This insight is the core of this post on one route to a moral case for transhumanism from Philippe Verdoux of the IEET. Transhumanism here meaning specifically a programme to engineer humans (employing whatever your favourite melange of ultra-high technologies may be) to be better able to adapt to and survive within the kind of society-nature ecology that characterizes Beck’s world risk society. The adaptive lag hypothesis (as discussed by Nick Bostrom and Christopher Williams), serves as the other plank of this argument, i.e. the idea that human brains are optimized to a particular archaic environment (the African savannah) and have been outpaced by culturally-assisted (exosomatic)evolution.

If this is so, then (it is suggested), one reason for choosing transhumanism is that it might be able to (phylogenetically) reengineer  humans to perceive invisible (spatially or temporally distributed) hazards and figure out the associated risks.

It’s evident, I think, that the adaptive lag hypothesis bears much wider application than this when thinking about prudential and moral constraints on how to act under great uncertainty. After all, one of the main arguments against introducing artificially engineered materials (e.g. biological or nanotechnological) into the environment without adequate constraints has to do with the inability of slowly-evolving natural systems, in certain circumstances, to cope with suddenly-introduced changes to their ecology (a reason why it pays to be cautious on hearing the remark “nature is the original nanoengineer” and variations on that theme).

But that aside, it seems to me that Verdoux is mistaken here, mainly because of the way he (and Bostrom, and Williams) seems to view the barriers to acting. Increasing our capacity to perceive developmental tendencies as manifested in our environment is supposed here to increase our capacity to predict accurately the future. But this seems to repeat a fundamental Promethean assumption (tackled by Barbara Adam and I in this book and also by yours truly here) which is inextricable from modernity’s attempts to hitch together how we strive to know the future and how we strive to influence it. This assumption constrains our view of uncertainty to that which lies outside known risk. The point of knowledge is therefore to reduce uncertainty to risk, by extending our statistical capabilities and the tools we possess for laying-in new relevant data.

But are the kinds of risks Beck is interested in – and which Verdoux appears to agree are characteristic of the contemporary environment to which we should adapt – best characterized in this way? On the one hand Beck points out that many of the phenomena with which “reflexive” (socially caused) hazards are associated are only “visible” to scientific instruments. This chimes with Verdoux’s argument. But Beck (and others, like Funtowicz and Ravetz, and Helga Nowotny) also points out that scientific methods are increasingly vulnerable in this environment, as many of the mechanisms by which risks propagate in space and time are subject to more fundamental uncertainties. Shorter: ontological  uncertainty is not epistemological uncertainty.

George Marshall has made arguments about the obstacles that may prevent us acting on climate change which, on the face of it, seem to echo the “adaptive lag”  hypothesis (basically, that the scale of the problem defeats our cognitive capacities). But the key to overcoming such obstacles, from Marshall’s point of view, does not lie in technological messianism, but in extending imaginative capacities – making the emotionally-based cognitive link between what is done here and now and the wider picture. This demands careful attention, here and now in the social and extra-socal environment in which we are embedded, to what are sources of value for us, how the scientific story impacts on these attachments, and how these attachments themselves can generate empathy for distant others. The problem here is how to frame processes of social learning.

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We will continue to liaise closely with the Sustainable Development Commission’s partners and will work with business, civil society, local communities, universities and internationally, to help deliver sustainable development together. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee will provide powerful democratic scrutiny of Government’s work in this area.

The problem is that these two bodies were, at their best, sources of independent research that highlighted serious shortfalls in government policy, but shaped at the same time debates on pollution and the very nature of sustainability. Losing them does not simply mean having to fine-tune existing checks and balances for the sake of “democratic scrutiny”, it means losing two independent sources of vital social learning, which provided critical scrutiny not just of the means government employed to promote a sustainable  society, but of its working conceptions of the ends .

To assume that we can just “deliver” sustainability, like realising a ready-made blueprint, is absurd. As we don’t know, in any operationalizable sense, what it means to be sustainable in a society like ours, we have to do theory and practice alongside each other. Without bodies like the SDC and RCEP, what we have left is academia, at several removes and even easier to ignore. And in months and years to come, likely to be hobbled by austerity mania.

