TWRule said:
The media is partly at fault, but that alone doesn't get at the crux of my critique. I'm interested in the root of this attitude of fear. In my thinking, if people didn't fear the worst case scenario of a disaster that could come out of global warming (or the countless other ways that science has lead us to imagine could cause our extinction), then no amount of media fear-mongering would have an effect.
No, I think it goes roughly like this (to greatly over-simplify): People believe in scientific materialism/naturalism, the model of an indifferent cosmos that not only readily wipe them from existence as though they were of no significance, but can easily do so because, after all, what I call my 'self' is ultimately just more material stuff that can be blown away like dust in the wind (relative to cosmic material forces acting on and around me). Because of this, death is certainly the end, and my life will have meant nothing at all - just the play of particles.
That is *not* my view, and perhaps few people explicitly think such things, but that is more or less what happens when one chooses to uncritically adopt popular contemporary scientific models as though they were unqualified truth, and fit together into a whole picture of reality (like those guilty of what I've been calling 'scientism' or 'the scientific worldview' do).
If you still have no idea what I'm saying then I guess I should give up - I don't know how better to explain my position right now. I'd recommend looking up critiques of modern thought by Edmund Husserl or Martin Heidegger. If you want to understand more about the spirit of my ethical critique on this doomsday attitude, look to Nietzsche - though I can't promise any of them will be easier to penetrate than my plain prose.
Okay I'm going to focus on this part, since I suppose we've come to agreement more or less on the issues that I misconstrued.
You're interesting and different, but you're not an easy person to debate with. It's times like these that I regret having only debated and studied philosophy on my own. Martin Heidgger was interested in questioning and always questioning like Socrates (at least on my very brief look of him), and I'm still looking up Edmund Husserl.
On the attitude of fear, there are models which predict catastrophic scenarios and those that predict a worst case scenario (which is still pretty devastating, it just doesn't mean the end of humanity). We can't make a whole model, but in simple terms of possible situations, even the least catastrophic situations where systems like the ocean conveyor belt don't shut down, we are facing a necessity to adapt to climate change, not only mitigate climate change( I insist on the term). A good comparison is the japanese and their earthquake resistant buildings, except we are talking on a larger scale of changing infrastructure (which can mean a variety of strategies).
We're going into the realm of politics here, but I suppose that the catastrophic scenarios were needed to actually get action. I am not familiar with the subject of activism. I know that it's difficult to get credence in a subject which is rife with misinformation because of special interests, especially on such a difficult subject. Even on this thread, among those who agree with climate change, there are many errors. It's not easy even among the earth scientists to reach an understandable consensus, since geologists don't understand the fragility of systems (since geology is an anti catastrophism discipline) of the ocean and the climate and the ecosystem, things that are known to hydrologists, climatologists and biologists.
I would much prefer that we talked about the danger of ecosystem collapse such as the disappearance of coral reefs, or the danger of perturbation in agriculture, or even the political instability from possible droughts due to less wind going to and from the equator and poles (since winds are to simplify are a way to make up the temperature difference between the two areas). Yet gigantic tsunamis and hurricanes seem to have captured the attention. I would again shift the blame on those who are responsible for creating this image of climate change, since professors and lectures on this subject have focused on changes due to climate change that are straight out of an apocalypse movie.
I don't understand the last sentence of science predicting that we would destroy ourselves. I never saw that attitude. In fact there's actually alot of optimism involved in the process of discovery, from my experience. I would yet again blame popular depictions of science or science philosophers (not to insult them, since it is an important role).
Media can make many claims on science, precisely because there's an ignorance of the scientific process.
We have made a distinction earlier that there's a difference between science and science philosophy right? I think that's where there is a disagreement. While some scientists may espouse a view of existence, death and the universe that may be disagreeable, it does not strictly relate to the process of science aka the scientific method and such.
The scientific theorem is a system which does insists that nothing is proven right, only that it has not been proven wrong. In the context of climate change, it hasn't been proven wrong and as the bearers of the burden of proof, we have furnished proof, which only continues to accumulate. From the numerous attempts to discredit climate change, there hasn't yet been a piece of evidence that has disproven climate change.
Now, whether the views that some people have gotten due to an enthusiasm for science (or a misinformed idea of science) is unfortunate, it's not strictly directly correlated. Do you blame Nietzsche for having adolescents say that everything is pointless? No, because if the belief in scientific naturalism/materialism may be due to individuals incorporating elements of science into their worldview, it doesn't mean that science is intricately tied to this view.
