The west can no longer afford to impose its values and notions of democracy on countries that neither want nor need them
First for the good news: Pakistan is not about to explode. The Islamic militants are not going to take power tomorrow; the nuclear weapons are not about to be trafficked to al-Qaida; the army is not about to send the Afghan Taliban to invade India; a civil war is unlikely.
The bad news is that Pakistan poses us questions that are much more profound than those we would face if this nation of 170m, the world's second biggest Muslim state, were simply a failed state. If Pakistan collapsed, we would be faced by a serious security challenge. But the resilience of Pakistan and the nation's continuing collective refusal to do what the west would like it to together pose questions with implications far beyond simple security concerns. They are about our ability to influence events in far-off places, our capacity to analyse and understand the behaviour and perceived interests of other nations and cultures, about our ability to deal with difference, about how we see the world.
Pakistan has very grave problems. In the last two years, I have reported on bloody ethnic and political riots, on violent demonstrations, from the front line of a vicious war against radical Islamic insurgents. I spent a day with Benazir Bhutto a week before she was assassinated and covered the series of murderous attacks committed at home and abroad by militant groups based in Pakistan with shadowy connections to its security services. There is an economic crisis and social problems - illiteracy, domestic violence, drug addiction - of grotesque proportions. Osama bin Laden is probably on Pakistani soil.
For many developing nations, all this would signal the state's total disintegration. This partly explains why Pakistan's collapse is so often predicted. The nation's meltdown was forecast when its eastern half seceded to become Bangladesh in 1971, during the violence that preceded General Zia ul-Haq's coup in 1977, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, when Zia was killed in 1988, during the horrific sectarian violence of the early Nineties, through sundry ethnic insurgencies, after 9/11, after the 2007 death of Bhutto and now after yet another political crisis. These predictions have been consistently proved wrong. The most recent will be too. Yesterday, tempers were already calming.
Some of the perpetual international hysteria is stoked by the Pakistanis themselves. Successive governments have perfected the art of negotiating by pointing a gun to their own heads. They know that their nation's strategic importance guarantees the financial life support they need from the international community. More broadly, our understanding of Pakistan is skewed. This is in part due to centuries of historical baggage. Though few would quote Emile Zola on contemporary France, Winston Churchill, who as a young man fought on the North-West Frontier, is regularly cited to explain today's insurgency. This legacy also includes stereotypes of "Mad Mullahs" running amok, an image fuelled by television footage that highlights ranting demonstrators from Pakistan's Islamist parties though they have never won more than 14% in an election.
For many Britons, Pakistan represents "the other" - chaotic, distant, exotic, dirty, hot, fanatical and threatening. Yet at the same time, Pakistan seems very familiar. There is the English language, cricket, kebabs and curries and figures such as Imran Khan. There are a million-odd Britons of Pakistani-descent who over four decades have largely integrated far better in the UK than often suggested.
It is the tension between these two largely imaginary Pakistans that leads to such strong reactions in Britain. We see the country as plunged in a struggle between the frighteningly foreign and the familiar, between fanaticism and western democracy, values, our vision of the world and how it should be ordered. Yet while we are fretting about Pakistan's imminent disintegration, we are blind to the really important change.
Recent years have seen the consolidation of a new Pakistani identity between these two extremes. It is nationalist, conservative in religious and social terms and much more aggressive in asserting what are seen, rightly or wrongly, as local "Pakistani" interests. It is a mix of patriotic chauvinism and moderate Islamism that is currently heavily informed by a distorted view of the world sadly all too familiar across the entire Muslim world. This means that for many Pakistanis, the west is rapacious and hostile. Admiration for the British and desire for holidays in London have been replaced by a view of the UK as "America's poodle" and dreams of Dubai or Malaysia. The 9/11 attacks are seen, even by senior army officers, as a put-up job by Mossad, the CIA or both. The Indians, the old enemy, are seen as running riot in Afghanistan where the Taliban are "freedom fighters". AQ Khan, the nuclear scientist seen as a bomb-selling criminal by the West, is a hero. Democracy is seen as the best system, but only if democracy results in governments that take decisions that reflect the sentiments of most Pakistanis, not just those of the Anglophone, westernised elite among whom western policy-makers, politicians and journalists tend to chose their interlocutors.
This view of the world is most common among the new, urban middle classes in Pakistan, much larger after a decade of fast and uneven economic growth. It is this class that provides the bulk of the country's military officers and bureaucrats. This in part explains the Pakistani security establishment's dogged support for elements within the Taliban. The infamous ISI spy agency is largely staffed by soldiers and the army is a reflection of society. For the ISI, as for many Pakistanis, supporting certain insurgent factions in Afghanistan is seen as the rational choice. If this trend continues, it poses us problems rather different from those posed by a failed state. Instead, you have a nuclear armed nation with a large population that is increasingly vocal and which sees the world very differently from us.
We face a related problem in Afghanistan where we are still hoping to build the state we want the Afghans to want, rather than the state that they actually want. Ask many Afghans which state they hope their own will resemble in a few decades and the answer is "Iran". Dozens of interviews with senior western generals, diplomats and officials in Kabul last week have shown me how deeply the years of conflict and "nation-building" have dented confidence in our ability to transplant western values. Our interest in Afghanistan has been reduced to preventing it from becoming a platform for threats to the west. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the west has glimpsed the limits to its power and to the supposedly universal attraction of its values.
The west's dreams of a comfortable post-Cold War era have been rudely shaken. We have been forced reluctantly to accept the independence and influence of China and Russia. These are countries that we recognise as difficult international actors pursuing agendas popular with substantial proportions of their citizens. Other countries, particularly those less troubled than Pakistan or Afghanistan, are likely soon to join that list.
This poses a critical challenge in foreign policy. Worrying about the imminent collapse of Pakistan is not going to help us find answers to the really difficult questions that Pakistan poses
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Friday, 20 February 2009
Sustainable Development: Prince Saddrudin
It will be my thesis today that the dogma of "sustainable development" is inherently misleading, and is now deluding our mindsets in much the same way as the flat earth theory once did -- but with implications which are infinitely more dangerous to our future survival.
Accordingly, I will refrain from the politically correct -- and attempt to highlight how the once noble notion of "sustainable development" has been diverted.
Despite all the rhetoric about basic needs and poverty alleviation -- and despite several decades officially dedicated to development -- the number of people in extreme or absolute poverty continues to increase.
The inclusive outcomes of the latest meetings in The Hague and Monterrey can hardly add to our optimism. This doesn't augur well for Johannesburg.
The time has come to end what Kofi Annan has aptly described as 'business as usual'. He is right in his analysis that "as our attention has been focused on conflict, on globalisation, or most recently on terrorism, we have often failed to see how these are connected to the issue of sustainability. That word has become a pious invocation, rather than the urgent call to concrete action it should be."
The irony is that those who promote sustainable development often do so under the guise of providing benefits to the poor nations of the south. The fact remains, however, that 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade ago, and the number of people living in poverty (those who earn less than $1 a day) is stuck stubbornly at 1.2 billion, while those earning less than $2 per day number almost 3 billion.
Someone on a daily wage of one dollar would take 109 years to earn what French footballer Zinedine Zidane is currently earning per day!
Sustainable development has been diverted in the following ways:
I) THE OXYMORON OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
Firstly by business -- to become synonymous with sustainable growth -- an oxymoron which reflects the conflict between a trade vision of the world and the environmental, social and cultural vision.
It has become a mantra for big business and multi-national corporations. Worse, it has unwittingly opened the door to a green backlash -- the gradual hi-jacking of the environment movement by so- called 'corporate realists'.
Even terms like 'environmentalist' or 'conservationist' are now not infrequently used to describe those who indiscriminately clear cut forests or kill animals for their skins. Such activities are now clouded in dubious euphemisms such as 'yields' or the 'harvesting' of natural and wildlife resources.
