or seeking any relevant evidence and usually in the face of arguments against that belief. There are so many problems with the idea that God exists and I think most people come across those problems, but some ignore them as if they didn’t matter. For example, God is supposedly omnipotent but allows people to be born with terrible illnesses or allows them to be killed in accidents like volcanic eruptions or whatever. The claim is that we can’t know for certain whether he exists and that this somehow makes it okay to believe in a deeply problematic idea that doesn’t solve any problems. This only makes sense if you think those problems are unsolvable or you don’t care about solving them.
Alan,
Could you explain how this is irrationalist and historicist? If anything, it agrees with Popper/Hayek’s ideas of unintended consequences (an economy relying on one limited product for transportation, energy, fertilizer, and packaging, for instance), centralized control of the state, and the refusal of the state to listen to alternative ideas.
Furthermore, you appear to be making an implicit argument from induction: ‘don’t worry, we’ve solved our past problems; we just need some very smart people to solve our future problems!’ Well, No one can know if we will be able to solve our future problems, and if we should slip, the fall is a long way down.
Again, these problems may in principle be solvable, but our current political climate is far from Popper’s Open Society, and we may pay the price unless there is some sort of reform.
Nate,
To solve problems is a matter of knowledge of their solutions and nothing else, right? (If not, what else is there?) (Note: trying to do something physically impossible or grossly immoral does not constitute a legitimate problem.)
So to take a pessimistic view, one has to point to some way knowledge creation will get stuck, or chronically be too slow, or something it fundamentally can’t address. Right? So, go ahead…
Scarce raw materials problems in general, today, are solved by creating knowledge of where to find more of that material on Earth, learning how to synthesize it, or using something else (i.e. having knowledge of how to solve the problems the material is useful for solving in other ways).
Although our society is not perfect, that won’t ruin us unless you can point out a concrete, ruinous and relevant flaw.
Elliott,
I think I have brought forward this problem twice so far. Perhaps I should be more explicit: you and I know that top-down organizational structures don’t like listening to criticism. This is one of the minor themes that run through both Popper and von Hayek’s work.
As of now, I think one problem is that most of the first world treats finite resources as infinite resources, implementing them in all parts of the economy, and with no presently known alternative resource available that would keep the economy running smoothly.
Of course, if we are lucky and resourceful, an alternate resource may be developed in the near future, but the second problem comes into play now: the Cassandras are pointing out that we better invest in these other technologies right now, not tomorrow, and to stay clear of the technologies that we know not to work. For instance, in the US a lot of time and energy is being spent on developing ethanol as an alternate energy source, but it’s known to cost more energy to produce it than it’s worth. Yet, the US continues to spend time and money on it anyway because it’s politically expedient.
Now, if there should be a collapse of the dollar after the price of begins to oil skyrocket (in, say, the next fifty to one hundred years), since the global economy is so dependent on this resource for transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing, we would be up the creek without a paddle.
So we have two problems: (1) finite resources that drive the economy with no real commitment on the part of the state to invest in other resources that will run out in the future; (2) the state’s current refusal to acknowledge this problem, or even take the problem seriously, even if it may not come to pass in our lifetime.
So how did 2 come to pass? I think it’s because the state is far from the ideal Open Society. Unfortunately, if we are going to fix this problem, and as I understand it the only way to fix something is through gradual social reform, if 1 comes to pass, we may not have solved 2 in time.
Does this make sense?
Nate,
First of all you have not engaged with what I said. I spoke about knowledge and asked specific questions. You didn’t address my challenge. And I asked “right?” twice and you did not say yes or no. Do you want to engage with my perspective?
Second, in general it’s a good idea to use your finite resources now rather than later. That’s because gains are more valuable now than later; there is no point in saving them. There is nothing irrational about (e.g.) using oil reserves up instead of saving them for later; it’s best to put off any costs of transition as long as possible (the richer we are, the less they matter). When we get near running out (which we are not yet near for much of anything) then the price will go up and people will react to that.
Ellott,
I’ll address your questions:
“To solve problems is a matter of knowledge of their solutions and nothing else, right? (If not, what else is there?)”
I would think a proper overarching social structure and specific well-funded institutions would be necessary to act on this knowledge when the problems are too grand in scale to be solved simply by knowing what solution is best. Do you disagree with this? If so, why?
“So to take a pessimistic view, one has to point to some way knowledge creation will get stuck, or chronically be too slow, or something it fundamentally can’t address. Right?”
I will try for a fourth time to make myself clearer: if knowledge-creation isn’t properly funded in the proper institutions, we may be producing knowledge at a slower pace than necessary to solve our future problems. How many different ways do you want me to say it?
