List: cc Ken, Charles, Andrew 1. I finally found the full Sept. 2013 paper at http://clivehamilton.com/what-would-heidegger-say-about-geoengineering/ - But you have to find the small “pdf” symbol there. 33 pages with language that is difficult for me as a non-philosopher (e.g. “Being”, enframing, dasein, etc..)
To help - there is an interesting long set of Heidegger definitions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology 2. I conclude after several hours of reading that the answer to the paper’s title question would be “I (Heidegger) disapprove”. But I missed such a sentence if it was there. 3. Prof Hamilton has essentially zero mention of the CDR concept - and I think also of biochar, although I am pretty sure Prof. Hamilton has used a word like “benign” in the past for biochar. The iron fertilization concept is mentioned, but I think the words geoengineering and sulfur release are virtually synonymous in this paper. 4. So this note is to ask list members who understand Heidegger the question: "What Would Heidegger Say About CDR (and/or Biochar)?" I looked carefully and am totally unsure - there was considerable reference to “nature”, differences between “world” and “earth”, entropy, etc. I am not asking about Hamilton’s view, but rather Heidegger’s. 5. Here are some quotes I thought pertinent to my above follow-on question (p 19) " Plans to engineer the climate—through the creation of a planetary command centre—are bound to come to grief on the rock of earth because, through all attempts by humans to understand and control the earth, disorder irrupts.” (RWL: Hamilton not Heidegger speaking - and often same below.) (p 20) "It is worth noting that Heidegger’s conception implies a rejection of all ethical naturalism, such as that captured in Aldo Leopold’s maxim: ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. [RWL: Shucks - I liked the Leopold version] > (p22 ) Geoengineering schemes aim to confine Being to the shadows. > (p22) Geoengineering itself is proof that the future is not in our hands, for if it were we would not have the crisis that geoengineering wants to solve. [RWL: Hmm. Here I disagree. I think the future is in our hands. Professor Hamilton is missing the full range of Geoengineering.] .(p26) So we may say that it is not geoengineering itself that is most dangerous, but the ever-tightening grip of Enframing that makes geoengineering thinkable. (p 27-28) Heidegger was not opposed to technology. Yes, it represents the danger, but there can be no going back to the pre-modern because Enframing must take its course. The task is not to oppose technology but to open ourselves to its ontological meaning and the power it has over us.86 We can then free ourselves from technology without rejecting it, and until we free ourselves we cannot make a good judgment about geoengineering. pp 27-28 (p28) Diagnosing an insufficiency of mastery, we plan to expand control over the so-far unregulated parts of the globe—the oceans whose chemical balance we would change, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the amount of sunlight falling on the Earth. (p28) (p28) "Proposals to engineer the climate system confirm that we have not yet found a way to respond to the climate crisis, except with more of the same. 6. Thanks to Ken (below) for keeping the philosophical discussion alive. But I need more help in understanding Heidegger. I understand Hamilton’s views on SRM, but I remain uncertain on CDR. Ron On Jan 19, 2014, at 2:42 AM, Ken Caldeira <kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu> wrote: > Let's not start insulting philosophers of science here. > > I do not believe that most philosophers of science see it as their role to > discourage inquiry, but rather see their role as doing things such as > analyzing how terms gain meaning and refer to things, how we can establish > the truth or falsity of statements, and so on. They try to make explicit what > is usually implicit in scientific inquiry. > > > > _______________ > Ken Caldeira > > Carnegie Institution for Science > Dept of Global Ecology > 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA > +1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu > http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab > https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira > > > > On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 1:33 AM, Charles H. Greene <c...@cornell.edu> wrote: > When we are on the verge of truly catastrophic climate change, I wonder what > philosophers of science will offer us as an alternative? Obviously, if they > wish to discourage scientists from even exploring possible geoengineering > options, they must have alternatives to offer, right? > > > > > On Jan 18, 2014, at 10:31 PM, Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> http://anthem-group.net/2014/01/18/what-would-heidegger-say-about-geoengineering-clive-hamilton/ >> >> What Would Heidegger Say About Geoengineering? Clive Hamilton >> >> Abstract: Proposals to respond to climate change by geoengineering the >> Earth’s climate system, such as by regulating the amount of sunlight >> reaching the planet, may be seen as a radical fulfillment of Heidegger’s >> understanding of technology as destiny. Before geoengineering was >> conceivable, the Earth as a whole had to be representable as a total object, >> an object captured in climate models that form the epistemological basis for >> climate engineering. Geoengineering is thinkable because of the >> ever-tightening grip of Enframing, Heidegger’s term for the modern epoch of >> Being. Yet, by objectifying the world as a whole, geoengineering goes beyond >> the mere representation of nature as ‘standing reserve’; it requires us to >> think Heidegger further, to see technology as a response to disorder >> breaking through. If in the climate crisis nature reveals itself to be a >> sovereign force then we need a phenomenology from nature’s point of view. If >> ‘world grounds itself on earth, and earth juts through world’, then the >> climate crisis is the jutting through, and geoengineering is a last attempt >> to deny it, a vain attempt to take control of destiny rather than enter a >> free relation with technology. 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