II) THE 'WISE USE' MOVEMENT
This leads me to the second negative evolution of 'sustainable development' into the term 'sustainable use' -- an anathema conjured by the so-called 'wise use' movement to mask activities which are exactly the opposite.
It is the alibi which facilitates lethal consumptive use and which has regrettably infiltrated key international fora such as CITES and the IWC 'sustainable use' of marine resources means killing whales and 'sustainable use' of native wildlife has spawned a multi-million dollar 'bushmeat' industry, particularly in Africa.
'Sustainable users' hope to convince poor Africans and Asians that they should not kill wildlife to collect the equivalent of several years' wages, while rich European and American trophy hunters kill the same animals for fun.
It is also the philosophy which has fragmented the movement -- dividing to rule by divorcing 'conservationists' (serious and 'scientific') from ethical causes such as fur and circuses (emotional idealists). The fact that an activity such as whaling may be economically sustainable does not make it desirable, or acceptable ethically.
In a speech to IWC delegates the assistant director general of the fishery agency of Japan -- and his country's IWC commissioner -- revealed that Japan had fishing agreements with eight countries, and has spent £400 million in aid -- 'fishing for votes' in the most literal sense of the words.
We have moved from a prudent, precautionary approach to a situation whereby our natural heritage has to 'pay its own way' and not form 'an impediment to free trade' if it is to have any chance of being preserved.
III) CORRUPTION
Thirdly, the sustainable development mindset indirectly fosters corruption.
Every year, businesses from OECD (organisation for economic and co-operative development) countries pay huge amounts of money in bribes to win friends, influence and contracts. These bribes are conservatively estimated to run to $80 billion a year -- roughly the amount that the UN has suggested is needed to eradicate global poverty.
The trade in banned animal parts is second only to the trade in illegal narcotics. Indeed, it has become a lucrative and low-risk sideline for international crime syndicates, such as the Yakuza in Japan, the Poon family in Hong-Kong, or the South American drug cartels -- especially as enforcement is relatively lax and discovery rarely involves more than a cursory fine. Already the trade has pushed species such as tigers and rhinos to the verge of extinction. Figures released last month indicate that the population of wild Asian elephants has been decimated by 80 per cent during the last decade.
An additional tragedy -- again reflecting the drugs trade -- is that war and the indiscriminate arms dealing that comes in its wake, invariably exacerbates the decimation of wildlife and its habitat.
IV) CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF GOVERNANCE
The fourth negative impact of 'sustainable development' is that it fosters the corporate takeover of governance. Has the new hymn indeed become 'he who pays the lobbyist calls the tune'? Just look at the corporate quid- pro-quo exacted after George W Bush's election as president of the United States.
Richard Parsons, head of Time AOL speaking at the world economic summit meeting in New York has been cited as declaring (without apparently a hint that there could be anything abnormal or worrying in the statement) that: "once the church determined our lives, then the state, and now it's corporations".
Everywhere we hear about the advantages of an essentially market-based response to the world's ills -- philanthropy, self-regulation, corporate social responsibility and voluntary codes of conduct. None of these can be deemed an acceptable proxy for state responsibility, policy and control.
Even the UN system has been jumping on the bandwagon through initiatives such as the 'global compact' with 50 of the world's biggest and most controversial corporations. As The Guardian commented, the UN "appears to be turning itself into an enforcement agency for the global economy, helping western companies to penetrate new markets while avoiding the regulations which would be the only effective means of holding them to account. By making peace with power, the UN is declaring war on the powerless."
V) CONSUMPTION
Everywhere the emphasis seems to be firmly on money and conspicuous consumption. This brings me to a fifth side--effect of sustainable development philosophy which has fostered a wholly abhorrent notion of 'sustainable consumption'. This in turn illustrates just how far the concept of sustainability has been allowed to stray down the path of Orwellian newspeak.
'Sustainable development', as defined following the Brundtland Report, calls not for a continuation of present growth patterns but a five to ten-fold acceleration thereof! But, surely, growth during maturity is either obesity or cancer.
Eight hundred million people are suffering from malnutrition while a small percentage of the world's population is choking on 'fast food'.
The food industry provides excellent focus for the themes of this session -- including consumerism, global disparities and the breakdown of governance.
The opening up of a great world market in the name of free trade, the rules of the WTO and the orientation of grants, all promote the consolidation and centralisation of the food industry. Sixty per cent of the international food sector is controled by 10 companies dealing in seed, fertilisers, pesticides, processing, manufacture and shipment.
Business has gone global -- but our systems of governance have failed to keep pace.
There currently exist more than 200 treaties of the environment -- three-quarters of which have been ratified during the last 30 years. But, for the most part, the commitments made with such a media splash in Rio and elsewhere remain a dead letter. Worse still, the effectiveness of these agreements is all too often undermined by vague commitments and lax enforcement.
Could the subtle shift in emphasis from focus on the 'Environment' (Stockholm 1972) to 'Environment and Development' (Rio, 1992) have anything to do with this?
It may not be popular to emphasise just before Johannesburg, but many processes are already probably irreversible. I wonder if it is not already too late for 'sustainable'.
Environmental crises, like climate change won't wait while we procrastinate for 'conclusive' scientific data. The gods' punishment for Hubris is blindness to warnings of impending doom.
Nor can we expect too much from technological lifeboats when the final SOS calls go out.
Must we be doomed to proceed by 'catastrophism'? To limit ourselves to dealing with symptoms rather than addressing the causes? Perhaps the time has come to impose a moratorium on new scientific or technological innovations that have potentially negative implications for the planet and society.
Indeed, science -- or what I fear we should increasingly term 'corporate science' -- always seems to be in on the verge of some major new breakthrough which, however ominous it may sound, is inevitably accompanied by reassuring noises regarding its ultimate potential to cure cancer, reverse climate change or end world hunger, if only we can keep the research grants flowing.
If the nations of the European Union are prepared to surrender part of their sovereignty to promote economic unity, why can't the nations of the world do the same to safeguard the ecological capital on which our survival depends?
Can't we identify a new direction? One which places greater emphasis on 'regeneration' rather than 'sustaining' an untenable status quo, on sound 'stewardship' rather than 'development' and relentless pursuit of growth? On quality of life rather than living standards? On being more rather than having more? About living more fully rather than faster? About multiplying our values rather than our possessions?
Stewardship has the advantage of going beyond mere economic values -- important as these may be -- by restoring the equilibrium and giving parallel emphasis to the environmental, ethical and spiritual values that are vital ingredients of any true and viable civilisation.
Look at how quickly progress was made in reducing violence in New York once the neighbourhoods were re-connected and re-involved. The same goes for restoring the urban landscape, as we heard yesterday from the mayor of Tirana.
Even 'stewardship', whilst already a significant improvement, could be taxed for its anthropocentric connotations. And besides, I wonder if any term -- however nobly conceived (like sustainable development) -- could not ultimately be diverted in the pursuit of human greed. Perhaps the world has had enough of slogans, soundbites and spin- doctors. Especially in an age when everything seems to have become urgent except for the essential.
We must strive towards a new mindset -- one which will allow us to challenge what we are trying to achieve, a new pact with nature -- one that restores our sense of balance, moderation and humanity.
Somewhere in our scientific confidence and economic gigantism, we have lost the plot -- lost our vision as well as the spiritual unity which these gatherings so rightly emphasise.
What is needed is a new renaissance -- on a par with that which moved us out of previous dark ages into a new spirit of enlightenment. As Einstein wrote, "you cannot solve the problems with the ways of thinking that led to their creation".
If globalisation has any positive merits, the creation of a universal social consciousness must be the greatest among them. Thanks to global communications, we are instantly aware of the slightest outbreak of injustice, hardship or abuse wherever it may be occurring on the planet. This has facilitated the emergence and global organisation of alternative movements exemplified by the Porto Alegre initiative. Here lie the seeds of hope.
