Philosophy Now Forum

I think the most challenging and rewarding field of ethics today falls in respect with environmentalism. Nothing has the power to change how you interact with nature, technology, and your society and challenge the fundamental assumptions with how you should behave in your environment as this field of study.

There are two main trains of thought when it comes to environmentalism that causes a lot of debate and tension, and that divide exists between systems based on the individual and those based on the whole. Personally, I stand on the holistic side of things, seeing environmental issues from the perspective of ecosystems rather than individual organisms. Animal rights, for example, focuses on individual members of a community. Ecology focuses on the entire system.

Another divide comes from seeing the world in mechanistic or organic terms. That is, seeing nature using the metaphor or a machine or an organism. Personally, I reject the mechanistic outlook, leaning more to organicism. I'm critical of the "super-organism" concept, that is calling an ecosystem an organism, but I think it's a better metaphor than a machine can provide us.

I hold a very ecologic view, influenced heavily by the science of ecology (and evolution).

I'm not making this thread to prove a point or propose an argument, I'm merely seeing if there's any interest in the subject. Maybe someone here would like to stick up for the mechanistic metaphor or the individualistic ethical basis that I just can't seem to accept. Maybe, like any good philosophy forum, we can just throw a bunch of jargon and talk past each other for 20 pages. I'm just interested in what people have to say about their environmental views (and maybe even practical applications of them).

For some background, I'm studying philosophy at the nation's leading environmental ethics college, where the field of study was born (by Baird Calicott and Pete Gunter, two wonderful professors). Though I focus more on the philosophy of science, I love environmental works (thanks in large part to brilliant works of Aldo Leopold, who is my main influence). I'm finishing up my degree soon and will be working on my master's in a year (hopefully teaching soon after).

I just think that when one starts usng the word ethics and considers an animal or a plant as equal to or more important than a person then one has lost touch with the foundations of ethics. There is absolutely room within a human centred framework of ethics for consideration of the environment and animal kingdom. In fact good rulership mandates effective care and concern for the environment. I am interested in your thread and will read up on some of the names you mentioned but where possible I will try to stay out of the thread - my position is close to that ethics begins and ends with humans (naturally how we relate to animals and nature reflects our morality). I'd rather not be the protagonist in yet another thread for a day or two. (No promises though)!

when the life of an insect is equal to yours, how do you think you'll be treated?

-Imp

Wootah wrote:I just think that when one starts usng the word ethics and considers an animal or a plant as equal to or more important than a person then one has lost touch with the foundations of ethics. There is absolutely room within a human centred framework of ethics for consideration of the environment and animal kingdom. In fact good rulership mandates effective care and concern for the environment. I am interested in your thread and will read up on some of the names you mentioned but where possible I will try to stay out of the thread - my position is close to that ethics begins and ends with humans (naturally how we relate to animals and nature reflects our morality). I'd rather not be the protagonist in yet another thread for a day or two. (No promises though)!

That is another divide that I didn't mention in the above post that I really should have, which is the anthropocentric vs non-anthropocentric perspectives. As someone who is ecologically minded, I fall under non-anthropocentric by default. Ethical consideration, to me, extends much farther than just human beings. Of course, a discussion of this expansion of "rights" into the plant and animal world is itself a topic that could go on forever. I'm fairly passionate about it, though, so I'll say a little something about it. Or rather, let Leopold do the work for me:

Aldo Leopold wrote:When god-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one rope a dozen slave-girls of his house-hold, whom he suspected of misbehavior during his absence. This hanging involved no question of propriety. The girls were property. The disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong. Concepts of right and wrong were not lacking from Odysseus' Greece: witness the fidelity of his wife through the long years before at last his black-prowed galleys clove the wine-dark seas for home. The ethical structure of that day covered wives, but had not yet been extended to human chattels. During the three thousand years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have been extended to many fields of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages in those judged by expediency only.

Leopold here opens his Land Ethic by considering the expansion of rights since the time of the Greeks. He goes on to argue the next logical stage in ethical consideration is the inclusion of the land itself into the ethical sphere. Now, this was first published in 1949, so technically he was quite ahead of his time in suggesting this. I tend to agree with him, though, that ecology and evolution have both made it impossible to not consider the land into our moral sphere. After all, ecology shows how dependent we are on our environment and evolution shows our kinship to all the life on Earth.

Impenitent wrote:when the life of an insect is equal to yours, how do you think you'll be treated?

