On a first level, questions and issues surrounding the environment are no different from any other questions and issues we face on a daily basis:
what movies should I go see?should I lie when my roommate asks me how she looks, and she looks like
something the cat dragged in?
what major program of studies should I pursue?
should I get up this morning and go to my calculus class - or will I
really need it once I get to med school?
when my girlfriend tells me she thinks she's pregnant, what should we do?
These and the thousands of other decisions we face require us to ask:
what are the relevant facts?and
what ought I do in response to those facts?
These questions, in turn, however, lead to more complicated questions. As Dr. Stauder's article suggests, when we seek to learn the relevant facts concerning the environment, things are not so simple. We can quickly become buried with conflicting reports and conflicting assessments of controversial data sets.
This is a general problem, however - one that occurs in every discipline, including the natural sciences and the social sciences. Economists do not agree, for example, on whether to raise the interest rates, keep them as they are, or lower them.
So what do we do? Part of our human condition involves limits. We are creatures of finite time and energy: none of us can become an expert atmospheric scientist and expert economist and expert forester - and expert atmospheric scientist and expert economist and expert forester - and expert ethicist and expert in diverse religious traditions. That might be the ideal, and we should certainly strive for that ideal - but as finite creatures, after a point, we are forced to rely on the witness of others.
So - whom do we trust for reliable information on global warming? Or the forests? or the environment in general?
Again, we're faced with this situation everywhere else in our lives. Whom do we trust:
professor X or professor Y when they seem to disgree?my family or my best friend when they seem to disagree?
supermarket tabloids? our local newspaper? the local TV stations? Fox
News Updates, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, or CNN?
Time? Newsweek? the Wall Street Journal? U.S. News and World Report?
Rush Limbaugh? The Utne Reader? The Nation? Mother Jones? National Catholic
Reporter? World Press in Review?
Anything I can find on the Internet?
My first point here is that we confront the sort of uncertainty regarding reliable sources of information everywhere - not just with regard to environmental matters. My second point here is that we need to distinguish between two possible responses to this glut of divergent sources:
a) skepticism - a healthy suspicion regarding truth claims, one which hasus avoid taking claims at face values, but asks instead for evidence,
argument, and other sorts of warrants, and
b) epistemological relativism - which says, in the face of conflicting
evidence, no reasonable conclusions can be made and we can essentially no
nothing.
I want to pursue option "a" - as part and parcel of the sort of critical thinking approach I propose to follow this evening.
So, when faced with competing claims from divergent sources, what can we do to begin to sort out who may serve as a generally reliable source for important information?
I propose a first step - logical analysis. How good is the logic of a given proponent? In general, if someone demonstrates shoddy logical thinking - I would not trust them to provide me with reliable information and insight.
My case study is Rush Limbaugh on Global Warming