For the past month or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose. Now, until you realize how dominant that concept has been in my thinking and in my scholarly contributions over the years, you won’t realize how significant it is that this month’s thinking actually deserves comment. But it does. I suppose it started with something of an intellectual crises of faith that I went through a few weeks ago, wherein I found myself asking that age-old question: How do we know that we know what we know? This was in response to Alex’s queries into the subject of free will and his conclusion that we do not, in fact, possess choice and agency as we believe, but are, in fact, merely the outcome of chemical reactions in our brains, influenced by the chemical reactions in our environment. Of course, I’ve dealt with this revelation before, during my own queries into the subject of free will. Still, to challenge Alex’s thinking required challenging my own, and there was indeed a period of time earlier this month wherein I wasn’t sure what I really thought about the subject. I escaped this debilitating self-doubt by clinging to an epistemological principle that I have embraced and contributed to over the years: that knowledge has purpose. Truth with a capital “T” isn’t as important as many philosophers throughout history have believed; what matters is whether the truth we have discovered fulfills its purpose. Often, this purpose requires true and correct knowledge, the more complete the better. But, for questions like the ones I was facing, questions concerning the limitations of the human mind to understand certain knowledge, adherence to the idea that knowledge must be useful was liberating.
My unusually strong concern with the idea of purpose continued into deliberations on the content of a law review article that I’m currently writing about the influence judicial decisions have had on the attitude towards climate change. As law is a relatively new area for me, I’ve been tempted to incorporate a lot of outside subject matter into my paper, to bolster what I don’t know with more of what I do know. In fact, my writing does this almost automatically, often devolving into an economic analysis or philosophical critique of some legal doctrine, rather than sticking to law. To avoid this, I’ve had to employ a purpose litmus-test for the material I want to include. What is the purpose of my article? What is the purpose of this information? Does the purpose of this information contribute to the purpose of the article? If the answer is not clearly affirmative, then the information should not be included.
More pressingly, I’ve been obsessing over the idea of purpose in the EMC2 program. First and foremost, as I’ve struggled in my relationships with a number of my students, I’ve been questioning my purpose as coordinator. But the answer to this question is necessarily wrapped up in the purpose of the EMC2 program. And, reflecting upon that question, I realized that we had probably lost sight of its original purpose. Moreover, it seemed to me that we had lost any overarching purpose. So, it was suddenly necessary to rediscover the original motivation for starting the EMC2 program, decide whether that should still be our focus, and then commit to running the program purposefully for the rest of the year. But, even once that issue was resolved, the question of my own purpose within the program still remains. And, as the year continues and many of the issues I had with my students at the beginning of the year continue, this question becomes all the more pressing.
Finally, and most relevant to this journal, I’ve been thinking about the purpose of this project. Originally, I meant for this project to just be an example for the students this year, since we were changing the program a little bit and I wanted to have something to point to when explaining what we wanted from the students. To that end, it was supposed to be done by the end of the summer. Unfortunately, I ended up working three jobs and training for a marathon this summer, and was unable to get anywhere close to a finished product. However, I decided to continue working through the school year, and it now serves a somewhat different purpose. This project is a sign of good faith to the students, and a gauge for us coordinators. I continue to work on this project so that I can honestly tell the kids that I’m not asking them to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. Moreover, as this program continues to evolve, it’s important for the coordinators to know whether we’re asking too much of our students, or too little, and to learn what’s useful and when it’s useful and what struggles arise in the course of a research project as we’ve conceived of it. The topic of this project was also purposeful, for two reasons. First, the environment is an issue that many libertarians continue to struggle with. It’s such a big issue, climate change; it seems like something that must be handled by a powerful entity like the government. So, I wanted this project to help set some libertarian positions on environmentalism on stronger ground. Second, this project is centered around a question, a radically original question, a question that forces one to stop and reconsider one’s once-solid views. “Is climate change really a bad thing?” This is the type of question that I want my students to discover and struggle with, because these are the questions that are actually worth asking. Year after year, the social sciences spit out study after study which are essentially just regressions of new data on a host of random topics. How many of them are actually changing the world or even just provoking real, meaningful thought? Big questions, like the purpose of school, the nature of childhood, the existence of free will, the effects of humor, the role of prices, the idea of climate change: these are questions that force the students to really think, to question everything they think they know about a topic, and motivate them to create something that will change the world.
Of course, for this project to accomplish its purpose, I have to treat it like a real project. And one of the essential elements of a research project is its answer to the question “So What?” Now, I guess that I’ve been assuming that my so-what has been self-evident. Climate change will most likely have a tremendous impact on the lives of human beings and on all that they’ve built; it may be the most important problem facing humanity in this age. People live in a state of fear and bitterness as a result of climate change. The debate over what to do about it, and who to blame, contributes to the startling level of tension and animosity existing between members of our society. The magnitude of the issue seemingly justifies massive government involvement in addressing the problem, which brings with it its own set of serious issues. Now, this project is a creative attempt to solve this problem of climate change. The goal of this project is not to solve climate change by presenting a method of stopping or reversing climate change, but to solve climate change by changing people’s view of climate change. The goal of this project is to get people to see climate change as an economic opportunity, not an overwhelming threat. It seems like a cop-out, a non-solution. “Oh, you have a problem? Have you tried not thinking of it as a problem?” But, this project is an attempt to justify the view of climate change as an economic opportunity. And, the project seeks to show how, once our perspective has changed, many of the problems caused by climate change really can be resolved more economically and more successfully. Therefore, this project is a suggestion for the beginning of a solution to one of humanity’s biggest problems today.
Unfortunately, I don’t know that I’ve made that clear, because the other day Bott asked me what I was selling and, when I replied with “an idea for a better way of approaching the problem of climate change,” he said that he couldn’t see it. Apparently, my “so what” isn’t apparent, yet. This is a huge problem, one that must be fixed quickly. Without a “so what,” there’s no reason for my audience and stakeholders to keep reading and listen to what I have to say. I have to make it clear what this project does and how important it is.
The theme of this month, as far as my research goes, has been the human mind. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the human mind, for my project, for Alex’s project, and during my intellectual crisis. But I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about purpose. And purpose is what this project needs, more than an elaboration on the role of the mind in economics. The purpose of my SDA this month (and every month) is to show progress, but also to embody my “so what.” As far as I’m concerned, this “so what” focus is the main focus for this upcoming SDA, and if a discussion of the human mind must be omitted or pushed aside, so be it. Hopefully, I can show what exactly it is that I’m selling, and, even better, convince my stakeholders that it’s worth buying. The purpose of this SDA, then, is to communicate the purpose of this project.
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