Box 71, Item 4: Two drafts of Metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament
Title
Box 71, Item 4: Two drafts of Metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament
Subject
Two typescript drafts, one with handwritten emendations, the other with typed corrections. Paper published, Routley R (1984) 'metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament', Philosophy & Social Criticism, 10(3-4):19-34, https://doi.org/10.1177/019145378401000303.
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Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
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Source
The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 71, Item 4
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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[33] leaves. 26.34 MB.
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Manuscript
Text
■k
METAPHYSICAL FALL-OUT FROM THE NUCLEAR PREDICAMENT
A series of nuclear prophets has produced a series of philosophically-oriented
works on nuclear war.^ The series is important for its deeper penetration into the
main nuclear predicament, r’own to metaphysical levels; in this the series contrasts
The most
transient superficialities of much of the political commentary,
circulated and influential text of the series is undoubtedly that of the
with the
widely
slightest of the "prophets", Schell’s The Fate of the Earth,
This skillful piece of
unc annily redeploys some of the apparently deep phenomenological
themes of Anders.
So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and Anders can often
To criticise their assumptions is not of course to belittle
be considered together,
media-philosophy
In particular, Schell’s little book, for all its political shortcomings,
their work.
is having a significant and much needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear
It is especially valuable for its vivid and horrifying scenarios of
arrangements.
the
exhibits,
both
the
claim
that
species
....
that we undertake together can make any practical or moral sense
...’
of
aftermath
nuclear
Unfortunately
attack.
it
also
philosophically and factually, severe defects.
’without
is
it
Some of
simply rubbish:
to
take
one example,
consider
... a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
nothing else
(p.173, rearranged).
This should certainly be rejected philosophically; for there is
no separate moral issue of such overwhelming importance that all other issues become
morally neutral.
compared
with
Moral
more
issues remain moral issues:
important
elsewhere, e.g. p.130).
moral
issues
(as
they don’t cease to be so when
Schell
effectively
acknowledges
And the claim should be questioned on more factual grounds.
Humans form a highly resilient species, like rats a survivor species, unlikely to be
entirely exterminated under presently-arranged nuclear holocausts.
The example was selected however because it leads into, indeed presupposes, two
of the major defective assumptions in the work of Schell and Anders.
51.
Nuclear war will eliminate life, human life at least, on earth (the extinction
assumption); and
52.
In the absence of humans, very many notions,
not only those of morality and
value, but those of time and space for example, make no sense; or, to put it into a
more
sympathetic
philosophical
form,
these
notions
depend
for
actual human context (the extravagant anthropocentric assumption) .
their
sense
on an
2
S2 which give Anders’
It is applications of
philosophical depth,
paradoxical
and Schell’s work some of its apparent
and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the
propositions
But
generated.
the
frequent
applications
S2
of
depend
essentially on SI.3 For without total extinction there will be humans about, to make
past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
the
Granted that
assumption SI
is by no means ruled out as a real possibility, as
technological
means appear
available
extinct;^
granted
centres of
prospect
the
of
to make it
large-scale
nuclear
Western civilization with obliteration.
the light of present - admittedly inadequate -
true,
to render Homo sapiens
war
does
threaten
leading
Even so SI appears unlikely in
Even in Canada, which
information.
lies on the polar route of Soviet missiles, human life should be able to continue in
certain northern areas (according to Canadian medical studies).
SI
is extremely flimsy.
It depends,
for example,
Schell’s argument to
on an unjustified extrapolation
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
North American thing, of contracting the world to North America.
all worthwhile civilization, is in USA, or at least,
to be more charitable, in North
America and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e.
eliminated
in
the nuclear
holocaust.)
Some of
(All that matters,
its human population will be
the data
upon,
Schell relies
for
example the effect of nuclear explosions on the .ozone layer, was significantly out of
date even when he wrote.
Other effects than ozone destruction, such as variations in
ultraviolent radiation and temperature levels, apparently extrapolate even less well
from North
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster produced
to South.
about the same time as Schell’s, by Preddey and others,
Southern Hemisphere,
such as
New Zealand
and southern
at
indicates that parts of the
latitudes of
Latin America
could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges.
Doomsday prophets
may appear
to have
gained new
purchase
through
recent
belated) scientific forecasts of a nuclear winter following upon nuclear war.
(if
But
although these forecasts certainly add a new, and alarming, ecological dimension to
the very damaging consequences of large-scale nuclear war,
extinction assumption3.
they do not sustain the
On the available evidence, human life will continue, though
no doubt with new complications and simplifications, for example^ in many southern
mid-latitude coastal reqions outside zones of radiation fall-out.
More generally,
life will go on,
though likely seriously and irreversibly impoverished through loss
of valuable nonhuman systems and creatures.
Nuclear prophets usually see the world (though with most of it carried along) as
already set
, in crucial respects, on the route to nuclear catastrophe.
Much of the
/r
3
way taken is seen as both inevitable and irreversible.
insist
the
upon
of
"impossibility
unlearning”
the
Thus both Anders and Schell
means of manufacturing nuclear
It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee, would furnish a good
bombs.
medium for unlearning nuclear technology (something very like this emerges from van
theory
Daniken’s
of an
"high"
earlier
In virtue
technology).
they would
of S2,
however exclude such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly that
the notion
no longer made
impossibility-of-unlearning
eventual
use
of
sense.
But
what
message
is
the
-
as
if
technology
the
they
again want
inevitability
having
learnt
to
suggest
have
been advanced.But
technological advances
cases of
they
that have
are not
not been
tenable.
the
development
and
else
was
of
the
the
means
determined, and manufacture and use ceased to be a matter of choice.
views
with
There
all
Certainly such
are many
taken advantage of,
and
examples of
there are even
technological developments that have been manufactured but not marketed or
used. There is not something very special about nuclear apparatus that puts it beyond
the scope of such generalisations.
Both Schell and Anders do claim that there are very special things about nuclear
Even if this were true just
"experiments".
weapons, notably that they do not allow "experiments"
of nuclear weapons - and it is certainly not of smaller weapons - it would not rebut
And in fact
the previous argument against the inevitability of nuclear weapons.
Anders and (even) Schell hedge their claims about testing, and the limits to nuclear
scientific work, 1to large-scale weapons and independent experiments which do not
Again they have
interfere with the■ observers and those outside the "laboratories" .
latched onto major points: in particular, we have at present no way of testing the
cumulative effects of large nuclear weapons in concert, e.g. for more holistic
effects,
such
circulation and
enough with it
in character,
or changes in coupled atmospheric
Short of a large-scale nuclear war, and likely
radiation fields.
these crucial effects must remain largely untested and hypothetical
as
fireballs
or
firestorms,
Nonetheless enough data can be assembled to carry through informative
modellings, which point to the improbability of SI, and so undermine applications of
S2 .
The penetration
Schell
and
Anders,
of
but
in S2, is not something peculiar to
Western philosophy, European philosophy
human
chauvinism, as
is
product
a
of
This chauvinism is unfortunately alive and still well, Anders’ version
It has also deeply
of S2 being just one striking illustration (cf. AA p.252ff.).
penetrated Anglo-American philosophy, and has been extended under the influence of
especially.
Wittgenstein’s work, where even the necessary truths of mathematics are taken to be a
product of human conventions, and would vanish with humans! Such are alleged
MB
4
implications of extinction: but the fact is that the truths of arithmetic are in no
way dependent on the existence of humans or humanoids or of gods or giraffes.
As
very many propositions
with necessary truths and falsehoods so with contingent ones:
about the world do not depend in any way for their truth-value or content on humans
or their communities.
In
Schell,
Kantian
obnoxious
is
chauvinism
human
dished
Thoughts and
form.
up
a
in
particularly
time
propositions,
powerful
history and
tenses,
and
and
memories, values and morality, all depend on the life-giving presence of human beings
-
future or merely potential
past or
humans are certainly not enough.
humans are not enough,
persons
that are not
Thus, according to Schell (p.140, e.g.),
’... the
thought "Humanity is now extinct" is an impossible one for a rational person, because
as
soon as it is, we are not.
In imagining any other event, we look ahead
moment that is still within the stream of human time,
a
later
rational
Though we no doubt have it
into past,
(p.143).
local
may
well
be
able
to
truly.
it
have
Schell
there is no "later" ’outside the human tenses of past,
(p.140)*^.
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that
erroneously denies that:
present, and future ...’
divides time
creature
The thought is however
... ’.
perfectly possible for humans; we can have it right now.
falsely,
to a
present and
future’: so annihilation cannot
’come to pass’
But it is simply false that the tenses are human; the tenses depend on a
time
ordering
(perceptible
to
many
creatures
other
than
humans,
but
not
depending at all on that perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to
to now (also a human-independent location, evident to other creatures,
the present,
and borne witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
And annihilation may
also too easily come to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon earth.
Before that
there was a time before there were any human beings.
argument for the demise of time, that ’what has been will no longer be
Anders’
even what
has
been’ ,
is also explicitly (and narrowly)
’for what
verificationist :
would the difference be between what has only been and what has never been,
is no
remain
one
remember the
to
many
sorts
of
things
difference;
organisms would be different.
that have been’
for
one,
Temporal
the
(AA p.245).
history
themes do not lack
if there
There would
recorded
in
many
still
other
’legitimacy because not
registered [or verified] by anyone’; truth, significance, still less meaning, are not
matters of human verification.
Here,
as
elsewhere,
the
human
chauvinism
is
mixed
with
other
distorting
metaphysical assumptions of our Western heritage, in particular, verificationism and
ontological assumptions (to the effect that there are severe difficulties in talking
about
does
what
exist)
not
Thus,
for
metaphysics from Freud, according to whom
example,
takes
Schell
dubious
over
it is indeed impossible to imagine our own
death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still
present
spectators"
as
refuting
the
(p.138).
fact
In
first.
clause goes
second
The
is
there
counterfactual situations which undermine both Freud’s
distance
difficulty
great
no
a good
describing
in
The
claims.
towards
same, goes
for
Schell’s extensions of human chauvinism into one of its main traditional strongholds,
value theory:
evil,
’... the simple and basic fact [sic!]
harm,
or
service
lamenting
rejoicing
or
that before there can be good or
must
there
be
life ,
human
life
These are no facts, but deeply entrenched philosophical dogmas (which have
(p.171).
been exposed and criticised elsewhere/, e.g. HC).
Naturally many
things will disappear with the extinction of humans:
trivially
there will be no more humans (unless humans re-evolve or are recreated), and thus no
more human communities,
human institutions, human activities, human emotions, and so
But it is already going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that there will
forth.
accordingly be
’no thought,
no love,
sacrifice, no image, no song ...'.
For there are, and may continue to exist, other
than humans with emotion,
creatures
no struggle, no pain, no hope, no comfort, no
struggles, songs,
...
Nor will the ending of
.
all such human ventures, if it comes to pass, show that all past human ventures have
been ’all in vain’, meaningless, and already so to say dead.
The decay of the solar
system, or the heat-death of the universe even, will not show that worthwhile human
A
activities were not worthwhile.*
Several of the other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from
their shared
assumptions SI
of a Second Death,
(in Revelations)
under
SI,
is
reckoned
meaningless
rendered
and S2.
a
and
species
death’,
and
all
extinction came
redeployed by both.
’second death’ ,
already
already ’overhung with death’
’a second
It is these that underlie the biblical notion
’seems
(S p.166).
because
to
Thus,
not merely one’s own but
future
to
pass,
generations
the
(S
stronger
be
by
’The death of mankind ,
S2 and
dead’
(AA
SI
p.244,
remaining
S p.166)
life
is
and
is
too, more trivially, a person faces
in addition that greater death of the
p.166,
p.115).
However
even
notion would not be vindicated,
if
nuclear
because
it
depends on the fallacious inference to the meaninglessness of preceding life and on
the very
questionable representation
of
this
meaninglessness as
a sort
of death.
There is no such Second Death: creatures die just once, perhaps all at about the same
time.
The idea of a Second Death lacks even a solid metaphysical base.
6
From SI,
together with the minor principle that extinction being an absolute
in degree,
doesn’t differ
theme that
the universality of peril
comes
’we are all
exposed to peril in the same degree’, which is accordingly ’disguised’ and ’difficult
to
with
SI.
In
situation,
there is no contrast (AE p.64;
because
recognise’,
event,
any
are
peoples
southern Patagonia
Indians of
the
all
not
This theme falls
S p.150).
by
imperilled
equally
the
better placed
being rather
nuclear
than the
Nor are all people equally locked into the situation or
Germans of northern Europe.
incapacitated by it; the prospects are different in different countries and places.
likewise,
Nor,
Schell
are all
contrast
(in
to
people equally responsible,
a pernicious
repeatedly infiltrates.
Anders)
This
is
theme^ which,
the
theme,
Pogo
according to which
S3.
Responsibility for the present nuclear predicament (fiasco, really) distributes
onto everybody, it belongs to every human in the world.
But
there is also, mixed in,
a weaker more
plausible claim that gives lie
to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
An especially blatant example of the Pogo theme11 runs as follows: ’...
the
world’s
leaders
political
...
they
though
now menace
the earth with nuclear
At least, this is
weapons, do so only with our permission, and even at our bidding.
true for democracies'
(pp.229-30).
pose
since we pay for extinction and
sense,
threat of it,
the
... we are
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true
the authors of that extinction.
in a positive
theme is elaborated elsewhere:
The
while for
support the governments that
the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world
it is
true only in the negative sense that they fail try to do anything about the danger)
(p.152).
But
this is more of an argument indicting representative government, by
revealing
its
allegedly
govern,
insensitivity
not
to
and
unresponsiveness
to
affected
by
mention
those
its
the
activities
populace
who
are
they
not
But Schell conveniently neglects all such
represented at all (namely foreigners).
points:
of
many
'... we are potential mass killers.
The moral cost of nuclear armaments is
it makes of all of us underwriters of the slaughter of hundreds of millions'
And again '[as] perpetrators ... we convey the steady message ... that life
(p.152),
that
not only is not sacred but is worthless; that ... it had been judged acceptable for
to be killed' (p.153).
Little of this is true.
Those who campaign against
nuclear arrangements, vote against nuclear—committed parties so far as is possible,
destruction,
and
responsibility for the nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
Nor
and
the
are
like,
does responsibility
attributes
decisions
to
certainly
— or
everyone
taken
—
not
the
the unlikely
fall
in "liberal
on
authors
opinions as
those
democracies"
who
have
of
potential
to worth
done
less.
Schell illegitimately
Responsibility for
even by representatives
(in the unlikely
event of
this happening in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be
traced back to those represented, since among many other things, a representative is
only
representative of a
party which offers a complex and often
ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero or more policies of this package.
Only in
the (uncommon)
can responsibility,
event of a clear
still of a qualified
single issue referendum, which is adopted,
sort, be
for it, not to everyone in the community.
sheeted home, to those who voted
While S3 is false, there is an important
related theme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nuclear situation
generates responsibilities for every socially involved person.
When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying themes, part
of what results is decidedly along the right lines; namely
S4.
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of us] have
failed to change our pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out of step
with the nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc. (the whole earth theme).
Though Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the
frequently immoral purposes for which the state is used, unfortunately he often loses
sight of
this important
critique of
the
theme (indicated
state whi?V
the conclusion
arrives at
is,
that
by and
pp.187-8).
Yet S4 forms part of Schell s
scattered
large,
the nation-state
and
has outlasted
Schell
fragmentary.
its usefulness,
and
that new political institutions more ’consonant with the global reality’ are required
as a matter of urgency.
But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out
viable alternatives.12 At most he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards
the Way Up to world political control.
Solutions to
the nuclear dilemma come,
way,
from the Top Down;
(cf.
p.230).
if not easily, in a similar simplistic
those who can must appeal
to the Top,
to those who govern
Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and limitations,
such as SALT, and in world government, through the United Nations (see p.225ff. and
especially p.227,
treaties,
bottom paragraph).
Given the record of
these organisations and
the negotiations and regulators, it is by now a pathetic faith.
Nor is a
serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the
origins of nuclear technology,
to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider
effective changes to military-industrial organisation and ways of life.
But some of the requisite deeper analysis of the nuclear situation and , more
generally, of the roots of war can be found in Anders$f and elsewhere.13 The roots of
the nuclear predicament are not confined to the ideologically-aligned arrangements of
nation-states,
but
penetrate
also
into
key
components
of
those
states,
their
8
and
controlling classes,
their
military,
their supporting bureaucracies.
And both
within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for the arrangements, and in
key components
of
states,
the
power and domination (and, often,
superiority by the
[nuclear]
science
interrelated forms.
surplus
product
nature)
to
super-states, to
involves
accumulated
can be
is
enables
is the
for
Thus the push for
domination,
large nation-state,
at home
(from
the drive
be achieved through military-oriented
and
main power-base
The
feature
the accompanying privilege).
which
technology,
and
and crucial
a conspicuous
and
from
abroad,
several
in
where enough
and
bled
from
proceed with military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found the high-
technology research and development means to ever more expendable power and energy.
In changing
the prospect of
to eliminate
arrangements
structural
the
nuclear
war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the main power-base, the nation
state;
it
sweepingly,
also
is
important
remove
to
state
relations,
political
alter
trouble-making
political arrangements,
in
to
key
components
patterns
embedded
namely patterns of domination,
organisation,
human-animal
relations,
but
in
of
in
state,
and,
all
these
social
and
patterns manifested not only
relations,
white-coloured
human-nature
more
the
relations;
to
male-female
in
remove,
short,
However not everything needs to be accomplished at once; and
chauvinistic relations.
the cluster of damaging power and domination relations tied into war can be tackled
separately.