Just as the key to human sickness is often in the mind, so the key to the planet's ills may be in our collective mindsets -- the priorities we give to our lives and our lifestyle choices.
In the final analysis, change can only come from within ourselves, and the only truly 'sustainable' progress must be that of the heart.
Reproduced with permission of the author.
Source:
http://www
Accordingly, I will refrain from the politically correct -- and attempt to highlight how the once noble notion of "sustainable development" has been diverted.
Despite all the rhetoric about basic needs and poverty alleviation -- and despite several decades officially dedicated to development -- the number of people in extreme or absolute poverty continues to increase.
The inclusive outcomes of the latest meetings in The Hague and Monterrey can hardly add to our optimism. This doesn't augur well for Johannesburg.
The time has come to end what Kofi Annan has aptly described as 'business as usual'. He is right in his analysis that "as our attention has been focused on conflict, on globalisation, or most recently on terrorism, we have often failed to see how these are connected to the issue of sustainability. That word has become a pious invocation, rather than the urgent call to concrete action it should be."
The irony is that those who promote sustainable development often do so under the guise of providing benefits to the poor nations of the south. The fact remains, however, that 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade ago, and the number of people living in poverty (those who earn less than $1 a day) is stuck stubbornly at 1.2 billion, while those earning less than $2 per day number almost 3 billion.
Someone on a daily wage of one dollar would take 109 years to earn what French footballer Zinedine Zidane is currently earning per day!
Sustainable development has been diverted in the following ways:
I) THE OXYMORON OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
Firstly by business -- to become synonymous with sustainable growth -- an oxymoron which reflects the conflict between a trade vision of the world and the environmental, social and cultural vision.
It has become a mantra for big business and multi-national corporations. Worse, it has unwittingly opened the door to a green backlash -- the gradual hi-jacking of the environment movement by so- called 'corporate realists'.
Even terms like 'environmentalist' or 'conservationist' are now not infrequently used to describe those who indiscriminately clear cut forests or kill animals for their skins. Such activities are now clouded in dubious euphemisms such as 'yields' or the 'harvesting' of natural and wildlife resources.
II) THE 'WISE USE' MOVEMENT
This leads me to the second negative evolution of 'sustainable development' into the term 'sustainable use' -- an anathema conjured by the so-called 'wise use' movement to mask activities which are exactly the opposite.
It is the alibi which facilitates lethal consumptive use and which has regrettably infiltrated key international fora such as CITES and the IWC 'sustainable use' of marine resources means killing whales and 'sustainable use' of native wildlife has spawned a multi-million dollar 'bushmeat' industry, particularly in Africa.
'Sustainable users' hope to convince poor Africans and Asians that they should not kill wildlife to collect the equivalent of several years' wages, while rich European and American trophy hunters kill the same animals for fun.
It is also the philosophy which has fragmented the movement -- dividing to rule by divorcing 'conservationists' (serious and 'scientific') from ethical causes such as fur and circuses (emotional idealists). The fact that an activity such as whaling may be economically sustainable does not make it desirable, or acceptable ethically.
In a speech to IWC delegates the assistant director general of the fishery agency of Japan -- and his country's IWC commissioner -- revealed that Japan had fishing agreements with eight countries, and has spent £400 million in aid -- 'fishing for votes' in the most literal sense of the words.
We have moved from a prudent, precautionary approach to a situation whereby our natural heritage has to 'pay its own way' and not form 'an impediment to free trade' if it is to have any chance of being preserved.
III) CORRUPTION
Thirdly, the sustainable development mindset indirectly fosters corruption.
Every year, businesses from OECD (organisation for economic and co-operative development) countries pay huge amounts of money in bribes to win friends, influence and contracts. These bribes are conservatively estimated to run to $80 billion a year -- roughly the amount that the UN has suggested is needed to eradicate global poverty.
The trade in banned animal parts is second only to the trade in illegal narcotics. Indeed, it has become a lucrative and low-risk sideline for international crime syndicates, such as the Yakuza in Japan, the Poon family in Hong-Kong, or the South American drug cartels -- especially as enforcement is relatively lax and discovery rarely involves more than a cursory fine. Already the trade has pushed species such as tigers and rhinos to the verge of extinction. Figures released last month indicate that the population of wild Asian elephants has been decimated by 80 per cent during the last decade.
An additional tragedy -- again reflecting the drugs trade -- is that war and the indiscriminate arms dealing that comes in its wake, invariably exacerbates the decimation of wildlife and its habitat.
IV) CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF GOVERNANCE
The fourth negative impact of 'sustainable development' is that it fosters the corporate takeover of governance. Has the new hymn indeed become 'he who pays the lobbyist calls the tune'? Just look at the corporate quid- pro-quo exacted after George W Bush's election as president of the United States.
Richard Parsons, head of Time AOL speaking at the world economic summit meeting in New York has been cited as declaring (without apparently a hint that there could be anything abnormal or worrying in the statement) that: "once the church determined our lives, then the state, and now it's corporations".
Everywhere we hear about the advantages of an essentially market-based response to the world's ills -- philanthropy, self-regulation, corporate social responsibility and voluntary codes of conduct. None of these can be deemed an acceptable proxy for state responsibility, policy and control.
Even the UN system has been jumping on the bandwagon through initiatives such as the 'global compact' with 50 of the world's biggest and most controversial corporations. As The Guardian commented, the UN "appears to be turning itself into an enforcement agency for the global economy, helping western companies to penetrate new markets while avoiding the regulations which would be the only effective means of holding them to account. By making peace with power, the UN is declaring war on the powerless."
V) CONSUMPTION
Everywhere the emphasis seems to be firmly on money and conspicuous consumption. This brings me to a fifth side--effect of sustainable development philosophy which has fostered a wholly abhorrent notion of 'sustainable consumption'. This in turn illustrates just how far the concept of sustainability has been allowed to stray down the path of Orwellian newspeak.
'Sustainable development', as defined following the Brundtland Report, calls not for a continuation of present growth patterns but a five to ten-fold acceleration thereof! But, surely, growth during maturity is either obesity or cancer.
Eight hundred million people are suffering from malnutrition while a small percentage of the world's population is choking on 'fast food'.
The food industry provides excellent focus for the themes of this session -- including consumerism, global disparities and the breakdown of governance.
The opening up of a great world market in the name of free trade, the rules of the WTO and the orientation of grants, all promote the consolidation and centralisation of the food industry. Sixty per cent of the international food sector is controled by 10 companies dealing in seed, fertilisers, pesticides, processing, manufacture and shipment.
Business has gone global -- but our systems of governance have failed to keep pace.
There currently exist more than 200 treaties of the environment -- three-quarters of which have been ratified during the last 30 years. But, for the most part, the commitments made with such a media splash in Rio and elsewhere remain a dead letter. Worse still, the effectiveness of these agreements is all too often undermined by vague commitments and lax enforcement.
Could the subtle shift in emphasis from focus on the 'Environment' (Stockholm 1972) to 'Environment and Development' (Rio, 1992) have anything to do with this?
It may not be popular to emphasise just before Johannesburg, but many processes are already probably irreversible. I wonder if it is not already too late for 'sustainable'.
Environmental crises, like climate change won't wait while we procrastinate for 'conclusive' scientific data. The gods' punishment for Hubris is blindness to warnings of impending doom.
Nor can we expect too much from technological lifeboats when the final SOS calls go out.
Must we be doomed to proceed by 'catastrophism'? To limit ourselves to dealing with symptoms rather than addressing the causes? Perhaps the time has come to impose a moratorium on new scientific or technological innovations that have potentially negative implications for the planet and society.