Lastly, I would think a libertarian such as yourself would know that while a free market will respond to these kinds of pressures, the US does not have a market economy; it’s crony capitalism. Heck, we’re still subsidizing corn!
If an institution is necessary then either 1) it exists or 2) we need to *know* how to create it. So there is no obstacle here but knowledge. Right?
If funding is misallocated, that can be solved with knowledge of the correct allocation and persuasive explanations. People will allocate funding better if they understand a better allocation. And no funding is needed for people such as you or I to think about these issues and write books about them.
Do you now agree all problems can be solved with knowledge?
So I say: there are ways forward which are not blocked and which we can pursue, if we like. And they don’t have much to do with issues like running out of some material; if humanity fails it will be caused by nothing but ignorance.
Put another way: the only important scarce resource is Critical Rationalism.
Elliot,
I would imagine that another obstacle would be a lack of will or disinterest in the problem and/or solution. No amount of knowledge will rectify many cases of apathy — unless you’re just talking about the knowledge someone adopts.
If that’s the case (and please correct me if I’m wrong!) then you’ve just made ‘knowledge’ vacuous:
All solvable problems can be solved when enough people want to solve these problems (or would it be ‘know that they want to solve …’?), have access to the necessary funding, and the present political structure either permits or encourages their actions … and so on.
“Do you now agree all problems can be solved with knowledge?”
You and I know that words don’t really matter, right? If you’re going to call ‘knowledge’ everything but the kitchen sink that is necessary to solve our problems, sure, I’ll agree with you.
“Put another way: the only important scarce resource is Critical Rationalism.”
I’ve said twice now, “our current political climate is far from Popper’s Open Society” and “the state is far from the ideal Open Society”. But the problem is, as both you and I know, the current intellectual climate is against CR.
If a problem should be solved (i.e. is a genuine problem) then there is a reason it should be solved. Telling people that reason will cause them to want to solve it.
Some people have quirks. You might have to explain something else first to avoid being misunderstood. But you can do that if you know what the quirks are and know what the person will be satisfied with in regard to them.
So again it comes down only to knowledge. Agreed?
Knowledge is not vacuous; it consists only of ideas not everything; but ideas can affect the world and create things like institutions or motivation. This great power of ideas makes them *fundamental* which is a good trait.
I agree the current intellectual climate is a problem. It’s a different problem than scarcity of materials. I am hoping to persuade you it is the true problem, and scarcity of materials is not what we should be worried about. Do you agree now?
Further, this problem of people having mistaken ideas is not a hopeless one, nor a disaster waiting to happen, but rather a hopeful problem which we can address just by figuring out better ideas and how to explain them very well. There is plenty of room for optimism, and plenty of scope for attainable progress. (One of the standard ideas beyond scarce materials scenarios is there is no scope for improvement b/c the supply can’t be increased. That’s why it’s important that that is not our real problem.)
typo: beyond -> behind
Elliot,
“Telling people that reason will cause them to want to solve it.”
I don’t think reasons are manifest; as David Miller notes, reasoning is our only available option, and some people aren’t willing to reason the way we think they should, even when we have good arguments against the way they reason. So no, I still don’t think knowledge is sufficient for solving problems. Necessary? Of course, but we need time, money, the technology, the currently best social institutions, other people, the currently best theory of knowledge, etc. We can’t be Robinson Crusoe (remember Popper’s famous thought-experiment?) and still behave rationally, which I would argue comes before knowledge. In brief, implicit rational behavior precedes knowledge.
“I agree the current intellectual climate is a problem. It’s a different problem than scarcity of materials. I am hoping to persuade you it is the true problem, and scarcity of materials is not what we should be worried about. Do you agree now?”
Yes, I agree with you. I’ve said that here. To express it in your language, I think the current intellectual climate does not provide an economic system that will respond effectively to the future scarcity of materials. That’s why I’ve been harping on the structure of the state for so long.
I don’t think reasons are *manifest* either. So what?
If someone has a misconception so he doesn’t understand, you can address that.
If he has another misconception which messes things up, you can address that too. And so on.
If you think a person can be in a state so that he is *unpersuadable* — so that helping him improve is something beyond any possible knowledge — then please provide some details of what you have in mind and why appropriate knowledge can’t be worked out.
WRT government: if the government distorts price signals, then some capital that uses some resource will be repurposed not to use it either early or late. If early, economic harm is done b/c we could have kept gaining benefit longer. If late, economic harm is done b/c some capital spends some time idle.
In general, it’s hard for this to be a huge disaster — the govt would have to very badly distort price signals that are integrated throughout a large proportion of the economy. And whatever the govt does to price signals, business people can and do see the govt is screwing stuff up and take measures to avert disaster.
Do you agree with this generic analysis? If so, why the pessimism?
