Academy of Ideas

#BattleFest2013: Building an intellectual legacy – the Battle for which ideas?

Recorded on Sunday 21 October 2013 at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Barbican in London
‘Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and understanding them is half way to being aboard that powerful juggernaut rather than under its wheels’. AC Grayling
Society seems woefully lacking in Big Ideas, and we seem to crave new thinking. In Britain, great hopes rest on the legacy of the Olympics, but however inspiring the sporting excellence we all witnessed, is it realistic that a summer of feel-good spectacle can resolve deep-rooted cultural problems, from widespread disdain for competitition to community fragmentation? In America, Mitt Romney has pledged to pit substantial ideas against the empty ‘yes, we can’ sloganeering of Barack Obama, with his running mate Paul Ryan dubbed the ‘intellectual’ saviour of the Republican Party, but can they really deliver? Europe, once the home of Enlightenment salons, is now associated more with EU technocrats than philosophes. Looking to the intellectual legacy of the past is considered out of pace with an ever-changing world. We seem estranged from ideas associated with important moments in history - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions. Can even a basic idea like free will survive the challenges of neuroscience and genetics? When the internet offers information at the click of a mouse, what’s the point of pedagogy?
Some contend intellectual life has rarely been healthier; after all today’s governments appoint economists, philosophers and scientific advisers to positions of influence, and the fashion for evidence-based policy puts a premium on academic research. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on ‘what works’ utility and short-term impact rather than open-ended, risky ideas. Often data is passed off as Truth, and Socratic dialogue replaced by rows over conflicting evidence. The scramble for the next Big Idea seems to have replaced the creative and painstaking development of ideas. It’s as though serious ideas can be conjured up in brainstorming sessions or critical-thinking classes. But think-tanks kite-flying the latest outside-of-the-box, blue-skies-thinking speak more to pragmatism and opportunism than following in the tradition of Plato. Ideas become free-floating, divorced from their origins, and take on any meaning one cares to ascribe to them. Hence freedom can mean protection, its defence leading to illiberal regulations; equality can mean conformity and sameness; tolerance becomes a coda for indifference, and individualism denotes little more than selfishness.
Where apparently novel concepts catch on, from sustainability to fairness, identity to offence, they are often little more than fashionable sound-bites. Other ideas are even described as dangerous; those who espouse the ‘wrong’ ideas branded as modern-day heretics. But can we ever hope to approach the truth if we stifle dissent? Is intellectual life on the wane? Is it conservative to cling to old ideas, or if we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants, are we doomed to stand still ? Might truth seeking be more important than the Truth?
Speakers:
Andrew Keenentrepreneur; founder, Audiocafe.com; author, Digital Vertigo: how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us
 
Professor Ivan KrastevChairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna
 
Dr Ellie Leereader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies
 
 
Rob Riemenwriter and cultural philosopher; founder & president, Netherlands-based Nexus Institute; author, Nobility of Sprit: a forgotten ideal and The Eternal Return of Fascism
 
Chair:
 
Claire Fox director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze
 
 

#BattleFest2012: Free will: just an illusion?

Free will is at the root of our notions of moral responsibility,
choice and judgment. It is at the heart of our conception of the human
individual as an autonomous end in himself. Nevertheless, free will is
notoriously hard to pin down. Philosophers have denied its existence on
the basis that we are determined by the laws of nature, society or
history, insisting there is no evidence of free will in the iron chain
of cause and effect. Theologians have argued everything happens
according to the will of God, not man. And yet, when we decide we want
something and act on that, it certainly seems as if we are choosing freely. Are we just kidding ourselves?
Some of the most profound contemporary challenges to the idea of free
will come from neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists and
biologists. They argue we are effectively programmed to act in certain
ways, and only feel as if we make choices. Some argue, for
example, that we can easily be nudged into certain types of behaviour if
only the right stimuli are applied. It is widely believed that
advertising can make us buy things we don’t need or even want. Stronger
forms of this reasoning can be found in the idea that early
intervention, usually before the age of three, can determine the sort of
adult a child will grow up to be. Without such intervention, we are
told, their future will be determined by genetics, by their environment,
by the way their parents treat them.
Nevertheless, common sense still gives strong support to the idea
that we have free will. We understand there are relatively large areas
of our lives in which it makes sense to say we could have acted
differently, with correspondingly different results. The law recognises
this too: it is no defence to say you stole because your parents were
cruel to you. We feel remorse at opportunities we could have taken but
did not. And we do sometimes choose to do the right thing even against
our own interests: in extreme cases some even lay down their lives for
others and for ideals. Jean-Paul Sartre argued, ‘the coward makes
himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is
always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the
hero to stop being a hero’. Is the idea that we might be born cowards,
or heroes, an excuse for not facing up to our moral responsibilities? Or
is free will really an illusion, the by-product of a vain belief that
we are all special? Speakers:Joe Friggieri professor
of philosophy and former head of department, University of Malta; poet;
playwright; theatre director; three-times winner, National Literary
PrizeDr Daniel Glaser head,
special projects, public engagement, Wellcome Trust; honorary senior
research fellow, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College
LondonNeal Lawson chair, Compass; author, All Consuming; former adviser to Gordon Brown; co-editor, Progressive CenturyDr Ellie Lee reader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies

Chair: Angus Kennedy
convenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discriminationRecorded on Sunday 21 October 2012 at the Battle of Ideas Festival at the Barbican in London.