Davidsonian Pragmatism
Donald Davidson didnât like being called a pragmatist. He associated pragmatism with William Jamesâs definition of truth as that what works (or something similar), which he rejected for a number of reasons. Davidsonâs understanding of pragmatism and how it contrasts with his own view is probably most clearly expressed in a passage from âTruth Rehabilitatedâ: Truth is not a value, so the âpursuit of truthâ is an empty enterprise unless it means only that it is often worthwhile to increase our confidence in our beliefs, by collecting further evidence or checking our calculations. From the fact that we will never...
Atrekic Buddhism
To be clear, atrekic Buddhism is not a variety of Buddhism. Itâs not un-Buddhist either, I think, but weâll get to that later. The term âatrekic Buddhismâ works in a similar way as âmethodological anarchismâ (famously proposed by Feyerabend) or âmetaphilosophical anarchismâ. The latter is a â more or less â anarchist approach to doing philosophy. It isnât anarchism per sĂŠ (i.e., anarchism as political ideology), but can be thought of as something like anarchism about philosophy. That said, it could be argued that (political) anarchists should also be metaphilosophical anarchists (but not necessarily the other way around), which doesnât...
The Jaina Doctrine of AnekÄntavÄda
In part II of A Buddha Land in this World, I proposed a variety of perspectival realism based on, among others, YogÄcÄra and the philosophy of Donald Davidson. The term âperspectival realismâ refers to a loose collection of theories that are realist, in the minimal sense of recognizing the existence of a mind-independent, external reality, but that reject the idea that there is just one ârightâ way of describing reality. Rather, descriptions or understandings of or views on reality are perspectival, that is, they are views from particular perspectives, or constructions due to particular conceptual schemes. And because there is...
Carbon-neutrality by 2050
(Originally published on December 15, 2020. First major revision on June 13, 2022. This is the second major version.) A few years after carbon-neutrality became an official goal in the Paris Agreement of 2015, one after the other, governments started to announce that their countries would be carbon-neutral by 2050 or a little bit later. Richer countries generally opted for 2050, while China and India, for example, aimed for 2060 and 2070, respectively. The promise of carbon-neutrality by 2050 (or 2060, or 2070) is a cheap promise, however, as the target is so far in the future that it doesnât...
Some Further Comments on Climate Sensitivity and Warming Estimates
While preparing an update of Carbon-Neutrality by 2050 (by far the most accessed page in this blog), I had another look at (equilibrium) climate sensitivity (ECS), a topic about which a wrote a few times before. ECS is the expected global temperature anomaly (i.e., the expected global average of warming) at twice the pre-industrial level of greenhouse gases (mainly COâ) in the atmosphere (i.e., 560ppm, as âpre-industrialâ is set at 280ppm). The currently most widely accepted estimate of ECS is that by Steve Sherwood and colleagues, who suggest average warming of 3.1°C (median; 66% uncertainty range: 2.6~3.9°C; 95%: 2.3~4.7°C). However,...
Pop-Stoicism as Ideology
Stoicism was a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC. Stoic philosophy consisted of logic, (meta-) physics, and ethics. There has been a bit of an upsurge of interest in stoicism recently among widely different segments of society, ranging from right-wing extremists and male supremacists to Secular Buddhists and self-help gurus. Typically, this resurgent âstoicismâ ignores most of Stoic philosophy and focuses on a simplified version of selected ethical doctrines. (And that selection, moreover, depends on the interests of the group that does the selecting.) The most prominent doctrine of this âpop-stoicismâ is the idea...
What is Real? (New Paper)
Published yesterday in Organon F: International Journal of Analytic Philosophy (30.2: 182â220). abstract: Two of the most fundamental distinctions in metaphysics are (1) that between reality (or things in themselves) and appearances, the R/A distinction, and (2) that between entities that are fundamental (or real, etcetera) and entities that are ontologically or existentially dependent, the F/D distinction. While these appear to be two very different distinctions, in Buddhist metaphysics they are combined, raising questions about how they are related. In this paper I argue that plausible versions of the R/A distinction are essentially a special kind of F/D distinction, and...
Is Secular Buddhism Possible?
The question whether secular Buddhism is possible might seem absurd at first. Varieties of what has been, or could be called âsecular Buddhismâ have been around for well over a century, and there is a sizable group of people who consider themselves âsecular Buddhistsâ. So, of course, âsecular Buddhismâ is possible. So, letâs be a bit more precise. My question is not really whether there are âthingsâ (in a rather broad sense of âthingâ) that could be or have been called âsecular Buddhismâ, but whether there could be something that is genuinely secular and simultaneously genuinely (a variety of) Buddhism....
Rent, Profit, and Degrowth â A Postscript to âCapitalism and Climate Collapseâ
In Capitalism and Climate Collapse, I argued that catastrophic climate collapse cannot be avoided under capitalism because capitalism requires economic growth, economic growth requires energy growth, energy growth requires extensive burning of fossil fuels, and extensive burning of fossil fuels causes catastrophic climate collapse. To avoid collapse, we need to shrink the economy â that is, degrowth â to a sustainable level with respect to energy requirements, and then switch to a steady state economy to stay at that level. What exactly that sustainable level is is debatable, but regardless of whether itâs closer to one third of current closer...
Capitalism and Climate Collapse
The claims that capitalism is the cause of climate change and that catastrophic climate collapse cannot be avoided under capitalism are as obvious to some people as they are nonsensical to others, but really they are neither. They are probably true, which implies that they are not nonsensical, but their (probable) truth is not obvious. They are not obvious, because these claims depend on four other claims that are themselves non-obvious: (1) capitalism requires economic growth; (2) economic growth requires energy growth; (3) energy growth requires extensive use of fossil fuels; and (4) extensive use of fossil fuels causes climate...
Some Remarks on the Notion of âCartesian Dualismâ in Continental Philosophy
In the beginning of the 20th century, Western philosophy split into two main schools, analytic and continental philosophy, that â barring exceptions â neither read nor understand each other. My own work and influences are mostly within, or closely affiliated with, the analytic school, but occasionally I read some continental philosophy (as well as some non-Western philosophy). One peculiar term I encountered several times in such reading across scholastic boundaries is âCartesian dualismâ, most recently in Saito Koheiâs Marx in the Anthropocene. To be more precise, it is not the term itself that struck me as peculiar â youâll find...
On Human Overpopulation
A recurring theme among a number of widely divergent political and environmental movements is that of human overpopulation. Often, the claim that there are too many humans has conspicuous racist overtones and is associated with ecofascism, but claims of overpopulation are also made by people with very different political ideas. Much of the popular overpopulation discourse appears to be quite ignorant about what âoverpopulationâ even means, however, and about what it might imply, so I thought it might be useful to write a few words about this. What even is âoverpopulationâ? âOverpopulationâ is a relative term â it means that...