Debates
Harari, Dawkins, Penrose, Elliott and Žižek lead a programme of more than 300 events across the bank holiday weekend.
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Harari, Dawkins, Penrose, Elliott and Žižek lead a programme of more than 300 events across the bank holiday weekend.
Weekend Tickets have now sold out! Limited Day Tickets and Flexi Day Passes available.
Nature: Friend or Foe?
Most think of nature as good, while humans and human interventions are more often seen as problematic and even on occasion evil. From eradicating e-numbers from our diets to refusing vaccines, many are motivated by the idea that nature knows best.Yet malaria is natural, the malaria vaccine is not. Crop failure, hurricanes, tsunamis - all are deadly, and all natural. Human actions are essential to extend and save lives from natural calamity.
Is our attachment to nature undermining belief in ourselves? Should we have more faith in the human and less trust in nature? Or are we right to be sceptical of human intervention and should we see the renewed reverence for nature as a positive return to an ancient and essential belief? Or are we missing the point altogether, and should we accept that we are part of the natural world, and give up on the false distinction between real and artificial, natural and unnatural?
The Gene Machine
Dawkins' Selfish Gene has been hugely influential, both within evolutionary biology and in the wider public sphere. It's a beautiful, simple story: genes and not organisms drive evolutionary change. But critics argue the story is simplistic. The effect of a gene is not always the same and is dependent on its host and the cell environment. Denis Noble, a pioneer of systems biology, goes further arguing that the organism and not genes are in charge.
Is it time to move on and acknowledge that Dawkins' theory is not the whole story? Might his theory be making a fundamental mistake in reducing humans to machines? Or does the Selfish Gene remain a remarkably powerful and accurate account of who we are?
The Mystery of the Multiverse
Multiverses are everywhere. Or at least the theory is. Everyone from physicists Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene to Marvel superheroes have shown their support for the idea. But critics argue that not only is the multiverse improbable, it is also fantasy and fundamentally unscientific as the theory can never be tested - a requirement that has defined science from its outset.
Should we reject the grand claims and leave multiverse theories to the pages of comic books? Are tales of the multiverse really sticking-plaster solutions for Big Bang theory in trouble? Or should we take multiverse theory as seriously as its proponents, and accept that modern science has moved beyond the bounds of experiment and into that of imagination?
Sins of the Past, Visions of the Future
It is 150 years since African Americans were given citizenship and the right to vote, 100 years since women got the vote in the US and UK, 60 years after the Civil Rights Acts, 50 years since the last wave of decolonisation, 55 years since homosexuality was legalised in Britain. But racism, sexism, homophobia, and the oppressive legacy of colonialism, don't appear to be disappearing anytime soon, and are arguably getting worse.
Is it an illusion to imagine that dominant cultures can escape the injustices of the past, or fully excise their legacy in the present? Or, while acknowledging our history should we place greater stress on the positive aspects of our culture? Or can we rise to the challenge of building a new identity of which we can all be proud?
Predicting the Future
Back at the beginning of 2021 inflation was not even a blip on the horizon. Average forecasts for the year were 'no change'. Economists and central banks forecast inflation at 2.2% in the US, 1.5% in the UK. The outturn was three times this level in each case, the highest since the inflation crises of the 70s and 80s , threatening growth and living standards. Now the same folk are forecasting falls for 2022. But have we any reason to take this any more seriously than last year's wildly mistaken prediction?
Should we give up on the idea that economics is a science and instead see predictions as politically motivated or exercises in wish fulfillment? Can our economic models be refined so that they deliver accurate predictions of the future? Or is there something essential about mathematical economic models that makes them incapable of predicting the unexpected?
The Future of Freedom
A famed experiment, by Libet in the 1980s, led many scientists and philosophers particularly those with a materialist outlook to argue that here was proof that free will was an illusion. From early on the result was challenged, and recent studies claim the experiment has been invalidated. Yet the legacy of the experiment persists and many materialists still contend that free will has been shown to be illusory, supporting their belief that humans are machines and artificial intelligence capable of replicating human thought and behaviour.
