Gary, I certainly concur with the points being raised here. The selfishness, in particular, inspires every manner of unfalsifiable conjecture to be spouted, by average scientists trying to be first with a great idea. There's a lot of rubbish swilling around, and this has the effect of dumbing down the rest of science, so that the really good ideas are lost in the swill. Unfalsifiable and untestable Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, the future impacting on the past (quantum eraser experiment), etc, etc, and on it rolls, the conjectures spew from all over, they don't end. Some might have merit. Most do not.
I do not disagree that environmental problems need to be taken seriously. However. and this is non-trivial. the onus is on climate change proponents, for example, to prove that their government-heavy, groupthink-driven, corruption-prone initiatives are more effective than the efficiencies to which lean-and-hungry small-government systems are predisposed. Not to mention the fake, corrupt science and problems with the peer-review process as identified by the likes of Richard Horton (2015) and Matt Binswanger (2014). The climate-change fashion is not to be trusted because of this. And then there is my favorite bug-bear, entropy. It continues to amaze me that Neo-Darwinists, especially, so easily turn a blind eye to the entropy problem. or perhaps this should not amaze me, maybe we are not all that different to our pagan-god-worshipping ancestors. With this kind of leap in judgment, Neo-Darwinism is a belief system, no different to any kind of religion. Absent is any kind of axiomatic framework to bring it all together. Thinking within the context of an axiomatic framework is essential. Isaac Newton is my favorite example because his axiomatic thinking is quite explicit. CS Peirce is another good example, but his axiomatic thinking is implied. I don't think he spelled out what it was that structured his reasoning. Peirce's implied axiomatic framework (in the context of biosemiotics), I anticipate, will play an essential part in making sense of quantum mechanics. Central is the question of pragmatism. how does any entity (including subatomic and atomic particles) "define" the things that matter? In what manner is "space" experienced by different mind-bodies (holons)? Think of everything that we now have out our fingertips. the science, the physics, the telescopes, the realization of what a galaxy is and that there are trillions of them, and trillions of billions of planets. Then think about the primitive degeneracy that western culture is rapidly sliding into. If one accepts the notion of reincarnation (as I do - the question of nonlocality of self has serious merit), then the odds, for most of us, of returning to a culture that knows what we know about the moon, the sun and the stars will be pretty slim. Dark prospects await most of us, and it will be back to dying from simple diseases, worshipping our local star-god, drinking stagnant smelly water and not knowing why it makes you sick, child sacrifice, and wondering whether the little old lady across the road track is a wicked witch who's cast a spell on your family. In conclusion, a Peircean-biosemiotic based paradigm understands the relevance of imitation (in the deeper sense of knowing how to be) to pragmatism. It understands the relationship between personality and culture, and therefore the nature of groupthink, corruption, and what makes cultures healthy or sick. Where Peirce says "the man is the thought", I say "the culture is the thought," and this opens up the narrative to thinking about what heaven and hell might be. Fixing climate change? The problem lies elsewhere and band-aid fixes by even the most well-intentioned will fail to address them properly. it's just pissing into the wind. maybe delay the inevitable, or maybe make it worse, depending on how fake the science is. For the most part, the climate-change fashion just gives virtue-signaling hypocrites the opportunity to masquerade their moral superiority, and shame those that don't accept their fake science. Regards From: Gary Richmond [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2018 5:45 AM To: Peirce-L Subject: [PEIRCE-L] The real environmental problems are less scientific and more ethical List, Today I received a Facebook post which included this quotation: "I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that." Gus Spaeth, a US adviser on climate change I wonder (1) whether list members agree that the top environmental problems aren't "biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change" but, rather, "selfishness, greed and apathy" and, if the latter (2) the extent to which one concurs that "scientists don't know how to address" these issues, that even after decades of "good science" around these problems that science hasn't been able to significantly impact the most serious environmental problems because these are essentially ethical issues and, finally (3) what thoughts forum members might have on how Peircean pragmatism might address these environmental/ethical issues, however one might frame them. I'd be interested in the views of frequent contributors to this forum, but also those of less active list members. I don't present this as a matter for 'debate' but, really, just thoughtful reflection. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York 718 482-5690
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