Lecture 6 - The Art Of Long-term Thinking Flashcards
(18 cards)
What are the three notions of time discussed in the lecture?
Answer: The three notions of time are:
- Chronos (homogeneous, measurable time)
- Kairos (right time to act, windows of opportunity)
- Inherent Time/Inherent Dynamics (natural course of things)
According to Kant, what are the four strategies to improve judgment?
- Try to be objective
- Be open for dialogue
- Try to understand others
- Search for the common sense
What are the main differences between Scientific and Practical Knowledge?
Answer: Key differences include:
- Scientific Knowledge deals with abstract, well-defined questions while Practical Knowledge handles concrete, diffuse situations
- Scientific Knowledge has demonstrable solutions while Practical Knowledge has no definitive proof possible
- Scientific Knowledge uses logical methods while Practical Knowledge uses heuristic approaches
- Scientific Knowledge can be taught through books while Practical Knowledge must be learned through practice
What are the different institutional levels and their corresponding timeframes?
- Embeddedness (culture, norms): centuries to millennia
- Formal rules (constitutions, laws): decades to centuries
- Governance structures: years to decades
- Market transactions: continuous
What are the three steps in the outline for sustainability heuristics?
- Identify relevant stocks and gather previous knowledge about material stocks and durable institutions
- Sketch the inherent time of stocks
- Integrate dynamics of stocks to an overall picture and search for windows of opportunity
What are the central aspects of sustainability?
- Intra- and intergenerational justice
- Long-run perspective considering future impacts
- Comprehensive and holistic approach
- Preservation of nature for future generations
- Addressing unbalanced global development opportunities
What are the two types of stocks discussed in sustainability concepts?
Material Stocks:
- Examples include coal reserves, wolf populations, machinery
- Characterized by persistence and inert dynamics
Immaterial Stocks:
- Knowledge and technologies
- Cultural elements and traditions
- Institutions (formal and informal rules)
What are the shortcomings in sustainability concepts?
The gaps in scientific discussion and practical implementation include:
- Handling uncertainty and ignorance
- Incorporating practical knowledge
- Managing long-term effects (>100 years)
- Achieving holistic perspectives
- Dealing with complexity
What is the definition of Power of Judgment according to Kant?
- Judgment is the ability of a person
- It enables the person to bridge between a specific situation and general aspects/rules
- It is practical knowledge necessary for decision-making and advising
- Helps bridge the gap between theory and practice
What are Aristotle’s strategies for improving judgment?
- Find the right balance by taking the middle between extremes
- Move away from your own inclinations
How to formalize decisions?
- Look at alternative actions
- Evaluate the options with various criteria
- Make a decision
Explain Utilitarism
- idea:the moral value of an action is measured by its contribution to increase welfare, utility, happiness, etc.
- ethical basis of normative economics
- Underlying principle → consequentialism: the best choice is the one with the most desirable consequences
What are rational decisions?
A decision where one can give good reasons for their decision
What are gut feelings?
- an intuitive decision
- A decision where the intellect is not involved
What are the key features of judgment?
- Bottom-up Approach
- Starts from specific cases rather than general rules
- Reflective judgment precedes determinative judgment
- Example: Medical diagnosis of rubella starts with specific symptoms
- Heuristic Nature
- Judgment finds rather than deduces
- Uses guiding principles for orientation
- Assumes world is structured comprehensibly
- Role of Feeling
- Feelings necessary but can both reveal truth and deceive
What does time have to do with sustainability?
- sustainability is a notion of justice in an intertemporal space
- Time in central in analysis
- Long time horizons are needed for decisions
- Science only covers certain aspects of time
- Judgment is needed to make good decisions and to find the right time to act
- We need heuristics for capturing time
What are institutions?
- formal and informal rules of society that are effective
- Important concept in economics and other social sciences
- Typically have a specific inherent time
- Durable institutions are an important class of immaterial stocks
What do stocks have to do with time?
Stocks and time are closely interconnected in sustainability thinking in several ways:
- Stocks have inherent temporal characteristics:
- They take time to build up or deplete
- They have natural cycles and rhythms
- They possess their own temporal dynamics
- Understanding stock dynamics helps identify Kairos moments:
- Recognizing when stocks are at critical points
- Identifying optimal intervention times
- Finding windows of opportunity for change
- Different types of stocks operate on different time scales:
- Material stocks might change over years or decades (like forest growth)
- Institutional stocks might evolve over centuries (like cultural norms)
- Knowledge stocks can accumulate or become obsolete at varying rates
By understanding how stocks behave over time, we can better plan sustainable interventions and predict long-term consequences of our actions.