We often imagine that experiment settles the matter, but should we instead conclude that our interpretation of experiment is a function of our desire to believe its outcome and more generally of our world view? Or can experiment be value free and in this instance finally enable us to determine the existence of free will or its absence?
The Strangeness of the Universe
Not only is the universe stranger than we think. It is stranger than we can think." So argued Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory. We imagine that our theories uncover how things are but, from quantum entanglement to wave-particle duality, from black holes to dark matter, at fundamental levels the closer we get to what we imagine to be reality the stranger and more incomprehensible it appears to become.
Might science, philosophy and human thought one day stretch to meet the universe's strangeness? Or is the universe not so strange after all, for if we can catch sight of the strangeness of the universe must we not already have some access to our ultimate circumstances? Or should we give up the idea that we can uncover the essential character of the world, and with Bohr conclude that the strangeness of the universe and the quantum world transcend the limits of the human mind?
The Democracy Illusion
When polling day comes around, many wait with baited breath to find out who will be in power. But despite the heat and the divisiveness, whether it's Trump or Biden, Sarkozy or Macron, Blair or Johnson, radical changes in our lives rarely materialize. Some argue that the complexity of decision making forces compromise. Others claim we are living in an episode of Yes Minister, with incoming and inexperienced politicians unable to compete with thousands of permanent government employees. Democracy, they say, is just a veneer covering up a deep state of unaccountable advisers and experts.
Should we recognize that politicians and leaders make little difference to policy and focus instead on the quality of permanent government staff and civil servants? Should we give politicians greater control of the appointment of all civil servants rather than a few at the top? Or is the reality that the management of a substantial economy is so complex that decisions are largely technical rather than political?
Camus vs Kafka
Camus and Kafka have both been central to 20th century writing and thought. Both wrote about the relationship of the individual to society. But they had very different visions. Camus saw the individual as having the power to change and influence society. While Kafka honed in on the limitations of the individual to change anything and the power of the state and social organisation.
Who got it right? Should we follow Camus and see freedom and the ability to change the world as essential to the human condition? Or is this an illusion, and instead recognise that we are limited by culture, upbringing, and organisation, so that there is no room left for the lone individual to alter and change the character of society or the course of their lives?
Infinity in the palm of your hand
Art is most often seen as an adornment to everyday life. An entertainment, a delightful distraction perhaps, but not an uncovery of the essential character of the world. To uncover reality, we instead focus on accurate description and the discovery of facts. Yet these descriptions frequently do not settle the matter and can often lead to conflict and dispute, and all the while we are no closer to agreement on the essential nature of reality.
Should we instead see art as a means of getting closer to the essence of what it is to be alive? Could we successfully refocus culture so that art was the primary means of making sense of ourselves and our reality? Or is this an empty romantic illusion that would leave us poorer, less productive, and less able to fend for ourselves in the world?
The Lessons of Failure
Nine months ago Afghanistan dominated the news. Now it is a rare report or column. Yet since US and Western withdrawl the reality of life under the Taliban has become apparent. Girls are excluded from school or forced into child marriage, women from employment. Meanwhile economic collapse threatens millions of deaths as food scarcity turns to widespread famine. And the West, out of ideas, focussed on the rise of China or threats to stability in Europe, has no policy and no answers.
Were critics wrong to criticise the US's role as a global policeforce? Do we need a strong America to keep Western humanitarian and democratic ideals alive? Or is intervention itself a threat to those ideals and the rights of other nations? Or is the question redundant and the age of America, and of the West, over?
The Obscure, The Banal, and the Magical
'The poet is the priest of the invisible', wrote Wallace Stevens. Today however poetry is often required to be down to earth. Praised for being unpretentious and accessible. Critics of this trend say it is banal. Characteristics that we would not apply to Shakespeare's sonnets, Plath's confessional poems, or Eliot's Quartets. They argue that as a result poetry is in decline, and evidence an extensive US survey that showed reading poetry has fallen by 45 percent in the last twenty years.
