Quote

In trying to develop an impartial, expansive ethic we are trying to get ethical systems to do something which they did not evolve in order to do. This doesn't mean that it can't be done or that we shouldn't try to expand the reach of our ethical frameworks, only that there are reasons to be skeptical about its success.

Dale Jamieson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dale Jamieson
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: October 21
Academic
Jurist
University Teacher
Sioux City
Iowa
Trying
Reasons
Expand
Something
Reach
Framework
Success
Ethical
Doesn
Evolve
Frameworks
Order
Systems
Expansive
Reason
Ethics
Impartial
Done
Shouldn
Ethic
Mean
Develop
Skeptical

More quotes by Dale Jamieson

Image
Every country now has its own domestic political debate about how to respond to climate change. This is where the action is.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If you're interested in doing something about climate change as we all should be, all of us who care about future people and creatures that will inhabit this world. Then buying a Prius is a good thing but an even better thing would be to be on the streets demanding urgent action from the United States' Congress.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Climate change is not going to be prevented. It's not even going to be mitigated to the degree a rational person would want. As a result we're going to have to live with climate change and try to reduce the extent and rate of change as much as possible. This is not an inspiring or sexy project.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Ethical systems are fundamentally conservative and primarily directed towards regulating interactions within communities.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The seas will continue to rise no matter who gets elected president.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The erosion of agency has consequences for our politics. As a result of all this, the fundamental ethical challenge of the anthropocene is the recovery of agency, or alternatively to come to terms with its loss and to understand how to go on.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If you look globally you see a patchwork of jurisdictions (nations, states, provinces, cities) that have taken aggressive action on climate change, and a patchwork of jurisdictions that have not. These various policies reflect the politics of each jurisdiction and the values of its citizens.
Dale Jamieson
Image
We live on a restless planet in a violent universe.
Dale Jamieson
Image
I think that by the middle of this century people will still be eating meat (though less), and their meat will mostly be produced in factories through synthetic processes, cell cultures, and so on.
Dale Jamieson
Image
You can't imagine anything like nature as we know it without predators.
Dale Jamieson
Image
I take seriously the idea that we are African Apes who (at least for the moment) dominate the planet, but our psychology is pretty much what it was when we were living in small groups on the savanna.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.
Dale Jamieson
Image
In the last few centuries we've managed to reduce how much we kill each other, we've learned some basic lessons about public health, and life is relatively good for more people than ever before.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Even if Bill McKibben were to become dictator, future generations would suffer because of the carbon we had already emitted.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The Paris climate conference in December, 2015 was a recognition that countries bring their climate policies to international meetings rather than create them during the negotiations (much less do they receive orders from the international community and then go home and implement them).
Dale Jamieson
Image
The problem is that the Enlightenment dream may make too many demands on poor African apes like us. We may just not be up to it.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The only way major change in environmental policy is going to happen, the only way, is if there is a very strong, very active popular movement that demands it and such a movement would be unparalleled because it would be a popular movement that says, Raise our taxes so that we change our behavior.
Dale Jamieson
Image
We're highly adaptable and have developed some powerful systems of representation.
Dale Jamieson
Image
It is probably true that the economic benefits of being in the EU are a net positive to the UK, but a large number of people do not share in these benefits and the result is increasing inequality.
Dale Jamieson