And there
the problems
can largely be narrowed
to certain problems of
states and certain key components of states.
In what analysis he does offer of the
contrast of
familiar false
"raison
d’etat"
and
the
justifies the means is
themselves
to
problem with states,
state expediency with morality,
Socratic-Christian
ethics.
every sort’
(p.134).
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
argument is
as a
contrast between
teaching
that
’the
end
the basis on which governments, in all times, have licensed
commit crimes of
extinction nullifies
The
Schell repeats the
So
’states may do virtually
Schell then argues however, that
end-means justification by destroying every end; but again the
far from sound, and depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined
with ontological
assumptions.
Even if all
humans were extinguished (as under SI)
ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animals and extraterrestrials,
actual
or
not.
The
ends-means
argument
can
however
be
repaired
to
remove
such
objections: instead it is claimed that extinction nullifies ends-means justification
by frustrating the realisation of every relevant end - meaning by ’relevant’, in this
context, those ends the realisation of which the state appeals to in justification of
its nuclear policies.a nuclear war, even without human extinction but with severe
enough losses,
would
undoubtedly
frustrate
the realisation of relevant
state ends.
9
So
even
expediency
an
from
perspective,
policies
super-state
are
open
severe
to
criticism, for example as motivationally irrational in the nuclear risks taken.
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
Schell leaves us in
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the right and
no doubt.
to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (p.187).
power
War arises from
how things are; from the arrangement of political affairs via jealous nation-states
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between having sovereignty and capacity^
(p.188).
to wage war.
to organise
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell contends, necessary for people
sovereignty.
is impossible
side, without war it
On the other
for war.
to preserve
Neither of these contentions is transparently clear as it stands.
The
first is damaged by civil war and the like, the second by the persistence of small
nonmilitary states.
the macro-state system is entrenched, it
Now that
easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the "realities
life,
which include self-interest,
that
peace
readily
are
arrangements
aggression,
dismissed
as
of international
It is on this basis
hatred.
fear,
is however
unrealistic,
utopian,
even
(amusingly) as extremist (cf. p.185).
Schell’s
further
nuclear "war"
that
theme
is not
war
threatens,
however,
to
undermine his case against the sovereign state; for example, his ends-means argument
and the argument based on its nuclear-war making capacity.
Fortunately the not-war
theme needs much qualification, and starts out from an erroneous characterisation of
war as ’a violent means employed by a nation to achieve an end’ (p.189): but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for war.
What is correct is that nuclear wars are
very different from previous conventional wars
(cf. WP) .
that war requires an end which nuclear "war" does not have.
to claim
Schell goes on
But nuclear attacks can
certainly have ends (even if large nuclear wars cannot be won in the older sense: but
It is also claimed that war depends on weakness; on
not all wars or games are won).
one side
’no one’s
happen,
But
being defeated
what
these
on a decision by arms.
strength fails
sorts
of
until
considerations
nuclear wars are not wars, but
But in nuclear "war
this doesn’t
both sides have been annihilated’
contribute
to
showing
is
(p.190).
again
that they are not wars of certain sorts,
not
that
e.g., not
just wars (because they fail on such criteria as reasonable prospect of success and
improvement), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
have
persisted
into
nuclear
times
does
damage
to
That conventional wars
Schell's argument
that nuclear
weapons have also ruined "conventional" wars, and his connected theme that the demise
of war
court
has left no means
of
appeal
has
mistaken propositions:
been
to finally settle disputes between nations, for the final
removed
(pp.192-193).
The
theme depends
on a
pair of
that concerning the demise of conventional war, and the idea
10
that war of
some sort has
to
be
the
final
court of appeal
between nations (for
there are other types of contests that could serve, and there is also the possibility
of more cooperative behaviour,
e.g.
joint referenda).
The
social-Darwinian assumption of Clausewicz (the 'logic of war
theme also
imports the
theme) that war has to
proceed to the technological limit — as if war and violence were thoroughly natural
activities, independent of recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.),
and ruleless activities.
On the contrary, wars are parasitic on social organisations
such as states and are governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
They are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if not a logic.
Much capital has been made not merely from "the logic of war
but from what is
now called "the logic of deterrence" and the "logic of nuclear [strategic] planning .
The message that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive arrangements the
world
is
now
entangled
in
are
perfectly
sound,
logical,
rational.
However
Logic in no way justifies the
represents little more than a cheap semantical trick.
present arrangements, or anything like them, or renders them reasonable.
logics of decision (as presented, e.g.,
be applied
planning;
in strategic
but
this
There are
for the classical case in Jeffrey) which can
they do not
yield
specific results without
desirability measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values
being pumped in, extralogically .
There are various ways these value assignments may
be determined, to meet moral requirements or not; but in nuclear strategic planning
they have invariably been settled on the basis of expediency^?.
For the most part,
however, ’logic of’ tends to be used very loosely, as a word of general commendation,
to
cover
something
like
’reasoning
and rational
considerations entering
into
the
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing with
policy or strategy of’.
the term ’logic of’, should write of 'the illogic of deterrence', for he emphasizes
its unreasonableness.
supposed
rationality
(even from a national
fail:^ yet
threat of
the
this
further and
For
of
stresses (p.213)
instance he
threatening
use
interest viewpoint)
success
of deterrence
unjustifiable and
of nuclear
the disparity between the
weapons and
the
irrationality
of actually using them should the threat
doctrine depends on the credibility of
irrational use.
the
Indeed Schell wants to go still
locate a contradiction in deterrence (e.g.
but
the argument
depends on an interesting confusion of contradiction with cancellation,
along with
the assumption that deterrence involves cancellation.
irrational, it is immoral, but it is not inconsistent.
pp.201-2);
Nuclear deterrence may well be
11
NOTES
This is a revised version of ’Appendix 1. On the fate of mankind and the earth,
according to Schell, and to Anders’ of my monograph referred to as WP, where
Several points, only touched ijpcn in this review, are further developed.
References are by way of authors’ names or else through obvious acronyms, given
in the list of references which follows.
1. The distinguishing term is from Foley’s Nuclear Prophets, where many
leading anti-nuclear prophets are assessed. One well-known prophet not so
considered there is Jaspers, presumably because his main work comes out in
entirely the wrong direction. It gives heavy philosophical attire to the
better-dead-than-red abomination. A main argument against Jaspers so
presented is simple. However bad being red might become (at present it is
debatably worse than living under some of the totalitarian regimes the
free West props up) , it still gives humans a further chance for goou
lives, since regimes fall or can be toppled: but total annihilation
removes that all-important opportunity.
But of course Jaspers does not present his position so simply. Rather his
contention is that there are circumstances where, and principles for
which, a person or group of persons ought to sacrifice even their lives.
Freedom is such: a life worth living is a free life. But the latter point
can be granted without conceding that sacrifice is a possible means to it.
While the sacrifice of one or a few lives may be a possible (if dubiously
effective) way to free lives for others, certainly the sacrifice of all
lives is not a possible route to free lives for all, since no human lives
remain.
To this extent Schell is right (on p.131) in accusing Jaspers of
an each to all fallacy.
Jasper’s idea that "the free life that they try
to save by all possible means is more than mere life or lives" breaks down
when applied to all participating people.
None can gain free lives by
extinction of all: that is not a possible route to life even.
2. A detailed comparison of Schell and Anders’ remarkably similar versions of
S2 is made in Foley Ju.
3. Should S2 appeal, as it may, to suitable communities of humans, SI will
require reformulation in similar terms; and the argument that follows
needs minor adjustment, with appropriate groups replacing individuals.
4. Thus the Last Person argument, important in environmental ethics (as HC
explains), is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting for instance the
remote death of the Sun, but assumes new urgency. It is this sort of
argument that connects environmental ethics and nuclear ethics, at a
deeper metaphysical level.
The Bomb and Bulldozer are out of the same
technological Pandora’s box.
Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only
Pandora's box.
Biological and chemical means are perhaps even more
effective, and certainly can be more selective in what gets extinguished.
Nuclear extinction would presumably require a different and more massive
exchange than is usually assumed in nuclear war scenarios, with heavy
targeting
in
particular
of
Southern
Hemispheric
internationally-recognised nuclear-free zones).
sites
(including
5. Nor do recent scientific studies claim as much.
The most intrepid of
these studies.
Erlich and others, only contends that in certain worstQ '
case circumstances, ’the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens
cannot be excluded’ (p.1299).
The study admits that, in the scenario
described,
’it seems unlikely ... Homo spaiens would be forced to
extinctions immediately’, and the difficulties indicated in the way of
long-term human survival are exaggerated.
In particular, many of the drastic effects predicted for Northern mid
latitudes are reflected in very much milder form in equivalent Southern
latitudes.
For example, temperatures for regions with maritine climates
appear likely to vary by only a few degrees and perhaps neglibly for many
agricultural purposes after 100 days (cf. Turco and others, p.1287 case
29, and p.1286).
Similarly the extent of nuclear darkness and of surface
ultraviolet radiation will be appreciably less in the South and perhaps
minor for many crucial purposes, such as photosynthesis and human outdoor
activity, after 100 dayss (cf. the data in Benton and Partridge).
No doubt some scientifically respectable sections of the environmental and
peace movements have an interest in exaggerating the probable effects of
nuclear
holocaust for life on earth, much as many statesmen and
strategists have an interest in minimizing them.
And there is certainly
substantial margin for error and for variation in conclusions drawn.
For
Crutzen (p.59) is right that ’analyses of the environmental effects of a
global nuclear war remain ... uncertain ... because of a lack of
information on various important processes [among other things] ... the
environment might become extremely hostile, because of hitherto overlooked
changes in the composition of the atmosphere’, again among other things.
Such uncertainty bodes considerable caution as rational.
The way to err
is clear.
marxist
persuasion,
determinists
of
merely
by
technological
6. Not
induction
that
if the
argues
by
straight
Hackworth, a former US general,
use
it.
US military has a weapon it will
present and future (etc.) is
7. The appalling theme that humans create past,
repeated elsewhere, e.g. p.173.
8. For detailed refutation of these assumptions, see JB.
9. Anders is here (AA pp.244-5) relying upon a version of the argument from
perserverence, criticised in detail in Routley and Griffin.
10. An interesting converse of this theme is sometimes advanced, that no one
is responsible, the whole thing is out of control.
The technological
version of this no-responsibility theme is discussed below (fn 15). More
satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangements are out of political
control, but for reasons, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclear
things going, which enable responsibility to be distributed.
The vested
interests, which bear considerable responsibility, include the military
13
weapons industry, and research and academic communities (cf. Barnaby).
Under pressures for re-election especially, politicians give in to these
powerful groups, so losing control of political processes.
The argument
is flawed at its final stage.
For many influential politicians either
belong to or represent vested interests.
Thus, though there is no doubt
some ’lack of control’, political processes tend rather to reflect vested
interests than to run out of political control.
11. Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows: ’The
self-extinction of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sane
or sensible; nevertheless, it is an act that, without quite admitting it
to ourselves, we plan in certain circumstances to commit’ (p.185).
Even
for most of the planners, extinction is presumably not part of "the plan",
but an unintended consequence; and most of us have little or no role in
the planning, enough of us even campaign against the planning.
Further
’the world ... chose the course of attempting to refashion the system of
sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons’ (p.194): the world? This
connects of course with the faulty ideological argument from defence of
fundamentals, e.g. for liberty, for the 'free enterprise
(USA) nation,
and against socialism.
12. A more detailed discussion is given in WP §8, where too the case against
the state from
nuclear dilemmqj'is elaborated.
13. Anders’ explanation is elaborated in Foley; some of the themes are
presented more straightforwardly in Martin.
The incomplete list of items
given, to be investigated in a deeper analysis of the nuclear situation,
paraphrases Foley JS p.164.
14. These motivating drives form part of a larger integrated package,
comprising maximisation drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth,
energy, speed, satisfaction,
. .., for the
newer
Enlightenment (but
Faustian) virtues.
Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for
excessive neatness and simplicity manifested) to reduce the package to one
main component, preference—satisfaction, for instance, or utility.
And
the type of drive is justified (especially for those who have it, but
worry about it) not only as virtuous, which it is not, but also as
rational, which again it is not. C Rationality, the deeply entrenched myth
has it. consists in maximisation,.a suitable mix of these virtues.
*
4
Maximisation of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation
The maximisation of self-interest
theorems and associated paradoxes,
runs
into
Newcomb
’s paraj^dox and special cases
(individual or national)
situations.
The
maximisation of power, as
such as Prisoners Dilemma
Christian-Islamic
God,
encounters
the paradox of
the
symbolised in
parallel
maximisation
of
knowledge,
paradoxes of
the
omnipotence,
or
no
consistent
objects
which
are
omnipotent
There are
omniscience.
the
The drive for maximum consistency, often taken to be
omniscient.
epitome of rationality, also leads
leads to
to inconsistency in the case of more
important theories, such as arithmetic and set theory (by virtue of
Godel’s theorem and associated limitative theorems).
15. R & D,
though directed by military requirements
and the arms race, also
14
drives the arms race.
science.
Its role is partly disguised by the myth of neutral
There have been attempts, not only by those committed to technological
determinism, to involve technology more deeply as the main, or single,
source of the nuclear fix (thus especially Mumford, in part thereby
anticipating Commoner’s parallel indictment of technology-choice in the
ecological fix).
It is technology, the mega-machine, running out of
control, that has brought us to this predicament, the nuclear abyss.
Sometimes this serves to exonerate states and their key components and
those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-ofcontrol machine; but sometimes the state itself is seen as a machine also
running out of control.
But technological determinism, like other
varieties of stronger (nonanalytic) determinism, is false.
Nuclear
technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known political
dispute involving distinguished scientists; it was deliberated, funded and
promoted, while other alternatives were not.
Damaging technologies of the nuclear age were not inevitable, but
deliberately chosen by certain components of the large nation-states. And
much as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be
persisted with.
The fashionable inevitability/determinism themes admit
not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting
with often recalcitrant technologies.
They also admit of being made to
look ridiculous.
If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolution,
then if it functions (as it probably will, a matter also determined), it
will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined.
That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionary place in human population
regulation!
16. This reformulation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main
qualification can be inferred from Schell’s context.
17. Selecting the usual game theory setting sees to this almost automatically;
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or her own
advantage. Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that ’the logic of
deterrence’ is based on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.
(ar
18. Even the
irrationality of /retaliatory * first-strike)
use has been
contested, e.g. it has been wishfully thougnt that America will rise like
a phoenix from the radioactive ashes.
There is moreover a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the "missing
motive" for retaliating to a large strike (p.204), namely, not a
retributive one, but an ideological one: eliminate the prospect of the
future dominance of the rival ideology. Such a motive has been offered -tor
the conjecturAL targeting of Latin America.
19. An analogous confusion of negation with cancellation or obliteration
appears in recent US "star-war" thinking, where US missiles are supposed
to "negate" incoming USSR missiles.
Moral
paradoxes of deterrence
take a different direction.
For although
15
involving negation, they depend upon perhaps questionable interconnexions
of intensional functors.
One type of paradox (considered in WP §5, where
the immorality of deterrence is argued) derives from a policy of credibly
threatening war without however intending to proceed to war, though
credible threats [appear to] imply an intention to proceed. Another style
derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles
when the persistent practice, which Implies an intention, is to increase
the number.
This paradox is technically removed - how satisfactorily is
another matter - by a distinction between longer-term aims and immediate
practice,
a
time-honoured
method
of
removing
contradictions
by
conveniently discerned temporal distinctions.
REFERENCES
G. Anders,
Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, C.H.
Beck, Munchen, 1956; referred to as
AA.
G. Anders,
Zeitenende:
Endzeitand
Gedanken
atomaren
zur
Situation,
C.H.
Beck,
Munchen, 1972; referred to as AE.
7
'
F. Barnaby,
’Will
be
there
a
War' ,//» Aus tralia
Nuclear
Nuclear
War,
J
(ed.
M. Denborough) , Croom Helm, Australia, 1983?
I.J.
Benton
and G.W.
Partridge,
’"Twilight
at Noon"
overstated’,
13
Ambio
(1984)
49-51.
B. Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man
P.J. Crutzen,
Technology, Knopf, New York, 1972.
’Darkness after a nuclear war’, Ambio 13 (1984) 52-4.
M. Denborough (ed.), Australian & Nuclear War, Croom Helm, Australia, 1983.
P.R. Erlich and others,
’Long-term biological consequences of nuclear war’,
Science
222 (1983) 1293-1300.
G. Foley,
’Jonathan
Schell:
Genius
-
Philosopher
-
Rewrite
Man’,
typescript,
Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS.
G. Foley, Nuclear Prophets. The True and the False, typescript, Brisbane, 1983.
16
in
’A Soldier’s Refragfljt’, , Australia
D. Hackworth,
Croom Helm, Australia, 1983
vi^vC
Nuclear War,
(ed. M. Denborough),
/zor-/z
»
K. Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, (trans. E.B. Ashton), University of Chicago Press,
1961.
B. Martin,
Strategy Against
Roots
Grass
War,
Freedom Press,
1984, "ter
Nottingham,
a-p-peax.
L. Mumford,
The Myth of
the Machine,
2 vols.,
Harcourt
Brifce
,
New York,
1970.
G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingencies 4. Nuclear Disasters, A Report to the
Commission for the Future, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1982.