Has poetry lost its way and does it need to reengage with a grander vision or is it a simply an old medium for a past time? Are Instagram poets like Rupi Kaur the true voice of the 21st century poetry? Or can we use poetry as a way to overcome the fashion for being down-to-earth, unpretentious and perhaps ultimately empty?
Moral Facts and Moral Fantasy
Once the fashion of a postmodern age, moral relativism has always had its detractors particularly from those with a religious inclination. But now a new breed of celebrity thinkers this time with an atheist bent, from Sam Harris to Peter Singer, are making claims for the existence of absolute moral truths. Yet these very same philosophers would deride the strict, moral codes of Victorians and other past generations. Critics argue these thinkers, like fall authoritarian moralists of the past, use so-called 'objective' morality to shore up their own prejudices and silence dissent.
Should we welcome the return of objective morality as an antidote to the chaos and confusion of current ethics? Or is it instead an authoritarian fantasy that needs to be excised before it gains further traction? Or should we give up moral claims altogether, be they relative or absolute in favour of a calm assessment of the social benefits and threats of any given action?
Anonymity: The Dream and the Nightmare
Anonymity was the gift that was going to give everyone a voice, free from the oversight of institutions and government control. Democratic, and empowering, it was to be a world that would liberate us all. Yet critics claim the dream has turned into a nightmare. For the anonymous world turns out to be one full of abuse, division and wild conspiracy. In addition, many contend that the dark side of the anonymous web has infected real world personal and public life undermining social cohesion, communication and personal well being.
Is it essential that we end anonymity now if we are to arrest the growing tensions in our culture? Are the financial benefits of anonymity to the web giants so great, and the short term pleasures it offers so addictive, that this cannot be achieved? Are we as a result snared in a downward spiral from which there is no escape, or can we find a way to return to the original dream?
Beyond the Self and the Non-Self
We laugh at the medieval view that disease is due to an imbalance in the four humours. Instead we see infectious illness as an attack by something external. But this can't be the whole story. After all not everyone got Covid or suffered from it equally. And there are mounting challenges to this attack-defence paradigm. Critics argue It relies on our being able to distinguish self and non-self and there is no such immune mechanism. We also don't attack non-self bodies such as food proteins and fetuses. Instead it is argued radical collective and ecological solutions are already proving highly effective.
Can the new paradigms of danger theory or adaptation help crack disease? Must we give up our current ideas of the self and identity? And might immunology prove to be the key to the deep philosophical question of what makes us who we are?
What the world is made of
Once we imagined that the world was made of atoms. Our children are now taught that it is made of fundamental particles, quarks, leptons and bosons. Then again particles themselves disappear in contemporary physics leaving us with fields, and energy. But what are these made of? Some talk of relations, information and mathematics. It seems we have lost the stuff of the universe and found nothing else in its place.
Should we just give up on physical stuff altogether? Should we recognise that it is not possible to provide an account of ultimate bits and just make use of our theories to achieve our goals? Or can we imagine that we might finally come up with an answer and know once and for all what the universe is made of?
Necessity and Lies
Honesty is upheld as an age-old virtue of civilisation. A requirement for our leaders and those in public life. Yet there are many instances where we deem lying desirable. Few would think it right for parents to be honest with their offspring about their favourite child, or to be honest about talents or abilities if it is likely to be hurtful for a relative, colleague or friend. And it is not just in personal relationships. We are not critical of Churchill for his rousing wartime speeches even if we now know he did not always believe them himself.
Should we recognise that lying can be valuable, constructive and sometimes necessary, not only for ourselves but for those in power? Or is honesty not only essential in public life but lies should be insisted upon in all aspects of our everyday life as well? More broadly, should we give up the idea that honesty is a virtue and recognise that along with lying it is also potentially a vice.
In association with New Humanist.
The Good and The Evil
Live a life of luxury, travel to the far ends of the earth, dial up any experience you can imagine. According to its propenents, including Mr Zuckerberg, a new world of embodied virtual reality is on the way. They claim, our future lives will take place as much in the digital world as in physical world with the potential to give everyone access to experiences currently only available to a few. But critics say this is a nightmare not a utopia. Instead of real relationships, we’ll have virtual ones; instead of nature, we will have a simulation. And who will control it? Meta, you can be sure, has a plan.