Indeed, science -- or what I fear we should increasingly term 'corporate science' -- always seems to be in on the verge of some major new breakthrough which, however ominous it may sound, is inevitably accompanied by reassuring noises regarding its ultimate potential to cure cancer, reverse climate change or end world hunger, if only we can keep the research grants flowing.
If the nations of the European Union are prepared to surrender part of their sovereignty to promote economic unity, why can't the nations of the world do the same to safeguard the ecological capital on which our survival depends?
Can't we identify a new direction? One which places greater emphasis on 'regeneration' rather than 'sustaining' an untenable status quo, on sound 'stewardship' rather than 'development' and relentless pursuit of growth? On quality of life rather than living standards? On being more rather than having more? About living more fully rather than faster? About multiplying our values rather than our possessions?
Stewardship has the advantage of going beyond mere economic values -- important as these may be -- by restoring the equilibrium and giving parallel emphasis to the environmental, ethical and spiritual values that are vital ingredients of any true and viable civilisation.
Look at how quickly progress was made in reducing violence in New York once the neighbourhoods were re-connected and re-involved. The same goes for restoring the urban landscape, as we heard yesterday from the mayor of Tirana.
Even 'stewardship', whilst already a significant improvement, could be taxed for its anthropocentric connotations. And besides, I wonder if any term -- however nobly conceived (like sustainable development) -- could not ultimately be diverted in the pursuit of human greed. Perhaps the world has had enough of slogans, soundbites and spin- doctors. Especially in an age when everything seems to have become urgent except for the essential.
We must strive towards a new mindset -- one which will allow us to challenge what we are trying to achieve, a new pact with nature -- one that restores our sense of balance, moderation and humanity.
Somewhere in our scientific confidence and economic gigantism, we have lost the plot -- lost our vision as well as the spiritual unity which these gatherings so rightly emphasise.
What is needed is a new renaissance -- on a par with that which moved us out of previous dark ages into a new spirit of enlightenment. As Einstein wrote, "you cannot solve the problems with the ways of thinking that led to their creation".
If globalisation has any positive merits, the creation of a universal social consciousness must be the greatest among them. Thanks to global communications, we are instantly aware of the slightest outbreak of injustice, hardship or abuse wherever it may be occurring on the planet. This has facilitated the emergence and global organisation of alternative movements exemplified by the Porto Alegre initiative. Here lie the seeds of hope.
Just as the key to human sickness is often in the mind, so the key to the planet's ills may be in our collective mindsets -- the priorities we give to our lives and our lifestyle choices.
In the final analysis, change can only come from within ourselves, and the only truly 'sustainable' progress must be that of the heart.
Reproduced with permission of the author.
Source:
http://www
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Prince Sadurdin Aga Khan
The Times of London Obituary
Remarking that he disliked racing — unlike his father, who was famous for his palaces and horses — Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan chose a career in politics, that was to see him rise almost to the top of the United Nations, and to devote much of his life to global environmental causes.
Born in 1933, he was the second son of the late Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, the 48th hereditary Imam of the Ismaili Shia Muslims, and the late Princess Andrée Aga Khan. He was also the uncle of Karim Aga Khan IV, the current Imam.
He was educated in Lausanne and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1957. After three years of postgraduate research at the Harvard Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, he was recruited by Unesco. In 1961, as executive secretary to its committee for the preservation of Nubia, he directed efforts to raise funds for the great Nubian monuments, including Abu Simbel and the temples of Philae and Kalabasha, which were threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam.
In 1962 he was appointed the UN’s Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees. By 1965, he was head of the commission, overseeing refugee crises in Uganda (1972), Sudan (1973), Chile (1973), Cyprus (1974) and elsewhere.
Bangladesh’s declaration of independence in 1971 provoked brutal Pakistani reprisals and created a flood of refugees into India. Sadruddin visited the camps and border areas. His answer to Indian accusation that he was a stooge for Pakistan, with whom his family had close associations, was explicit: “I am not pro-Pakistani. I am not pro-Indian. I am pro-refugee.” And his words carried considerable weight: by February 1972, more than seven million refugees had returned to Bangladesh.
From 1978, in the role of chargé de mission to Kurt Waldheim, then UN Secretary-General, Sadruddin directed the efforts of UN agencies, governments and charities. The complexity of his background — as an Iranian brought up in Switzerland in the Muslim faith by an Iranian father and a French mother, and then educated at Harvard — meant that he was eminently suited to his role as an interpreter between East and West.
Despite working intensively and effectively in the role, however, Sadruddin was twice passed over for the post of Secretary-General, once in 1981, and again in 1991. Though he won the 1981 vote, his election was vetoed by the Soviet Union, which considered him too Western. Instead, the post went to the Peruvian Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, under whom, during the late 1980s, Sadruddin co-ordinated efforts to bring aid to the people of Afghanistan.
In the wake of the first Gulf War he negotiated with Saddam Hussein to try to ensure the presence of a UN guard force and the implementation of humanitarian initiatives in Iraq to assist the Kurds and Shia Muslims. He also encouraged Saddam to accept the conditions of the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme. Later, concerned for the welfare of the Iraqi people, he advised that the sanctions should be suspended.
In 1991, Boutros Boutros Ghali was named Secretary-General. Once again, it was thought that Sadruddin was too Western-orientated, and the reputation of his aristocratic family counted against him. Moreover, the United States and Britain disagreed with his belief in a policy of boosting aid to Iraq. Sadruddin made few enemies, though, and was popular among his colleagues. From 1992 until his death, he continued to work at the UN, as chargé de mission to Kofi Annan.
Through his London-based Aga Khan Foundation and private Geneva-based Bellerive Foundation (established in 1977 to promote conservation of natural resources and the protection of all life forms), Sadruddin published articles on humanitarian and ecological issues. He was vocal on numerous subjects, ranging from the plight of monk seals on the Sporadean island of Alonissos to nuclear disarmament, and from the spectacle of a wretched panda trained to play a trumpet in a circus to the detrimental impact on the planet of mass deforestation.
Latterly, however, Sadruddin had become disillusioned with the environmental movement. Before last year’s UN summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, he argued that the once honourable notion of “sustainable development” was now misleading and was being commercially abused. Multinational corporations and Western-based businesses, he claimed, were engaged in public relations exercises, using a green cloak to cover their continued abuse of the natural world and the exploitation of impoverished populations.
His own approach to the environment was a holistic one. “If you don’t protect the forest, then you can’t protect the wildlife,” he wrote. “If you don’t protect the wildlife, then you can’t protect people.”
Through Alp Action, he endeavoured to halt the progressive urbanisation that threatens the forests of the Alps by emulating the system of national parks in the Canadian Rockies.
The 17th-century Château de Bellerive on the shores of Lake Geneva was not only his home and the headquarters of his non-governmental organisation, but also contained his extensive art collection. Sadruddin’s father had inherited a library of Persian texts, and in the 1950s a folio from the 14th-century Mameluke Koran became Sadruddin’s own first acquisition.
The collection he amassed over the next 45 years included Islamic paintings, drawings and manuscripts from Turkey, Iran and India, and in 1998, 140 items from it were displayed at the British Museum and internationally.
Sadruddin accumulated various honours during his lifetime, including Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur (France), the Pontifical Order of St Sylvestre (Holy See) and the Order of the Star of the Nile. Last year he was appointed KBE.
Sadruddin’s first marriage, in 1957, to the model Nina Dyer, was dissolved in 1962. In 1972 he married Catherine Aleya Sursock, a Greek born in Alexandria, who survives him.
Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, KBE, environmentalist and UN executive, was born on January 17, 1933. He died of cancer on May 12, 2003, aged 70.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Benefits of doubt
February 4, 2007
Benefits of Doubt
By SIMON BLACKBURN
Book Review:
DESCARTES
The Life and Times of a Genius.
By A. C. Grayling.
Illustrated. 303 pp. Walker & Company. $26.95.
