Important Questions In Environmental Ethics

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Important Questions In Environmental Ethics

• important types of
• environmental ethics

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The roots of environmental degradation

• What are they?

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Agriculture displaced sustainable foraging
lifeways, beginning 10,000 years
agoAgricultures destroyed ecosystems and the
foraging societies that had co-evolved with
themPaul Shephard
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Western Monotheistic Religion?

• Critics cite 4 anti-nature tendencies in western
  religions

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1) Domination of Nature

• Genesis God commands humans to "fill the earth
  and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of
  the sea and over the birds of the air and over
  every living thing...
• After the great flood God says to Noah the
  animals will dread and fear you, and I will give
  you dominion over "everything that creeps on the
  ground, and over all the fish of the sea."

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2) Rejection of animism and pantheism

• Animists believe that every part of the
  environment, living and non-living, has
  consciousness or spirit. Therefore, all beings
  deserve reverence.
• Pantheists identify deities with natural objects
  and processes. Therefore nature is sacred or
  holy and people should have reverence for it

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3) Wilderness is cursed Pastoral, agricultural,
and City landscapes are Holy, Promised Lands
4) The sacred is beyond the world - earth is
devalued in favor of heavenly hopes
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Christians Jews respond

• Our traditions promote a care-giving stewardship
  not domination of nature. (Noah story)
• Some admit the general destructive tendency, but
  say
• Minority "traditions within the wider tradition"
  are nature-beneficent.
• Both traditions are currently mutating into forms
  increasingly concerned with the environment

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Western Philosophy -another culprit?

• Critics blame its dualism, viewing humans as
  separate from and superior to nature

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Rene Descartes is often blamed

• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) believed that animals
  have no minds and cannot suffer
• Humans have minds and souls, they are different
  from animals
• His famous dictum -- I think, therefore I am --
  suggested to him that thought reveals not only
  existence, but also human superiority

• So for Descartes, HUMANS are separate from nature
  and superior to it.
• And the natural world became an objectified
  "thing."
• Some critics say this objectification of nature
  is a key to science and progress

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Francis Bacon is also blamed

• Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the father of the
  Scientific method.
• Critics say he promoted a view of nature as a
  machine.
• See, e.g., New Atlantis "a mechanistic
  utopia"--1624

• Many passages reveal that he thought nature was
  like women and slaves They should be bound into
  the service of men
• Many scholars think such thinking shaped the
  anti-nature views of Judaism and Christianity,
  and thus warped human-nature relations in the
  west

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Proffered roots of ecological deterioration
industrial civilization technology
patriarchy hierarchy overpopulation
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More purported roots of ecological
deterioration consumerism socialism/capitalis
m Agricultures Pastoralism
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Two main types of Environmental Ethics

• Individualistic
• Holistic

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Both holistic and individualistic environmental
ethics address --

• Whose interests count?
• Whose interests must we consider?

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I.e. Who has standing? Human Individuals?

• Anthropocentrism The environment is valuable to
  the extent is useful or necessary for human well
  being
• Usually "rationality" or some "intellectual"
  criterion is critical in the West for moral
  standing
• E.g. Kant Descartes only humans have
  "consciousness"
• William Blacksone all have a right to a liveable
  environment (EE, 105)
• Kantian, deontological defense of human rights.
• Not much new here in the overall approach

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Who has standing?
Sentient animals?

• Sentient animals are those who can experience
  pleasure and/or pain
• Jeremy Bentham an early utilitarian theorist,
  provided a basis for extending moral standing
  beyond humans
• Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" theory
  provides a utilitarian argument pro-Animal
  Liberation

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Who has Standing?Entities with Interests

• Living entities that have "interests" -- a good
  that can be harmed -- have moral standing
• Christopher Stone Individual natural objects,
  including trees, can have standing
• Conservator/trustee notion analogous to mentally
  deficient humans
• Tom Regan Animals who are "subjects of a life"
  have a "right" to that life.