Should we ignore the hyperbole and recognise itl as a science fiction fantasy that is simply a marketing device to motivate staff and shareholders? Or is the embodied digital world an inevitable future that we urgently need to prepare for now? Can we harness its potential or is it a trap that threatens to steal all that is vital, namely real life.
Lost in Language
A little more than a hundred years ago philosophy in the English speaking world was transformed by the arrival of what has come to be known as 'analytic philosophy'. It was hugely influential. Focussing on logic and the meaning of words, analytic philosophy sought to put philosophy on a scientific footing. Yet a century on and critics argue the core questions about the relationship between language and the world have been largely abandoned as insoluble, while the focus on logic and the aping of science is out of sync with the contemporary environment. .
Is it time for the English speaking world to move on from analytic philosophy? Should we see it as the high point of an enlightenment scientism that has been in retreat almost since its inception and which is no longer relevant? Or can it be revived by appying its focus on rationality and the logic of words to the divisive and emotional disputes that beset current culture?
Society 2.0
The Covid pandemic opened our eyes to the jobs society can't live without. From nurses to lorry drivers, supermarket shelf-stackers to reception staff, the roles often seen as lower status proved indispensible. Left and right, for pragmatic reasons of filling vacancies and for moral reasons of rewarding hard work, called for unprecedented wage rises in these newly valued and vital sectors. But changes in wage levels also implies a reassessment of the relative value we attach to the roles themselves.
Should we conclude that we have overvalued professional and middle class office and management roles? Do we need to abandon the assumption that a university education leads to a more highly paid and valued role, and eradicate current social hierarchies in order to level up? Or should we retain pay differentials and protect the status quo with the educated elite taking their rightful place at the top?
We look for certainty to know where we are, to feel safe. Descartes founded modern Western philosophy on the search for certainty. And in our daily lives we have institutions to create the illusion of certainty, marriage in the precarious world of relationships, schools and universities in the world of knowledge. For psychologists tell us that uncertainty is one of the strongest predictors of distress. Yet certainty is also the enemy of progress and change, and as Eric Fromm argued 'The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning'. To be certain is to have ended enquiry, to have called a halt to the new and the original, to have in a sense already died.
Should we recognise the pursuit of certainty in our personal lives, in our pursuit of knowledge, and in religion and philosophy is destined to fail? Should we instead welcome, even encourage, the uncertain and the unknown as a vehicle for growth and potential? Or without the safety of the known are we all lost?
World History and The Baby Bust
Remember the jokes about how the pandemic would lead to a baby boom? The reverse has happened and birth rates have fallen to all time lows, accentuating declines already in place. A recent paper in The Lancet, a world-leading medical journal, predicted global population will be 2 billion less than previously forecast by 2100. 23 countries will halve their population. China alone is expected to lose more than 600 million people. Commentators claim we are facing a demographic winter that will reshape the world and the fortunes of all nations.
Do we urgently need to take steps to boost population to avoid long term deep economic decline? Should we accept that these can't succeed and instead focus on the impact and the shifting global power balance that will result? Or should we ignore the doomongers and welcome the decline as beneficial to the planet's resources and climate change?
Beyond the Darkness
Dark matter is said to account for 85% of matter in the universe. Entering the scientific mainstream in the 1980s, it was key to explaining the otherwise anomalous speeds of stars and gas clouds in spiral universes. Yet decades of searching have so far revealed exactly zero dark matter particles. And now some cosmologists are starting to look for alternatives models of the universe that don’t posit dark matter, like MOND, to describe the world and effect a paradigm shift in our thinking about the cosmos.
Should scientists focus on one model of the universe when the dark matter it claims has never been directly discovered? Do we need a radical reassessment of our approach that would make it easier to question current accounts of cosmology? Or are we just around the corner from finally finding dark matter particles?
This Land is My Land
As the West seeks to atone for its past and create a fairer new world in which power cannot obliterate minority cultures, there remains a glaring problem. The US and Canada live on land taken from Native Americans, while former European colonial powers still benefit from wealth gained from the exploitation of other peoples and nations in the past.