To clarify: if the govt destroys 20% of GDP for 5 consecutive years by price signal mishaps, yeah that sucks a lot, but it’s nothing like an apocalypse, life will go on.
The govt already destroys a significant proportion of GDP and we get by anyway.
I don’t see, from the general kind of mechanisms involved, how the govt would manage to do much more than that, e.g. destroy 99% of gdp for a decade so we start starving.
Elliot,
“If you think a person can be in a state so that he is *unpersuadable* … then please provide some details of what you have in mind and why appropriate knowledge can’t be worked out.”
Justificationism in epistemology, for one: they refuse to address CR on its terms, CR scholars point out their errors, justificationists refuse to address their errors. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Talk about a dogmatic mode of thought!
(I do hope we can agree on this point!)
“In general, it’s hard for this to be a huge disaster — the govt would have to very badly distort price signals that are integrated throughout a large proportion of the economy.”
First, the Federal Reserve isn’t as bad as the banking systems in the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe, but it’s still one black mark amongst many in our present economic system.
Second, once oil becomes scarce (and it will), the economy will suffer significantly for some time. We’re now talking about whether or not it will be a ‘huge disaster’ worse than the Great Depression or just a disaster on par with the financial crisis of 2007 and whether or not the time will be measured in years or decades. You acknowledge that neither of us can know what will happen, right?
Lastly, my answer would be ‘no’: we can’t know what the future holds, so it’s best that we start working on our solutions now, be it reforming the state or figuring out possible alternative fuels or technologies before we’ve exhausted our entire oil supply.
Two noncontroversial questions: do you think current funding of ethanol as a fuel source is mistaken? If you think it is mistaken, do you think it is indicative of a state with poor priorities?
I agree justificationism is dogmatic, frustrating, bad, etc… But I do not agree there is nothing you could say to a justificationist to persuade him of better ideas. Haven’t some justificationists reformed?
As an example of what to say, I’d point to Popper’s books. They help some justificationists. And they could be improved to help more, if only we knew how.
The Great Depression was not a ‘huge disaster’ in the relevant sense. It wasn’t a catastrophic collapse. It wasn’t a threat to civilization. We got through it, and that despite massive government bungling that made it much worse than it otherwise would have been. If all you’re worried about with running out of oil is that we might face a great depression sized setback in wealth, that seems to me rather an optimistic position, and nothing worth worrying about that in 100 years or whatever we might lose a fraction of our wealth if this stuff comes to pass and our govt isn’t way better by then.
There’s stuff way scarier to contemplate than a Great Depression. What if Marxist ideas become prominent and Marxists get elected and run out govt? You think they will stop at a great depression? They will bring wealth creation to a near stand still and then set about destroy a significant fraction of our capital *per year*. Islamic ideas running our government and imposing Sharia law would be even worse than Marxists.
So, scare resources? Who cares. There’s far worse catastrophes to be worried about. And more plausible ones: Obama got elected and he has really bad ideas. And the left wing is pushing for worse, not in the distant future (oil reserves are massive ) but right now.
@Ethanol: spending money on alternative fuels today is by and large a waste of money. There is no disaster imminent, and the “solutions” are often worse than the potential disaster (harming the economy by a few percent now can easily be worse than harming it by 20% in 100 years). Wasting money harms our ability to have an economy that can withstand setbacks, and our ability to create real solutions. Ethanol is a particularly stupid approach. Some people in the world go hungry and we are wasting food on a hugely inefficient project (the energy that goes into creating ethanol (including its component parts and manufacturing costs), compared with what you get out of it, is a very bad efficiency rate)
typo, should say: “run our govt” not “run out govt”
What Elliot said about the Great Depression.
Practically every natural resource has a substitute. What does not?
Oil? We are talking energy.
Try nuclear power, if the Green luddites will only get out of the way.
Elliot,
Sorry for not responding so soon. I’ve had far too much work at the moment, but I’ll leave some very brief remarks: Elliot, I don’t like your behavior during our conversation; however, you’ve made persuasive arguments against an economic collapse, and I’m changing my mind on the issue: it’s a worst-case scenario at most, so the best we can do is work towards preventing it as best we can. Thanks. You won’t hear me defending Obama, since he deserves all the (legitimate) criticism directed at him for his policies on civil rights, the role of the state, and his economic ‘policy’.
That said, I don’t think your argument for knowledge solving all our problems survives criticism; I think we need specific social institutions that adopt procedures or rules that model CR or the Open Society (even knowledge of CR isn’t a requirement, but it helps), enough time, energy, and the will to solve our problems.
If there is some problem.
And solving it requires some social institution.
Then we can solve the problem in the following way:
step 1) create the institution
step 2) solve the problem
And we can do that if, and only if, we know how to do that. If we have the knowledge.
