Battle of Ideas 2011 complete

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CREATIVITY AND CURIOSITY: DO WE MAKE STUFF UP OR FIND IT OUT?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5683

For many music lovers, it is the seeming inevitability of a musical sequence that makes it beautiful, as if it has always existed, waiting to be discovered by its ‘composer’. Typically, we value serious literature for the truths it tells about the human condition, rather than for mere flights of fancy. The proverbial Indian woodcarver, asked how he approached his work, answered that he simply cut away the wood that didn’t look like an elephant. Perhaps, as Oscar Wilde said, art really is ‘the science of beauty’, revealing the world to us rather than adding something new. Or is all this an illusion? Is it an aesthetic judgement rather than a scientific one that leads us to describe a work of art as ‘truthful’?

Historically, great artists were often employed by the Church to glorify God, and their work was seen as a mere reflection of His Creation. Early scientists like Isaac Newton also saw themselves as revealing the glory of Creation. For modern thinkers in the wake of the Enlightenment, however, man made God in his own image, not the other way round. The led to a more heroic conception of both artists and scientists. Looking back, the great medieval cathedrals could be seen as monuments to man’s own ingenuity. Artists came to be seen as ‘creative’ in their own right, while scientists seemed to be unravelling religious beliefs with their discoveries about the natural world. But the resulting scepticism also opened the door to new forms of fatalism, a process still unfolding today. As neuroscience advances, some think we will discover we are not much more than human ants, determined by natural laws. As for the mysteries of art, there are countless examples of scientific or mathematical explanations of the Mona Lisa’s beauty or the perfection of a symphony. At the same time, though, some doubt the objectivity even of mathematics. Some doubt that complex numbers really ‘exist’, for example, and suggest mathematicians are inventing theories rather than discovering eternal verities. Meanwhile, the romantic celebration of artists as special individuals has given way in many quarters to doubt about the value of ‘postmodern’ art that seems neither true nor beautiful.

Modern humanity exists in a vast cold universe, but (most of the time) we don’t feel crushed by its weight. Are we fooling ourselves with stories we tell each other, papering over the existential cracks? Should we be much more honest about our significance, given what scientific measurement might reveal to us? How far can art and creativity go in informing our understanding of the world? Does art just reflect reality? Is reality shaped by art? Do we find what we are looking for? Even create what we want to find? Are we human because we make ourselves so, or just animals putting on airs?

Speakers
Dr Ken Arnold
head of public programmes, Wellcome Trust; author, Cabinets for the Curious

Dr Tiffany Jenkins
writer and broadcaster; author, Keeping Their Marbles: how treasures of the past ended up in museums and why they should stay there

Professor Colin Lawson
director, Royal College of Music; period clarinettist; author, Mozart: Clarinet Concerto and Brahms: Clarinet Quintet

Ruth Padel
poet and writer; author, The Mara Crossing and Darwin: a life in poems

Professor Raymond Tallis
fellow, Academy of Medical Sciences; author, philosopher, critic and poet; recent books include NHS SOS and Aping Mankind; chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying

Chair
Dolan Cummings
associate fellow, Academy of Ideas; author, That Existential Leap: a crime story (forthcoming from Zero Books)

Battle of Ideas 2011

Creativity and curiosity: do we make stuff up or find it out?

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PROFITING RESPONSIBLY? BUSINESS IN THE BIG SOCIETY
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5682

Not long ago, ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) was all the rage. Leading consultants Giles Gibbons and Steve Hilton (now advisor to David Cameron) argued business could change the world, and it would be good for business too. Such rhetoric is increasingly seen as a cynical ruse, however, often dismissed as ‘green wash’, or a cynical means of avoiding unwanted regulation. But if the CSR brand is slightly tarnished, perhaps the Big Society offers a new lease of life to the idea of business as a force for good. David Cameron wants private enterprise to pick up the burden from the state and play a greater role in delivering public services. And while funding CSR programmes is no longer a no-brainer, at the 10th Annual Responsible Business Summit held in London at the start of May, top CEOs declared themselves eager to earn a ‘licence to operate’ by demonstrating their businesses’ social worth. This may be understandable, with the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer showing trust in British CEOs dropping from 51% to 35%. The public seems increasingly cynical about fat cats and powerful corporations. But how should business contribute to society? Milton Friedman famously argued a corporation’s purpose is solely to maximise returns for its shareholders. Traditional free market advocates explain that businesses make profits by producing useful goods and services, creating jobs in the process. What more do you want?

