Important Questions In
Environmental Ethics
& important types of
environmental
ethics
The roots of
environmental
degradation
What are they?
Agriculture displaced sustainable
foraging lifeways, beginning 10,000
years ago
Agricultures destroyed ecosystems
and the foraging societies that had
co-evolved with them
Paul Shephard
Western
Monotheistic
Religion?
Critics cite 4 anti-nature
tendencies in western
religions
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."
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
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

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 naturebeneficent.

Both traditions are currently
mutating into forms increasingly
concerned with the environment
Western Philosophy another culprit?
Critics blame its “dualism,”
viewing humans as
separate from and
superior to nature
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’
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
Proffered roots of
ecological deterioration:
* industrial civilization
* technology
* patriarchy
* hierarchy
* overpopulation
More purported roots of
ecological deterioration:
* consumerism
* socialism/capitalism
* Agricultures
* Pastoralism
Two main types of
Environmental Ethics:
Individualistic
&
Holistic
Both holistic and individualistic
environmental ethics address --
Whose interests
count?
Whose interests
must we consider?
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
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
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.
Problems with
individualistic
approaches:

(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.

(3) Feinberg,
Regan and
Singer base
standing on
human traits:
having interests,
capacity to suffer,
beings subjectsof-a-life"

I.e.: only if
animals are like
us in some
important way
will we grant
them standing
Problems with
individualistic
approaches:

(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?

(5) Individualistic
approaches
provide no basis
for prioritizing
concern for
endangered
species
Holistic Approaches -the basic idea:
The whole is
greater (and more
valuable) than the
constitutive parts

3 Holistic Approaches



Biocentrism
life-centered ethics
Ecocentrism
ecosystem-centered ethics
Deep Ecology
‘identification’ and kinship
ethics
Biocentrism
life centered ethics

Precursors include
Albert Schweitzer's
"reverence for life"
ethics and
Aristotle’s Virtue
Ethics: stressing
character traits;
awe, the inherent
worth of each life
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)
Biocentrism
- key problem

Still pre-ecological
not really focused on
ecosystems, but on
individual life forms.
Ecocentrism:
ecosystem centered
ethics
Precursors:
Baruch
Spinoza
 Henry David
Thoreau
 John Muir


Aldo Leopold’s 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
Leopold’s ecosystemcentered 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 Lovelock’s 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."
Lovelock’s 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 biospherecentered (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
Deep Ecology
Basic 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
Deep Ecology
The 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
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"!
Ethics and Environmental Ethics
The Gradual Extension of Moral Concern
The ‘Earth Charter’
(as global example)
www.earthcharter.org