That's a problem in the non-anthropocentric individualistic ethic, but not so much of a concern in the holistic ecological perspective (which is where I stand). I don't think we can treat insects (or other creatures) in the same way as humans. Should I simply not eat at all to preserve the rights of each individual organism? Absurd! From the holistic approach, I free myself up to do such things, keeping in mind the integrity of the species or ecosystem as a whole rather than each individual unit. Even governments due this when they assess risk vs. reward (such as in war time or even with highway speed limits). I certainly agree with your criticism, and it's precisely why I have a holistic (or ecocentric) view.

is the whole more than the sum of its parts?

no? that swarm of fleas has more life than all that reside in your house...

embracing singer's anthropocentric fallacy is suicidal...

-Imp

Maybe, like any good philosophy forum, we can just throw a bunch of jargon and talk past each other for 20 pages.

In regards to the relationship between relationships of relationships and exploring the meaning of meaning in a meaningful way, and keeping in mind the nature of nature is naturally natural, absolutely ad nauseam!

I'm just interested in what people have to say about their environmental views

Our environmental views are of course made of thought.

Thought is inherently divisive.

Thus we experience a division between ourselves and everything else.

Imho, that's the heart of it.

Good topic, looking forward to the other replies.

Impenitent wrote:is the whole more than the sum of its parts?

The holistic approach assumes precisely that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The opposite being the individualist approach, which you could also call reductionist or even atomist.

Impenitent wrote:no? that swarm of fleas has more life than all that reside in your house...

embracing singer's anthropocentric fallacy is suicidal...

Are you talking about his accusation of speciesism or his critique of antropocentrism in general? He does both and I think they're good points.

Peter Singer is an animal rights activist, so he's no holist. There's certainly a divide between animal rights and ecology there. Also, ecology tends to be more deontological, where as Singer is strictly utilitarian. To put it in perspective, ecology grew out of ethical hunting, whereas animal rights grew as a reaction to the amazingly unethical practices of meat, egg, and milk production (among other things).

Hi Metadigital,

and it's precisely why I have a holistic (or ecocentric) view.

But the ecocentric view is no view at all! When you take the perspective of the whole there is no way of distinguishing the ethical from the unethical. From this holistic view, Mankind's destruction of the planet is not destruction, but the natural (but temporary) flourishing of one species to the detriment of other species.

In fact, even terms like 'flourishing' and 'detriment' are apt to mislead as there is no reason why a barren lifeless planet is less desirable than a diverse biosphere. In the universe, is lush green Earth of more value than dry old Mars?

I'm sorry to say this but subjects like yours are so dismal. There is this constant, unresolvable tension. When you take the perspective of one or more species there is never any way of knowing when to draw the line (as you showed above when you talked about the absurdity of putting the plant's life before the human who wants to eat it). But when you refuse to take any species' perspective at all, no outcome can be valued more than others and the possibility of ecological ethics is completely lost.

I think you're best off out of this subject - do something that does your intellect justice.

Best wishes, Nikolai

In fact, even terms like 'flourishing' and 'detriment' are apt to mislead as there is no reason why a barren lifeless planet is less desirable than a diverse biosphere. In the universe, is lush green Earth of more value than dry old Mars?

There are two levels on which the conversation can play out, and perhaps we should try not to get them confused.

If we step back far enough, as philosophers like to do, there isn't really a way to value life over non-life. Reality as a whole is all one thing that just is. I agree with this in theory, but this perspective is kind of an ivory tower view that's not especially practical.

We are human beings, and we'd all like to have nice lives. We want to survive and thrive. That's what life forms do.

Environmental ethics would seem to be about helping to make that happen.

Nikolai wrote:But the ecocentric view is no view at all! When you take the perspective of the whole there is no way of distinguishing the ethical from the unethical. From this holistic view, Mankind's destruction of the planet is not destruction, but the natural (but temporary) flourishing of one species to the detriment of other species.

I don't follow.

Mankind's destruction of the planet is largely the loss of biodiversity (some would argue biocultural diversity). The science of ecology teaches us that species co-evolve into interdependent relationships, so the loss of any one species has complex and unforeseeable consequences on the viability of other species to survive, even ourselves. There is certainly an ethical perspective if you value life. Or, to go back to Aldo Leopold:

Aldo Leopold wrote:A things is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

I don't see how a holistic (or ecocentric) perspective jeopardizes the viability of an ethical framework.

Nikolai wrote:I'm sorry to say this but subjects like yours are so dismal. There is this constant, unresolvable tension. When you take the perspective of one or more species there is never any way of knowing when to draw the line (as you showed above when you talked about the absurdity of putting the plant's life before the human who wants to eat it). But when you refuse to take any species' perspective at all, no outcome can be valued more than others and the possibility of ecological ethics is completely lost.

