Environmental Ethics
Key Question - What is the nature of our ethical
obligation to the environment?
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I. Definitions
Environment
1. Environment as surroundings
My
Environment
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Me
Environment
I. Definitions
2. Environment as support system
02
Me
H2O
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I. Definitions
Environment
3. Environment as organic entity
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I. Definitions
Value
1. Instrumental value
2. Intrinsic value
Anthropocentrism
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II. Two approaches to environmental
Ethics
1. Anthropocentric
2. Ecocentric
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1. Anthropocentric approaches to
environmental ethics
Key Ideas
• The environment or nature has no value in and of itself - its value is
instrumental not intrinsic.
• Anthropocentric approaches relative to circumstance. For example both
preserving Yosemite for its value to us as a place of scenic beauty and
cutting its trees down to make houses reflect an anthropocentric
orientation, but they are also mutually exclusive. The question then
becomes - how to decide which instrumental use is of greater value.
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Right and wrong are determined
by cost benefit analyses. Cost
benefit analyses involve three
distinct elements:
or
1. Assessment - A determination of the likely effects of taking an action.
2. Evaluation - The establishment of the relative value to people for taking
one or another action.
3. Assessment of opportunity cost - establishing the value lost by taking
one action over another
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This calculus is described in
William Baxter’s - “People or Penguins?”
Questions
1. What does Baxter propose as the “four principles for human organization?”
2. What are the implications of these four principles for how people should
interact with the environment?
3. How does Baxter respond to his critics?
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Baxter’s argument?
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Problems with the anthropocentric
approach
1. The problem with cost benefit analyses is that it is often quite difficult to
establish valuation for non-monetary commodities.
2. Valuation of nature relies on incomplete knowledge. While a protected species
may have little direct value to humans, its value may be indirect, complex and thus
unknown.
Examples:
•
The Asian Yew tree.
•
Marshes and wetlands
3. The anthropocentric approach leads people to see everything external to the self
as a tool for their projects. At its core, this is the idea of might makes right. This
contributes to domination model described by Taylor in chapter 9. If the self sees
the other as a tool to be bent to their ends, where does this logic end? (can we
dominate the environment while respecting the dignity of other people?)
4. Anthropocentrism is overly reductionist (rationality = dignity = respect)
5. Anthropocentrism is bigotry (Singer’s speciesism)
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2. Ecocentric approaches to
environmental ethics
Ecocentric approaches to environmental ethics often
spring from specific criticisms made against the
anthropocentric approach.
There are three principle ecocentric approaches to
environmental ethics:
A.All life has intrinsic value (Singer)
B.Entire ecosystems possess intrinsic value
(Leopold, Naess, Devall and Sessions)
C.Ecofeminism
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A. All life has intrinsic value
•
Singer’s equal consideration of interests
Organisms that can suffer have intrinsic value and thus demand respect
“If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that
suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the
principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like
suffering - in so far as rough comparisons can be made - of any other being. If a
being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there
is nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience (using the
term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, shorthand for the capacity to suffer
or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of
concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some characteristic
like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not
choose some other characteristic, like skin colour?” (Singer)
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Singer’s
idea
broadens
the circle of
beings to
which we
have ethical
obligations
Beings that have
experience
(and thus can suffer)
Rational
Beings
Note: To have an ethical obligation means to be capable of weighing and choosing
among options. This implies rationality. Things without rationality are incapable of
such weighing and choosing and thus are not subject to ethical demands. Such
things are still worthy of ethical respect, however, if they have experience.
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A. All life has intrinsic value
•
Holmes Ralston - Organisms have intrinsic value because they are self
maintaining systems - they are autonomous
All living things “grow and are irritable in response to stimuli. They reproduce . . .
They resist dying. . . . They gain and maintain internal order against the
disordering tendencies of external nature. They keep winding up, recomposing
themselves, while inanimate things run down, erode and decompose (Rolston).
•
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Both Rolston and Singer seek to broaden the definition of what constitutes
intrinsic value and to avoid defining such value in purely human terms.
B. Entire ecosystems posses intrinsic
value
• An ecosystem is a whole of interacting and
interdependent parts in a given locale that
possesses both unity and diversity
• Why should such a system possess intrinsic value?
