Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

Kurasawa – Predictions

No link to their offense – our paradigm of predictions is comparatively different

Kurasawa 4 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology – York University of Toronto, Constellations, 11(4)) jl

When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latter’s total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors.

Kurasawa – Predictions

We must embrace an ethic of responsibility toward future generations – this sparks resistence against the predictions they criticize

Kurasawa 4 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology – York University of Toronto, Constellations, 11(4)) jl

By contrast, Jonas’s strong consequentialism takes a cue from Weber’s “ethic of responsibility,” which stipulates that we must carefully ponder the potential impacts of our actions and assume responsibility for them – even for the incidence of unexpected and unintended results. Neither the contingency of outcomes nor the retrospective nature of certain moral judgments exempts an act from normative evaluation. On the contrary, consequentialism reconnects what intentionalism prefers to keep distinct: the moral worth of ends partly depends upon the means selected to attain them (and vice versa), while the correspondence between intentions and results is crucial. At the same time, Jonas goes further than Weber in breaking with presentism by advocating an “ethic of long-range responsibility” that refuses to accept the future’s indeterminacy, gesturing instead toward a practice of farsighted preparation for crises that could occur.30 From a consequentialist perspective, then, intergenerational solidarity would consist of striving to prevent our endeavors from causing large-scale human suffering and damage to the natural world over time. Jonas reformulates the categorical imperative along these lines: “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life,” or “Act so that the effects of your action are not destructive of the future possibility of such life.”31 What we find here, I would hold, is a substantive and future-oriented ethos on the basis of which civic associations can enact the work of preventive foresight. Having suggested a way to thicken the normative foundations of farsighted cosmopolitanism, I would now like to discuss the socio-cultural strategies that global civil society participants have begun employing in order to create a sense of intergenerational solidarity. Both the moral imagination and reason constitute triggers of farsightedness that have entered public discourse in a variety of settings, with the objective of combatting the myopia of presentism.32 The first of these catalysts appeals to us to carefully ponder our epoch’s legacy, to imagine the kind of world we will leave to future generations (what will social life be like if today’s risks become tomorrow’s reality?). Left dystopianism performs just this role of confronting us with hypothetically catastrophic futures; whether through novelistic, cinematic, or other artistic means, it conjures up visions of a brave new world in order to spark reflection and inspire resistance.33 By way of thick description, dystopian tales call upon audiences’ moral imagination and plunge them into their descendants’ lifeworlds. We step into the shoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Winston Smith or are strongly affected by The Handmaid’s Tale’s description of a patriarchal-theocratic society and The Matrix’s blurring of simulacra and reality, because they bring the perils that may await our successors to life. NGOs and social movements active in global civil society have drawn upon the moral imagination in similar ways, introducing dystopian scenarios less as prophecies than as rhetorical devices that act as ‘wake-up calls.’ Dystopias are thrust into public spaces to jolt citizens out of their complacency and awaken their concern for those who will follow them. Such tropes are intended to be controversial, their contested character fostering public deliberation about the potential cataclysms facing humankind, the means of addressing them, and the unintended and unexpected consequences flowing from present-day trends. In helping us to imagine the strengths and weaknesses of different positions towards the future, then, the dystopian imaginary crystallizes many of the great issues of the day. Amplifying and extrapolating what could be the long-term consequences of current tendencies, public discourse can thereby clarify the future’s seeming opaqueness. Likewise, fostering a dystopian moral imagination has a specifically critical function, for the disquiet it provokes about the prospects of later generations is designed to make us radically question the ‘self-evidentness’ of the existing social order.34 If we imagine ourselves in the place of our descendants, the takenfor- granted shortsightedness of our institutionalized ways of thinking and acting becomes problematic. Indifference toward the future is neither necessary nor inevitable, but can be – and indeed ought to be – changed. Aside from the moral imagination, and given that the idea of gambling with humanity’s future or failing to minimize its possible sources of suffering is logically unsustainable, the appeal to reason represents another main trigger of intergenerational solidarity. Since actual deliberation between current and future generations is obviously impossible, a Rawlsian contractualist thoughtexperiment allows us to demonstrate the soundness of a farsighted cosmopolitanism. If, in the original position, persons were to operate behind a chronological veil of ignorance that would preclude them from knowing the generation to which they belong, it is reasonable to expect them to devise a social order characterized by a fair distribution of risks and perils over time. Conversely, it is unreasonable to expect them to agree to a situation where these burdens would expand over time and thereby be transferred from one generation to the next. “The life of a people,” Rawls writes, “is conceived as a scheme of cooperation spread out in historical time. It is to be governed by the same conception of justice that regulates the cooperation of contemporaries. No generation has stronger claims than any other.”35 Via the practice of preventive foresight, this norm of crossgenerational fairness may acquire sufficient weight.