You need not be much of a mathematician to know of Cartesian coordinates. And even people who have only a slender acquaintance with philosophy have often heard of “Cogito ergo sum” — I think therefore I am. They may even have heard of Cartesian skepticism and Cartesian dualism, and may know that it was in the course of pursuing the first, and establishing the second, that Descartes relied on his famous remark. The brilliant, enigmatic Frenchman whose name is thus remembered comes vividly to life in this fascinating new biography, by one of Britain’s foremost literary figures and philosophers.
Descartes lived in interesting times. He was born just before the 17th century, in the sunny Touraine region of France, and died exactly halfway through it, in the bitter northern winter at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden. For most of this time Europe was racked by the Thirty Years’ War, a dreary, vicious contest between Protestants and Catholics, which so exhausted the Old World that religion never really recovered there, and had to be exported to the New.
In “Descartes,” A. C. Grayling (whom I know as a professional colleague) deftly conjures up the political and religious conflicts of Bohemia and France, Spain and Holland, and brings to life those distant characters and events that began to shape modern Europe: the Holy Roman Emperor, the Winter King, Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus, among others, pursuing their gigantic conflict with countless lesser players at the Defenestration of Prague, the Synod of Dort, the Battle of the White Mountain or the Treaty of Westphalia. He makes a convincing case that Descartes had a minor role as some kind of intelligence agent in the affairs of the day. He was certainly suited for the part, being solitary, unsociable and secretive, and he undoubtedly had an uncanny habit of turning up in the thick of the action. The idea also offers an explanation of some strange aspects of his subsequent life, like his choosing to live outside France. A devout Catholic, he had an apparently unswerving loyalty to the Jesuits who conducted his schooling, and the Society of Jesus had interests that would not necessarily have been those of France.
Whether or not he was a spy, Descartes skulked in the shadows of Europe’s great events for a fairly short time. After following the armies and conducting secretive travels for some seven years, he settled down to the life of a savant in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The rest of his story belongs not so much to political history as to the history of natural science, mathematics and philosophy. It has been told before, and Grayling does not seek to compete with such renowned scholars as Charles Adam or Stephen Gaukroger. But his strength lies in how he provides context, drawing the strange world from which modern science was emerging. Like his rough contemporary Francis Bacon in England, Descartes wanted the key to a method that would separate astrology, necromancy, alchemy and dark hermeneutic claptrap on the one hand from astronomy, chemistry, physics and real science on the other. Bacon was in one way farther on the right track than Descartes, emphasizing experiment and observation where Descartes pinned his faith in the powers of reason. But whereas Bacon is often compared to Moses, who led people to within sight of the promised land but never entered it, Descartes went ahead and did so. He experimented and observed and made real progress in optics, physiology and mathematics, all the time hoping to synthesize what he found into a unified system, a crystalline structure of “clear and distinct” ideas. He wanted to know not just how events do fall out, but why they have to fall out as they do, why it stands to reason that the laws of nature have to be as they are. And he thought that by finding that out we would, quite literally, be reading the mind of God.
If we hope that the lives of great scientists, mathematicians or philosophers will be ones of moral grandeur, Descartes will disappoint us. He could not stand criticism, and seems to have exhausted much of his energy conducting bitter academic quarrels. At various times he showed himself ungrateful and less than scrupulous in his conduct of his various controversies. A more attractive side comes out in his love for his illegitimate daughter, whose early death prostrated him, and in the avuncular correspondence he had with the gifted Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, who put her finger on the insoluble problem of mind-body interaction, given Descartes’s strict separation of consciousness from the physical world. The problem is with us still, under the new name “the hard problem of consciousness.” It is a pity that Elizabeth had no fortune to share with him (she later became a nun), leaving him open to an offer from the autocratic Christina. Descartes’s preferred habit was to stay warmly in bed in the mornings; Christina had him give her intellectual nourishment, bareheaded and standing in deference to her royalty, in her icy palace at 5 a.m. Pneumonia set in, fatally, but perhaps he had the last laugh when, some years later, she turned Catholic and relinquished her throne.
Simon Blackburn is professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His most recent books are “Truth: A Guide” and “Plato’s Republic.”
The New Philosophy
Decemeber 7 2007: New York Times
Idea Lab
The New New Philosophy
By KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH
Suppose the chairman of a company has to decide whether to adopt a new program. It would increase profits and help the environment too. “I don’t care at all about helping the environment,” the chairman says. “I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.” Would you say that the chairman intended to help the environment?
O.K., same circumstance. Except this time the program would harm the environment. The chairman, who still couldn’t care less about the environment, authorizes the program in order to get those profits. As expected, the bottom line goes up, the environment goes down. Would you say the chairman harmed the environment intentionally?
I don’t know where you ended up, but in one survey, only 23 percent of people said that the chairman in the first situation had intentionally helped the environment. When they had to think about the second situation, though, fully 82 percent thought that the chairman had intentionally harmed the environment. There’s plenty to be said about these interestingly asymmetrical results. But perhaps the most striking thing is this: The study was conducted by a philosopher, as a philosopher, in order to produce a piece of . . . philosophy.
It’s part of a recent movement known as “experimental philosophy,” which has rudely challenged the way professional philosophers like to think of themselves. Not only are philosophers unaccustomed to gathering data; many have also come to define themselves by their disinclination to do so. The professional bailiwick we’ve staked out is the empyrean of pure thought. Colleagues in biology have P.C.R. machines to run and microscope slides to dye; political scientists have demographic trends to crunch; psychologists have their rats and mazes. We philosophers wave them on with kindly looks. We know the experimental sciences are terribly important, but the role we prefer is that of the Catholic priest presiding at a wedding, confident that his support for the practice carries all the more weight for being entirely theoretical. Philosophers don’t observe; we don’t experiment; we don’t measure; and we don’t count. We reflect. We love nothing more than our “thought experiments,” but the key word there is thought. As the president of one of philosophy’s more illustrious professional associations, the Aristotelian Society, said a few years ago, “If anything can be pursued in an armchair, philosophy can.”
But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments. The newborn movement (“x-phi” to its younger practitioners) has come trailing blogs of glory, not to mention Web sites, special journal issues and panels at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association. At the University of California at San Diego and the University of Arizona, students and faculty members have set up what they call Experimental Philosophy Laboratories, while Indiana University now specializes with its Experimental Epistemology Laboratory. Neurology has been enlisted, too. More and more, you hear about philosophy grad students who are teaching themselves how to read f.M.R.I. brain scans in order to try to figure out what’s going on when people contemplate moral quandaries. (Which decisions seem to arise from cool calculation? Which decisions seem to involve amygdala-associated emotion?) The publisher Springer is starting a new journal called Neuroethics, which, pointedly, is about not just what ethics has to say about neurology but also what neurology has to say about ethics. (Have you noticed that neuro- has become the new nano-?) In online discussion groups, grad students confer about which philosophy programs are “experimentally friendly” the way, in the 1970s, they might have conferred about which programs were welcoming toward homosexuals, or Heideggerians. Oh, and earlier this fall, a music video of an “Experimental Philosophy Anthem” was posted on YouTube. It shows an armchair being torched.
Can you really do philosophy with clipboards and questionnaires? It seems that you can. Joshua Knobe, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the philosopher who investigated how people responded to those two stories about the company chairman. (Full disclosure: I examined him on his dissertation.) You might have supposed that whether we judge an action to be (say) blameworthy depends on whether we think it was intentional, and the nature of intentional action is something philosophers have had plenty to say about. But the so-called Knobe effect suggests that — oddly enough — it may not be clear to us whether an action is intentional until we’ve decided whether it’s good or bad.
