Report on Youth Session
The overarching topic of the Tokyo Forum is “Shaping the Future”, and it essentially needs the participation of youth who will be the main actors of the future and also may have different interests from the established generation. As a side event of the Tokyo Forum 2022, a total of 10 students from UTokyo and Korean universities discussed "Dialogue between Philosophy and Science: In a World Facing War, Pandemic, and Climate Change” to provide views from the younger generations on this topic. The participants were:
・ISE, Kohei: Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, UTokyo
・IWATA, Yukina: Faculty of Engineering, UTokyo
・JEONG, Min Kyeong: Yonsei University, Graduate School of International Studies
・JU, Ryujung: Sookmyung Women's University
・KANG, Seoyoon: Sungkyunkwan University, Graduate School of Governance
・MATSUURA, Yuuki: Collage of Arts and Sciences, UTokyo
・OH, Min-ji: Ewha Womans University, Graduate School of International Studies
・SAITO, Tomomi: Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Science, UTokyo
・YOSHIMOTO Saki: Graduate School of Public Policy, UTokyo
The Youth Session started in October 2022 and after several on-line meetings, they had a final face-to-face session on the campus of the University of Tokyo on December 2 (Fri) between 1:00pm and 3:00pm.
Throughout the sessions, intrinsic values of human as opposed to instrumental values were discussed. One participant voiced her concern that “children are regarded as a cost in the modern society, but why?” If a society recognizes human as an instrument to produce economic profits, children can be the cost. However, this is a myopic and narrow view. Children will grow up in the long-run and add new values to society. Furthermore, humans have multiple values aside from producing economic profit. To reconcile this problem, the session has provided the following useful insights.
- Although philosophy and scientific technology have inseparable relationships from their births, homogenous nature of modern technology aiming at exploitation provides threats to human beings today. Enhancing techno-diversity was suggested to alleviate the threats.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies need to be used for enhancing multiple dimensions of human values, rather than overly focusing on limited number of values by neglecting the plural nature of human activities.
- Climate change also provide threats. Although the international society has spent many hours discussing threatened non-human species, no clear definition, systematic framework, nor sufficient global cooperations exist regarding humans threatened by climate changes. More attention is needed for displaced persons.
- Migrant workers are in the blind spot of human rights, which are guaranteed in sovereign states. The need of more powerful global governance is desirable to bridge the health gap experienced by migrant workers.
- Past efforts to reconcile sustainability and profitability were not successful because of the lack of long-term views. Technologies need to be constructed so that they can facilitate humans to build such long-term views through improved communications among people and promoting transparency in the business sector.
Discussions further went on to the point of how to convince the majority of the society. Humanity should be pursued as a society. Empathy was also suggested as the key for possible solutions. Promoting more personal contacts with different cultural backgrounds was suggested. Utilizing technology to remove obstacles for human communication was acknowledged to better global political representations. Alternative philosophical viewpoints on science and technology were also debated as a way of pursuing human values.
Finally, the participants agreed that the younger generation should (i) understand how philosophy and science are related with our lives in the social context, (ii) contemplate upon what values to be pursued, both on individual and community levels, and (iii) act to materialize such values.
(The report was drafted by Kangwoo Choi, Seoul National University, and modified by Nobuyuki Yagi, the University of Tokyo. Professors Jie Ae Sohn, Ewha Womans University, and Nobuyuki Yagi, the University of Tokyo, were the co-supervisors of the 2022 Youth Session.)