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Problems with individualistic approaches

• (3) Feinberg, Regan and Singer base standing on
  human traits having interests, capacity to
  suffer, beings subjects-of-a-life"
• I.e. only if animals are like us in some
  important way will we grant them standing

• (1) Animal Liberation How can you measure
  pleasure/suffering
• a perennial problem with utilitarianism
• (2) Animal Rights boundary of moral
  considerability is very restrictive
• and many plants and animals left out.

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Problems with individualistic approaches

• (5) Individualistic approaches provide no basis
  for prioritizing concern for endangered species

• (4) How can we determine what the "interests" of
  a living thing are?
• How should we decide who should be the trustee
  for non-rational, morally considerable entities?

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Holistic Approaches -- the basic idea

• The whole is greater (and more valuable) than the
  constitutive parts

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3 Holistic Approaches

• Biocentrism
• life-centered ethics
• Ecocentrism
• ecosystem-centered ethics
• Deep Ecology
• identification and kinship ethics

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Biocentrism life centered ethics

• Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature (1986)
• Living things have a good of their own, a will to
  live, and end of their own. Thus they have
  inherent worth
• With this perspective comes morally responsible
  behavior toward nature. Also
• (1) humans are member of earth's life community
• (2) all species part of interdependent ecological
  system
• (3) all life pursues own good in own ways
• (4) Humans not inherently superior (all life has
  moral standing)

• Precursors include Albert Schweitzer's "reverence
  for life" ethics and Aristotles Virtue Ethics
  stressing character traits awe, the inherent
  worth of each life

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Biocentrism - key problem

• Still pre-ecological
• not really focused on ecosystems, but on
  individual life forms.

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Ecocentrism ecosystem centered ethics

• Aldo Leopolds watershed Land Ethic, 1949
  "All
  ethics rest upon a single premise that the
  individual is a member of a community of
  interdependent parts.
• Leopold argued that ethics involves self-imposed
  limitations on freedom of action and is derived
  from the above recognition

• Precursors
• Baruch Spinoza
• Henry David Thoreau
• John Muir

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Leopolds ecosystem-centered ethics

• A land-use decision "is right when it tends to
  preserve the biotic community. It is wrong when
  it tends otherwise."
• Leopold spoke of the land as an organism, as
  alive.
• "the complexity of the land organism" is the
  outstanding 20th century discovery."
• This is a mystical revelation that sounds like
  pantheism and anticipates James Lovelocks Gaia
  hypothesis
• The Land Ethic "changes the role of Homo Sapiens
  from conqueror of the land-community to plain
  member and citizen of it. It implies respect for
  his fellow-members, and also respect for the
  land- community as such."

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Lovelocks holistic planetary Gaia theory

• Arguing the earth is a self-regulating living
  system that maintains the conditions for the
  perpetuation of life, James Lovelock advanced the
  Gaia Hypothesis.
• Although not intended as an ethics, a
  biosphere-centered (large-ecocentric) ethics has
  been deduced from it, claiming
• People ought not degrade this wonderful system in
  such a way that it can not function to keep its
  systems within the various delicate margins
  necessary for life

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Deep EcologyBasic ideas

• All life systems are sacred and valuable -- apart
  from their usefulness to human beings
• All life evolved in the same way and thus, all
  are kin, with kinship obligations
• All species should be allowed to flourish and
  fulfill their evolutionary destinies

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Deep EcologyThe problem solution

• Anthropocentrism (and reformist approaches)
  destroy nature
• A transformation of consciousness is needed,
  replacing anthropocentrism with a broader sense
  of the self
• identity should be grounded nature
• When we understand that we are part of nature,
  eco-defense, as self-defense, will follow

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Holistic Approaches -- Key criticism

• Individuals get hurt when you ignore them in
  favor of wholes
• This is the key criticism of all ends-focused
  theories
• In environmental ethics, the common charge is of
  "eco-fascism"!

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Ethics and Environmental Ethics The Gradual
Extension of Moral Concern
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The Earth Charter(as global example)
www.earthcharter.org
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Earth Charter

• Describe the Earth Charter process (history),
  central principles, and strategic vision, and say
  something about how this effort reflects some of
  the concerns and perspectives to which you are
  being introduced in this class, and would be
  opposed by other points of view