Philosophers being a quarrelsome group, lots of rival explanations have been offered for what’s going on, leading to new rounds of experiments. And to new rounds of arguments over what the experiments show. Edouard Machery, a philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh by way of the Sorbonne, told subjects about a man named Joe who visits the local smoothie shop and asks for the largest drink available. Joe is informed that the megasmoothies come in a special commemorative cup. He doesn’t care one way or the other about the cup. He just wants the megasmoothie. Did he get the commemorative cup intentionally? Most people said no. What if, instead, he’s informed that the megasmoothie has gone up in price and that he’ll have to pay an extra dollar for it? Joe doesn’t care about the extra dollar; he just wants the megasmoothie. Did he pay the extra dollar intentionally? Most people said yes. Machery concluded that foreseen side effects of our actions are taken to be intended when we conceive them as costs incurred for a benefit. In the case of the blameworthy company chairman, then, more pollution was taken to be a harm incurred to gain more profit. Not so, a philosopher at the University of Utah has argued — bolstering his claims with another battery of field-tested thought experiments.
But even while the experimentalists wrangle over exactly what they’ve shown (experimental philosophy is still philosophy, after all), their work offers some good cautionary lessons. Wittgenstein once declared, “We do in fact call ‘Isn’t the weather glorious today?’ a question, although it is used as a statement.” If you actually proposed to do some research to make sure, he would have thought you mad, or impertinent. Philosophers have always been wonderfully confident in their ability to say what “it would be natural to say.” This confidence, experiments show, can sometimes lead us astray.
In one of the most famous arguments of postwar philosophy of language, Saul Kripke addressed a question that had long preoccupied philosophers: how do names refer to people or things? (The larger question here is: How does language get traction on reality?) In a theory that Bertrand Russell made canonical, a name is basically shorthand for a description that specifies the person or thing in question. Kripke was skeptical. He suggested that the way names come to refer to something is akin to baptism: once upon a time, someone or some group conferred the name on an object, and, through the causal chains of history, we borrow that original designation.
To support his case, Kripke offered a thought experiment: Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about “Gödel” only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to? According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: “Gödel” is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. “But it seems to me that we are not,” Kripke declared. “We simply are not.”
To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean “we,” kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates — one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference. Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. “We simply are not”: well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that?
I’m not sure. Because here’s the thing about the theory of reference: Versions of both views — Kripke’s and the one he was challenging — have plentiful adherents among philosophers. Both intuitions have their advocates, and the right answer, if there is one, isn’t necessarily to be determined by a head count. The best work in experimental philosophy would be valuable and suggestive even if it skipped the actual experiments. (“It would be natural to say,” Knobe might have written, “that the chairman in one situation had harmed the environment intentionally, whereas. . . .”) X-phi helps keep us honest and enforces a useful modesty about how much weight to give one’s personal hunches, even when they’re shared by the guy in the next office. But — this is my own empirical observation — although experiments can illuminate philosophical arguments, they don’t settle them.
For instance, is it a good thing that we attribute intention in the curious way that we do, and if so, why? (Is the Knobe effect a bug or a feature?) You can conduct more research to try to clarify matters, but you’re left having to interpret the findings; they don’t interpret themselves. There always comes a point where the clipboards and questionnaires and M.R.I. scans have to be put aside. To sort things out, it seems, another powerful instrument is needed. Let’s see — there’s one in the corner, over there. The springs are sagging a bit, and the cushions are worn, but never mind. That armchair will do nicely.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher at Princeton University, is the author of “Experiments in Ethics,” which will be published next month. His last article for the magazine was about the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire.
Idea Lab
The New New Philosophy
By KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH
Suppose the chairman of a company has to decide whether to adopt a new program. It would increase profits and help the environment too. “I don’t care at all about helping the environment,” the chairman says. “I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.” Would you say that the chairman intended to help the environment?
O.K., same circumstance. Except this time the program would harm the environment. The chairman, who still couldn’t care less about the environment, authorizes the program in order to get those profits. As expected, the bottom line goes up, the environment goes down. Would you say the chairman harmed the environment intentionally?
I don’t know where you ended up, but in one survey, only 23 percent of people said that the chairman in the first situation had intentionally helped the environment. When they had to think about the second situation, though, fully 82 percent thought that the chairman had intentionally harmed the environment. There’s plenty to be said about these interestingly asymmetrical results. But perhaps the most striking thing is this: The study was conducted by a philosopher, as a philosopher, in order to produce a piece of . . . philosophy.
It’s part of a recent movement known as “experimental philosophy,” which has rudely challenged the way professional philosophers like to think of themselves. Not only are philosophers unaccustomed to gathering data; many have also come to define themselves by their disinclination to do so. The professional bailiwick we’ve staked out is the empyrean of pure thought. Colleagues in biology have P.C.R. machines to run and microscope slides to dye; political scientists have demographic trends to crunch; psychologists have their rats and mazes. We philosophers wave them on with kindly looks. We know the experimental sciences are terribly important, but the role we prefer is that of the Catholic priest presiding at a wedding, confident that his support for the practice carries all the more weight for being entirely theoretical. Philosophers don’t observe; we don’t experiment; we don’t measure; and we don’t count. We reflect. We love nothing more than our “thought experiments,” but the key word there is thought. As the president of one of philosophy’s more illustrious professional associations, the Aristotelian Society, said a few years ago, “If anything can be pursued in an armchair, philosophy can.”
But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments. The newborn movement (“x-phi” to its younger practitioners) has come trailing blogs of glory, not to mention Web sites, special journal issues and panels at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association. At the University of California at San Diego and the University of Arizona, students and faculty members have set up what they call Experimental Philosophy Laboratories, while Indiana University now specializes with its Experimental Epistemology Laboratory. Neurology has been enlisted, too. More and more, you hear about philosophy grad students who are teaching themselves how to read f.M.R.I. brain scans in order to try to figure out what’s going on when people contemplate moral quandaries. (Which decisions seem to arise from cool calculation? Which decisions seem to involve amygdala-associated emotion?) The publisher Springer is starting a new journal called Neuroethics, which, pointedly, is about not just what ethics has to say about neurology but also what neurology has to say about ethics. (Have you noticed that neuro- has become the new nano-?) In online discussion groups, grad students confer about which philosophy programs are “experimentally friendly” the way, in the 1970s, they might have conferred about which programs were welcoming toward homosexuals, or Heideggerians. Oh, and earlier this fall, a music video of an “Experimental Philosophy Anthem” was posted on YouTube. It shows an armchair being torched.
Can you really do philosophy with clipboards and questionnaires? It seems that you can. Joshua Knobe, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the philosopher who investigated how people responded to those two stories about the company chairman. (Full disclosure: I examined him on his dissertation.) You might have supposed that whether we judge an action to be (say) blameworthy depends on whether we think it was intentional, and the nature of intentional action is something philosophers have had plenty to say about. But the so-called Knobe effect suggests that — oddly enough — it may not be clear to us whether an action is intentional until we’ve decided whether it’s good or bad.
Philosophers being a quarrelsome group, lots of rival explanations have been offered for what’s going on, leading to new rounds of experiments. And to new rounds of arguments over what the experiments show. Edouard Machery, a philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh by way of the Sorbonne, told subjects about a man named Joe who visits the local smoothie shop and asks for the largest drink available. Joe is informed that the megasmoothies come in a special commemorative cup. He doesn’t care one way or the other about the cup. He just wants the megasmoothie. Did he get the commemorative cup intentionally? Most people said no. What if, instead, he’s informed that the megasmoothie has gone up in price and that he’ll have to pay an extra dollar for it? Joe doesn’t care about the extra dollar; he just wants the megasmoothie. Did he pay the extra dollar intentionally? Most people said yes. Machery concluded that foreseen side effects of our actions are taken to be intended when we conceive them as costs incurred for a benefit. In the case of the blameworthy company chairman, then, more pollution was taken to be a harm incurred to gain more profit. Not so, a philosopher at the University of Utah has argued — bolstering his claims with another battery of field-tested thought experiments.