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Aldo Leopold
• 1887-1949
• Biologist, forester, professor at the
University of Wisconsin and
nature writer
• His most famous book,
A Sand
County Almanac was published in
1949
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Aldo Leopold’s ethical stance toward the
environment
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•
Leopold argued that we should think of the environment
as “a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils
animals and plants” (Leopold). This metaphor is illustrated
in Leopold’s “Oddessey”
•
Based on this, Leopold did not think it amiss to speak of
the entire system as “healthy or unhealthy” or, from an
ethical perspective - right or wrong (Note how this
conflicts with Baxter).
•
Leopold suggested an ethics that maintained “a thing is
right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends
otherwise (Leopold 262).
•
In this sense, ecosystems have worth based upon the same
logic that Rolston argues any organism has worth (from
the quote above). From this the entire earth might be
regarded as a single system possessing integrity, stability
and beauty which ought to be maintained.
Thus Leopold’s idea broadens our
ethical obligations even further
Things and
ecosystems
integral to the
earth as a whole
Things integral
to an ecosystem
Beings that have
experience
(and thus can suffer)
Rational
Beings
This approach also blurs the subject-object distinction
since “I” (subject) is a subset of the ecosystem (object)
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Deep Ecology
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•
Deep Ecology built upon the
biocentric foundation begun by
Aldo Leopold
•
Its first principle proponent was
Arne Naess (1912-2009), a
Norwegian Philosopher.
•
The ideas have since been
expanded by the American
Philosophers Bill Devall and
George Sessions in their 1985
Book Deep Ecology
Philosophical roots of Deep Ecology
•
Deep ecology rejects the anthropocentric
view of the universe based on Descartes’
dualism
•
This view maintains Humans are special
because they possess the “special” substance
- mind.
•
This special substance was bestowed on
Humans by God thus setting them apart from
the rest of reality
•
The Cartesian model fits well with the JudeoChristian conception of man’s relation to the
world around him:
“And God said Let us make man in
our image after our likeness and let
them have dominion over the fish of
the sea and over the fowl of the air
and over the cattle and over all the
earth and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the
earth” (Genesis 1:26)
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Philosophical roots of Deep Ecology
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•
Naess instead embraced the ideas of Baruch
Spinoza, a 17th century Dutch philosopher.
•
Spinoza defined God as infinite substance
possessing infinite attributes, among which are
extension (body) and mind (thought).
•
There can thus be no substance but God, because
any other substance would already be included in
the definition of God, which is infinite substance.
•
If God is all substance, then all substance is God.
Thus God and Nature are the same.
•
Since we are part of Nature, we are part of
God, but no more or less than anything else in
the universe
•
Thus distinctions between subject (self) and
object (not self) are utterly meaningless. All that
is is one.
•
This idea is sometimes referred to as pantheism God is everything
Tenets of Deep Ecology
•
The Western conceptions of individualism, reductionism and (more recently) consumerism
are built on flawed premises and must be re-thought.
•
Biocentric equality - All things in the Biosphere have an equal right to live” and flourish - all
are equal in intrinsic worth.
•
Any intrusion into nature to change it requires justification and this justification must be
based upon the satisfaction of a vital need, not a desire or want.
•
The flourishing of human and non-human life alike requires a “substantial decrease in human
population.”
•
Focus on increasing standards of living (the growth paradigm on which the world economy is
presently based) must be redirected to an appreciation of the existential quality of life.
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Tenets of Deep Ecology
•
•
Serves as justification for ecoterrorism
•
Would require a complete change in our way of life
Violates the notion that man has more value than nature (and with it most of the Western
Judeo-Christian world view)
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Ecofeminism
•
Philosophical orientation emerging in the 1970s that maintained we ought to look to
social patterns to discover what is wrong with our relationship to nature.
•
Ecofeminists argue that a strong parallel exists between the oppression and subordination
of women in families and society and the degradation of nature.
•
Note the importance of subject object relationships in this scheme that serve to reinforce
hierarchical patterns of interaction between dominant and subordinate categories:
Subject
•
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Object
Actor
Acted upon
Man
Woman
Humans
The non human environment
The developed world
The developing world
Eco feminism maintains that understanding our relationship with the environment (and
correcting the problems that have arisen from this relationship) requires a rethinking of
the entire conceptual framework (described above) of western society.