Today, however, shareholders’ interests are often pitted against those of broader stakeholders. The new buzz-phrases are ‘social accounting’ and ‘the triple bottom line’, with demands that the social and environmental effects of a company’s economic actions are made transparent to consumers, investors such as pension funds, and communities in the areas where the corporation operates, as well as regulators and the media. A cursory glance at the course content of MBA courses - bulging with as many modules on environmental, ethical and social issues as traditional topics like accounting and management - shows young entrepreneurs and tomorrow’s senior managers are routinely taught to ‘think and act beyond the bottom line’. But is the bottom line and profit really at odds with society as implied? Is it naïve to insist corporations’ contribution stands on its own merits? After all, long-term improvements in health, living standards, the arts and higher education depend on wealth creation.

Does business leaders’ eagerness to demonstrate their social worth in new ways reflect a loss of confidence in that core contribution? Perhaps it is easier to turn a profit by manipulating the public perception of brands, and benefitting from government largesse in the form of spurious public-private partnerships, than by investing in innovation and creating jobs in new sectors of the economy. If so, are critics letting corporations off the hook? Do CSR demands help restore trust in business, or create a world of smoke and mirrors?

Speakers
Sue Clark
corporate affairs director, SABMiller

Professor Bill Durodié
head of department and chair of international relations, University of Bath

Giles Gibbons
founder and CEO, Good Business; founder, Sustainable Restaurant Association; co-author, Good Business: your world needs you

Leo Johnson
partner, PwC Sustainability & Climate Change; host, BBC World's Down to Business

Philippe Legrain
visiting senior fellow, LSE’s European Institute; author, Immigrants: your country needs them and European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right

Chair
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Profiting responsibly? Business in the big society

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WHAT IS NATURE FOR?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5681

Even in our culturally advanced and technologically sophisticated modern world, it seems we are fascinated by the natural world. Recent government plans to sell off woodlands were met with a storm of outrage; David Attenborough’s Planet Earth and Blue Planet documentaries have been international success stories, and Cornwall’s Eden Project has long outlived the Millennium Dome as a tourist attraction. But what do we mean by ‘nature’? Many of the ‘natural’ habitats we revere are actually the products of human activity, from agriculture and horticulture to the very act of selective conservation itself. Moreover, for much of human history, untamed natural forces were to be feared rather than admired. Even the 21st century citizen is not entirely insulated from such forces: whether it is the devastation wreaked by natural disasters such as the Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina or the Haiti earthquake, or the unintended consequences of our own activity, from landslides caused by deforestation to anthropogenic climate change, we are regularly reminded how precarious civilisation can be in the face of Mother Nature.

The contemporary reaction to such rare disasters – ‘Nature’s Revenge’ ran one headline after the Fukushima earthquake – seems to suggest we are a long way from the Enlightenment view of man gaining freedom by controlling nature. As Rousseau put it, ‘Nature commands every animal, and beasts obey. Man feels the same impetus, but he knows he is free to go along or to resist; and it is above all in the awareness of this freedom that the spirituality of his soul is made manifest.’ Today, mankind seems more concerned with protecting nature than mastering it: witness the ferocity with which the Heathrow airport expansion was opposed. While many talk up the possibilities of alternative energy sources drawn from wind, solar and biofuels, the prospect of using ambitious bio-engineering to ‘improve’ nature makes others uncomfortable. Environmentalists insist we should see ourselves as an integral part of nature, rather than somehow outside it.