But even while the experimentalists wrangle over exactly what they’ve shown (experimental philosophy is still philosophy, after all), their work offers some good cautionary lessons. Wittgenstein once declared, “We do in fact call ‘Isn’t the weather glorious today?’ a question, although it is used as a statement.” If you actually proposed to do some research to make sure, he would have thought you mad, or impertinent. Philosophers have always been wonderfully confident in their ability to say what “it would be natural to say.” This confidence, experiments show, can sometimes lead us astray.
In one of the most famous arguments of postwar philosophy of language, Saul Kripke addressed a question that had long preoccupied philosophers: how do names refer to people or things? (The larger question here is: How does language get traction on reality?) In a theory that Bertrand Russell made canonical, a name is basically shorthand for a description that specifies the person or thing in question. Kripke was skeptical. He suggested that the way names come to refer to something is akin to baptism: once upon a time, someone or some group conferred the name on an object, and, through the causal chains of history, we borrow that original designation.
To support his case, Kripke offered a thought experiment: Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about “Gödel” only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to? According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: “Gödel” is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. “But it seems to me that we are not,” Kripke declared. “We simply are not.”
To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean “we,” kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates — one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference. Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. “We simply are not”: well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that?
I’m not sure. Because here’s the thing about the theory of reference: Versions of both views — Kripke’s and the one he was challenging — have plentiful adherents among philosophers. Both intuitions have their advocates, and the right answer, if there is one, isn’t necessarily to be determined by a head count. The best work in experimental philosophy would be valuable and suggestive even if it skipped the actual experiments. (“It would be natural to say,” Knobe might have written, “that the chairman in one situation had harmed the environment intentionally, whereas. . . .”) X-phi helps keep us honest and enforces a useful modesty about how much weight to give one’s personal hunches, even when they’re shared by the guy in the next office. But — this is my own empirical observation — although experiments can illuminate philosophical arguments, they don’t settle them.
For instance, is it a good thing that we attribute intention in the curious way that we do, and if so, why? (Is the Knobe effect a bug or a feature?) You can conduct more research to try to clarify matters, but you’re left having to interpret the findings; they don’t interpret themselves. There always comes a point where the clipboards and questionnaires and M.R.I. scans have to be put aside. To sort things out, it seems, another powerful instrument is needed. Let’s see — there’s one in the corner, over there. The springs are sagging a bit, and the cushions are worn, but never mind. That armchair will do nicely.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher at Princeton University, is the author of “Experiments in Ethics,” which will be published next month. His last article for the magazine was about the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire.
In the Footsteps of the Prophet
In the Footsteps of the Prophet Lessons From the Life of Muhammad. By Tariq Ramadan. 242 pages. $23. Oxford University Press; ?20. Allen Lane.
Friday, March 30, 2007 International Herald Tribune
For some years now, the Swiss philosopher and Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan has been saying he wants to reconcile Islamic tradition with Western democracy, conservative religious values with liberal political ones, writes the reviewer Stanie Giry. But not everyone finds him credible. And being the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, doesn't help. Skeptics say he is a radical in disguise? a Janus-faced rhetorician who presents a moderate's face to Western audiences and a reactionary's to Muslim ones.
The government is taking no chances: it has twice denied him a visa to teach in the United States, ostensibly for giving about $800 to a charity later blacklisted by the government because of suspected ties with Hamas. (Ramadan is now a fellow at Oxford.) Ian Buruma concluded a recent profile of him in The New York Times Magazine with this uncertain endorsement: "From what I understand of Ramadan's enterprise," the values he espouses "are neither secular, nor always liberal, but they are not part of a holy war against Western democracy either. His politics offer an alternative to violence, which, in the end, is reason enough to engage with him, critically, but without fear."
Ramadan, meanwhile, continues to defend himself and his project. In his new book, "In the Footsteps of the Prophet," he seeks to illustrate that Islam and Western democracy are inherently compatible by extracting lessons from the prophet's life.
Returning to the roots of Islam, he believes, makes the parallels clear. Ramadan's Muhammad is a kind man and a wise leader. He is fair to his wives, openly affectionate with his daughters, generally good to women - he lets them into the mosques. ("Gentleness" is one of Ramadan's favorite words.) Muhammad knows when to encourage patience and faith in his followers and when to indulge their craving for rest and sex. He consults before making decisions, and wages war only when necessary. He is tolerant of non-Muslims and fair to his enemies. His faith is unflappable, but he is also a critical thinker: he uses reason to translate the word of God into a practicable ethics. If Muhammad is the embodiment of Islam, Islam is a religion of moderation, common sense, resilience and love.
Some will challenge Ramadan's understated, if not euphemistic, treatment of the Muslims' conquest of the Arabian Peninsula and his claim that armed jihad is justified only in self-defense. But judging this avowedly interpretive biography by its historical accuracy or the quality of its Koranic interpretation is to miss the more relevant question: What does the book reveal about Ramadan's political philosophy? Ramadan's vision of Islam comes down to just a few universal principles. Everything else ? the cultures of Muslim countries, the politics often pursued in Islam's name ? is historically contingent, and so up for negotiation.
(Elsewhere, Ramadan has said, "Arabic is the language of Islam, but Arabic culture is not the culture of Islam.") For just this reason, Islam can be a complement to modern democracies. "Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference," Ramadan argues, "but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions." In other words, "In the Footsteps of the Prophet" is a brief. But it is also an apologia for some of Ramadan's most controversial positions. In 2003, he was criticized for calling for a moratorium on the stoning of adulterers rather than condemning the practice outright. He replied that while he personally opposed the sentence - and the death penalty in general - advocating a sweeping ban might have alienated hard-liners in majority-Muslim countries and delayed reform there. This claim seemed feeble to his detractors, but it was probably less sinister than it sounded. As this book suggests, Ramadan's response wasn't a tacit endorsement of stoning so much as an expression of his view that each society must decide for itself how to put into practice the values of Islam.
Likewise, his portrayal of those values as universal may shed a different light on his alleged bigotry. He was called an anti-Semite after he wrote an article in 2003 chiding French-Jewish intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut, Bernard-Henri Levin and Bernard Kouchner for reflexively backing the war in Iraq and Israel's foreign policy. He didn't help his case by including on his list the sociologist Pierre-André頔aguieff, who isn't Jewish. Yet even prejudice, if that's what accounted for the slip, needn't have undermined his warning about the danger of sectarian politics. Ramadan was making the point about these writers as a prelude to discouraging Muslims from resorting to ethnic politics themselves - even though, as Ramadan told me when I interviewed him in 2005, their greater numbers in France suggest it's a strategy that might serve them well. By invoking universalism ? a mantra of French republicanism ? as a higher good, Ramadan has tried to show that even as a practicing Muslim he can be a better citoyen than his critics.
So why the controversy? To those who say his discourse is double talk, Ramadan responds that they practice "double hearing" (and sometimes it does seem as though they have a stake in his not being what he claims). More important, Ramadan's intentions ? Whatever they are - ultimately matter less than the arguments themselves. Taking him literally could be one way to get beyond his critics' accusations, as well as the paranoid legalism of the State Department. In fact, it could yield just the kind of accommodation that the secular establishment in France and the multiculturalists in the Netherlands are struggling to reach with their growing Muslim populations. Ramadan's universalist, apolitical view of Islam could actually facilitate the pragmatic resolution of social frictions.
Ramadan, who encourages modesty among Muslim women, opposed the 2004 French law banning head scarves in public schools, for instance. But he did so on classic libertarian grounds? the right of Muslim girls to choose for themselves whether to cover up ? And has been advising girls forced to choose between attending class and wearing the veil to "go to school and learn." He has said of last year's controversy over cartoons lampooning Muhammad both that "Muslims have to understand that there is an old tradition in secular Western society to make fun of everything" and that "we should not forget wisdom and decency." Sensible arguments all, whatever plans are lurking in the recesses of the mind that produced them.
