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Already this summer I’ve read a dozen or so books, most of them more or less academic. One of the books I read this weekend was Hilary Putnam’s (2004) Ethics Without Ontology.

The book consists of six lectures: four on “ethics without ontology” and two on “enlightenment and pragmatism.” Given my various research interests, I found the most profound and interesting parts of the book to be in essays 1, 4, and 5.

Essay 1: “Ethics Without Metaphysics.” This essay sets up Putnam’s next three essays.  On p. 24 he brings in Levinas: The foundation of ethics is my immediate recognition, when confronted with a suffering fellow human being, that I have an obligation to do something. No me, no ethics. No other, no ethics.  Thus, we can say that ethics is both personal and relational. To not feel the obligation is to not be ethical.

On p. 28, building on Dewey, he introduces the concept of “practical problems.” He interprets Dewey: Solving practical problems is the concern of ethics.

From here he turns to the issue of “controversiality” (pp 29-32). Solutions to practical problems are controversial — unless they are put into practice and succeed to the satisfaction of all those involved. In other words, problems cannot be solved in principle, only in practice, and even then, the solutions may “fail.” Indeed, even when a practical problem is successfully solved, there is still controversy as to whether the successful solution can be generalized to the next problem that seems similar. Even the “similarity” between problems is typically controversial!

Essay 4: “Ontology: An Obituary.” On p. 74 Putnam reprises quite quickly the “collapse of the fact/value dichotomy.” Valuings do not contrast with descriptions. There is an overlap between the class of valuings and the class of descriptions. As with solutions to practical problems (which are always ethical), ethical claims (i.e., valuings) are frequently controversial. But so are questions of fact (p. 75). In short, factual, descriptive and ethical valuings are controversial.

Some ethical questions are such that agreement is unlikely until such time as it can be demonstrated that we agree (p. 76). [Note the performative quality to ethical controversies.] And even in the case of success — i.e., cases where the problem is solved for now — questions may arise as to whether the same thing would work again the next time, or in the next case , etc.

If we try something in connection with a social problem and it works well, meaning to the satisfaction of those involved, those who object to such a solution in another situation are unlikely to concede that it will work again (pp. 76-77). In short, it is impossible to “verify” that something is the right thing to do, even when the success criteria are agreed upon, unless you have actually done it, and it has worked to everyone’s satisfaction. But even then, questions may remain about its ongoing applicability. This is a general feature of practical problems, that is to say, a general feature of ethical problems.

Essay 5: “The Three Enlightenments.” Lengthy quote from Dewey on the “common good” (p. 97). In short, the common good is only possible when it involves those whose benefits are intended. Again, more interpretation of Dewey as positing a kind of participatory democracy as integral to resolving social problems (pp. 99-100).

Although not invoked, recall Levinas’ ethics as implicating a me-other relationality. From this Putnam concludes that contra to Kant, Hobbes, etc., there can be no morality prior to sociality (p. 101). That is to say, moral beings do not confront the social world. Rather social beings confront the moral world, or perhaps, moral worlds. Although Putnam has supposedly done away with ontology, clearly he is saying there is a primacy of sociality over ethicality. But if that is the case, if I am social before I am ethical, then there are bound to be ethical lapses in social life. May capacity for ethics grows out of my social life. The ethical response is a response to the confrontation of the other.

I’ve been using Gmail instead of Outlook for about a year now. However, despite configuring Gmail to list my “from” address as @psu.edu, some recipients were still seeing my messages come through as “on behalf of” first.last@gmail.com. Although bothersome, I just never got around to figuring it out.

Today I finally decided to see if it could be fixed. It turns out Google has addressed this problem. First, read this Gmail blog post. For most users, this should be enough. However, in the case of my Penn State account, it took some digging to find the settings. In particular, for Penn State you will need to use authsmtp.psu.edu (and not smtp.psu.edu) as your outgoing mail server. Also, use port 587. However, contrary to the instructions in the Penn State knowledge base, do NOT check the box for SSL encryption.

So much to blog about lately, especially as it relates to the BP oil spill. One piece that caught my attention was a column in the Washington Post which used the oil spill to illustrate that the debate over capitalism vs. socialism is a false dichotomy. (see: Gulf Oil Spill Offers Lesson in Capitalism vs. Socialism)

For instance, Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, normally an outspoken critic of government intervention, lately has been complaining he’s not getting enough support — “resources” in his terminology — from Washington. It seems in this case more government, not less is what’s needed.