R. Routley and
N. Griffin,
'Unravelling
the meanings of life’, Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy #3, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.
R. Routley,
Meinong’s
Exploring
Jungle
and
Beyond,
Research
School
of
Social
Sciences, Australian National University, 1980; referred to as JB.
R. Routley, War and Peace I. On the Ethics of Large-Scale Nuclear War and Nuclear
deterrence and the Political Fall-Out, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy #5, Australian National University, 1984j
R. and
V. Routley,
Philosophy
(ed.
'Human
chauvinism
D. Manujson and
and
Environmental
others),
Research
ethics’,
School of
in
Environmental
Social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as HC.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Knopf, New York, 1982; referred to as S./F.
R.P.
Turco
and
others,
'Nuclear
winter:
global
consequences
explosions’ , Science 222 (1983) 1283-92.
M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
of
multiple nuclear
Appendix 1: On the fate of mankind and tht?_ _ea£_t]i, according to
SchelT~and Anders.
Nuclear prophets and prophetic rubbish. The extinction assumption.
Common emerging themes of Schell and Anders. The extravagant anthro
pocentric assumption, and some of what is wrong with it. Second death
dismissed. The universality of peril. The alleged universality of
responsibility: the Pogo theme. The correct, but undeveloped, whole
earth theme. Ultimately Schell offers little hope and superficiality.
Nuclear war is war. The logic and illogic of deterrence.
METAPHYSICAL FALL-OUT FROM THE NUCLEAR PREDICAMENT*
A series of nuclear prophets has produced a series of philosophically-oriented
works on nuclear war.^ The series is important for its deeper penetration into the
main nuclear predicament, down to metaphysical levels;
with the
widely
in this the series contrasts
transient superficialities of much of the political commentary.
circulated
influential
and
text
the
of
series
is
undoubtedly that
uncannily
some
of
the
the apparently
deep phenomenological
So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and Anders can often
themes of Anders.
be considered together.
their work.
redeploys
of
This skillful piece of
slightest of the "prophets", Schell’s The Fate of the Earth.
media-philosophy
The most
To criticise their assumptions is not of course to belittle
In particular, Schell’s little book, for all its political shortcomings,
is having a significant and much needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear
It is especially valuable for its
arrangements.
the
aftermath
of
nuclear
vivid and horrifying scenarios of
Unfortunately
attack.
it
also
exhibits,
both
philosophically and factually, severe defects.
Some of
’without
is
it
simply rubbish:
to
take
one
example,
consider
the
... a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
nothing else
claim that
species
....
that we undertake together can make any practical or moral sense . . . ’
(p.173, rearranged).
This should certainly be rejected philosophically; for there is
no separate moral issue of such overwhelming importance that all other issues become
Moral
morally neutral.
compared
with
more
issues remain moral issues: they don’t cease to be so when
important
elsewhere, e.g. p.130).
moral
issues
(as
Schell
effectively
acknowledges
And the claim should be questioned on more factual grounds.
Humans form a highly resilient species, like rats a survivor species, unlikely to be
entirely exterminated under presently-arranged nuclear holocausts.
The example was selected however because it leads into, indeed presupposes, two
of the major defective assumptions in the work of Schell and Anders:
51.
Nuclear war will eliminate life, human life at least, on earth (the extinction
assumption); and
52.
value,
In
the absence of humans,
very many notions,
not only
those of morality and
but those of time and space for example, make no sense; or, to put it into a
form,
for their
X 2
actual human context (the extravagant anthropocentric assumption).
more
sympathetic
philosophical
these
notions
depend
sense
on an
2
S2 which give Anders’ and Schell’s work some of its apparent
It is applications of
and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the
philosophical depth,
paradoxical propositions generated.
But the frequent applications of S2 depend
essentially on SI.3 For without total extinction there will be humans about, to make
past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
Granted that assumption SI
the
technological
means appear
extinctgranted
the
prospect
is by no means ruled out as a real possibility, as
available to
of
make it
nuclear
large-scale
to render Homo sapiens
true,
war
does
threaten
leading
Even so SI appears unlikely in
centres of Western civilization with obliteration.
the light of present - admittedly inadequate - information.
Even in Canada, which
lies on the polar route of Soviet missiles, human life should be able to continue in
certain northern areas (according to Canadian medical studies).
SI
is
extremely flimsy.
for example,
It depends,
Schell s argument to
on an unjustified extrapolation
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
North Zunerican thing, of contracting the world to North America.
(All that matters,
all worthwhile civilization, is in USA, or at least, to be more charitable, in North
America and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e. its human population will be
eliminated in
the nuclear
holocaust.)
Some of
the data
Schell relies
upon,
for
example the effect of nuclear explosions on the ozone layer, was significantly out of
date even when he wrote.
Other effects than ozone destruction, such as variations in
ultraviolent radiation and temperature levels, apparently extrapolate even less well
from North
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster produced at
to South.
about the same time as Schell’s, by Preddey and others,
indicates that parts of the
Southern Hemisphere,
latitudes of
such as
New Zealand
and
southern
Latin America
could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges.
Doomsday prophets
belated) scientific
may appear
forecasts of
to have
gained new
purchase through
recent
a nuclear winter following upon nuclear war.
(if
But
although these forecasts certainly add a new, and alarming, ecological dimension to
the very damaging consequences of large-scale nuclear war, they do not sustain the
extinction assumption3.
On the available evidence, human life will continue, though
no
doubt with new complications and
mid-latitude coastal
life will go on,
for example
in many southern
regions outside zones of radiation fall-out.
More generally,
simplifications,
though likely seriously and irreversibly impoverished through loss
of valuable nonhuman systems and creatures.
Nuclear prophets usually see the world (though with most of it carried along) as
already set
, in crucial respects, on the route to nuclear catastrophe.
Much of the
3
way taken is seen as both inevitable and irreversible.
insist
upon
unlearning"
of
"impossibility
the
Thus both Anders and Schell
means of
the
manufacturing nuclear
It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee, would furnish a good
bombs.
medium for unlearning nuclear technology (something very like this emerges from van
Daniken’s
of an
theory
"high"
earlier
they would
of S2,
In virtue
technology).
however exclude such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly that
the notion
longer
no
made
sense.
But what
message
is
the
-
as
if
impossibility-of-unlearning
eventual
use
of
the
technology
they
to suggest
again want
learnt
having
the
of
inevitability
with
the
development
and
all
the means
determined, and manufacture and use ceased to be a matter of choice.
views have
been advanced.
technological advances
cases of
But
are not
they
that have
been
not
tenable.
Certainly such
are many
There
taken advantage of,
was
else
examples of
there are even
and
technological developments that have been manufactured but not marketed or
used. There is not something very special about nuclear apparatus that puts it beyond
the scope of such generalisations.
Both Schell and Anders do claim that there are very special things about nuclear
weapons, notably that they do not allow "experiments".
Even if this were true just
of nuclear weapons - and it is certainly not of smaller weapons - it would not rebut
the
argument against
previous
inevitability
the
of nuclear weapons.
And
in
fact
Anders and (even) Schell hedge their claims about testing, and the limits to nuclear
work,
scientific
large-scale
to
weapons
and
independent
experiments which
interfere with the observers and those outside the "laboratories".
latched onto major points:
cumulative
such
effects,
of
effects
as
in particular,
fireballs
or
Again they have
we have at present no way of testing the
wreapons
in
concert,
firestorms,
or
changes
nuclear
large
do not
e.g.
in
for
more
holistic
atmospheric
coupled
circulation and
radiation fields.
enough with
these crucial effects must remain largely untested and hypothetical
it,
in character.
Short of a large-scale nuclear war,
and likely
Nonetheless enough data can be assembled to carry through informative
modellings, which point to the improbability of SI, and so undermine applications of
S2.
The
Schell
penetration
and
Anders,
of human
but
is
a
chauvinism,
product
of
as
in S2,
Western
is not
something peculiar
philosophy,
European
to
philosophy
especially.
This chauvinism is unfortunately alive and still well, Anders’ version
of
just one striking illustration (cf. AA p.252ff.).
S2
being
penetrated Anglo-American philosophy,
and
has
been extended
It has also deeply
under the
influence of
Wittgenstein’s work, where even the necessary truths of mathematics are taken to be a
product
of
human
conventions,
and
would
vanish
with
humans!
Such
are
alleged
4
implications of extinction: but the fact is that the truths of arithmetic are in no
way dependent on the existence of humans or humanoids or of gods or giraffes.
with necessary truths and falsehoods so with contingent ones:
As
very many propositions
about the world do not depend in any way for their truth-value or content on humans
or their communities.
In
human
Schell,
obnoxious Kantian
form.
dished
is
chauvinism
and
Thoughts
up
in
propositions,
a
particularly
time
powerful
history and
tenses,
and
and
memories, values and morality, all depend on the life-giving presence of human beings
future or merely potential humans are not enough,
- past or
that are not
persons
Thus, according to Schell (p.140, e.g.),
humans are certainly not enough.
’... the
thought "Humanity is now extinct" is an impossible one for a rational person, because
as
it
soon as
is, we are not.
In imagining any other event, we look ahead
moment that is still within the stream of human time,
... ’.
a
later
rational
erroneously denies that:
present, and future ...’
into past,
divides time
may
well
be
to
able
ordering
time
it
have
Schell
truly.
there is no "later" ’outside the human tenses of past,
(p.140)7.
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that
present and future’: so annihilation cannot
But it is simply false that the tenses are human;
(p.143).
local
creature
The thought is however
Though we no doubt have it
perfectly possible for humans; we can have it right now.
falsely,
to a
(perceptible
to
many
creatures
’come to pass’
the tenses depend on a
other
than humans,
but
not
depending at all on that perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to
to now (also a human-independent location, evident to other creatures,
the present,
and borne witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
And annihilation may
also too easily come to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon earth.
Before that
there was a time before there were any human beings.
Anders’ argument for the demise of time,
even what has been’,
is also
that
’what has been will no longer be
explicitly (and narrowly)
’for what
verif icationist:
would the difference be between what has only been and what has never been,
is no
remain
one
remember the things
to
many
sorts
organisms would
of
difference;
be different.
that have been’
for
one,
Temporal
the
(AA p.245).
history
themes do not lack
if there
There would
still
many
other
recorded
in
’legitimacy because not
registered [or verified] by anyone’; truth, significance, still less meaning, are not
matters of human verification.
Here,
as
elsewhere,
the
human
chauvinism
is
mixed
with
other
distorting
metaphysical assumptions of our Western heritage, in particular, verificationism and
5
ontological assumptions (to the effect that there are severe difficulties in talking
about
exist)0.
not
does
what
Thus,
Schell
example,
for
takes
over
dubious
metaphysics from Freud, according to whom "it is indeed impossible to imagine our own
death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still
present
spectators"
as
refuting
(p.138).
fact
In
first.
the
clause goes
second
The
there
is
great
no
situations which undermine both Freud’s
counterfactual
a good
distance
difficulty
claims.
in
towards
describing
The same goes
for
Schell’s extensions of human chauvinism into one of its main traditional strongholds,
value theory:
evil,
'... the simple and basic fact [sic!]
or
service
(p.171).
lamenting
harm,
rejoicing
or
that before there can be good or
there
be
must
life’,
human
life
These are no facts, but deeply entrenched philosophical dogmas (which have
been exposed and criticised elsewhere, e.g. LIC).
Naturally many things will disappear with the extinction of humans: trivially
there will be no more humans (unless humans re-evolve or are recreated), and thus no
more human communities, human institutions, human activities, human emotions, and so
But it is already going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that there will
forth.
’no thought,
accordingly be
no love,
sacrifice, no image, no song
no struggle, no pain, no hope, no comfort, no
For there are, and may continue to exist, other
...’.
creatures than humans with emotion, struggles,
songs,
...
Nor will the ending of
.
all such human ventures, if it comes to pass, show that all past human ventures have
been 'all in vain', meaningless, and already so to say dead.
The decay of the solar
system, or the heat-death of the universe even, will not show that worthwhile human
9
activities were not worthwhile.
Several of the other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from
their shared assumptions SI
of a Second Death,
(in Revelations)
under
SI,
rendered
is
and S2.
reckoned
meaningless
a
and
species
and
all
extinction came
redeployed
'second death',
already
already 'overhung with death'
'a second death',
It is these that underlie the biblical notion
'seems
(S p.166).
because by
to
to
pass,
generations
the
(S
stronger
be
Thus,
not merely one's own but
future
by both.
'The death of mankind',
S2 and
dead'
(AA
SI remaining
p.244,
S p.166)
life is
and is
too, more trivially, a person faces
in addition that greater death of the
p.166,
p.115).
However
even
notion would not be vindicated,
if
nuclear
because
it
depends on the fallacious inference to the meaninglessness of preceding life and on
the very
questionable representation
of. this
meaninglessness as
a sort
of death.
There is no such Second Death: creatures die just once, perhaps all at about the same
time.
The idea of a Second Death lacks even a solid metaphysical base.
6
together with the minor principle
From SI,
doesn’t differ
in degree,
comes
extinction being an absolute
that
the universality of
peril
theme that
we are all
exposed to peril in the same degree’, which is accordingly ’disguised’ and ’difficult
to
recognise’,
with
In
SI.
situation,
there is no contrast (AE p.64;
because
any
event,
not
Indians of
the
peoples
all
Germans of northern Europe.
ihis theme falls
imperilled
equally
are
southern Patagonia
S p.150).
being rather
by
nuclear
the
better placed
than the
Nor are all people equally locked into the situation or
incapacitated by it; the prospects are different in different countries and places.
Nor,
Schell
likewise,
contrast
(in
all
are
to
people
equally responsible,
a
repeatedly infiltrates.
Anders)
pernicious
This
is
the
theme which
Pogo theme,
according to which
S3.
Responsibility for the present nuclear predicament (fiasco, really) distributes
onto everybody, it belongs to every human in the world.
But
there
is also, mixed
a weaker more
in,
plausible claim that gives lie
to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
An especially blatant example of the Pogo themeH runs as follows: ’...
the
world’s
leaders
political
...
though they
now menace
weapons, do so only with our permission, and even at our bidding.
true for democracies’
(pp.229-30).
positive
pose
the
since we
sense,
threat of it,
At least, this is
theme is elaborated elsewhere:
The
... we are
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true
the authors of that extinction.
in a
with nuclear
the earth
pay for extinction and
support the governments that
the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world it is
while for
true only in the negative sense that they fail try to do anything about the danger/
But this is more of an argument indicting representative government, by
(p.152).
revealing
insensitivity
its
unresponsiveness
and
to
many
of
the
populace
they
allegedly govern, not to mention those affected by its activities who are not
represented at all (namely foreigners).
But Schell conveniently neglects all such
’... we are potential mass killers.
points:
that it makes of all of us underwriters of
(p.152).
The moral cost of nuclear armaments is
the slaughter of hundreds of millions
And again ’[as] perpetrators ... we convey the steady message ... that life
not only is not sacred but is worthless;
(p.153).
everyone to be killed’
that
... .it had been judged acceptable for
Little of this is true.
Those who campaign against
nuclear arrangements, vote against nuclear—committed parties so far as is possible,
destruction,
and
responsibility for the nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
Nor
and
the
are
like,
does responsibility
certainly
— or
everyone
attributes
to
decisions
taken
—
not
the
the unlikely
fall
in "liberal
on
authors
opinions as
those
democracies"
who
have
of
to
done
potential
worth
Schell
less.
even by representatives
illegitimately
Responsibility
for
(in the unlikely
7
event of
this happening
in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be
traced back to those represented, since among many other things, a representative is
only
representative of a
party which offers
a complex and often ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero or more policies of this package.
Only in the (uncommon) event of a clear single issue referendum, which is adopted,
still of a qualified sort, be sheeted home, to those who voted
can responsibility,
for it, not to everyone in the community.
While S3 is false, there is an important
related theme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nuclear situation
generates responsibilities for every socially involved person.
When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying themes, part
of what results is decidedly along the right lines; namely
S4.
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of us] have
failed to change our
pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out of step
with the nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc. (the whole earth theme).
Though Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the
frequently immoral purposes for which the state is used, unfortunately he often loses
sight of
this important
arrives
at
state which is,
the
critique of
theme (indicated pp.187-8).
the conclusion
that
by and
large,
Yet S4 forms part of Schell s
scattered and
the nation-state has outlasted
fragmentary.
Schell
its usefulness,
and
that new political institutions more ’consonant with the global reality’ are required
as a matter of urgency.
But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out
viable alternatives.12 At most he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards
the Way Up to world political control.
Solutions to
way,
the nuclear dilemma come,
from the Top Down;
(cf. p.230).
those
if not easily, in a similar simplistic
who can must appeal
to the Top,
to those who govern
Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and limitations,
such as SALT, and in world government,
especially p.227,
bottom paragraph).
through the United Nations (see p.225ff. and
Given the record of
these organisations and
treaties, the negotiations and regulators, it is by now a pathetic faith.
Nor is a
serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the
origins of nuclear technology,
to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider
effective changes to military-industrial organisation and ways of life.