The ecocentric approach doesn't often favor one species over another. This can be the case with endangered or threatened species, but this is intended to protect the ecosystem as a whole. That is, as Leopold put it above, the entire biotic community. Of course there is a conflict of interests between individuals and species, but this conflict is a necessary part of the system itself. For example, without tree diseases, many species of birds would not be able to hollow out homes to live in. Without wolves, deer would overpopulate and overgraze the land (one of the causes of the Dust Bowl). Without wildfires, plant communities would become dominated by aggressive monocultures. It's precisely the holistic perspective that allows the philosopher (or scientist) to stand back and work out an ethics that extends to plant and animal life without stopping one's self from killing and eating individual members within that system for their own basic survival.

Nikolai wrote:I think you're best off out of this subject - do something that does your intellect justice.

As I said above, I'm primarily in the philosophy of science. This is where my interest in ecology comes from (evolution and geology mainly). I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to handle such a complex topic such as environmental ethics, honestly. It's probably the most challenging and important field of philosophy today.

Nikolai wrote: When you take the perspective of the whole there is no way of distinguishing the ethical from the unethical.

Nikolai can clarify further.

I take him to mean that from the perspective of the whole, there is no basis upon which to value life over non-life. Thus, there is no basis upon which to build any kind of ethics.

Mankind's destruction of the planet is largely the loss of biodiversity (some would argue biocultural diversity).

I realize you know this already, but it should still be said that we are incapable of destroying the planet, or life on the planet.

We are destroying our place on the planet. Ethics is about us.

We could have five all out nuclear wars in a row, plus three bio wars, and 75,000 massive oil spills etc. It would probably wipe us out, along with many other species.

Nature would just rebuild a new version of Earth over the next million years, and things would go on much as they always have.

The TV show "Life After People" on the History Channel is a fun exploration of this idea. According to the show, after people are gone, almost all the evidence of our civilization would sink out of view in only a few hundred years.

Ethics presume our value as a starting point. That assumption is based on nothing, but really, who cares. We want to live, that's what we do.

We should decide whether this conversation is philosophical, or practical.

Typist & metadigital

We are human beings, and we'd all like to have nice lives. We want to survive and thrive. That's what life forms do.

Environmental ethics would seem to be about helping to make that happen.

I agree with you here. But you are taking the anthropocentric view that metadigital professes to reject. My point is that unless you argue from a species' perspective, environmental ethics is simply not possible. Which species perspective should we go for? Well, we could choose any.

The fallacy is that it is possible to derive an ethics for the sake of the whole. Specifically, it is a category error - the whole is an abstract concept that is the sum of all the conflicting individual requirements. The whole is not a participating entity. We can arbitrarily declare some snapshot in time to be a kind of equilibrium, but in order to maintain it would mean that some species growth would be arbitrarily repressed and vice versa.

To declare high biodiversity a 'good thing' in itself is a grave error. To the cactus in the desert an increase in biodiversity would mean too much competition for water. If we take the cactus perspective, the good ethical system would ensure almost perfect biohomogeniety. The same might well apply to a flourishing human community, which might value as much land as possible devoted to a small number of high yield food plants: corn, rice, soya.

A things is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Stability is only a good thing when the status quo is pleasing to a specific species. If it does not please that species then stability is regrettable and anything that maintains the status quo is a bad thing.

As for beauty, that is unashamedly anthropocentric and the discussion about achieving that is aesthetic.

best Nikolai

Typist,

I agree with all you've said.

If we want to talk about ethics it seems we must take an anthropocentric view, but we don't seem to want to take that view as we think that it is through being anthropocentric that we have ended up destroying the planet!

If the planet dies, then we humans die. Some face their species' mortality with equanimity, while others are metaphorically wanting to bank their DNA in the Cryogenetic Facility.

Do we live fast and die young; or live sensibly and long?

Horses for courses, really!

Typist wrote:I take him to mean that from the perspective of the whole, there is no basis upon which to value life over non-life. Thus, there is no basis upon which to build any kind of ethics.

Yes, of course, but to do so ad absurdum isn't going to address any form of holism that anyone would tend to adhere to.

Typist wrote:I realize you know this already, but it should still be said that we are incapable of destroying the planet, or life on the planet.

We are destroying our place on the planet. Ethics is about us.

This is one critique of the hidden anthropocentric quality within the ecological approach, and I think it's somewhat valid. I don't think you can escape the fact that human ethics is going to center first and foremost on humans. In fact, I think that it's simply a quality of mammalian ethics that it tends to start with the self, extend outwards to the family, then to the community, and finally the world at large. We shouldn't expect even a non-anthropocentric ecocentric system to completely avoid that quality, even if on the surface it pretends to.

Typist wrote:We could have five all out nuclear wars in a row, plus three bio wars, and 75,000 massive oil spills etc. It would probably wipe us out, along with many other species.

Nature would just rebuild a new version of Earth over the next million years, and things would go on much as they always have.

The TV show "Life After People" on the History Channel is a fun exploration of this idea. According to the show, after people are gone, almost all the evidence of our civilization would sink out of view in only a few hundred years.