So why the controversy? To those who say his discourse is double talk, Ramadan responds that they practice ‘double hearing’’
Muhammad may not have been as sober and sensible as Ramadan writes, but why take issue with this portrayal if it can help reconcile Islam with Western liberalism today? The project that Ramadan states is his own is worth pursuing even if, for some, Ramadan himself cannot be entrusted with it.
Friday, March 30, 2007 International Herald Tribune
For some years now, the Swiss philosopher and Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan has been saying he wants to reconcile Islamic tradition with Western democracy, conservative religious values with liberal political ones, writes the reviewer Stanie Giry. But not everyone finds him credible. And being the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, doesn't help. Skeptics say he is a radical in disguise? a Janus-faced rhetorician who presents a moderate's face to Western audiences and a reactionary's to Muslim ones.
The government is taking no chances: it has twice denied him a visa to teach in the United States, ostensibly for giving about $800 to a charity later blacklisted by the government because of suspected ties with Hamas. (Ramadan is now a fellow at Oxford.) Ian Buruma concluded a recent profile of him in The New York Times Magazine with this uncertain endorsement: "From what I understand of Ramadan's enterprise," the values he espouses "are neither secular, nor always liberal, but they are not part of a holy war against Western democracy either. His politics offer an alternative to violence, which, in the end, is reason enough to engage with him, critically, but without fear."
Ramadan, meanwhile, continues to defend himself and his project. In his new book, "In the Footsteps of the Prophet," he seeks to illustrate that Islam and Western democracy are inherently compatible by extracting lessons from the prophet's life.
Returning to the roots of Islam, he believes, makes the parallels clear. Ramadan's Muhammad is a kind man and a wise leader. He is fair to his wives, openly affectionate with his daughters, generally good to women - he lets them into the mosques. ("Gentleness" is one of Ramadan's favorite words.) Muhammad knows when to encourage patience and faith in his followers and when to indulge their craving for rest and sex. He consults before making decisions, and wages war only when necessary. He is tolerant of non-Muslims and fair to his enemies. His faith is unflappable, but he is also a critical thinker: he uses reason to translate the word of God into a practicable ethics. If Muhammad is the embodiment of Islam, Islam is a religion of moderation, common sense, resilience and love.
Some will challenge Ramadan's understated, if not euphemistic, treatment of the Muslims' conquest of the Arabian Peninsula and his claim that armed jihad is justified only in self-defense. But judging this avowedly interpretive biography by its historical accuracy or the quality of its Koranic interpretation is to miss the more relevant question: What does the book reveal about Ramadan's political philosophy? Ramadan's vision of Islam comes down to just a few universal principles. Everything else ? the cultures of Muslim countries, the politics often pursued in Islam's name ? is historically contingent, and so up for negotiation.
(Elsewhere, Ramadan has said, "Arabic is the language of Islam, but Arabic culture is not the culture of Islam.") For just this reason, Islam can be a complement to modern democracies. "Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference," Ramadan argues, "but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions." In other words, "In the Footsteps of the Prophet" is a brief. But it is also an apologia for some of Ramadan's most controversial positions. In 2003, he was criticized for calling for a moratorium on the stoning of adulterers rather than condemning the practice outright. He replied that while he personally opposed the sentence - and the death penalty in general - advocating a sweeping ban might have alienated hard-liners in majority-Muslim countries and delayed reform there. This claim seemed feeble to his detractors, but it was probably less sinister than it sounded. As this book suggests, Ramadan's response wasn't a tacit endorsement of stoning so much as an expression of his view that each society must decide for itself how to put into practice the values of Islam.
Likewise, his portrayal of those values as universal may shed a different light on his alleged bigotry. He was called an anti-Semite after he wrote an article in 2003 chiding French-Jewish intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut, Bernard-Henri Levin and Bernard Kouchner for reflexively backing the war in Iraq and Israel's foreign policy. He didn't help his case by including on his list the sociologist Pierre-André頔aguieff, who isn't Jewish. Yet even prejudice, if that's what accounted for the slip, needn't have undermined his warning about the danger of sectarian politics. Ramadan was making the point about these writers as a prelude to discouraging Muslims from resorting to ethnic politics themselves - even though, as Ramadan told me when I interviewed him in 2005, their greater numbers in France suggest it's a strategy that might serve them well. By invoking universalism ? a mantra of French republicanism ? as a higher good, Ramadan has tried to show that even as a practicing Muslim he can be a better citoyen than his critics.
So why the controversy? To those who say his discourse is double talk, Ramadan responds that they practice "double hearing" (and sometimes it does seem as though they have a stake in his not being what he claims). More important, Ramadan's intentions ? Whatever they are - ultimately matter less than the arguments themselves. Taking him literally could be one way to get beyond his critics' accusations, as well as the paranoid legalism of the State Department. In fact, it could yield just the kind of accommodation that the secular establishment in France and the multiculturalists in the Netherlands are struggling to reach with their growing Muslim populations. Ramadan's universalist, apolitical view of Islam could actually facilitate the pragmatic resolution of social frictions.
Ramadan, who encourages modesty among Muslim women, opposed the 2004 French law banning head scarves in public schools, for instance. But he did so on classic libertarian grounds? the right of Muslim girls to choose for themselves whether to cover up ? And has been advising girls forced to choose between attending class and wearing the veil to "go to school and learn." He has said of last year's controversy over cartoons lampooning Muhammad both that "Muslims have to understand that there is an old tradition in secular Western society to make fun of everything" and that "we should not forget wisdom and decency." Sensible arguments all, whatever plans are lurking in the recesses of the mind that produced them.
So why the controversy? To those who say his discourse is double talk, Ramadan responds that they practice ‘double hearing’’
Muhammad may not have been as sober and sensible as Ramadan writes, but why take issue with this portrayal if it can help reconcile Islam with Western liberalism today? The project that Ramadan states is his own is worth pursuing even if, for some, Ramadan himself cannot be entrusted with it.
Response:
No Grounds for Patronizing the Hunza
I was deeply disappointed by the bias against the Hunza of northern Pakistan that was evident in "Fighting the good fight" (The Conflict, Nov. 26). Should it really have escaped your research that the Aga Khan has been weighed in gold by his followers, mostly the Hunza people, so he could amass his tremendous wealth? To speak of him as a benefactor if he spends so little of this fortune for charity programs in the region is the height of irony.
Fifty years ago, no expedition in the Karakorum region was possible without the endurance and surefootedness of Hunza men. At the beginning of the 20th century, no country on earth, regardless of its civilized status, could match the happiness and health of the Hunza. Life expectancy was by far above that of the U.S. or Britain.
Now the Hunza are applauded if they speak flawless English and export some honey or dried fruit to England. What can be said of this state of arrogance and ignorance?
Rolf Schurian
Zankenhause, Germany
I was deeply disappointed by the bias against the Hunza of northern Pakistan that was evident in "Fighting the good fight" (The Conflict, Nov. 26). Should it really have escaped your research that the Aga Khan has been weighed in gold by his followers, mostly the Hunza people, so he could amass his tremendous wealth? To speak of him as a benefactor if he spends so little of this fortune for charity programs in the region is the height of irony.
Fifty years ago, no expedition in the Karakorum region was possible without the endurance and surefootedness of Hunza men. At the beginning of the 20th century, no country on earth, regardless of its civilized status, could match the happiness and health of the Hunza. Life expectancy was by far above that of the U.S. or Britain.
Now the Hunza are applauded if they speak flawless English and export some honey or dried fruit to England. What can be said of this state of arrogance and ignorance?
Rolf Schurian
Zankenhause, Germany
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