Is human history the story of man’s gradual but relentless domination of nature? Or is it possible for even the most ardent modernist to argue for keeping some spaces ‘natural’? Is nature an obstacle for mankind to overcome, or should we learn to work within its limits? What do we look to nature for, and why does it still have such a hold on the imagination of those who have benefitted from industrialised living?

Speakers
Josie Appleton
director, civil liberties group, Manifesto Club; author, Officious: Rise of the Busybody State

Dr Jim Endersby
senior lecturer, University of Sussex; author, A Guinea Pig's History of Biology

Matthew Oates
specialist on nature & wildlife engagement, National Trust

Ruth Padel
poet and writer; author, The Mara Crossing and Darwin: a life in poems

Chair
Patrick Hayes
director, British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)

What is nature for?

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THE BATTLE AGAINST THE FATES
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5680

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
(Julius Caesar, 1.2.146), Cassius to Brutus

Education Minister Michael Gove says the government wants to help all Britain’s children shape their own destinies and become ‘masters of their own fate’. But is this a realistic aspiration, or even a meaningful one? Certainly the human struggle for self-mastery has a fine pedigree, going back to the ancients. But has the modern age brought us closer to this goal, or simply revealed the futility of trying to tame the fates? After all, one scientific discovery follows the next suggesting our behaviour is genetically driven. Some scientists claim everything from sexual preference to criminality, altruism to greed, is hardwired. Brain research and evolutionary psychology are mobilised to argue that even religious beliefs and morality are expressions of genetic and neurological dispositions. When US President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1939, ‘Men are not prisoners of Fate, but only prisoners of their own minds’, he was of course unaware of the gains of modern neuroscience. Bestselling authors like Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values and David Brooks in The Social Animal tell us a ‘cognitive revolution’ has occurred in recent years, ‘producing amazing insights about who we are’. Behavioural economics suggests we are essentially irrational, simply acting out our unconscious urges. Social determinism is also influential: it is taken for granted in the current discussion on social mobility that where you are born, both geographically and in class terms, is likely to dictate your future. Meanwhile, we feel increasingly powerless to deal with external forces, from international terrorism to swine flu, climate change to volcanic ash clouds.

The fatalistic zeitgeist means we tend increasingly to downplay the significance of our own actions and focus instead on external forces beyond our control. Frequently this leads to a conspiratorial mindset, and fears of being manipulated by anything from subliminal advertising to unknown powers that have no name. In such circumstances, our ability to change our destiny seems futile; we have little option but to defer to fate. What explains today’s intellectual temper of fatalism? If we believe individuals cannot control their own behaviour, let alone their future, where does that leave the exercise of free will? If our capacity to influence events is so limited, can there be any meaningful sense of responsibility? How can we be held to account if ‘my genes made me do it m’lud’? Or is it cowardly to avoid understanding that man-made science is now freeing us from the metaphysical ignorance that suggested we could determine who we are? Can the capacity for moral independence be rescued or is it a futile rage against the inevitable? Where does fate end and free will begin?

Speakers
Professor Frank Furedi
sociologist and social commentator; author, What's Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history

Peter Hunter OP
principal tutor, philosophy, Blackfriars Hall; Dominican Friar

Steve Rayner
James Martin Professor of Science and Civilization; director, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford

Jeffrey Rosen
professor of law, George Washington University; author, The Supreme Court: the personalities and rivalries that defined America

Chair
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

The Battle against the Fates

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WELCOME ADDRESS 2011
https://academyofideas.org.uk/2011/10/29/battle-of-ideas-festival-2011-welcome-address/

The seventh annual Battle of Ideas festival opened with a Welcome Address hosted by Claire Fox, Director of the Academy of Ideas.

Speakers
Ann Furedi
chief executive, British Pregnancy Advisory Service; author, The Moral Case for Abortion

Dr Paul Thompson
rector and vice-provost, Royal College of Art

Jamie Walls
vice president, UK communications, Shell

Mike Wright
executive director, Jaguar Land Rover

Chair
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Welcome Address 2011

Listen to recordings of our discussions and debates. Our aim is to expand the boundaries of public debate, to break out of today's echo chambers and challenge orthodoxies.