We don't know this, of course. Perhaps we have the power to turn Earth into another Mars. With the advance of technology and at our population, I don't think it would be wise to rule this out as impossible. Nature may be "invincible", but life is extremely fragile. The Earth will survive us, but will life? We annihilate 100 species of life a day. Extinct. Gone. It's highly improbable that evolution will be so kind as to evolve them back into the game. Eventually, that number will rise to the point where there are no species left, especially considering the interdependence of each species. For me (even before studying it), it's been too alarming to just assume that life will recover no matter our intentions.

Typist wrote:Ethics presume our value as a starting point. That assumption is based on nothing, but really, who cares. We want to live, that's what we do.

We should decide whether this conversation is philosophical, or practical.

It's both, which is why I put it in the "Applied Ethics" forum. It can get esoteric, but at its heart, environmental ethics is concerned with constructing a world view (or views) that resolves the apparent conflict between humans and nature (if you wish to make that distinction). This can be done for our own survival (which I think is a good start), or it could be done out of consideration for the survival of other life forms, our cousins on the tree of life (which I hope is the long term goal).

Nikolai wrote:I agree with you here. But you are taking the anthropocentric view that metadigital professes to reject. My point is that unless you argue from a species' perspective, environmental ethics is simply not possible. Which species perspective should we go for? Well, we could choose any.

As I said above, the ecocentric view is concerned with protecting a species for the sake of the biodiversity of an ecosystem. So, it's an ecocentric, not a species centered, perspective.

The fallacy is that it is possible to derive an ethics for the sake of the whole. Specifically, it is a category error - the whole is an abstract concept that is the sum of all the conflicting individual requirements. The whole is not a participating entity. We can arbitrarily declare some snapshot in time to be a kind of equilibrium, but in order to maintain it would mean that some species growth would be arbitrarily repressed and vice versa.

Yes, the whole is an abstract concept that doesn't actually exist in nature. That's ironic, but it's about the best we can do. Holism, though, is concerned with emergent properties, so rejects the notion that the concept is simply the sum of its parts. Yes, the concept is spacial and temporal, but I don't see a way we can really avoid that. Really, when you get down to that level of abstraction, the idea of the individual could be seen as a category error. You are a composite of one hundred billion cells, only one billion of which are human cells. Are you a single individual or a composite? You could break down concepts all day, but I think that in doing so you miss the emergent properties of the whole.

To declare high biodiversity a 'good thing' in itself is a grave error. To the cactus in the desert an increase in biodiversity would mean too much competition for water. If we take the cactus perspective, the good ethical system would ensure almost perfect biohomogeniety. The same might well apply to a flourishing human community, which might value as much land as possible devoted to a small number of high yield food plants: corn, rice, soya.

Sure, from an individual perspective. Biodiversity tends to lend itself to sustainability, though. It's protected because we don't know the consequences of removing each component from the network. The call to biodiversity isn't really that it is the "good" and we should do anything we can to increase it, but rather something that we should protect for the sake of the stability of an ecosystem.

Stability is only a good thing when the status quo is pleasing to a specific species. If it does not please that species then stability is regrettable and anything that maintains the status quo is a bad thing.

Sure, and that's very difficult to sort through. Generally, stability is something we value for our own self interest, even if that interest is the appreciation of nature (rather than merely its exploitation).

As for beauty, that is unashamedly anthropocentric and the discussion about achieving that is aesthetic.

I agree, but I don't think that it's a very serious issue for Leopold. He was largely non-anthropocentric, but at the end of the day he was a human like the rest of us.

Perhaps we have the power to turn Earth into another Mars.

Not now, but it's reasonable to assume someday we will.

We annihilate 100 species of life a day. Extinct. Gone. It's highly improbable that evolution will be so kind as to evolve them back into the game.

Not those particular species, but some other species. Let's recall, the same process that created life out of non-life is still at work.

Eventually, that number will rise to the point where there are no species left, especially considering the interdependence of each species. For me (even before studying it), it's been too alarming to just assume that life will recover no matter our intentions.

Well, at some point in our species destruction spree, we will be the next to go, and that will solve the problem. Everything will be rebuilt from whatever species we missed.

...at its heart, environmental ethics is concerned with constructing a world view (or views) that resolves the apparent conflict between humans and nature.

Imho, environmental ethics should start with an understanding of the process whereby we experience reality as a division between "me" and "everything else".

"Everything else" includes even our own bodies. We will take drugs we know damage our own bodies, jump out of airplanes, etc etc in order to serve the needs of the "me". This points to something deeper than our world view.

It's not the content of thought that is at the heart of the issue, but thought itself. The tool we are using to examine environmental ethics is itself the chief environmental problem.