The focus of our research is the future, which is unknown and unknowable'; that is, it is uncertain.

We acknowledge and seek to accommodate uncertainty in its original forms of volatility, ambiguity, complexity, aleatory and epistemic risk as well as ontologic uncertainty. In doing so, we are forced to address those things of which we are sure — those things to which we are committed, of our beliefs.

This is a statement of 20 of those things:

We believe . . .

1. in Locke’s formulation of imperative of ‘the consent of the governed’;

2. in the precepts and aspriations of liberal democracy;

3. that freedom vests ineluctably in the individual;

4. freedom arises both positively (freedom to) and negatively (freedom from);

5. rights carry both counter-vailing & reciprocal responsibilities;

6. in J.S. Mill’s Harm Principle;

7. in Kant’s second formulation of his Categorical Imperative (avoidance of using humans instrumentally — also known as his ‘humanity principle’);

8. in the pro-sociality of free, open, competitive markets (per Smith’s ‘invisible hand’);

9. [We acknowledge] there are conditions under which markets under-perform or fail;

10. the scale of the state should be the minimum that is consistent with performing its selected roles openly, equitably & efficiently, allowing for uncertainties;

11. the roles of the state should be specified to satisfy the democratic will, balanced by superordinate constraints imposed by equity, efficiency, affordability, openness justice and known principles of political economy;

12. governments can also fail partially or fully and must be tightly overseen by democratically-elected officials;

13. the aspirations of the Western Enlightenment are yet to be realised and that governments and people must continue to strive to adapt the principles that arise therefrom and seek to ensure their realisation through personal & collective action;

14. in scientific knowledge and scientific processes for the confirmation, refutation & creation of knowledge;

15. that, although science typically proceeds as descibed by realist historian Thomas Kuhn, on abductionist principles described by philosopher William James, the standard of scientific proof remains Karl Popper’s principals of falsification;

16. Bertrand Russell’s chicken still dies (i.e., we recognise the problem of induction);

17. that, noting R.M Hare’s distinction between intuitive and critical thinking, neither virtue-ethics, nor deontological or Kantian ethics (and Nozick’s process ethics) nor consequentialism (& Rawlsian justice as fairness) are universalisable (contra Kant). Ethics are inevitably dependent on context; that is, on scope and time horizon;
 (Rawls’ Pareto-optimality-type instrument of his ‘maximin principle’ is, however, both practically and economically unrealistic)

18. in synthesis and that many distinctions and differences of opinion arise from confusion of terms and contexts or semantic distinctions (per Hare);

19. in open, uninhibited, respectful, pluralist debate & the right to dissent & the imperative to express and to hear and listen to dissent;

20. that when the facts change, we should change our minds. What do you do, sir? (J.M. Keynes)

    And, as Ludwig Wittgenstein noted, “Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent.”