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Hang on: let’s look closer. Something about Sam is triggering the ol’ Spidey-sense:

we dislike the bullying, fear-mongering campaign against sun exposure….Self-image is measurably increased by a tan…Plants and animals owe their existence to the sun, and it is hardly surprising that we’ve learned to adapt and use it.

And no mention of ozone depletion, suggesting that the author doesn’t think that environmental problems might be a contributing factor to health issues… Quick everybody! Over to Spiked Online! Oh look, there he is. And there. And there. And there.

Yet more proof that, wherever there’s an issue, there’s a Spiked-o-matic spambot waiting to splurge all over it.

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But she admitted the longterm consequences of using enormous quantities of the chemical over such a long period of time were unresolved. “It is clear to me that the science of dispersants has not in any way kept up with our ability to drill and use fossil fuels and that is a huge disconnect,” she said.

Or rather perhaps a fundamental growth-related technological contradiction. If our capacity to use fossil fuels is more developed than our ability to clean up the messes we make along the way, it’s because the benefits of pursuing their use are more immediately profitable.

This is the core of what Ulrich Beck called “organised irresponsibility”, namely that behind the viral spread of the use of technologies whose consequences we are poorly equipped to predict is simply the need to get our hands on more surplus value. And the more viral the spread, the wider apart the gap between what we can do and what we understand about the likely outcomes (”But technology isn’t about perfection – it’s about doing something practical to achieve a tangible result. And to do that, you don’t always need to know why things work; just that they do work”). So, debates over whether or not Venter has “created life” aside, one way in which he is engaged in “business as usual” is quite clear. What the philosopher Alfred Nordmann calls “naturalised technology” – the objects enchanted by the sorcerer’s spell which take on a strange, unfathomable life of their own once the limits of our control over them are surpassed – is in Synthia a potentiality, in Deepwater yet another actuality.

For more on the peculiarities of BP’s choice of Corexit as the “best” way to clean up after themselves, see Richard Denison.

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Late on Monday 26 April, the Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities, Ed Esche, informed staff in Philosophy that the University executive had ‘accepted his recommendation’ to close all Philosophy programmes: undergraduate, postgraduate and MPhil/PhD.

Philosophy is the highest research-rated subject in the University. Building on its grade 5 rating in RAE2001, it was awarded a score of 2.8 on the new RAE scale in 2008, with 65% of its research activity judged ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. It is now widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world.

The MA programmes in Philosophy at Middlesex have grown in recent years to become the largest in the UK, with 42 new students admitted in September 2009. The Dean explained that the decision to terminate recruitment and close the programmes was ’simply financial’, and based on the fact that the University believes that it may be able to generate more revenue if it shifts its resources to other subjects – from ‘Band D’ to ‘Band C’ students.

As you may know, the University currently expects each academic unit to contribute 55% of its gross income to the central administration. As it stands (by the credit count method of calculation), Philosophy and Religious Studies contributes 53%, after the deduction of School admin costs. According to the figures for projected recruitment from admissions (with Philosophy undergraduate applications up 118% for 2010-11), if programmes had remained open, the contribution from Philosophy and Religious Studies would have risen to 59% (with Philosophy’s contribution, considered on its own, at 53%).

In a meeting with Philosophy staff, the Dean acknowledged the excellent research reputation of Philosophy at Middlesex, but said that it made no ‘measurable’ contribution to the University.

Needless to say, we very much regret this decision to terminate Philosophy, and its likely consequences for the School and our University and for the teaching of our subject in the UK.

• Professor Peter Hallward, Programme Leader for the MA programmes in Philosophy,
• Professor Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy,
• Dr. Stella Sandford, Director of Programmes, Philosophy

Facebook group here. Please republish the above statement and link to this call for action.

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The Mail notes that Il Silvestre

was spawned in the Tuscan countryside and is now considered to be one of the rising terror groups in Europe with a rigid cell structure, access to explosives and a membership that has no qualms about killing to achieve its goals. It is considered as one of the successor groups to the lethal Red Brigades that scorched Italy in 70’s and 80’s.

At least we didn’t get a mention of Al-Qaida. The collective past activities of Il Silvestre extend (I think) to being accused of blowing up electricity pylons, and some acts of arson, for which some were jailed (in somewhat dubious circumstances?) and some acquitted.

