* Originally By: amcgowen@hposl02.cup.hp.com
 * Originally Re: Re: preaching to the converted
 * Forwarded 
> 
> At 4:36 AM 1/22/96, MATT COLE wrote:
> >Mark Gilkey states that 'economic growth cannot continue
> >indefinitely'. Whilst I happen to believe he is correct, I feel we
> >should be careful not to state such claims in such a dogmatic manner.
> >Indeed, his claim has not been proven and at the end of the day
> >comes down to personal belief.
> 
> I would say that this is not so much an issue of making points
> diplomaticly, as it is of making points with very, very clear semantics.
> The statement as phrased - "economic growth cannot continue indefinitely" -
> is indeed opinion.  My reading of Mark's post was that he meant "the
> physical throughput of the economy cannot continue to grow indefinitely", a
> statement which does have a sound physical basis.  So, the use of very
> ambiguous terms such as "growth" must be very cautious; growth _of what_?
> In what units?  That would go a long way to understanding between different
> camps, I think.
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Eric Fellinger                  Graduate Student
The idea that economic growth can occur without corresponding growth of
anything physical is a metaphysical dogma of neoclassical economics,
resulting from the subjectivism of utilitianism -- a subjectivism
in turn decended from the Cartesian Subject/Object distinction, which
in many respects is the philosophical foundation of modernism. In this
view, a holdover of the religious belief that only humans have immortal 
souls, "value" is created by mental acts of humans, which are nonphysical
-- hence there is no reason why "value" cannot grow without physical limit.
This naive value theory has been thoroughly exploded by environmental
ethicists; see, for a recent online example: J. Baird Callicott, Intrinsic 
Value in Nature: a Metaethical Analysis, from The Electronic Journal of
Analytic Philosophy. The web address is 
http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/1995.spring/callicott.abs.html
The entire Spring issue, called "Justifying Value in Nature" is interesting.
It is at http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/1995.spring/contents.html
If nature rather than the metaphysics of the human will is the primary source
of value, the idea that value can grow without limit becomes a claim about
the operation of nature -- a claim which clearly flies in the face of 
vidence
for ecological limits. Conversely, the theory that value can grow without 
limit
because it is an anthropogenic domain, autonomous from nature, rests on the 
view that humans are somehow external to nature, an exemptionist doctrine 
hat
flies in the face of our evolutionary derivation and biological constitution.
In short, the idea that economic growth is unconstrained by physical limits
requires a metaphysical commitment to dogmas that are clear scientific
nonsense.
This is not to disagree with Fellinger's point that when speaking of growth,
it helps to specify what is growing and how it is measured. But claims for
economic growth uncoupled to living nature always come back to exemptionist
claims of one type or another.
Alan McGowen
--- Blue Wave v2.12 [NR]
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