Should the West make good its apologies and give back what was taken? Is there a time limit to historic wrongs, and if so what should it be? Or is criticism of its history inevitable and something that comes to all declining empires not so much as a result of its wrongs as its weakening power, and will it only be drawn to a close when the West has no power left?
The Web Corporation
Once the heroes, they are now the villains. In just a couple of decades big tech has gone from being the cool face of a sleeker and morally better future to power hungry autocrats that manipulate personal lives, remove privacy, undermine mental health, and crush competition. There is a widespread feeling in national governments, and the public as a whole that they have to be stopped. But now they are so powerful, Apple alone has a value that exceeds the GDP of India, can this be achieved?
Could punitive taxation and regulation control their excesses? Or would we be best to follow the calls of some in the US, like Elizabeth Warren, to break them up? Then again are web and social media essential services that would be better run by government? After all most nations, including Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, have their public broadcasters, should they not also have national web services? Not the BBC but the BWC perhaps?
Getting Everything, Losing Everything
Live a life of luxury, travel to the far ends of the earth, dial up any experience you can imagine. According to its propenents, including Mr Zuckerberg, a new world of embodied virtual reality is on the way. They claim, our future lives will take place as much in the digital world as in physical world with the potential to give everyone access to experiences currently only available to a few. But critics say this is a nightmare not a utopia. Instead of real relationships, we’ll have virtual ones; instead of nature, we will have a simulation. And who will control it? Meta, you can be sure, has a plan.
Should we ignore the hyperbole and recognise itl as a science fiction fantasy that is simply a marketing device to motivate staff and shareholders? Or is the embodied digital world an inevitable future that we urgently need to prepare for now? Can we harness its potential or is it a trap that threatens to steal all that is vital, namely real life.
Truth, Prejudice and the University
The pursuit of truth has frequently been seen as the central goal of the academy. Proclaimed by Harvard in its motto 'Veritas'. But there are a growing number of professors and university presidents who claim this has been undermined by institutional group think. They are supported by surveys showing a quarter of academics endorse the ousting of a colleague for having the 'wrong' opinion. In response, leading figures including Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and Kathleen Stock, have set up a new institution, the University of Austin, to create a school that encourages all enquiry.
Should we root out intolerance from our campuses to create an imaginative and exploratory culture? Or is contemporary university culture alive and well and these criticisms the misguided prejudices of a conventional liberal elite who have not understood that the world has moved on? Or is the institutional row itself the consequence of the end of our belief in truth in the first place and no amount of railing against it will bring it back?
Overcoming Trauma
Trauma was traditionally associated with events such as war, assault and natural disasters. Now it is increasingly used to describe everyday experiences like personal criticism or romantic rejection, and of becoming an empty therapeutic buzzword . Some psychologists argue that we risk undermining diagnoses of serious disorders by treating the mundane as the catastrophic, at the same time as making us less resilient and more susceptible to suffering.
Should we stop describing everyday setbacks as trauma to help us become less fearful and more resilient? Or is a looser understanding of trauma to be encouraged so that individuals can come to terms with their suffering? Or is this all a symptom of a broader cultural focus on our emotional lives which once promised better mental health, but which has now turned out to have undermined an entire generation?
China and the Art of Peace
The rise of China has for decades been watched from the West with mistrust. But with Xi Jinping making belligerent moves from the South China Sea to the Indian border, tensions have been mounting. And now, with the arrival of almost routine sorties into Taiwan airspace combined with Xi's declaration to 'reunite China' by any means necessary, the threat is overt. With Biden weakened by the Afghanistan debacle, and under pressure to take a tough stance, the risk of conflict has become real and apparent.
The ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu declared 'in peace prepare for war'. Should this be Western strategy? Or are the threats overblown and preparing for war a dangerous strategy that risks an arms race and an unimaginably terrible future potential conflict?