But
some of
the requisite
deeper analysis of
the nuclear situation and, more
The roots of
generally, of the roots of war can be found in Anders and elsewhere.
the nuclear predicament are not confined to the ideologically —aligned arrangements of
nation-states,
but
penetrate
also
into
key
components
of
those
states,
their
8
and their supporting bureaucracies.
their controlling classes,
military,
And both
within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for the arrangements, and in
key components
of
states,
the
science
for
super-states, to be achieved through military-oriented
in several
enables
domination,
and
which
involves
superiority by the
and
technology,
forms.
interrelated
surplus
the drive
Thus the push for
the accompanying privilege).
power and domination (and, often,
[nuclear]
feature is
a conspicuous and crucial
product
can be
accumulated
at home
(from
where enough
large nation-state,
is the
The main power-base
from abroad,
and
and
bled
from
nature) to proceed with military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found the highj
15
technology research and development means to ever more expendable powei and energy*
prospect of nuclear
war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the mam power-base, the nation
state; it is also important to alter key components of the state, and, more
sweepingly, to remove trouble-making patterns embedded in all these social and
In changing
the
structural
political arrangements,
in
state
relations,
political
arrangements
chauvinistic relations .
relations,
but
in
the
eliminate
namely patterns of domination,
organisation,
human-animal
to
patterns manifested not only
relations,
white-coloured
human-nature
relations;
to
remove,
male-female
in
short,
However not everything needs to be accomplished at once; and
the cluster of damaging power and domination relations tied into war can be tackled
And there the problems can largely be narrowed to certain problems of
separately.
states and certain key components of states.
analysis he does offer of the problem with states, Schell repeats the
familiar false contrast of state expediency with morality, as a contrast between
The teaching that 'the end
"raison d’etat" and the Socratic—Christian ethics.
justifies the means is the basis on which governments, in all times, have licensed
In what
themselves
to
commit crimes of
every
sort’
(p.134).
So
'states may do virtually
Schell then argues however, that
extinction nullifies end-means justification by destroying every end; but again the
argument is far from sound, and depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
with ontological
assumptions.
Even if all humans were
extinguished (as under SI)
ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animals and extraterrestrials,
The ends-means argument can however be repaired to remove such
actual or not.
objections: instead it is claimed that extinction nullifies ends-means justification
by frustrating the realisation of every relevant end - meaning by 'relevant', in this
context, those ends the realisation of which the state appeals to in justification of
I6
its nuclear policies.
A nuclear war, even without human extinction but with severe
enough losses, would undoubtedly frustrate the realisation of relevant state ends.
9
So
even
from
an
perspective,
expediency
policies
super-state
open
are
severe
to
criticism, for example as motivationally irrational in the nuclear risks taken.
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
Schell leaves us in
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the right and
no doubt.
power to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (p.187).
War arises from
how things are; from the arrangement of political affairs via jealous nation-states
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between having sovereignty and capacity
(p.188).
to wage war.
to organise
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell contends, necessary for people
for war.
sovereignty.
On the other
side, without war it
is impossible
to preserve
The
Neither of these contentions is transparently clear as it stands.
first is damaged by civil war and the like, the second by the persistence of small
the macro-state
Now that
nonmilitary states.
system is entrenched, it is however
easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the "realities
life,
which include self-interest,
that
peace
are
arrangements
aggression,
readily
fear,
hatred.
as
dismissed
of international
is on this basis
It
unrealistic,
utopian,
even
(amusingly) as extremist (cf. p.L85).
Schell’s further
theme
nuclear
that
"war"
is not
war threatens,
however,
to
undermine his case against the sovereign state; for example, his ends-means argument
and the argument based on its nuclear-war making capacity.
theme needs much qualification,
Fortunately the not-war
and starts out from an erroneous characterisation of
war as ’a violent means employed by a nation to achieve an end’ (p.189): but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for war.
very different
What is correct is that nuclear wars are
from previous conventional wars
(cf. WP).
Schell goes on
that war requires an end which nuclear "war" does not have.
to claim
But nuclear attacks can
certainly have ends (even if large nuclear wars cannot be won in the older sense: but
It is also claimed that war depends on weakness; on
not all wars or games are won).
one side being defeated
’no
happen,
But
what
one’s
these
on a decision by arms.
strength
sorts
of
fails
war
this doesn t
until both sides have been annihilated’
considerations
nuclear wars are not wars, but
But in nuclear
contribute
to
showing
is
(p.190).
again
that they are not wars of certain sorts,
not
that
e.g., not
just wars (because they fail on such criteria as reasonable prospect of success anu
improvement), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
that conventional wars
have
argument
persisted
into
nuclear
times
does
damage
to
Schell’s
that nuclear
weapons have also ruined "conventional" wars, and his connected theme that the demise
of war
court
has left no means
of
appeal
has
mistaken propositions:
been
to finally settle disputes between nations, for the final
removed
(pp. 192—193) •
The
theme depends
on a
pair of
that concerning the demise of conventional war, and the idea
10
that
war of
some
sort has
to be
final "court of appeal" between nations (for
the
there are other types of contests that could serve, and there is also the possibility
of more cooperative behaviour,
joint referenda).
e.g.
imports the
The theme also
social-Darwinian assumption of Clausewicz (the "logic of war
that war has to
theme)
proceed to the technological limit ~ as if war and violence were thoroughly natural
activities, independent of recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.),
On the contrary, wars are parasitic on social organisations
and ruleless activities.
such as states and are governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
They are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if not a logic.
Much capital has been made not merely from "the logic of war
but from what is
now called "the logic of deterrence" and the "logic of nuclear [strategic] planning .
The message that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive arrangements the
world
is
entangled
now
in
are
perfectly
sound,
logical,
represents little more than a cheap semantical trick.
rational.
however this
Logic in no way justifies the
present arrangements, or anything like them, or renders them reasonable.
There are
logics of decision (as presented, e.g., for the classical case in Jeffrey) which can
be applied
in
strategic
planning;
but
yield specific results without
they do not
desirability measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values
being pumped in, extralogically .
There are various ways these value assignments may
be determined, to meet moral requirements or not; but in nuclear strategic planning
they have invariably been settled on the basis of expediency
however,
to
cover
something
like
’reasoning
(even from a national
fail:18 yet
threat of
further and
of
stresses (p.213)
threatening
use
interest viewpoint)
the success
this
considerations entering
into
the
’the illogic of deterrence’, for he emphasizes
For instance he
unreasonableness.
rationality
rational
and
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing with
the term ’logic of’, should write of
supposed
lor the most pait,
’logic of’ tends to be used very loosely, as a word of general commendation,
policy or strategy of’.
its
.
of deterrence
unjustifiable and
the disparity between the
weapons and
of nuclear
the
irrationality
of actually using them should the threat
doctrine depends on the credibility of
irrational use.
the
Indeed Schell wants to go still
locate a contradiction in deterrence (e.g.
but
the argument
depends on an interesting confusion of contradiction with cancellation,
along with
the assumption that deterrence involves cancellation.
irrational, it is immoral, but it is not inconsistent.
pp.z-01~2>;
Nuclear deterrence may well be
ft
NOTES
This is a revised version of ’Appendix 1. On the fate of mankind and the earth,
according to Schell, and to Anders' of my monograph referred to as WP, where
several points, only touched upon in this review, are further developed.
References are by way of authors' names or else through obvious acronyms, given
in the list of references which follows.
. The distinguishing term is from Foley's Nuclear Prophets, where many
leading anti-nuclear prophets are assessed. One well-known prophet not so
considered there is Jaspers, presumably because his main work comes out in
entirely the wrong direction. It gives heavy philosophical attire to the
better-dead-than-red abomination. A main argument against Jaspers so
presented is simple. However bad being red might become (at present it is
debatably worse than living under some of the totalitarian regimes the
free West props up), it still gives humans a further chance for good
lives, since regimes fall or can be toppled: but total annihilation
removes that all-important opportunity.
But of course Jaspers does not present his position so simply. Rather his
contention is that there are circumstances where, and principles for
which, a person or group of persons ought to sacrifice even their lives.
Freedom is such: a life worth living is a free life. But the latter point
can be granted without conceding that sacrifice is a possible means to it.
While the sacrifice of one or a few lives may be a possible (if dubiously
effective) way to free lives for others, certainly the sacrifice of all
lives is not a possible route to free lives for all, since no human lives
remain.
To this extent Schell is right (on p.131) in accusing Jaspers of
an each to all fallacy.
Jasper's idea that "the free life that they try
to save by all possible means is more than mere life or lives" breaks down
when applied to all participating people.
None can gain free lives by
extinction of all: that is not a possible route to life even.
. A detailed comparison of Schell and Anders' remarkably similar versions of
S2 is made in Foley JS.
. Should S2 appeal, as it may, to suitable communities of humans, SI will
require reformulation in similar terms; and the argument that follows
needs minor adjustment, with appropriate groups replacing individuals.
. Thus the Last Person argument, important in environmental ethics (as HC
explains), is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting for instance the
remote death of the Sun, but assumes new urgency.
It is this sort of
argument that connects environmental ethics and nuclear ethics, at a
deeper metaphysical level.
The Bomb and Bulldozer are out of the same
technological Pandora's box.
Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only
Pandora's box.
Biological and chemical means are perhaps even more
effective, and certainly can be more selective in what gets extinguished.
Nuclear extinction would presumably require a different and more massive
exchange than is usually assumed in nuclear war scenarios, with heavy
12
targeting
in
particular
of
Southern Hemispheric
internationally-recognised nuclear-free zones).
sites
(including
5. Nor do recent scientific studies claim as much.
The most intrepid of
these studies, Erlich and others, only contends that in certain worst-case
circumstances, ’the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens cannot
be excluded’ (p.1299).
The study admits that, in the scenario described,
’it seems unlikely ... Homo spaiens would be forced to extinctions
immediately ’, and the difficulties indicated in the way of long-term human
survival are exaggerated.
In particular, many of the drastic effects predicted for Northern mid
latitudes are reflected in very much milder form in equivalent Southern
latitudes.
For example, temperatures for regions with maritine climates
appear likely to vary by only a few degrees and perhaps neglibly for many
agricultural purposes after 100 days (cf. Turco and others, p.1237 case
29, and p.1286).
Similarly the extent of nuclear darkness and of surface
ultraviolet radiation will be appreciably less in the South and perhaps
minor for many crucial purposes, such as photosynthesis and human outdoor
activity, after 100 dayss (cf. the data in Benton and Partridge).
No doubt some scientifically respectable sections of the environmental and
peace movements have an interest in exaggerating the probable effects of
nuclear holocaust
for life on earth, much as many statesmen and
strategists have an interest in minimizing them.
And there is certainly
substantial margin for error and for variation in conclusions drawn.
For
Crutzen (p.59) is right that ’analyses of the environmental effects of a
global nuclear war remain
. . . uncertain .. . because of a lack of
information on various important processes [among other things] ... The
environment might become extremely hostile, because of hitherto overlooked
changes in the composition of the atmosphere*, again among other things.
Such uncertainty bodes considerable caution as rational.
The way to err
is clear.
6. Not
merely
by
technological
determinists
of
marxist
persuasion.
Hackworth, a former US general, argues by straight induction that if the
US military has a weapon it will use it.
7. The appalling theme that humans create past, present and future (etc.) is
repeated elsewhere, e.g. p.173.
8. For detailed refutation of these assumptions, see JB.
9. Anders is here (AA pp.244-5) relying upon a version of the argument from
perserverence, criticised in detail in Routley and Griffin.
10. An interesting converse of this theme is sometimes advanced, that no one
is responsible, the whole thing is out of control.
The technological
version of this no-responsibility theme is discussed below (fn 15). More
satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangements are out of political
control, but for reasons, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclear
things going, which enable responsibility to be distributed.
The vested
interests, which bear considerable responsibility, include the military
13
weapons industry, and research and academic communities (cf. Barnaby).
Under pressures for re-election especially, politicians give in to these
powerful groups, so losing control of political processes.
The argument
is flawed at its final stage.
For many influential politicians either
belong to or represent vested interests.
Thus, though there is no doubt
some ’lack of control’, political processes tend rather to reflect vested
interests than to run out of political control.
11. Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows: ’The
self-extinction of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sane
or sensible; nevertheless, it is an act that, without quite admitting it
to ourselves, we plan in certain circumstances to commit’ (p.185).
Even
for most of the planners, extinction is presumably not part of "the plan",
but an unintended consequence; and most of us have little or no role in
the planning, enough of us even campaign against the planning.
Further
'the world ... chose the course of attempting to refashion the system of
sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons' (p.194): the world? This
connects of course with the faulty ideological argument from defence of
fundamentals, e.g. for liberty, for the "free enterprise" (USA) nation,
and against socialism.
12. A more detailed discussion is given in WP ^8, where too the case against
the state from nuclear dilemmas is elaborated.
13. Anders' explanation is elaborated in Foley; some of the themes are
presented more straightforwardly in Martin.
The incomplete list of items
given, to be investigated in a deeper analysis of the nuclear situation,
paraphrases Foley JS p.164.
14. These motivating drives form part of a larger integrated package,
comprising maximisation drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth,
energy, speed, satisfaction,
..., for the "newer" Enlightenment (but
Faustian) virtues.
Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for
excessive neatness and simplicity manifested) to reduce the package to one
main component, preference-satisfaction, for instance, or utility.
And
the type of drive is justified (especially for those who have it, but
worry about it) not only as virtuous, which it is not, but also as
rational, which again it is not.
Rationality, the deeply entrenched myth
has it, consists in maximisation, of a suitable mix of these virtues.
Maximisation of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation
The maximisation of self-interest
theorems and associated paradoxes
(individual or national) runs into Newcomb's paradox and special cases of
The maximisation of power, as
it such as Prisoners Dilemma situations.
the
Christian-lslamic
God,
encounters the paradox of
symbolised in
the
parallel
maximisation
of
knowledge,
paradoxes of
omnipotence,
or
There
are
no
consistent
objects
which
arc
omnipotent
omniscience.
the
The
drive
for
maximum
consistency,
often
taken
to
be
omniscient.
epitome of rationality, also leads to inconsistency in the case of more
important theories, such as arithmetic and set theory (by virtue of
Godel’s theorem and associated limitative theorems).
15. R & D,
though directed by military requirements and the arms race, also
14
drives the arms race.
science.
Its role is partly disguised by the myth of neutral
There have been attempts, not only by those committed to technological
determinism, to involve technology more deeply as the main, or single,
source of the nuclear fix (thus especially Mumford, in part thereby
anticipating Commoner’s parallel indictment of technology-choice in the
ecological fix).
It is technology, the mega-machine, running out of
control, that has brought us to this predicament, the nuclear abyss.
Sometimes this serves to exonerate states and their key components and
those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-ofcontrol machine; but sometimes the state itself is seen as a machine also
running out of control.
But technological determinism, like other
varieties of stronger (nonanalytlc) determinism, is false.
Nuclear
technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known political
dispute involving distinguished scientists; it was deliberated, funded and
promoted, while other alternatives were not.
Damaging technologies of the nuclear age were not inevitable, but
deliberately chosen by certain components of the large nation-states. And
much as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be
persisted with.
The fashionable inevitability/determinism themes admit
not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting
with often recalcitrant technologies.
They also admit of being made to
look ridiculous.
If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolution,
then if it functions (as it probably will, a matter also determined), it
will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined.
That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionary place in human population
regulation!
16. This reformulation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main
qualification can be inferred from Schell’s context.
17. Selecting the usual game theory setting sees to this almost automatically;
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or her own
advantage. Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that ’the logic of
deterrence’ is based on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.
18. Even the irrationality of retaliatory (or first-strike) use has been
contested, e.g. it has been wishfully thought that America will rise like
a phoenix from the radioactive ashes.
There is moreover a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the "missing
motive" for
retaliating to a large strike (p.204), namely, not a
retributive one, but an ideological one: eliminate the prospect of the
future dominance of the rival ideology.
Such a motive has been offered
for the conjectured targeting of Latin America.
19. An analogous confusion of negation with cancellation or obliteration
appears in recent US "star-war" thinking, where US missiles are supposed
to "negate" incoming USSR missiles.
Moral
paradoxes of deterrence
take a different direction.
For although
involving negation, they depend upon perhaps questionable interconnexions
of intensional functors.
One type of paradox (considered in WP §5, where
the immorality of deterrence is argued) derives from a policy of credibly
threatening war without however intending to proceed to war, though
credible threats [appear to] imply an intention to proceed. Another style
derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles
when the persistent practice, which implies an intention, is to increase
the number.
This paradox is technically removed - how satisfactorily is
another matter - by a distinction between longer-term aims and immediate
practice,
a
time-honoured
method
of
removing
contradictions
by
conveniently discerned temporal distinctions.
REFERENCES
G. Anders,
AA.
Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, C.H.
G. z\nders, Endzeitand Zeitenende: Gedanken
Munchen, 1972; referred to as AE.
zur
Beck, Munchen, 1956; referred to as
atomaren
F. Barnaby, ’Will there be a Nuclear War’, in Australia
M. Denborough), Croom Helm, Australia, 1983, 2-37.
I.J.
Benton
49-51.
and G.W.
Partridge,
’"Twilight
at Noon"
Situation,
and
Beck,
C.H.
War,
Nuclear
overstated', Ambio
(ed.
(1984)
13
B. Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology, Knopf, New York, 1972.
P.J. Crutzen, ’Darkness after a nuclear war', Ambio 13 (1984) 52-4.
M. Denborough (ed.), Australian & Nuclear War, Croom Helm, Australia, 1983.
P.R. Erlich and others, ’Long-term biological consequences of nuclear war’,
222 (1983) 1293-1300.
G. Foley,
'Jonathan Schell: Genius Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS.
