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 JamiesonWhen it comes to climate change it's all the usual barriers: greed, mendacity, ignorance, short-sightedness and so on, manifest in the extreme power of corporations, the weakness of government, and the indifference of citizens.
Dale JamiesonWe're good at noticing sudden movements of middle size objects in our immediate visual field, but what is out of sight is for us is largely out of mind.
Dale JamiesonThe millennium development goals are important, both morally and economically, because much of the world's population maybe is as much as a third of the world's population hasn't yet reached the level of economic development where we begin to get a dissociation from people's economic status and their reports about personal happiness. So we really do need to do much more and much more effectively in order to give everyone the kind of basis for which they can have good vibes.
Dale JamiesonNone of us are rational economic men as we're supposed to be portrayed in economic theory where mixes of passions, of desires, of moral principles, of self-deception, of altruism, of concern of others, of concerns for ourselves and an interest in our bank accounts. And social policies have to be responsive to the complexity of who we are as people or else, like the war on drugs, they're simply going to fail.
Dale Jamieson