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Philosophical Conditions for Sustainable Outcomes to Complex Systemic Interventions David Rousseau PhD. School of Theology, Religious Studies & Islamic Studies. Centre for Systems Philosophy. Centre for Systems Studies. University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
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Philosophical Conditions for Sustainable Outcomes to Complex Systemic InterventionsDavid Rousseau PhD School of Theology, Religious Studies & Islamic Studies Centre for Systems Philosophy Centre for Systems Studies University of Wales Trinity Saint David www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk www.systemsphilosophy.org www.hull.ac.uk/hubs ISSS Viet Nam July 2013
Value Alignment and Sustainability e.g.: Christian perspectives • “Environmentalism is a good thing” "We affirm that God-given dominion [over the earth] is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to exploit or abuse the creation of which we are a part. We are not the owners of creation, but its stewards, summoned by God to 'watch over and care for it.'" "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." National Association of Evangelicals 2004 • “Environmentalism is a bad thing” “One of the greatest threats to society and the church today is the multifaceted environmentalist movement” ... [it promotes] “secular and pagan worldviews” and is a “false religion” that Christians “must avoid at all costs”. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, founder and national spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation (2006) • “Environmentalism is irrelevant” “I know who made the environment and he’s coming back and is going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.” Pastor Mark Driscoll, speaking at Catalyst (a major Christian conference), 3 May 2013
von Bertalanffy on Intuitions (1955) • Evolution selects for cognitive structures that produce isomorphies between experience and reality, thus leading to survival-benefitting behaviour in practice • Therefore our intuitions and native mental models are evolutionary adaptations that “are fitted to the real world” • However they represent without necessarily being fully comprehensive or fully accurate
Academic Support for Realism • Arguments for Critical Realism • The success of science (Putnum, Brown, Psillos) • The predictive power of the “theoretical virtues” (Maxwell, van Fraasen) • The failure of Bell’s Theorem (Christian) • Presupposition of language use (Searle) • The incoherence of Idealism (Russell, Moore, Ewing, Searle, Stove) • However, note these arguments do not entail a new Reductive Physicalism • Need to account for “non-physical” phenomena e.g. knowledge, subjectivity, values (Nagel) • A “Broad Naturalism” is possible in principle (Chalmers) • The “new mechanists”: Organicism rather than Reductionism (Brennan) • The “new ontologists”: something other or more than Physicalism (Chalmers, Sider) • But so far it is unclear how to describe or discover this broad ontology
Unity of Knowledge A spectrum of academically established views, differentiated by what is taken to be the ultimate existent(s) On what basis can be decide between them?
Ervin Laszlo: GST and the Unity of Knowledge Not Physicalism!
The Grounding of Values • Options for how values are grounded: • Divine Commands • Social Agreements • Evolutionary Strategies • nature of Nature • Assessment • Philosophical reasons against divine command theory (Aristotle, Leibniz, Russell, Cottingham) • Empirical evidence against comprehensive cultural conditioning (e.g. infant morality) • Empirical evidence against comprehensive evolutionary imperatives (e.g. interspecies altruism) • Empirical evidence in favour of some natural foundations (e.g. meditator effects) • Therefore objective basis for optimism that we can develop a scientific basis for some level of objectivity about values
Worldview construction Four levels of systems thinking (Rousseau 2013) (Maani & Cavana 2007) 1 Events 2 Patterns 3 Knowledge Systemic structures 4 Mental models Natural systems Experiences Intuitions
Worldview construction Five levels of systems thinking (Rousseau 2013) (extending Maani & Cavana 2007) 1 Events 2 Patterns 3 Knowledge Systemic structures 4 Mental models Natural systems Experiences Intuitions 5 Unified broad nat. ontological model Unifiedbroad naturalistic ontology
Centre for Systems Philosophy THANK YOU David Rousseau www.systemsphilosophy.org david.rousseau@systemsphilosophy.org