At the same time, frustrations over BP’s inability to stop the flow of the oil led to a series of stories about the prospects of the government “firing” BP. However, talk of such a plan seems to have been largely silenced after Admiral Thad Allen observed “To push BP out of the way, it would raise a question: Replace them with what?” In other words, the government needs private industry too. In this case, without BP the prospects of stopping the flow of oil becomes even more bleak.

And so, we have a bizarre triangle. Local citizens need the government to save them from BP. The government needs BP to help them. Thus, BP is both the cause of the problem, and one hopes, part of the solution.  In other words, in the gulf we find that even a government-industry hybrid is incapable of either containing or stopping the spill. One lesson: suggestions that what the world needs is less government or less industry is to suggest that in the future we would be even less capable of responding to crises and disasters such as the spill. Of course the second lesson is largely an echo of the financial crisis. Regulation matters. And clearly different regulatory regimes are likely to result.

But in which direction should we go? Stepping back, what the BP oil spill seems to suggest is that the acid test for regulatory reform is not whether it strengthens government at the cost of industry or vice versa, but what is the effect on the entire hybrid and its configuration. Good legislation is not legislation that punishes business or rewards it, or strengthens government or weakens it. Good legislation requires reconfiguring the institutional arrangements in such a way that will strengthen the entire government-industry hybrid network. To merely trade off or shift between either government or industry as having the upper hand is to miss the point. Like the financial crisis, the BP oil spill suggests that what is needed is greater hybrid strength, resilience and coordination, not less. This is one more place where a sum zero game means we all lose, no matter which side wins.

Last week I stumbled across this interesting dashboard of renewable energy projects in the PJM queue. Wind projects are by far the biggest category with nearly 42 GW of capacity planned. By comparison just 1.5 GW of PV solar is planned. And nearly 31 GW of nonrenewables are planned.

Separate from these planned capacity additions, PJM already has 165 GW of generation capacity available. Coal, natural gas and nuclear power are the three largest sources, whereas wind is a minuscule 2.3 GW of the current capacity.

Sometime in March, the Pennsylvania Wine and Spirits stores sent an email advertising “March Gladness” specials. All the specials were available for order on the internet only, but then delivered to your local retail store at no charge. Among the discounted items were two absolute bargains.

The first bargain was the Whitehall Lane 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (California). Whitehall Lane is a perennially good cabernet. Normally it retails for between $35 and $45 a bottle, and so, for obvious budgetary reasons has not made too many appearance in my wine cellar since becoming a Ph.D. student. However, discounted to $19.99 a bottle, it is an absolute steal. Although 2004 was not a crowning achievement for Whitehall Lane, there is nothing disappointing about this wine. Expecting it would be worth every penny, I splurged and picked up a case — we have not been disappointed.

In some ways, my second bargain was both a bigger leap into the unknown, and yet, an even safer bet. The Rolf Binder 2004 “Hales” Shiraz Barossa Valley (Australia) normally retails in the $25 to $30 range, though you can find it discounted for $18 to $22. However, the state store was offering it for $7.99 a bottle. Robert Parker rated the wine 90 points, and described it as:

An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. It was aged for 12 months in French and American oak; 10% of the latter was new. It offers an enticing bouquet of wood-smoke, earth, bacon, and blueberry. Supple-textured, plush, and friendly, it has gobs of flavor, excellent grip and length, and enough structure to evolve for 2-3 years. Drink it through 2016. (Source: Wine Advocate, August 2008 as cited on WiredForWine.com)

A Robert Parker 90 point wine for $8!?!? Despite never having tasted other vintages of Rolf Binder, I settled on 2-1/2 cases — enough in case it was good, not too much in case it wasn’t all that. Suffice to say I should have bought more like 5 cases. This is an amazingly complex and well integrated wine. It has a very lush mouth feel, a long finish, and lots of fine tannins. For $8!?!? Amazing. Also, as I know some people who are not huge fans of shiraz, it is worth mentioning that this wine feels more like a cabernet than a shiraz.

Cheers!

The National Academies has developed a nice website entitled: “What You Need to Know About Energy.” It covers Uses, Sources, Costs, and Efficiency. In an earlier post I referenced its visualization of the U.S. Energy System. The other sections are worth exploring too.

A few weeks ago I blogged about several people who see PowerPoint as a barrier to understanding. Today, my eye was drawn to a New York Times headline proclaiming: “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.”