The Ignorance of Experts
'Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts' argued Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the last fifty years. He wished to promote the idea that the best science respects no authority and is not a learnt set of facts, but a rigorous method of questioning in search of a better account. Yet in the pandemic governments and commentators propounded the opposite, that experts should be followed without question. Feynman proposed that good science guesses at theories and then looks to see whether they are supported by the data. But in public debate there is rarely clarity about the theory and little focus on the data.
Should we see science not as an agreed body of knowledge but a method to improve our account of the world? Should science never been seen as an authority? Or are authorities necessary since we cannot all test all of the theories all of the time?
Overcoming Tribal Division
There is nothing new about divisiveness in politics. Yet cultural and political division appears to be deepening. Tribalism continues to rise. There are even credible commentators who argue that civil war in the US is a real possibility.
Should we dial down the rhetoric, calm our vocabulary, and all will be well? Or is social media to blame encouraging violent opinion and tribal bonding? Or have we lost something more profound, belief in our culture, which we urgently need to rediscover?
In association with The Week.
Love and Other Drugs
'Love is all' says the song. From the Christian tenet 'God is love' to the narrative thread of countless novels and films, love is seen as central to our lives. Yet from scientific studies along with anecdotal accounts we know that psychoactive substances and MDMA in particular can enhance and in some cases induce intense feelings of love. If love can be hacked by a change in brain chemistry, might our romanticised idea of love itself be the distortion?
Should we use drugs to encourage, initiate and repair relationships as some therapists advocate? Or are such experiences false, damaging, and potentially socially dangerous? Is love a product of brain chemistry, or, is it something deeper that a drug could never replicate?
In Search of a Cleaner World
Everyone is agreed, the climate crisis has to be addressed. Across the world governments are looking to renewable energy as the solution. But many argue these 'clean' energies aren't so clean after all. Electric car batteries and solar panels are almost indestructible and contain seriously toxic elements. Critics claim governments have no credible plans for their disposal and in twenty years time there will hundreds of millions of them.
Is our focus on renewables a mistake? Should we overcome our worries about nuclear energy and invest in it rapidly as an alternative, or might new technologies like fusion be the answer? At root, can we rely on humanity’s ability to use technology to solve both the current environmental crisis, and any future crisis? Or Is relentless consumption and growth itself to blame for our environmental issues?
Life, Death, and Money
In opinion polls at election time health is often the leading topic of concern. Not surprising therefore that Governments spend ever more on health. But expenditure doesn't seem to lead to satisfaction or to be directly related to life expectancy. The US spends 17% of GDP on health, the highest in the world and almost twice as much as Italy, but comes 46th in terms of life expectancy, more than four years less than Italy.
Should we stop focusing on doctors and hospitals, money and medical intervention, and instead focus on lifestyle and well being? Do we want to believe that money and resources deliver health to avoid the less comfortable conclusion that we all die in the end? Or should we just be thankful for the success of our drugs and vaccines and not puzzle too much over the stats?
Desire and Being Desired
Fifty years of feminism and increasing status and influence for women, it is nevertheless still seen as the norm for men to be the ones seeking sex and women to be those who consent. Yet some argue that until this changes and women become more sexually assertive and men more chaste the power balance will remain skewed in favour of men.
Is the assertion of sexual desire key to power relationships between the sexes? Is this character of sexual relationships between women and men hard wired in our biology, or could they be changed? Would such a shift be desirable and be desired?
The Weaker Sex?
From Serena Williams to Angela Merkel, the new 007 to Kamela Harris, strong women are changing the world. And now evidence is growing that it might actually be men who are the weaker sex. A recent study showed that in famines, epidemics and enslavement women survive longer than men. And throughout life they survive disease better than men - 50% more men died from Covid. While across all cultures women live longer. Of the 43 people living over the age of 110, 42 are women. Yet still the idea persists that women need men to protect them. And it is not for example seen as problematic that men are called up to fight in Ukraine while women are encouraged to seek sanctuary.
Is it time to give up the notion that women are weaker and need to be defended by men? What changes should we make to social organisation to reflect this? Or is this shift not only misguided but profoundly detrimental to women?
A UK First. Back To Big Thinking
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