Philosopher
-
Rewrite
Man',
Science
typescript,
G. Foley, Nuclear Prophets. The True and the False, typescript, Brisbane, 1983.
D. Hackworth, 'A Soldier's Report’, Australia and Nuclear War,
Croom Helm, Australia, 1983, 209-12.
(ed. M. Denborough),
K. Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, (trans. E.B. Ashton), University of Chicago Press,
16
1961.
B. Martin, Grass Roots Strategy Against War, Freedom Press, Nottingham, 1984.
L. Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, 2 vols., Harcourt Brace, New York, 1970.
G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingencies 4. Nuclear Disasters, A Report to the
Commission for the Future, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1982.
R. Routley and N. Griffin, ’Unravelling the meanings of life’, Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy #3, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.
R. Routley, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond, Research School
Sciences, Australian National University, 1980; referred to as JB.
of
Social
R. Routley, War and Peace I. On the Ethics of Large-Scale Nuclear War and Nuclear
deterrence and the Political Fall-Out, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy #5, Australian National University, 1984; referred to as WP.
R. and V. Routley, ’Human chauvinism and Environmental ethics’, in Environmental
Philosophy (ed. D. Mannison and others), Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as HC.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Knopf, New York, 1982; referred to as S./F.
R.P.
Turco and others, ’Nuclear winter: global
explosions’, Science 222 (1983) 1283-92.
consequences
M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
of
multiple
nuclear
METAPHYSICAL FALL-OUT FROM THE NUCLEAR PREDICAMENT
A series of nuclear prophets has produced a series of philosophically-oriented
works on nuclear war.^ The series is important for its deeper penetration into the
main nuclear predicament, r’own to metaphysical levels; in this the series contrasts
The most
transient superficialities of much of the political commentary,
circulated and influential text of the series is undoubtedly that of the
with the
widely
slightest of the "prophets", Schell’s The Fate of the Earth,
This skillful piece of
unc annily redeploys some of the apparently deep phenomenological
themes of Anders.
So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and Anders can often
To criticise their assumptions is not of course to belittle
be considered together,
media-philosophy
In particular, Schell’s little book, for all its political shortcomings,
their work.
is having a significant and much needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear
It is especially valuable for its vivid and horrifying scenarios of
arrangements.
the
exhibits,
both
the
claim
that
species
....
that we undertake together can make any practical or moral sense
...’
of
aftermath
nuclear
Unfortunately
attack.
it
also
philosophically and factually, severe defects.
’without
is
it
Some of
simply rubbish:
to
take
one example,
consider
... a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
nothing else
(p.173, rearranged).
This should certainly be rejected philosophically; for there is
no separate moral issue of such overwhelming importance that all other issues become
morally neutral.
compared
with
Moral
more
issues remain moral issues:
important
elsewhere, e.g. p.130).
moral
issues
(as
they don’t cease to be so when
Schell
effectively
acknowledges
And the claim should be questioned on more factual grounds.
Humans form a highly resilient species, like rats a survivor species, unlikely to be
entirely exterminated under presently-arranged nuclear holocausts.
The example was selected however because it leads into, indeed presupposes, two
of the major defective assumptions in the work of Schell and Anders.
51.
Nuclear war will eliminate life, human life at least, on earth (the extinction
assumption); and
52.
In the absence of humans, very many notions,
not only those of morality and
value, but those of time and space for example, make no sense; or, to put it into a
more
sympathetic
philosophical
form,
these
notions
depend
for
actual human context (the extravagant anthropocentric assumption) .
their
sense
on an
2
S2 which give Anders’
It is applications of
philosophical depth,
paradoxical
and Schell’s work some of its apparent
and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the
propositions
But
generated.
the
frequent
applications
S2
of
depend
essentially on SI.3 For without total extinction there will be humans about, to make
past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
the
Granted that
assumption SI
is by no means ruled out as a real possibility, as
technological
means appear
available
extinct;^
granted
centres of
prospect
the
of
to make it
large-scale
nuclear
Western civilization with obliteration.
the light of present - admittedly inadequate -
true,
to render Homo sapiens
war
does
threaten
leading
Even so SI appears unlikely in
Even in Canada, which
information.
lies on the polar route of Soviet missiles, human life should be able to continue in
certain northern areas (according to Canadian medical studies).
SI
is extremely flimsy.
It depends,
for example,
Schell’s argument to
on an unjustified extrapolation
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
North American thing, of contracting the world to North America.
all worthwhile civilization, is in USA, or at least,
to be more charitable, in North
America and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e.
eliminated
in
the nuclear
holocaust.)
Some of
(All that matters,
its human population will be
the data
upon,
Schell relies
for
example the effect of nuclear explosions on the .ozone layer, was significantly out of
date even when he wrote.
Other effects than ozone destruction, such as variations in
ultraviolent radiation and temperature levels, apparently extrapolate even less well
from North
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster produced
to South.
about the same time as Schell’s, by Preddey and others,
Southern Hemisphere,
such as
New Zealand
and southern
at
indicates that parts of the
latitudes of
Latin America
could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges.
Doomsday prophets
may appear
to have
gained new
purchase
through
recent
belated) scientific forecasts of a nuclear winter following upon nuclear war.
(if
But
although these forecasts certainly add a new, and alarming, ecological dimension to
the very damaging consequences of large-scale nuclear war,
extinction assumption3.
they do not sustain the
On the available evidence, human life will continue, though
no doubt with new complications and simplifications, for example^ in many southern
mid-latitude coastal reqions outside zones of radiation fall-out.
More generally,
life will go on,
though likely seriously and irreversibly impoverished through loss
of valuable nonhuman systems and creatures.
Nuclear prophets usually see the world (though with most of it carried along) as
already set
, in crucial respects, on the route to nuclear catastrophe.
Much of the
/r
3
way taken is seen as both inevitable and irreversible.
insist
the
upon
of
"impossibility
unlearning”
the
Thus both Anders and Schell
means of manufacturing nuclear
It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee, would furnish a good
bombs.
medium for unlearning nuclear technology (something very like this emerges from van
theory
Daniken’s
of an
"high"
earlier
In virtue
technology).
they would
of S2,
however exclude such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly that
the notion
no longer made
impossibility-of-unlearning
eventual
use
of
sense.
But
what
message
is
the
-
as
if
technology
the
they
again want
inevitability
having
learnt
to
suggest
have
been advanced.But
technological advances
cases of
they
that have
are not
not been
tenable.
the
development
and
else
was
of
the
the
means
determined, and manufacture and use ceased to be a matter of choice.
views
with
There
all
Certainly such
are many
taken advantage of,
and
examples of
there are even
technological developments that have been manufactured but not marketed or
used. There is not something very special about nuclear apparatus that puts it beyond
the scope of such generalisations.
Both Schell and Anders do claim that there are very special things about nuclear
Even if this were true just
"experiments".
weapons, notably that they do not allow "experiments"
of nuclear weapons - and it is certainly not of smaller weapons - it would not rebut
And in fact
the previous argument against the inevitability of nuclear weapons.
Anders and (even) Schell hedge their claims about testing, and the limits to nuclear
scientific work, 1to large-scale weapons and independent experiments which do not
Again they have
interfere with the■ observers and those outside the "laboratories" .
latched onto major points: in particular, we have at present no way of testing the
cumulative effects of large nuclear weapons in concert, e.g. for more holistic
effects,
such
circulation and
enough with it
in character,
or changes in coupled atmospheric
Short of a large-scale nuclear war, and likely
radiation fields.
these crucial effects must remain largely untested and hypothetical
as
fireballs
or
firestorms,
Nonetheless enough data can be assembled to carry through informative
modellings, which point to the improbability of SI, and so undermine applications of
S2 .
The penetration
Schell
and
Anders,
of
but
in S2, is not something peculiar to
Western philosophy, European philosophy
human
chauvinism, as
is
product
a
of
This chauvinism is unfortunately alive and still well, Anders’ version
It has also deeply
of S2 being just one striking illustration (cf. AA p.252ff.).
penetrated Anglo-American philosophy, and has been extended under the influence of
especially.
Wittgenstein’s work, where even the necessary truths of mathematics are taken to be a
product of human conventions, and would vanish with humans! Such are alleged
MB
4
implications of extinction: but the fact is that the truths of arithmetic are in no
way dependent on the existence of humans or humanoids or of gods or giraffes.
As
very many propositions
with necessary truths and falsehoods so with contingent ones:
about the world do not depend in any way for their truth-value or content on humans
or their communities.
In
Schell,
Kantian
obnoxious
is
chauvinism
human
dished
Thoughts and
form.
up
a
in
particularly
time
propositions,
powerful
history and
tenses,
and
and
memories, values and morality, all depend on the life-giving presence of human beings
-
future or merely potential
past or
humans are certainly not enough.
humans are not enough,
persons
that are not
Thus, according to Schell (p.140, e.g.),
’... the
thought "Humanity is now extinct" is an impossible one for a rational person, because
as
soon as it is, we are not.
In imagining any other event, we look ahead
moment that is still within the stream of human time,
a
later
rational
Though we no doubt have it
into past,
(p.143).
local
may
well
be
able
to
truly.
it
have
Schell
there is no "later" ’outside the human tenses of past,
(p.140)*^.
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that
erroneously denies that:
present, and future ...’
divides time
creature
The thought is however
... ’.
perfectly possible for humans; we can have it right now.
falsely,
to a
present and
future’: so annihilation cannot
’come to pass’
But it is simply false that the tenses are human; the tenses depend on a
time
ordering
(perceptible
to
many
creatures
other
than
humans,
but
not
depending at all on that perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to
to now (also a human-independent location, evident to other creatures,
the present,
and borne witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
And annihilation may
also too easily come to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon earth.
Before that
there was a time before there were any human beings.
argument for the demise of time, that ’what has been will no longer be
Anders’
even what
has
been’ ,
is also explicitly (and narrowly)
’for what
verificationist :
would the difference be between what has only been and what has never been,
is no
remain
one
remember the
to
many
sorts
of
things
difference;
organisms would be different.
that have been’
for
one,
Temporal
the
(AA p.245).
history
themes do not lack
if there
There would
recorded
in
many
still
other
’legitimacy because not
registered [or verified] by anyone’; truth, significance, still less meaning, are not
matters of human verification.
Here,
as
elsewhere,
the
human
chauvinism
is
mixed
with
other
distorting
metaphysical assumptions of our Western heritage, in particular, verificationism and
ontological assumptions (to the effect that there are severe difficulties in talking
about
does
what
exist)
not
Thus,
for
metaphysics from Freud, according to whom
example,
takes
Schell
dubious
over
it is indeed impossible to imagine our own
death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still
present
spectators"
as
refuting
the
(p.138).
fact
In
first.
clause goes
second
The
is
there
counterfactual situations which undermine both Freud’s
distance
difficulty
great
no
a good
describing
in
The
claims.
towards
same, goes
for
Schell’s extensions of human chauvinism into one of its main traditional strongholds,
value theory:
evil,
’... the simple and basic fact [sic!]
harm,
or
service
lamenting
rejoicing
or
that before there can be good or
must
there
be
life ,
human
life
These are no facts, but deeply entrenched philosophical dogmas (which have
(p.171).
been exposed and criticised elsewhere/, e.g. HC).
Naturally many
things will disappear with the extinction of humans:
trivially
there will be no more humans (unless humans re-evolve or are recreated), and thus no
more human communities,
human institutions, human activities, human emotions, and so
But it is already going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that there will
forth.
accordingly be
’no thought,
no love,
sacrifice, no image, no song ...'.
For there are, and may continue to exist, other
than humans with emotion,
creatures
no struggle, no pain, no hope, no comfort, no
struggles, songs,
...
Nor will the ending of
.
all such human ventures, if it comes to pass, show that all past human ventures have
been ’all in vain’, meaningless, and already so to say dead.
The decay of the solar
system, or the heat-death of the universe even, will not show that worthwhile human
A
activities were not worthwhile.*
Several of the other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from
their shared
assumptions SI
of a Second Death,
(in Revelations)
under
SI,
is
reckoned
meaningless
rendered
and S2.
a
and
species
death’,
and
all
extinction came
redeployed by both.
’second death’ ,
already
already ’overhung with death’
’a second
It is these that underlie the biblical notion
’seems
(S p.166).
because
to
Thus,
not merely one’s own but
future
to
pass,
generations
the
(S
stronger
be
by
’The death of mankind ,
S2 and
dead’
(AA
SI
p.244,
remaining
S p.166)
life
is
and
is
too, more trivially, a person faces
in addition that greater death of the
p.166,
p.115).
However
even
notion would not be vindicated,
if
nuclear
because
it
depends on the fallacious inference to the meaninglessness of preceding life and on
the very
questionable representation
of
this
meaninglessness as
a sort
of death.
There is no such Second Death: creatures die just once, perhaps all at about the same
time.
The idea of a Second Death lacks even a solid metaphysical base.
6
From SI,
together with the minor principle that extinction being an absolute
in degree,
doesn’t differ
theme that
the universality of peril
comes
’we are all
exposed to peril in the same degree’, which is accordingly ’disguised’ and ’difficult
to
with
SI.
In
situation,
there is no contrast (AE p.64;
because
recognise’,
event,
any
are
peoples
southern Patagonia
Indians of
the
all
not
This theme falls
S p.150).
by
imperilled
equally
the
better placed
being rather
nuclear
than the
Nor are all people equally locked into the situation or
Germans of northern Europe.
incapacitated by it; the prospects are different in different countries and places.
likewise,
Nor,
Schell
are all
contrast
(in
to
people equally responsible,
a pernicious
repeatedly infiltrates.
Anders)
This
is
theme^ which,
the
theme,
Pogo
according to which
S3.
Responsibility for the present nuclear predicament (fiasco, really) distributes
onto everybody, it belongs to every human in the world.
But
there is also, mixed in,
a weaker more
plausible claim that gives lie
to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
An especially blatant example of the Pogo theme11 runs as follows: ’...
the
world’s
leaders
political
...
they
though
now menace
the earth with nuclear
At least, this is
weapons, do so only with our permission, and even at our bidding.
true for democracies'
(pp.229-30).
pose
since we pay for extinction and
sense,
threat of it,
the
... we are
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true
the authors of that extinction.
in a positive
theme is elaborated elsewhere:
The
while for
support the governments that
the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world
it is
true only in the negative sense that they fail try to do anything about the danger)
(p.152).
But
this is more of an argument indicting representative government, by
revealing
its
allegedly
govern,
insensitivity
not
to
and
unresponsiveness
to
affected
by
mention
those
its
the
activities
populace
who
are
they
not
But Schell conveniently neglects all such
represented at all (namely foreigners).
points:
of
many
'... we are potential mass killers.
The moral cost of nuclear armaments is
it makes of all of us underwriters of the slaughter of hundreds of millions'
And again '[as] perpetrators ... we convey the steady message ... that life
(p.152),
that
not only is not sacred but is worthless; that ... it had been judged acceptable for
to be killed' (p.153).
Little of this is true.
Those who campaign against
nuclear arrangements, vote against nuclear—committed parties so far as is possible,
destruction,
and
responsibility for the nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
Nor
and
the
are
like,
does responsibility
attributes
decisions
to
certainly
— or
everyone
taken
—
not
the
the unlikely
fall
in "liberal
on
authors
opinions as
those
democracies"
who
have
of
potential
to worth
done
less.
Schell illegitimately
Responsibility for
even by representatives
(in the unlikely
event of
this happening in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be
traced back to those represented, since among many other things, a representative is
only
representative of a
party which offers a complex and often
ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero or more policies of this package.
Only in
the (uncommon)
can responsibility,
event of a clear
still of a qualified
single issue referendum, which is adopted,
sort, be
for it, not to everyone in the community.
sheeted home, to those who voted
While S3 is false, there is an important
related theme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nuclear situation
generates responsibilities for every socially involved person.
When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying themes, part
of what results is decidedly along the right lines; namely
S4.
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of us] have
failed to change our pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out of step
with the nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc. (the whole earth theme).
Though Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the
frequently immoral purposes for which the state is used, unfortunately he often loses
sight of
this important
critique of
the
theme (indicated
state whi?V
the conclusion
arrives at
is,
that
by and
pp.187-8).
Yet S4 forms part of Schell s
scattered
large,
the nation-state
and
has outlasted
Schell
fragmentary.
its usefulness,
and
that new political institutions more ’consonant with the global reality’ are required
as a matter of urgency.
But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out
viable alternatives.12 At most he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards
the Way Up to world political control.
Solutions to
the nuclear dilemma come,
way,
from the Top Down;
(cf.
p.230).
if not easily, in a similar simplistic
those who can must appeal
to the Top,
to those who govern
Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and limitations,
such as SALT, and in world government, through the United Nations (see p.225ff. and
especially p.227,
treaties,
bottom paragraph).
Given the record of
these organisations and
the negotiations and regulators, it is by now a pathetic faith.
Nor is a
serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the
origins of nuclear technology,
to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider
effective changes to military-industrial organisation and ways of life.
But some of the requisite deeper analysis of the nuclear situation and , more
generally, of the roots of war can be found in Anders$f and elsewhere.13 The roots of
the nuclear predicament are not confined to the ideologically-aligned arrangements of
nation-states,
but
penetrate
also
into
key
components
of
those
states,
their
8
and
controlling classes,
their
military,
their supporting bureaucracies.
