Many environmental questions are in a deep way philosophical, despite our penchant for treating them as if they were only technological, economic, or whatever. Dale Jamieson More Quotes by Dale Jamieson More Quotes From Dale Jamieson I think the mother of all arguments against eating meat now is the climate change argument. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and when we eat meat we wipe away many of the good things that we do when we try to create greener and more sustainable practices in the rest of our lives. So if you add the concern for climate change with other concerns that were there. I think the case for vegetarianism is pretty overwhelming. Dale Jamieson powerful mother thinking I must say that in my own mind, I think what's important is for us, as a society, to radically reduce the consumption of meat. This is more important than some fraction of us become moral saints and become vegetarians so it would be much better if we would reduce meat consumption by three quarters of each of us as an individuals would only eat one-quarter as much meat as we do now then that half of the population should become vegetarian. We should see this as a collective challenge rather than an issue about individual, moral period. Dale Jamieson challenges mind thinking None of us are rational economic men as we're supposed to be portrayed in economic theory where mixes of passions, of desires, of moral principles, of self-deception, of altruism, of concern of others, of concerns for ourselves and an interest in our bank accounts. And social policies have to be responsive to the complexity of who we are as people or else, like the war on drugs, they're simply going to fail. Dale Jamieson passion men war If you look at the works psychologists have done about individual reports of wellbeing, what happens is that if you're poor, you are not happy. But once you achieve a certain level of material satisfaction then income has very little correlation with people's reported states of happiness, things like climate matter more, things like the culture of the country in which you're raised matter more and so the things really, let's face it, like individual temperament matter more than these things. Dale Jamieson done country culture The millennium development goals are important, both morally and economically, because much of the world's population maybe is as much as a third of the world's population hasn't yet reached the level of economic development where we begin to get a dissociation from people's economic status and their reports about personal happiness. So we really do need to do much more and much more effectively in order to give everyone the kind of basis for which they can have good vibes. Dale Jamieson important goal giving Philosophy is not a body of knowledge to impart to someone, that's why reading philosophy books isn't always the best way of learning philosophy. Philosophy is really more the process of rational engagement, rational reflection with a diversity of views and ideas and opinions and trying to sort of reason your way through to a more reflective position. I think if you look at it that way, philosophizing is to some extent some small way a part of almost everyone's lives although they don't recognize it as such and a lot of people are embarrassed about it. Dale Jamieson reading philosophy book Philosophy isn't reading Emmanuel Kant. Philosophy is about thinking hard about what the right thing to do is in a situation and approaching that kind of question in an open-minded and open-hearted way, receptive to a broad range of considerations and interests of other people and other things. Dale Jamieson reading philosophy thinking We can use economic instruments to help realize our goals but economics does not tell us what our goals should be. Dale Jamieson goal use doe Climate change involves fundamental choices about how we want to live and what kind of world we want. Dale Jamieson climate choices fundamentals 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. Dale Jamieson educational strong children Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before. Dale Jamieson very-good life-is people In the last few centuries we've managed to reduce how much we kill each other, we've learned some basic lessons about public health, and life is relatively good for more people than ever before. Dale Jamieson health-and-life lessons people The problem is that the Enlightenment dream may make too many demands on poor African apes like us. We may just not be up to it. Dale Jamieson enlightenment demand dream The very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact. Dale Jamieson impact essence culture The Enlightenment dream is a good one. The idea that people should rationally appreciate their place in nature, assess threats and possibilities, and regulate their behavior in response is inspiring. Dale Jamieson dream people ideas Most "process" philosophy is historicist (e.g., Hegel) and not concerned with "deep time." Maybe Whitehead is an exception. He may be a really important philosopher for all I know. I've never been able to read him. Dale Jamieson important may philosophy 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. Dale Jamieson resilience focus nice 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. Dale Jamieson earth years thinking We live on a restless planet in a violent universe. Dale Jamieson restless violent planets A great deal of our math, science, philosophy, and everyday behavior presupposes that stability and equilibria are the "default" states, and everything else involves some "perturbation." This is a mental model, a conceptual frame, a tacit belief, a presupposition - whatever you want to call it. Dale Jamieson everyday math philosophy