Two things to note: first, the ready use of the term eco-terrorism by the fearmeisters at the Mail is interesting. It’s as baggy and comfortable a concept as most definitions of terrorist activity that extend beyond “use of violence against non-combatants in the pursuit of political ends” (which governments seem to find problematic for some reason). Here’s an attempt at definition from 2002, courtesy of the Domestic Terrorism Section Chief of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division:

Since 1977, when disaffected members of the ecological preservation group Greenpeace formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and attacked commercial fishing operations by cutting drift nets, acts of “eco-terrorism” have occurred around the globe.

The difference between “eco-terrorism” and direct action in particular is nebulous enought to be very useful to governments aiming to frame restrictive counter-protest legislation in the guise of fighting terrorism. The law courts in the UK tend not to agree, however.

Second, if the reports are correct, there is no real history of direct action against nanotechnology per se, up until this point. There have only been relatively good-natured occasional protests at trade fairs and the like, alongside disruptive campaigns such as that waged by Piece Mains d’Ouevres against necrotechnologies which have sought to define nanotech as a key link in a coming biopolitical regime of governance that will extend inside the bodies and minds of the populace. Supposing the reports are right, one might wonder about what is happening out there…

There’s been a marked lack of will on the part of governments and industry to seriously engage with the public about the uses to which emerging radical technologies may be put. And, in addition, there’s been a growing sense for a long time in business and in government that the public’s “irrationality” about technology is a threat to be feared – even though its equally “irrational” enthusiasms for some technologies are to be valued and cultivated. Do these kinds of attitudes not create the conditions within which campaigns of non-violent or violent direct action are likely to flourish, by creating an atmosphere of perceived or actual secrecy – and amongst a widening technosceptical fringe of the public, active suspicion?

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Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, stole the first televised leaders’ debate in British political history by offering himself up as the fresh and honest alternative to two tired old parties in an electrifying, fast-moving, 90-minute primetime broadcast.

Let’s agree that the lasting impressions, the things that haunt your consciousness afterward, make up the sole real impact of this sort of thing. And that affect is the key thing here. Revulsion at Nixon’s shiftiness, embarrassment at Quayle’s uppitiness, terror whenever Michael Howard pops up anywhere.

How I feel about Nick Clegg at the moment is, I suppose, a mixture of irritation and pity: caused by the fact that he spent a lot of time yesterday evening tugging at my coatsleeve, wheedling that his party had failed to win a general election for over 70 years, and that I should therefore do the decent thing and help to elect them this time.

As for Cameron: that feeling you get when a namebadge bearing 17-year-old comes up to you in PC World and asks whether you need any help, and you know that help from this eejit is that last thing you need right now. Or the sensation you get when someone ostentatiously starts telling you about their diverse collection of ethnically and sexual-orientationally-diverse friends. Accompanied by a recurrent feeling of bemusement: why did he keep saying “Jobs Tax! Jobs Tax!” as if everyone he was talking to knew exactly what he meant, and darkly muttering about the “threat from China”?

Brown: a frequent but intermittent Homer Simpson raps-type of sensation, and an occasional spike of actual happiness (as when he mentioned inheritance tax, and Cameron looked scared and said nothing).

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When we get our shiny new Parliament this year, whoever is in charge of it may conceivably be in that position for five years.

And within five years, we may be approaching – more rapidly than anticipated – peak oil. The Government has recently been rethinking its position, following thirteen years of largely ignoring it (would the Heathrow decision ever have happened otherwise?). Not that you’d know it, because nowhere in the whole mainstream of political debate are those two words ever mentioned.

Ideology can slam on the blinkers pretty firmly – but so can believing you don’t have (or need) any. Judging by these remarks, even Richard Branson has a more serious basis for a political programme than any of the blimps we’ll be goggling at on Thursday night.

Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, warned then that the coming crisis could surpass the credit crunch. “The next five years will see us face another crunch: the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well,” he said.

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Like in Swansea and Newport we need to show that racists are not welcome in Cardiff and we need to mobilise the local community even more than at these 2 demos in Wales.The protest has been planned for the 5th June at 3pm outside Central Station, which clearly suggests EDL from outside are preparing to come and back up whatever locals may be involved. There is an organising meeting of Wales Unite Against Fascism tomorrow (Thursday) night at Transport House, Cathedral Road at 7PM

Sign up at the Facebook event page here.

Via Guardian Cardiff.

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So here’s a little something from way, way back to celebrate the ol’ vernal equinox.

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