In remarks that appear to be channeling Edward Tufte, General McChrystal has called PowerPoint “dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

Others in the military agree.  According to the article, this month at a military conference in North Carolina, Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said  “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” (He spoke without PowerPoint.) At the same conference, Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, likened PowerPoint to an internal threat.

Again, consistent with Tufte’s arguments, the article reports: “Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs.”

Having just spent two days at an academic conference where every session — including the one I gave — featured a PowerPoint presentation, I wonder if anyone has considered its effects on the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge…

When it comes to the issue of sustainability accounting, corporate responses are all over the map. Some corporations have voluntarily reported on a host of what are now called environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors for more than 20 years (e.g., Kodak), whereas as others have generally tried to avoid doing so (although the empirical evidence suggests that such a position is becoming less and less tenable). And of course, there are a host of intermediate responses, in terms of when companies decide to account for sustainability, and in terms of what they count as sustainability, and how they account for it.

Shareholder activism is one of many factors which might influence if, when and to what extent a corporation chooses to produce a sustainability account. With that idea in mind I was intrigued by a recent press release from Harrington Investments:

Intel corporation has agreed to amend the Charter of the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee to include “corporate responsibility and sustainability performance” into the committee’s overall policy responsibility. Intel also provided [Harrington Investments] with an outside legal opinion stating that under Delaware Law directors have a fiduciary duty to address corporate responsibility and sustainability performance as specified in the committee charter.

Harrington Investments describes itself as “a 28 year-old Napa, California-based socially responsible investment advisory firm that manages assets of individual and institutional investors requiring social and environmental as well as financial portfolio performance.”

This was the second year in a row that Harrington had introduced a shareholder resolution to amend Intel’s bylaws to create a Board Committee on Sustainability. Although Intel initially opposed the resolution, it later engaged in a dialogue with Harrington. As of March 18, 2010, Intel’s Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee charter now requires its that the committee:

reviews and reports to the Board on a periodic basis with regard to matters of corporate responsibility and sustainability performance, including potential long and short term trends and impacts to our business of environmental, social and governance issues, including the company’s public reporting on these topics.

Currently, Intel’s Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee is chaired by David B. Yoffie.  Other members include Reed E. Hundt, Jane E. Shaw, and John L. Thornton.

The National Academies have posted a nice visualization of the U.S. Energy System, including where the energy comes from, how it is used, and how much is wasted. Bottomline: America consumed about 99 quadrillion BTUs (quads) in 2008. Of that, 42 quads were used by homes, businesses, factories, cars, trains, and planes. The remainder — 57 quads — was spent in generation, refining, transmission, distribution and efficiency losses. In other words, for every 100 BTUs we use, we waste another 135 BTUs. Ouch. Considering that energy is a $6 trillion global sector (and growing), figuring out how to reduce all this shrinkage sounds like a big business opportunity.

Today one of my colleagues mentioned an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on “teaching naked.”

In essence, the article argues that technology — especially PowerPoint — inhibits the learning process by promoting boredom and passivity, rather than interest and engagement. As a practical matter, anything that’s on a slide can be read asynchronously, so why waste valuable class time going over it? By comparison a real-time interactive discussion and debate about weighty issues is something that’s much harder to replicate outside the classroom, and that’s likely to be much more memorable 10 or 20 years later.

Of course, the problems with PowerPoint are well documented. One of my favorites is Edward Tufte’s essay “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within.” He shows through numerous examples that PowerPoint is simply the wrong tool for conveying all sorts of information. And while he agrees that some small part of the blame can be placed on poor presenters, he asserts:

“PowerPoint has a distinctive, definite, well-enforced, and widely-practiced cognitive style that is contrary to serious thinking” (p. 26).

Somewhat more humorously, some years ago Fortune published a much shorter primer on what-not-to-do entitled “Ban It Now! Friends Don’t Let Friends Use PowerPoint.” Unfortunately the online version lacks the visual punch of the print edition, in which the article’s major points were made as a series of PowerPoint bullets. It went something like this as I recall:

Slide 1: WHY BAN POWERPOINT?

• It’s a monopoly.

Slide 2: WHY BAN POWERPOINT?

• It’s a monopoly.
• It’s inescapable.

Slide 3: WHY BAN POWERPOINT?

• It’s a monopoly.
• It’s inescapable.
• It’s monotonous.

Slide 4: WHY BAN POWERPOINT? (cont.)

I think you get the idea… Indeed, since trading in my corporate career for an academic career, I have found that PowerPoint is as universal in this world as the former — both in classrooms and at academic conferences. The question is: How to overcome the curse of PowerPoint?