And both
within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for the arrangements, and in
key components
of
states,
the
power and domination (and, often,
superiority by the
[nuclear]
science
interrelated forms.
surplus
product
nature)
to
super-states, to
involves
accumulated
can be
is
enables
is the
for
Thus the push for
domination,
large nation-state,
at home
(from
the drive
be achieved through military-oriented
and
main power-base
The
feature
the accompanying privilege).
which
technology,
and
and crucial
a conspicuous
and
from
abroad,
several
in
where enough
and
bled
from
proceed with military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found the high-
technology research and development means to ever more expendable power and energy.
In changing
the prospect of
to eliminate
arrangements
structural
the
nuclear
war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the main power-base, the nation
state;
it
sweepingly,
also
is
important
remove
to
state
relations,
political
alter
trouble-making
political arrangements,
in
to
key
components
patterns
embedded
namely patterns of domination,
organisation,
human-animal
relations,
but
in
of
in
state,
and,
all
these
social
and
patterns manifested not only
relations,
white-coloured
human-nature
more
the
relations;
to
male-female
in
remove,
short,
However not everything needs to be accomplished at once; and
chauvinistic relations.
the cluster of damaging power and domination relations tied into war can be tackled
separately.
And there
the problems
can largely be narrowed
to certain problems of
states and certain key components of states.
In what analysis he does offer of the
contrast of
familiar false
"raison
d’etat"
and
the
justifies the means is
themselves
to
problem with states,
state expediency with morality,
Socratic-Christian
ethics.
every sort’
(p.134).
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
argument is
as a
contrast between
teaching
that
’the
end
the basis on which governments, in all times, have licensed
commit crimes of
extinction nullifies
The
Schell repeats the
So
’states may do virtually
Schell then argues however, that
end-means justification by destroying every end; but again the
far from sound, and depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined
with ontological
assumptions.
Even if all
humans were extinguished (as under SI)
ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animals and extraterrestrials,
actual
or
not.
The
ends-means
argument
can
however
be
repaired
to
remove
such
objections: instead it is claimed that extinction nullifies ends-means justification
by frustrating the realisation of every relevant end - meaning by ’relevant’, in this
context, those ends the realisation of which the state appeals to in justification of
its nuclear policies.a nuclear war, even without human extinction but with severe
enough losses,
would
undoubtedly
frustrate
the realisation of relevant
state ends.
9
So
even
expediency
an
from
perspective,
policies
super-state
are
open
severe
to
criticism, for example as motivationally irrational in the nuclear risks taken.
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
Schell leaves us in
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the right and
no doubt.
to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (p.187).
power
War arises from
how things are; from the arrangement of political affairs via jealous nation-states
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between having sovereignty and capacity^
(p.188).
to wage war.
to organise
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell contends, necessary for people
sovereignty.
is impossible
side, without war it
On the other
for war.
to preserve
Neither of these contentions is transparently clear as it stands.
The
first is damaged by civil war and the like, the second by the persistence of small
nonmilitary states.
the macro-state system is entrenched, it
Now that
easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the "realities
life,
which include self-interest,
that
peace
readily
are
arrangements
aggression,
dismissed
as
of international
It is on this basis
hatred.
fear,
is however
unrealistic,
utopian,
even
(amusingly) as extremist (cf. p.185).
Schell’s
further
nuclear "war"
that
theme
is not
war
threatens,
however,
to
undermine his case against the sovereign state; for example, his ends-means argument
and the argument based on its nuclear-war making capacity.
Fortunately the not-war
theme needs much qualification, and starts out from an erroneous characterisation of
war as ’a violent means employed by a nation to achieve an end’ (p.189): but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for war.
What is correct is that nuclear wars are
very different from previous conventional wars
(cf. WP) .
that war requires an end which nuclear "war" does not have.
to claim
Schell goes on
But nuclear attacks can
certainly have ends (even if large nuclear wars cannot be won in the older sense: but
It is also claimed that war depends on weakness; on
not all wars or games are won).
one side
’no one’s
happen,
But
being defeated
what
these
on a decision by arms.
strength fails
sorts
of
until
considerations
nuclear wars are not wars, but
But in nuclear "war
this doesn’t
both sides have been annihilated’
contribute
to
showing
is
(p.190).
again
that they are not wars of certain sorts,
not
that
e.g., not
just wars (because they fail on such criteria as reasonable prospect of success and
improvement), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
have
persisted
into
nuclear
times
does
damage
to
That conventional wars
Schell's argument
that nuclear
weapons have also ruined "conventional" wars, and his connected theme that the demise
of war
court
has left no means
of
appeal
has
mistaken propositions:
been
to finally settle disputes between nations, for the final
removed
(pp.192-193).
The
theme depends
on a
pair of
that concerning the demise of conventional war, and the idea
10
that war of
some sort has
to
be
the
final
court of appeal
between nations (for
there are other types of contests that could serve, and there is also the possibility
of more cooperative behaviour,
e.g.
joint referenda).
The
social-Darwinian assumption of Clausewicz (the 'logic of war
theme also
imports the
theme) that war has to
proceed to the technological limit — as if war and violence were thoroughly natural
activities, independent of recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.),
and ruleless activities.
On the contrary, wars are parasitic on social organisations
such as states and are governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
They are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if not a logic.
Much capital has been made not merely from "the logic of war
but from what is
now called "the logic of deterrence" and the "logic of nuclear [strategic] planning .
The message that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive arrangements the
world
is
now
entangled
in
are
perfectly
sound,
logical,
rational.
However
Logic in no way justifies the
represents little more than a cheap semantical trick.
present arrangements, or anything like them, or renders them reasonable.
logics of decision (as presented, e.g.,
be applied
planning;
in strategic
but
this
There are
for the classical case in Jeffrey) which can
they do not
yield
specific results without
desirability measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values
being pumped in, extralogically .
There are various ways these value assignments may
be determined, to meet moral requirements or not; but in nuclear strategic planning
they have invariably been settled on the basis of expediency^?.
For the most part,
however, ’logic of’ tends to be used very loosely, as a word of general commendation,
to
cover
something
like
’reasoning
and rational
considerations entering
into
the
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing with
policy or strategy of’.
the term ’logic of’, should write of 'the illogic of deterrence', for he emphasizes
its unreasonableness.
supposed
rationality
(even from a national
fail:^ yet
threat of
the
this
further and
For
of
stresses (p.213)
instance he
threatening
use
interest viewpoint)
success
of deterrence
unjustifiable and
of nuclear
the disparity between the
weapons and
the
irrationality
of actually using them should the threat
doctrine depends on the credibility of
irrational use.
the
Indeed Schell wants to go still
locate a contradiction in deterrence (e.g.
but
the argument
depends on an interesting confusion of contradiction with cancellation,
along with
the assumption that deterrence involves cancellation.
irrational, it is immoral, but it is not inconsistent.
pp.201-2);
Nuclear deterrence may well be
11
NOTES
This is a revised version of ’Appendix 1. On the fate of mankind and the earth,
according to Schell, and to Anders’ of my monograph referred to as WP, where
Several points, only touched ijpcn in this review, are further developed.
References are by way of authors’ names or else through obvious acronyms, given
in the list of references which follows.
1. The distinguishing term is from Foley’s Nuclear Prophets, where many
leading anti-nuclear prophets are assessed. One well-known prophet not so
considered there is Jaspers, presumably because his main work comes out in
entirely the wrong direction. It gives heavy philosophical attire to the
better-dead-than-red abomination. A main argument against Jaspers so
presented is simple. However bad being red might become (at present it is
debatably worse than living under some of the totalitarian regimes the
free West props up) , it still gives humans a further chance for goou
lives, since regimes fall or can be toppled: but total annihilation
removes that all-important opportunity.
But of course Jaspers does not present his position so simply. Rather his
contention is that there are circumstances where, and principles for
which, a person or group of persons ought to sacrifice even their lives.
Freedom is such: a life worth living is a free life. But the latter point
can be granted without conceding that sacrifice is a possible means to it.
While the sacrifice of one or a few lives may be a possible (if dubiously
effective) way to free lives for others, certainly the sacrifice of all
lives is not a possible route to free lives for all, since no human lives
remain.
To this extent Schell is right (on p.131) in accusing Jaspers of
an each to all fallacy.
Jasper’s idea that "the free life that they try
to save by all possible means is more than mere life or lives" breaks down
when applied to all participating people.
None can gain free lives by
extinction of all: that is not a possible route to life even.
2. A detailed comparison of Schell and Anders’ remarkably similar versions of
S2 is made in Foley Ju.
3. Should S2 appeal, as it may, to suitable communities of humans, SI will
require reformulation in similar terms; and the argument that follows
needs minor adjustment, with appropriate groups replacing individuals.
4. Thus the Last Person argument, important in environmental ethics (as HC
explains), is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting for instance the
remote death of the Sun, but assumes new urgency. It is this sort of
argument that connects environmental ethics and nuclear ethics, at a
deeper metaphysical level.
The Bomb and Bulldozer are out of the same
technological Pandora’s box.
Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only
Pandora's box.
Biological and chemical means are perhaps even more
effective, and certainly can be more selective in what gets extinguished.
Nuclear extinction would presumably require a different and more massive
exchange than is usually assumed in nuclear war scenarios, with heavy
targeting
in
particular
of
Southern
Hemispheric
internationally-recognised nuclear-free zones).
sites
(including
5. Nor do recent scientific studies claim as much.
The most intrepid of
these studies.
Erlich and others, only contends that in certain worstQ '
case circumstances, ’the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens
cannot be excluded’ (p.1299).
The study admits that, in the scenario
described,
’it seems unlikely ... Homo spaiens would be forced to
extinctions immediately’, and the difficulties indicated in the way of
long-term human survival are exaggerated.
In particular, many of the drastic effects predicted for Northern mid
latitudes are reflected in very much milder form in equivalent Southern
latitudes.
For example, temperatures for regions with maritine climates
appear likely to vary by only a few degrees and perhaps neglibly for many
agricultural purposes after 100 days (cf. Turco and others, p.1287 case
29, and p.1286).
Similarly the extent of nuclear darkness and of surface
ultraviolet radiation will be appreciably less in the South and perhaps
minor for many crucial purposes, such as photosynthesis and human outdoor
activity, after 100 dayss (cf. the data in Benton and Partridge).
No doubt some scientifically respectable sections of the environmental and
peace movements have an interest in exaggerating the probable effects of
nuclear
holocaust for life on earth, much as many statesmen and
strategists have an interest in minimizing them.
And there is certainly
substantial margin for error and for variation in conclusions drawn.
For
Crutzen (p.59) is right that ’analyses of the environmental effects of a
global nuclear war remain ... uncertain ... because of a lack of
information on various important processes [among other things] ... the
environment might become extremely hostile, because of hitherto overlooked
changes in the composition of the atmosphere’, again among other things.
Such uncertainty bodes considerable caution as rational.
The way to err
is clear.
marxist
persuasion,
determinists
of
merely
by
technological
6. Not
induction
that
if the
argues
by
straight
Hackworth, a former US general,
use
it.
US military has a weapon it will
present and future (etc.) is
7. The appalling theme that humans create past,
repeated elsewhere, e.g. p.173.
8. For detailed refutation of these assumptions, see JB.
9. Anders is here (AA pp.244-5) relying upon a version of the argument from
perserverence, criticised in detail in Routley and Griffin.
10. An interesting converse of this theme is sometimes advanced, that no one
is responsible, the whole thing is out of control.
The technological
version of this no-responsibility theme is discussed below (fn 15). More
satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangements are out of political
control, but for reasons, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclear
things going, which enable responsibility to be distributed.
The vested
interests, which bear considerable responsibility, include the military
13
weapons industry, and research and academic communities (cf. Barnaby).
Under pressures for re-election especially, politicians give in to these
powerful groups, so losing control of political processes.
The argument
is flawed at its final stage.
For many influential politicians either
belong to or represent vested interests.
Thus, though there is no doubt
some ’lack of control’, political processes tend rather to reflect vested
interests than to run out of political control.
11. Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows: ’The
self-extinction of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sane
or sensible; nevertheless, it is an act that, without quite admitting it
to ourselves, we plan in certain circumstances to commit’ (p.185).
Even
for most of the planners, extinction is presumably not part of "the plan",
but an unintended consequence; and most of us have little or no role in
the planning, enough of us even campaign against the planning.
Further
’the world ... chose the course of attempting to refashion the system of
sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons’ (p.194): the world? This
connects of course with the faulty ideological argument from defence of
fundamentals, e.g. for liberty, for the 'free enterprise
(USA) nation,
and against socialism.
12. A more detailed discussion is given in WP §8, where too the case against
the state from
nuclear dilemmqj'is elaborated.
13. Anders’ explanation is elaborated in Foley; some of the themes are
presented more straightforwardly in Martin.
The incomplete list of items
given, to be investigated in a deeper analysis of the nuclear situation,
paraphrases Foley JS p.164.
14. These motivating drives form part of a larger integrated package,
comprising maximisation drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth,
energy, speed, satisfaction,
. .., for the
newer
Enlightenment (but
Faustian) virtues.
Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for
excessive neatness and simplicity manifested) to reduce the package to one
main component, preference—satisfaction, for instance, or utility.
And
the type of drive is justified (especially for those who have it, but
worry about it) not only as virtuous, which it is not, but also as
rational, which again it is not. C Rationality, the deeply entrenched myth
has it. consists in maximisation,.a suitable mix of these virtues.
*
4
Maximisation of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation
The maximisation of self-interest
theorems and associated paradoxes,
runs
into
Newcomb
’s paraj^dox and special cases
(individual or national)
situations.
The
maximisation of power, as
such as Prisoners Dilemma
Christian-Islamic
God,
encounters
the paradox of
the
symbolised in
parallel
maximisation
of
knowledge,
paradoxes of
the
omnipotence,
or
no
consistent
objects
which
are
omnipotent
There are
omniscience.
the
The drive for maximum consistency, often taken to be
omniscient.
epitome of rationality, also leads
leads to
to inconsistency in the case of more
important theories, such as arithmetic and set theory (by virtue of
Godel’s theorem and associated limitative theorems).
15. R & D,
though directed by military requirements
and the arms race, also
14
drives the arms race.
science.
Its role is partly disguised by the myth of neutral
There have been attempts, not only by those committed to technological
determinism, to involve technology more deeply as the main, or single,
source of the nuclear fix (thus especially Mumford, in part thereby
anticipating Commoner’s parallel indictment of technology-choice in the
ecological fix).
It is technology, the mega-machine, running out of
control, that has brought us to this predicament, the nuclear abyss.
Sometimes this serves to exonerate states and their key components and
those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-ofcontrol machine; but sometimes the state itself is seen as a machine also
running out of control.
But technological determinism, like other
varieties of stronger (nonanalytic) determinism, is false.
Nuclear
technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known political
dispute involving distinguished scientists; it was deliberated, funded and
promoted, while other alternatives were not.
Damaging technologies of the nuclear age were not inevitable, but
deliberately chosen by certain components of the large nation-states. And
much as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be
persisted with.
The fashionable inevitability/determinism themes admit
not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting
with often recalcitrant technologies.
They also admit of being made to
look ridiculous.
If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolution,
then if it functions (as it probably will, a matter also determined), it
will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined.
That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionary place in human population
regulation!
16. This reformulation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main
qualification can be inferred from Schell’s context.
17. Selecting the usual game theory setting sees to this almost automatically;
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or her own
advantage. Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that ’the logic of
deterrence’ is based on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.
(ar
18. Even the
irrationality of /retaliatory * first-strike)
use has been
contested, e.g. it has been wishfully thougnt that America will rise like
a phoenix from the radioactive ashes.
There is moreover a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the "missing
motive" for retaliating to a large strike (p.204), namely, not a
retributive one, but an ideological one: eliminate the prospect of the
future dominance of the rival ideology. Such a motive has been offered -tor
the conjecturAL targeting of Latin America.
19. An analogous confusion of negation with cancellation or obliteration
appears in recent US "star-war" thinking, where US missiles are supposed
to "negate" incoming USSR missiles.
Moral
paradoxes of deterrence
take a different direction.
For although
15
involving negation, they depend upon perhaps questionable interconnexions
of intensional functors.
One type of paradox (considered in WP §5, where
the immorality of deterrence is argued) derives from a policy of credibly
threatening war without however intending to proceed to war, though
credible threats [appear to] imply an intention to proceed. Another style
derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles
when the persistent practice, which Implies an intention, is to increase
the number.
This paradox is technically removed - how satisfactorily is
another matter - by a distinction between longer-term aims and immediate
practice,
a
time-honoured
method
of
removing
contradictions
by
conveniently discerned temporal distinctions.
REFERENCES
G. Anders,
Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, C.H.
Beck, Munchen, 1956; referred to as
AA.
G. Anders,
Zeitenende:
Endzeitand
Gedanken
atomaren
zur
Situation,
C.H.
Beck,
Munchen, 1972; referred to as AE.
7
'
F. Barnaby,
’Will
be
there
a
War' ,//» Aus tralia
Nuclear
Nuclear
War,
J
(ed.
M. Denborough) , Croom Helm, Australia, 1983?
I.J.
Benton
and G.W.
Partridge,
’"Twilight
at Noon"
overstated’,
13
Ambio
(1984)
49-51.
B. Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man
P.J. Crutzen,
Technology, Knopf, New York, 1972.
’Darkness after a nuclear war’, Ambio 13 (1984) 52-4.
M. Denborough (ed.), Australian & Nuclear War, Croom Helm, Australia, 1983.
P.R. Erlich and others,
’Long-term biological consequences of nuclear war’,
Science
222 (1983) 1293-1300.