Perhaps you will say creating institutions requires time, money, etc
However, we will have one of two situations:
1) we have enough wealth to create it, no problem
2) we do not have enough
If (2), then we can either create wealth — which, again, is a matter of knowing how — or we can find a cheaper way to create the institution which is also a matter of knowing how.
If the institution already exists, fine, that’s great. Existing institutions (among other things) already contain knowledge.
The point of all this is not some thesis like “only knowledge matters” which is false. However, knowledge does *underly* everything, and that has legitimate importance and can be used in some arguments.
This is a reasonably simple and modest point and I have seen no criticism of it. I have seen proposals that some problems aren’t solved by knowledge, but in each case it was not difficult to point out the knowledge involved.
As to the other issues, I did not expect you to defend Obama, I don’t know what is meant by my behavior, I’m gratified to hear that you’ve reconsidered some things, and I do not consider replies to be time sensitive.
Elloit,
I think one possible criticism that I’ve raised before, and I should make more explicit, is that a specific kind of attitude is required when dealing with knowledge.
We may be apathetic towards a problem (thus, knowledge of the solution isn’t important), and while other people can attempt to persuade us that a problem ought to be important to us by appealing to more knowledge, this often is unsuccessful.
All sorts of psychological afflictions may underlie this problem, but one of them is, I think, a dogmatic or noncritical attitude. Thus, if you want to gain new knowledge, beforehand you have to have the attitude/disposition/willingness to accept new knowledge, which involves embracing our fallibility.
I think one part of what makes Popper’s work so important is the implicit idea that World 3 can’t solve our problems; only humans can solve our problems by accessing World 3 through specific social institutions.
But one can learn attitudes he didn’t have before. What’s the problem?
Elliot,
In order for an individual to learn, they must have the disposition to learn.
So, if a person lacks an appropriate disposition then they learn nothing for the rest of their life?
Or if dispositions can change, then figuring out how to change them is a matter of knowledge.
Elliot,
“So, if a person lacks an appropriate disposition then they learn nothing for the rest of their life?”
That’s uncharitable of you. We’re discussing the ability to abandon dispositions when confronted with criticism, not the ability to construct a framework that buttresses said disposition.
“Or if dispositions can change, then figuring out how to change them is a matter of knowledge.”
I would think some dispositions can change when confronted with appropriate criticism and the individual with the disposition understands the strength of the criticism; other dispositions may be unable to be updated or dropped, no matter the criticism directed at it, for the individual deflects any criticism. Do you agree that this is possible?
In short, no it is impossible.
For a person to be stuck in the way you imagine, then need to be learning *nothing*. Basically they’d have to be dead or severely brain damaged. If they learn some things, that that will put them in a new problem situation and will open up more things they can learn, and in this way they will make progress, and while it may be indirect there will be paths by which that progress can be relevant to their original problems and lead to solutions (one reason this will happen is that to become an expert on anything, no matter how irrelevant it seems, one engages not only with subject-specific material but also generic knowledge about how to be good at things, which can in turn help with any problem)
No one is learning literally nothing. We know this because communicating requires learning: one must create knowledge of what the other person says. Meanings are not manifest.
Anyone who can talk and create knowledge of what you’ve said can learn new things, as he’s just demonstrated, and while his disposition may be a major obstacle to various improvements it’s not insurmountable.
To take another aspect of the situation: if a person can learn even one thing, then we know they can conjecture and criticize because that is the only method of learning. And if they can do that, they can learn anything, because the method of conjecture and criticism can create knowledge of anything.
Elliot,
And what if these new problems are to counter whatever criticisms directed at the ‘hard core’ come what may?
One doesn’t get to choose his problem situation, nor the connections between fields, nor any of it. If someone learns something he is, as a matter of fact, whether he likes it or not, in a new situation, with new possibilities available.
What I think you have in mind is something like a person who only is interested in new information if it will help him maintain some original position and rejects any criticism. There are many approaches to deal with such a person. One would be to talk to him about another subject that isn’t a criticism, e.g. error correction in general. That will seem harmless to him because he doesn’t know what it has to do with his position. But once he understands a bit about error correction, then as a matter of logic it has applications to his position and his attitude to his position.
What if he’s not interested in epistemology? Well he has a hobby. Racing motorcycles or whatever. Talk to him about that, and then get into how philosophy of error correction can help with his hobby. Then explain some. Since the epistemology of error correction is general purpose knowledge that helps with all hobbies, it’s easy to find a way to relate it to someone’s interests.
A nice point on relating to people’s interests! One of the main problems with the teaching of philosophy is the typical examples that are used, so often they have no relation to anyone’s interests. I know some examples are chosen to be neutral to social and political issues to examine the logic of the argument without importing a lot of prejudice but that is overdone.