From the reasoning above, a teaching methodology will develop out of the steps needed to think intelligently when confronted by some aspect of the environment that we experience or live in. It is essentially scientific but since we are developing social policy we are also operating at a moral level of reasoning. Can such a methodology work for moral reasoning? In my teaching unit on genetics (YNHTI 1996), I set out Dewey’s arguments for the appropriateness of scientific reasoning when making ethical judgments. His key justifications are as follows:
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1. Moral judgments, as science, deals with time and space since both concern antecedents and consequences.
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2. In both science and morality, universals are abstracted out of particular events and actual contexts. Both concern universal ‘laws’ that only mean anything as predicators in actual situations.
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3. Science and morality both concern judgments on experiences that require reflection and then action to test theoretical understandings. These are tested as events involving some action, the results of which are used to confirm or deny the validity of the prior reflections and judgments.
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4. Science demands that reason be subjected to the hard knocks of experience. Similarly morality must justify itself in terms of actual experienced problems. Neither can hide behind appeals to transcendence independent of experience if they are to claim to be true.
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5. Both science and morality involve feeling awareness, rational cognition and action to test validity of the relationship between feeling and thought. Feeling awareness in both science and morality is attention to some aspect of the immediacy of experience that calls forth sentient interest, goals and vision of possibilities (in morality, love is an example of this). Cognition consists of logical connections in experience based on cause and effect. Objective thought in morality and science comes from acting out this reasoning within the environment (in morality, moral principles are reasoning within an experience such as love). If the consequences of action meet those expected by reason and those desired by the original feeling awareness (that drew one’s attention to this aspect of the environment in the first place) then both science and morality have reasonable grounds for objectivity.
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6. Since methodology of making scientific and moral judgments are analogous, then the use of the following scientific or intelligent method of making social policies to solve problems in the environment are legitimated.
To simplify the above, we may use the life-skills problem solving schema described below that all teachers in New Haven Public Schools are expected to use, where applicable, across all academic disciplines. What follows is a practical application of this applied to the population crisis.
(I) Defining the Problem
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a. Population is the root cause of pollution and since population increases exponentially so pollution is increasing exponentially and so necessarily uncontrollably.
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b. Pollution of air, water and soil means loss of available resources for the expanding population.
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c. Population drives consumption that depletes resources and prevents a balanced or sustainable economy with the environment. It drives the need for synthetics and the need for garbage disposal that further pollutes and cuts back on available land and resources.
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d. Population increase drives the need to use mass farming techniques such as mono-genetic crops and pesticides that only increases productivity of crop production on the short term. It increases the risk of loss of protection from pests in the future and toxicity to life in general. In the process further environmental damage threatens the existing level of human population.
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e. Population increase means reduction of forests to provide fuel and more cultivated land, more houses and recreational space etc. Loss of forests threatens global homeostatic control of global temperature.
If the temperature goes up there is flooding and increased rate of desertification, if the temperature goes down, there is a movement towards a glacial age. In either case, there is more land lost to farming.
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f. Increase in population means increased dependence upon oil and other imported goods that decreases national security and so increases military expenditure that reduces resources available for feeding the population etc.
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g. Increase in population ultimately threatens all environmental treaties because the struggle for survival will justify governments to abandon them, that then in turn may lead to qualitative leaps in environmental destruction, and as such possibly lead to death of Gaia or devastating loss of human life to levels below existing population.
(ii)Hypothetical Solutions
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a) Give tax and social benefits as incentives to 2 children families and penalties for exceeding this number.
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b) Require all synthetics to be either biodegradable or able to be recycled on a sustainable basis.
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c) Agribusiness must justify all management and farming policies based upon long term sustainable policies, organic solutions to pest and preservation of genetic diversity in the environment.
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d) Enforcement of ‘greenbelts’ around all forest and woodlands. Cutting of trees must not threaten a complex ecosystem in which they live.
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e) Reduce dependence upon foreign imports to reduce military expenditure. Reduce foreign debt by limiting profits that can be made on loans.
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f) Support an international economic order that requires foreign trade to be based upon the best use of natural resources consistent with local climate or distinctive biome needs.
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g) Give priority to all plans that address issues solving systemic problems.
(iii) Determine what criteria would be used to deem plans/solutions as good/bad or better/worse. (controlling variables).
The task is now to anticipate consequences of the hypothetical solutions that have been imagined. In this case we are interested in:
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1) outcomes for the government, state or wider community material or nonmaterial.
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2) outcomes for those immediately involved.
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3) outcomes for extended family and others directly affected.
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4) anticipated outcomes based upon research into comparable situations, for example China.
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5) anticipate costs to different sectors of the economy and ways to deal with this.
(iv) Procedure/Materials/Presentation of Data.
Choose the best hypothetical plan and fully write out how it would be implemented with list of resources and costs incurred. Plan data tables, graphs and so forth to determine how outcomes can be measured and presented.
(v) Conclusion
Recommend implementing the plan that appears to offer the best outcomes. Point out limitations and expected arrears for refinement.