G. Foley,
’Jonathan
Schell:
Genius
-
Philosopher
-
Rewrite
Man’,
typescript,
Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS.
G. Foley, Nuclear Prophets. The True and the False, typescript, Brisbane, 1983.
16
in
’A Soldier’s Refragfljt’, , Australia
D. Hackworth,
Croom Helm, Australia, 1983
vi^vC
Nuclear War,
(ed. M. Denborough),
/zor-/z
»
K. Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, (trans. E.B. Ashton), University of Chicago Press,
1961.
B. Martin,
Strategy Against
Roots
Grass
War,
Freedom Press,
1984, "ter
Nottingham,
a-p-peax.
L. Mumford,
The Myth of
the Machine,
2 vols.,
Harcourt
Brifce
,
New York,
1970.
G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingencies 4. Nuclear Disasters, A Report to the
Commission for the Future, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1982.
R. Routley and
N. Griffin,
'Unravelling
the meanings of life’, Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy #3, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.
R. Routley,
Meinong’s
Exploring
Jungle
and
Beyond,
Research
School
of
Social
Sciences, Australian National University, 1980; referred to as JB.
R. Routley, War and Peace I. On the Ethics of Large-Scale Nuclear War and Nuclear
deterrence and the Political Fall-Out, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy #5, Australian National University, 1984j
R. and
V. Routley,
Philosophy
(ed.
'Human
chauvinism
D. Manujson and
and
Environmental
others),
Research
ethics’,
School of
in
Environmental
Social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as HC.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Knopf, New York, 1982; referred to as S./F.
R.P.
Turco
and
others,
'Nuclear
winter:
global
consequences
explosions’ , Science 222 (1983) 1283-92.
M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
of
multiple nuclear
Appendix 1: On the fate of mankind and tht?_ _ea£_t]i, according to
SchelT~and Anders.
Nuclear prophets and prophetic rubbish. The extinction assumption.
Common emerging themes of Schell and Anders. The extravagant anthro
pocentric assumption, and some of what is wrong with it. Second death
dismissed. The universality of peril. The alleged universality of
responsibility: the Pogo theme. The correct, but undeveloped, whole
earth theme. Ultimately Schell offers little hope and superficiality.
Nuclear war is war. The logic and illogic of deterrence.
METAPHYSICAL FALL-OUT FROM THE NUCLEAR PREDICAMENT*
A series of nuclear prophets has produced a series of philosophically-oriented
works on nuclear war.^ The series is important for its deeper penetration into the
main nuclear predicament, down to metaphysical levels;
with the
widely
in this the series contrasts
transient superficialities of much of the political commentary.
circulated
influential
and
text
the
of
series
is
undoubtedly that
uncannily
some
of
the
the apparently
deep phenomenological
So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and Anders can often
themes of Anders.
be considered together.
their work.
redeploys
of
This skillful piece of
slightest of the "prophets", Schell’s The Fate of the Earth.
media-philosophy
The most
To criticise their assumptions is not of course to belittle
In particular, Schell’s little book, for all its political shortcomings,
is having a significant and much needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear
It is especially valuable for its
arrangements.
the
aftermath
of
nuclear
vivid and horrifying scenarios of
Unfortunately
attack.
it
also
exhibits,
both
philosophically and factually, severe defects.
Some of
’without
is
it
simply rubbish:
to
take
one
example,
consider
the
... a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
nothing else
claim that
species
....
that we undertake together can make any practical or moral sense . . . ’
(p.173, rearranged).
This should certainly be rejected philosophically; for there is
no separate moral issue of such overwhelming importance that all other issues become
Moral
morally neutral.
compared
with
more
issues remain moral issues: they don’t cease to be so when
important
elsewhere, e.g. p.130).
moral
issues
(as
Schell
effectively
acknowledges
And the claim should be questioned on more factual grounds.
Humans form a highly resilient species, like rats a survivor species, unlikely to be
entirely exterminated under presently-arranged nuclear holocausts.
The example was selected however because it leads into, indeed presupposes, two
of the major defective assumptions in the work of Schell and Anders:
51.
Nuclear war will eliminate life, human life at least, on earth (the extinction
assumption); and
52.
value,
In
the absence of humans,
very many notions,
not only
those of morality and
but those of time and space for example, make no sense; or, to put it into a
form,
for their
X 2
actual human context (the extravagant anthropocentric assumption).
more
sympathetic
philosophical
these
notions
depend
sense
on an
2
S2 which give Anders’ and Schell’s work some of its apparent
It is applications of
and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the
philosophical depth,
paradoxical propositions generated.
But the frequent applications of S2 depend
essentially on SI.3 For without total extinction there will be humans about, to make
past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
Granted that assumption SI
the
technological
means appear
extinctgranted
the
prospect
is by no means ruled out as a real possibility, as
available to
of
make it
nuclear
large-scale
to render Homo sapiens
true,
war
does
threaten
leading
Even so SI appears unlikely in
centres of Western civilization with obliteration.
the light of present - admittedly inadequate - information.
Even in Canada, which
lies on the polar route of Soviet missiles, human life should be able to continue in
certain northern areas (according to Canadian medical studies).
SI
is
extremely flimsy.
for example,
It depends,
Schell s argument to
on an unjustified extrapolation
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
North Zunerican thing, of contracting the world to North America.
(All that matters,
all worthwhile civilization, is in USA, or at least, to be more charitable, in North
America and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e. its human population will be
eliminated in
the nuclear
holocaust.)
Some of
the data
Schell relies
upon,
for
example the effect of nuclear explosions on the ozone layer, was significantly out of
date even when he wrote.
Other effects than ozone destruction, such as variations in
ultraviolent radiation and temperature levels, apparently extrapolate even less well
from North
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster produced at
to South.
about the same time as Schell’s, by Preddey and others,
indicates that parts of the
Southern Hemisphere,
latitudes of
such as
New Zealand
and
southern
Latin America
could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges.
Doomsday prophets
belated) scientific
may appear
forecasts of
to have
gained new
purchase through
recent
a nuclear winter following upon nuclear war.
(if
But
although these forecasts certainly add a new, and alarming, ecological dimension to
the very damaging consequences of large-scale nuclear war, they do not sustain the
extinction assumption3.
On the available evidence, human life will continue, though
no
doubt with new complications and
mid-latitude coastal
life will go on,
for example
in many southern
regions outside zones of radiation fall-out.
More generally,
simplifications,
though likely seriously and irreversibly impoverished through loss
of valuable nonhuman systems and creatures.
Nuclear prophets usually see the world (though with most of it carried along) as
already set
, in crucial respects, on the route to nuclear catastrophe.
Much of the
3
way taken is seen as both inevitable and irreversible.
insist
upon
unlearning"
of
"impossibility
the
Thus both Anders and Schell
means of
the
manufacturing nuclear
It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee, would furnish a good
bombs.
medium for unlearning nuclear technology (something very like this emerges from van
Daniken’s
of an
theory
"high"
earlier
they would
of S2,
In virtue
technology).
however exclude such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly that
the notion
longer
no
made
sense.
But what
message
is
the
-
as
if
impossibility-of-unlearning
eventual
use
of
the
technology
they
to suggest
again want
learnt
having
the
of
inevitability
with
the
development
and
all
the means
determined, and manufacture and use ceased to be a matter of choice.
views have
been advanced.
technological advances
cases of
But
are not
they
that have
been
not
tenable.
Certainly such
are many
There
taken advantage of,
was
else
examples of
there are even
and
technological developments that have been manufactured but not marketed or
used. There is not something very special about nuclear apparatus that puts it beyond
the scope of such generalisations.
Both Schell and Anders do claim that there are very special things about nuclear
weapons, notably that they do not allow "experiments".
Even if this were true just
of nuclear weapons - and it is certainly not of smaller weapons - it would not rebut
the
argument against
previous
inevitability
the
of nuclear weapons.
And
in
fact
Anders and (even) Schell hedge their claims about testing, and the limits to nuclear
work,
scientific
large-scale
to
weapons
and
independent
experiments which
interfere with the observers and those outside the "laboratories".
latched onto major points:
cumulative
such
effects,
of
effects
as
in particular,
fireballs
or
Again they have
we have at present no way of testing the
wreapons
in
concert,
firestorms,
or
changes
nuclear
large
do not
e.g.
in
for
more
holistic
atmospheric
coupled
circulation and
radiation fields.
enough with
these crucial effects must remain largely untested and hypothetical
it,
in character.
Short of a large-scale nuclear war,
and likely
Nonetheless enough data can be assembled to carry through informative
modellings, which point to the improbability of SI, and so undermine applications of
S2.
The
Schell
penetration
and
Anders,
of human
but
is
a
chauvinism,
product
of
as
in S2,
Western
is not
something peculiar
philosophy,
European
to
philosophy
especially.
This chauvinism is unfortunately alive and still well, Anders’ version
of
just one striking illustration (cf. AA p.252ff.).
S2
being
penetrated Anglo-American philosophy,
and
has
been extended
It has also deeply
under the
influence of
Wittgenstein’s work, where even the necessary truths of mathematics are taken to be a
product
of
human
conventions,
and
would
vanish
with
humans!
Such
are
alleged
4
implications of extinction: but the fact is that the truths of arithmetic are in no
way dependent on the existence of humans or humanoids or of gods or giraffes.
with necessary truths and falsehoods so with contingent ones:
As
very many propositions
about the world do not depend in any way for their truth-value or content on humans
or their communities.
In
human
Schell,
obnoxious Kantian
form.
dished
is
chauvinism
and
Thoughts
up
in
propositions,
a
particularly
time
powerful
history and
tenses,
and
and
memories, values and morality, all depend on the life-giving presence of human beings
future or merely potential humans are not enough,
- past or
that are not
persons
Thus, according to Schell (p.140, e.g.),
humans are certainly not enough.
’... the
thought "Humanity is now extinct" is an impossible one for a rational person, because
as
it
soon as
is, we are not.
In imagining any other event, we look ahead
moment that is still within the stream of human time,
... ’.
a
later
rational
erroneously denies that:
present, and future ...’
into past,
divides time
may
well
be
to
able
ordering
time
it
have
Schell
truly.
there is no "later" ’outside the human tenses of past,
(p.140)7.
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that
present and future’: so annihilation cannot
But it is simply false that the tenses are human;
(p.143).
local
creature
The thought is however
Though we no doubt have it
perfectly possible for humans; we can have it right now.
falsely,
to a
(perceptible
to
many
creatures
’come to pass’
the tenses depend on a
other
than humans,
but
not
depending at all on that perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to
to now (also a human-independent location, evident to other creatures,
the present,
and borne witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
And annihilation may
also too easily come to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon earth.
Before that
there was a time before there were any human beings.
Anders’ argument for the demise of time,
even what has been’,
is also
that
’what has been will no longer be
explicitly (and narrowly)
’for what
verif icationist:
would the difference be between what has only been and what has never been,
is no
remain
one
remember the things
to
many
sorts
organisms would
of
difference;
be different.
that have been’
for
one,
Temporal
the
(AA p.245).
history
themes do not lack
if there
There would
still
many
other
recorded
in
’legitimacy because not
registered [or verified] by anyone’; truth, significance, still less meaning, are not
matters of human verification.
Here,
as
elsewhere,
the
human
chauvinism
is
mixed
with
other
distorting
metaphysical assumptions of our Western heritage, in particular, verificationism and
5
ontological assumptions (to the effect that there are severe difficulties in talking
about
exist)0.
not
does
what
Thus,
Schell
example,
for
takes
over
dubious
metaphysics from Freud, according to whom "it is indeed impossible to imagine our own
death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still
present
spectators"
as
refuting
(p.138).
fact
In
first.
the
clause goes
second
The
there
is
great
no
situations which undermine both Freud’s
counterfactual
a good
distance
difficulty
claims.
in
towards
describing
The same goes
for
Schell’s extensions of human chauvinism into one of its main traditional strongholds,
value theory:
evil,
'... the simple and basic fact [sic!]
or
service
(p.171).
lamenting
harm,
rejoicing
or
that before there can be good or
there
be
must
life’,
human
life
These are no facts, but deeply entrenched philosophical dogmas (which have
been exposed and criticised elsewhere, e.g. LIC).
Naturally many things will disappear with the extinction of humans: trivially
there will be no more humans (unless humans re-evolve or are recreated), and thus no
more human communities, human institutions, human activities, human emotions, and so
But it is already going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that there will
forth.
’no thought,
accordingly be
no love,
sacrifice, no image, no song
no struggle, no pain, no hope, no comfort, no
For there are, and may continue to exist, other
...’.
creatures than humans with emotion, struggles,
songs,
...
Nor will the ending of
.
all such human ventures, if it comes to pass, show that all past human ventures have
been 'all in vain', meaningless, and already so to say dead.
The decay of the solar
system, or the heat-death of the universe even, will not show that worthwhile human
9
activities were not worthwhile.
Several of the other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from
their shared assumptions SI
of a Second Death,
(in Revelations)
under
SI,
rendered
is
and S2.
reckoned
meaningless
a
and
species
and
all
extinction came
redeployed
'second death',
already
already 'overhung with death'
'a second death',
It is these that underlie the biblical notion
'seems
(S p.166).
because by
to
to
pass,
generations
the
(S
stronger
be
Thus,
not merely one's own but
future
by both.
'The death of mankind',
S2 and
dead'
(AA
SI remaining
p.244,
S p.166)
life is
and is
too, more trivially, a person faces
in addition that greater death of the
p.166,
p.115).
However
even
notion would not be vindicated,
if
nuclear
because
it
depends on the fallacious inference to the meaninglessness of preceding life and on
the very
questionable representation
of. this
meaninglessness as
a sort
of death.
There is no such Second Death: creatures die just once, perhaps all at about the same
time.
The idea of a Second Death lacks even a solid metaphysical base.
6
together with the minor principle
From SI,
doesn’t differ
in degree,
comes
extinction being an absolute
that
the universality of
peril
theme that
we are all
exposed to peril in the same degree’, which is accordingly ’disguised’ and ’difficult
to
recognise’,
with
In
SI.
situation,
there is no contrast (AE p.64;
because
any
event,
not
Indians of
the
peoples
all
Germans of northern Europe.
ihis theme falls
imperilled
equally
are
southern Patagonia
S p.150).
being rather
by
nuclear
the
better placed
than the
Nor are all people equally locked into the situation or
incapacitated by it; the prospects are different in different countries and places.
Nor,
Schell
likewise,
contrast
(in
all
are
to
people
equally responsible,
a
repeatedly infiltrates.
Anders)
pernicious
This
is
the
theme which
Pogo theme,
according to which
S3.
Responsibility for the present nuclear predicament (fiasco, really) distributes
onto everybody, it belongs to every human in the world.
But
there
is also, mixed
a weaker more
in,
plausible claim that gives lie
to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
An especially blatant example of the Pogo themeH runs as follows: ’...
the
world’s
leaders
political
...
though they
now menace
weapons, do so only with our permission, and even at our bidding.
true for democracies’
(pp.229-30).
positive
pose
the
since we
sense,
threat of it,
At least, this is
theme is elaborated elsewhere:
The
... we are
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true
the authors of that extinction.
in a
with nuclear
the earth
pay for extinction and
support the governments that
the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world it is
while for
true only in the negative sense that they fail try to do anything about the danger/
But this is more of an argument indicting representative government, by
(p.152).
revealing
insensitivity
its
unresponsiveness
and
to
many
of
the
populace
they
allegedly govern, not to mention those affected by its activities who are not
represented at all (namely foreigners).
But Schell conveniently neglects all such
’... we are potential mass killers.
points:
that it makes of all of us underwriters of
(p.152).
The moral cost of nuclear armaments is
the slaughter of hundreds of millions
And again ’[as] perpetrators ... we convey the steady message ... that life
not only is not sacred but is worthless;
(p.153).
everyone to be killed’
that
... .it had been judged acceptable for
Little of this is true.
Those who campaign against
nuclear arrangements, vote against nuclear—committed parties so far as is possible,
destruction,
and
responsibility for the nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
Nor
and
the
are
like,
does responsibility
certainly
— or
everyone
attributes
to
decisions
taken
—
not
the
the unlikely
fall
in "liberal
on
authors
opinions as
those
democracies"
who
have
of
to
done
potential
worth
Schell
less.
even by representatives
illegitimately
Responsibility
for
(in the unlikely
7
event of
this happening
in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be
traced back to those represented, since among many other things, a representative is
only
representative of a
party which offers
a complex and often ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero or more policies of this package.
Only in the (uncommon) event of a clear single issue referendum, which is adopted,
still of a qualified sort, be sheeted home, to those who voted
can responsibility,
for it, not to everyone in the community.
While S3 is false, there is an important
related theme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nuclear situation
generates responsibilities for every socially involved person.
When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying themes, part
of what results is decidedly along the right lines; namely
S4.
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of us] have
failed to change our
pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out of step
with the nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc. (the whole earth theme).
Though Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the
frequently immoral purposes for which the state is used, unfortunately he often loses
sight of
this important
arrives
at
state which is,
the
critique of
theme (indicated pp.187-8).
the conclusion
that
by and
large,
Yet S4 forms part of Schell s
scattered and
the nation-state has outlasted
fragmentary.
Schell
its usefulness,
and
that new political institutions more ’consonant with the global reality’ are required
as a matter of urgency.
But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out
viable alternatives.12 At most he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards
the Way Up to world political control.
Solutions to
way,
the nuclear dilemma come,
from the Top Down;
(cf. p.230).
those
if not easily, in a similar simplistic
who can must appeal
to the Top,
to those who govern
Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and limitations,
such as SALT, and in world government,
especially p.227,
bottom paragraph).
through the United Nations (see p.225ff. and
Given the record of
these organisations and
treaties, the negotiations and regulators, it is by now a pathetic faith.
Nor is a
serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the
origins of nuclear technology,
to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider
effective changes to military-industrial organisation and ways of life.
But
some of
the requisite
deeper analysis of
the nuclear situation and, more
The roots of
generally, of the roots of war can be found in Anders and elsewhere.
the nuclear predicament are not confined to the ideologically —aligned arrangements of
nation-states,
but
penetrate
also
into
key
components
of
those
states,
their
8
and their supporting bureaucracies.
their controlling classes,
military,
And both
within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for the arrangements, and in
key components
of
states,
the
science
for
super-states, to be achieved through military-oriented
in several
enables
domination,
and
which
involves
superiority by the
and
technology,
forms.
interrelated
surplus
the drive
Thus the push for
the accompanying privilege).
power and domination (and, often,
[nuclear]
feature is
a conspicuous and crucial
product
can be
accumulated
at home
(from
where enough
large nation-state,
is the
The main power-base
from abroad,
and
and
bled
from
nature) to proceed with military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found the highj
15
technology research and development means to ever more expendable powei and energy*
prospect of nuclear
war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the mam power-base, the nation
state; it is also important to alter key components of the state, and, more
sweepingly, to remove trouble-making patterns embedded in all these social and
In changing
the
structural
political arrangements,
in
state
relations,
political
arrangements
chauvinistic relations .
relations,
but
in
the
eliminate
namely patterns of domination,
organisation,
human-animal
to
patterns manifested not only
relations,
white-coloured
human-nature
relations;
to
remove,
male-female
in
short,
However not everything needs to be accomplished at once; and
the cluster of damaging power and domination relations tied into war can be tackled
And there the problems can largely be narrowed to certain problems of
separately.
states and certain key components of states.
analysis he does offer of the problem with states, Schell repeats the
familiar false contrast of state expediency with morality, as a contrast between
The teaching that 'the end
"raison d’etat" and the Socratic—Christian ethics.
justifies the means is the basis on which governments, in all times, have licensed
In what
themselves
to
commit crimes of
every
sort’
(p.134).
So
'states may do virtually
Schell then argues however, that
extinction nullifies end-means justification by destroying every end; but again the
argument is far from sound, and depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
with ontological
assumptions.
Even if all humans were
extinguished (as under SI)
ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animals and extraterrestrials,
The ends-means argument can however be repaired to remove such
actual or not.
objections: instead it is claimed that extinction nullifies ends-means justification
by frustrating the realisation of every relevant end - meaning by 'relevant', in this
context, those ends the realisation of which the state appeals to in justification of
I6
its nuclear policies.
A nuclear war, even without human extinction but with severe
enough losses, would undoubtedly frustrate the realisation of relevant state ends.
9
So
even
from
an
perspective,
expediency
policies
super-state
open
are
severe
to
criticism, for example as motivationally irrational in the nuclear risks taken.
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
Schell leaves us in
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the right and
no doubt.
power to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (p.187).
War arises from
how things are; from the arrangement of political affairs via jealous nation-states
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between having sovereignty and capacity
(p.188).
to wage war.
to organise
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell contends, necessary for people
for war.
sovereignty.
On the other
side, without war it
is impossible
to preserve
The
Neither of these contentions is transparently clear as it stands.
first is damaged by civil war and the like, the second by the persistence of small
the macro-state
Now that
nonmilitary states.
system is entrenched, it is however
easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the "realities
life,
which include self-interest,
that
peace
are
arrangements
aggression,
readily
fear,
hatred.
as
dismissed
of international
is on this basis
It
unrealistic,
utopian,
even
(amusingly) as extremist (cf. p.L85).
Schell’s further
theme
nuclear
that
"war"
is not
war threatens,
however,
to
undermine his case against the sovereign state; for example, his ends-means argument
and the argument based on its nuclear-war making capacity.
theme needs much qualification,
Fortunately the not-war
and starts out from an erroneous characterisation of
war as ’a violent means employed by a nation to achieve an end’ (p.189): but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for war.
very different
What is correct is that nuclear wars are
from previous conventional wars
(cf. WP).
Schell goes on
that war requires an end which nuclear "war" does not have.
to claim
But nuclear attacks can
certainly have ends (even if large nuclear wars cannot be won in the older sense: but
It is also claimed that war depends on weakness; on
not all wars or games are won).
one side being defeated
’no
happen,
But
what
one’s
these
on a decision by arms.
strength
sorts
of
fails
war
this doesn t
until both sides have been annihilated’
considerations
nuclear wars are not wars, but
But in nuclear
contribute
to
showing
is
(p.190).
again
that they are not wars of certain sorts,
not
that
e.g., not
just wars (because they fail on such criteria as reasonable prospect of success anu
improvement), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
that conventional wars
have
argument
persisted
into
nuclear
times
does
damage
to
Schell’s
that nuclear
weapons have also ruined "conventional" wars, and his connected theme that the demise
of war
court
has left no means
of
appeal
has
mistaken propositions:
been
to finally settle disputes between nations, for the final
removed
(pp. 192—193) •
The
theme depends
on a
pair of
that concerning the demise of conventional war, and the idea
10
that
war of
some
sort has
to be
final "court of appeal" between nations (for
the
there are other types of contests that could serve, and there is also the possibility
of more cooperative behaviour,
joint referenda).
e.g.
imports the
The theme also
social-Darwinian assumption of Clausewicz (the "logic of war
that war has to
theme)
proceed to the technological limit ~ as if war and violence were thoroughly natural
activities, independent of recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.),
On the contrary, wars are parasitic on social organisations
and ruleless activities.
such as states and are governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
They are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if not a logic.
Much capital has been made not merely from "the logic of war
but from what is
now called "the logic of deterrence" and the "logic of nuclear [strategic] planning .
The message that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive arrangements the
world
is
entangled
now
in
are
perfectly
sound,
logical,
represents little more than a cheap semantical trick.
rational.
however this
Logic in no way justifies the
present arrangements, or anything like them, or renders them reasonable.
There are
logics of decision (as presented, e.g., for the classical case in Jeffrey) which can
be applied
in
strategic
planning;
but
yield specific results without
they do not
desirability measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values
being pumped in, extralogically .
There are various ways these value assignments may
be determined, to meet moral requirements or not; but in nuclear strategic planning
they have invariably been settled on the basis of expediency
however,
to
cover
something
like
’reasoning
(even from a national
fail:18 yet
threat of
further and
of
stresses (p.213)
threatening
use
interest viewpoint)
the success
this
considerations entering
into
the
’the illogic of deterrence’, for he emphasizes
For instance he
unreasonableness.
rationality
rational
and
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing with
the term ’logic of’, should write of
supposed
lor the most pait,
’logic of’ tends to be used very loosely, as a word of general commendation,
policy or strategy of’.
its
.
of deterrence
unjustifiable and
the disparity between the
weapons and
of nuclear
the
irrationality
of actually using them should the threat
doctrine depends on the credibility of
irrational use.
the
Indeed Schell wants to go still
locate a contradiction in deterrence (e.g.
but
the argument
depends on an interesting confusion of contradiction with cancellation,
along with
the assumption that deterrence involves cancellation.
irrational, it is immoral, but it is not inconsistent.
pp.z-01~2>;
Nuclear deterrence may well be
ft
NOTES
This is a revised version of ’Appendix 1. On the fate of mankind and the earth,
according to Schell, and to Anders' of my monograph referred to as WP, where
several points, only touched upon in this review, are further developed.
References are by way of authors' names or else through obvious acronyms, given
in the list of references which follows.
. The distinguishing term is from Foley's Nuclear Prophets, where many
leading anti-nuclear prophets are assessed. One well-known prophet not so
considered there is Jaspers, presumably because his main work comes out in
entirely the wrong direction. It gives heavy philosophical attire to the
better-dead-than-red abomination. A main argument against Jaspers so
presented is simple. However bad being red might become (at present it is
debatably worse than living under some of the totalitarian regimes the
free West props up), it still gives humans a further chance for good
lives, since regimes fall or can be toppled: but total annihilation
removes that all-important opportunity.
But of course Jaspers does not present his position so simply. Rather his
contention is that there are circumstances where, and principles for
which, a person or group of persons ought to sacrifice even their lives.
Freedom is such: a life worth living is a free life. But the latter point
can be granted without conceding that sacrifice is a possible means to it.
While the sacrifice of one or a few lives may be a possible (if dubiously
effective) way to free lives for others, certainly the sacrifice of all
lives is not a possible route to free lives for all, since no human lives
remain.
To this extent Schell is right (on p.131) in accusing Jaspers of
an each to all fallacy.
Jasper's idea that "the free life that they try
to save by all possible means is more than mere life or lives" breaks down
when applied to all participating people.
None can gain free lives by
extinction of all: that is not a possible route to life even.
. A detailed comparison of Schell and Anders' remarkably similar versions of
S2 is made in Foley JS.
. Should S2 appeal, as it may, to suitable communities of humans, SI will
require reformulation in similar terms; and the argument that follows
needs minor adjustment, with appropriate groups replacing individuals.
. Thus the Last Person argument, important in environmental ethics (as HC
explains), is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting for instance the
remote death of the Sun, but assumes new urgency.
It is this sort of
argument that connects environmental ethics and nuclear ethics, at a
deeper metaphysical level.
The Bomb and Bulldozer are out of the same
technological Pandora's box.
Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only
Pandora's box.
Biological and chemical means are perhaps even more
effective, and certainly can be more selective in what gets extinguished.
Nuclear extinction would presumably require a different and more massive
exchange than is usually assumed in nuclear war scenarios, with heavy
12
targeting
in
particular
of
Southern Hemispheric
internationally-recognised nuclear-free zones).
sites
(including
5. Nor do recent scientific studies claim as much.
The most intrepid of
these studies, Erlich and others, only contends that in certain worst-case
circumstances, ’the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens cannot
be excluded’ (p.1299).
The study admits that, in the scenario described,
’it seems unlikely ... Homo spaiens would be forced to extinctions
immediately ’, and the difficulties indicated in the way of long-term human
survival are exaggerated.
In particular, many of the drastic effects predicted for Northern mid
latitudes are reflected in very much milder form in equivalent Southern
latitudes.
For example, temperatures for regions with maritine climates
appear likely to vary by only a few degrees and perhaps neglibly for many
agricultural purposes after 100 days (cf. Turco and others, p.1237 case
29, and p.1286).
Similarly the extent of nuclear darkness and of surface
ultraviolet radiation will be appreciably less in the South and perhaps
minor for many crucial purposes, such as photosynthesis and human outdoor
activity, after 100 dayss (cf. the data in Benton and Partridge).
No doubt some scientifically respectable sections of the environmental and
peace movements have an interest in exaggerating the probable effects of
nuclear holocaust
for life on earth, much as many statesmen and
strategists have an interest in minimizing them.
And there is certainly
substantial margin for error and for variation in conclusions drawn.
For
Crutzen (p.59) is right that ’analyses of the environmental effects of a
global nuclear war remain
. . . uncertain .. . because of a lack of
information on various important processes [among other things] ... The
environment might become extremely hostile, because of hitherto overlooked
changes in the composition of the atmosphere*, again among other things.
Such uncertainty bodes considerable caution as rational.
The way to err
is clear.
6. Not
merely
by
technological
determinists
of
marxist
persuasion.
Hackworth, a former US general, argues by straight induction that if the
US military has a weapon it will use it.
7. The appalling theme that humans create past, present and future (etc.) is
repeated elsewhere, e.g. p.173.
8. For detailed refutation of these assumptions, see JB.
9. Anders is here (AA pp.244-5) relying upon a version of the argument from
perserverence, criticised in detail in Routley and Griffin.
10. An interesting converse of this theme is sometimes advanced, that no one
is responsible, the whole thing is out of control.
The technological
version of this no-responsibility theme is discussed below (fn 15). More
satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangements are out of political
control, but for reasons, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclear
things going, which enable responsibility to be distributed.
The vested
interests, which bear considerable responsibility, include the military
13
weapons industry, and research and academic communities (cf. Barnaby).
Under pressures for re-election especially, politicians give in to these
powerful groups, so losing control of political processes.
The argument
is flawed at its final stage.
For many influential politicians either
belong to or represent vested interests.
Thus, though there is no doubt
some ’lack of control’, political processes tend rather to reflect vested
interests than to run out of political control.
11. Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows: ’The
self-extinction of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sane
or sensible; nevertheless, it is an act that, without quite admitting it
to ourselves, we plan in certain circumstances to commit’ (p.185).
Even
for most of the planners, extinction is presumably not part of "the plan",
but an unintended consequence; and most of us have little or no role in
the planning, enough of us even campaign against the planning.
Further
'the world ... chose the course of attempting to refashion the system of
sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons' (p.194): the world? This
connects of course with the faulty ideological argument from defence of
fundamentals, e.g. for liberty, for the "free enterprise" (USA) nation,
and against socialism.
12. A more detailed discussion is given in WP ^8, where too the case against
the state from nuclear dilemmas is elaborated.
13. Anders' explanation is elaborated in Foley; some of the themes are
presented more straightforwardly in Martin.
The incomplete list of items
given, to be investigated in a deeper analysis of the nuclear situation,
paraphrases Foley JS p.164.
14. These motivating drives form part of a larger integrated package,
comprising maximisation drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth,
energy, speed, satisfaction,
..., for the "newer" Enlightenment (but
Faustian) virtues.
Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for
excessive neatness and simplicity manifested) to reduce the package to one
main component, preference-satisfaction, for instance, or utility.
And
the type of drive is justified (especially for those who have it, but
worry about it) not only as virtuous, which it is not, but also as
rational, which again it is not.
Rationality, the deeply entrenched myth
has it, consists in maximisation, of a suitable mix of these virtues.
Maximisation of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation
The maximisation of self-interest
theorems and associated paradoxes
(individual or national) runs into Newcomb's paradox and special cases of
The maximisation of power, as
it such as Prisoners Dilemma situations.
the
Christian-lslamic
God,
encounters the paradox of
symbolised in
the
parallel
maximisation
of
knowledge,
paradoxes of
omnipotence,
or
There
are
no
consistent
objects
which
arc
omnipotent
omniscience.
the
The
drive
for
maximum
consistency,
often
taken
to
be
omniscient.
epitome of rationality, also leads to inconsistency in the case of more
important theories, such as arithmetic and set theory (by virtue of
Godel’s theorem and associated limitative theorems).
15. R & D,
though directed by military requirements and the arms race, also
14
drives the arms race.
science.
Its role is partly disguised by the myth of neutral
There have been attempts, not only by those committed to technological
determinism, to involve technology more deeply as the main, or single,
source of the nuclear fix (thus especially Mumford, in part thereby
anticipating Commoner’s parallel indictment of technology-choice in the
ecological fix).
It is technology, the mega-machine, running out of
control, that has brought us to this predicament, the nuclear abyss.
Sometimes this serves to exonerate states and their key components and
those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-ofcontrol machine; but sometimes the state itself is seen as a machine also
running out of control.
But technological determinism, like other
varieties of stronger (nonanalytlc) determinism, is false.
Nuclear
technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known political
dispute involving distinguished scientists; it was deliberated, funded and
promoted, while other alternatives were not.
Damaging technologies of the nuclear age were not inevitable, but
deliberately chosen by certain components of the large nation-states. And
much as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be
persisted with.
The fashionable inevitability/determinism themes admit
not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting
with often recalcitrant technologies.
They also admit of being made to
look ridiculous.
If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolution,
then if it functions (as it probably will, a matter also determined), it
will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined.
That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionary place in human population
regulation!
16. This reformulation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main
qualification can be inferred from Schell’s context.
17. Selecting the usual game theory setting sees to this almost automatically;
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or her own
advantage. Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that ’the logic of
deterrence’ is based on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.
18. Even the irrationality of retaliatory (or first-strike) use has been
contested, e.g. it has been wishfully thought that America will rise like
a phoenix from the radioactive ashes.
There is moreover a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the "missing
motive" for
retaliating to a large strike (p.204), namely, not a
retributive one, but an ideological one: eliminate the prospect of the
future dominance of the rival ideology.
Such a motive has been offered
for the conjectured targeting of Latin America.
19. An analogous confusion of negation with cancellation or obliteration
appears in recent US "star-war" thinking, where US missiles are supposed
to "negate" incoming USSR missiles.
Moral
paradoxes of deterrence
take a different direction.
For although
involving negation, they depend upon perhaps questionable interconnexions
of intensional functors.
One type of paradox (considered in WP §5, where
the immorality of deterrence is argued) derives from a policy of credibly
threatening war without however intending to proceed to war, though
credible threats [appear to] imply an intention to proceed. Another style
derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles
when the persistent practice, which implies an intention, is to increase
the number.
This paradox is technically removed - how satisfactorily is
another matter - by a distinction between longer-term aims and immediate
practice,
a
time-honoured
method
of
removing
contradictions
by
conveniently discerned temporal distinctions.
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zur
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atomaren
F. Barnaby, ’Will there be a Nuclear War’, in Australia
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I.J.
Benton
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Partridge,
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Collection
Citation
Richard Sylvan, “Box 71, Item 4: Two drafts of Metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament,” Antipodean Antinuclearism, accessed March 29, 2024, https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/104.