Why Environmental Philosophy?
Advent of “environmental crisis” in the 1960s:
oil spills fouling beaches and killing shore birds
municipal and industrial offal polluting water
urban smog making city breathing toxic
[2nd wave of the environmental crisis in 1980s
6th mass extinction
stratospheric ozone depletion
global warming / climate change]
Student demand for “relevancy” in university curriculum
Advent of Environmental Philosophy
Response in the 1970s:
1st college course in environmental ethics (1971)
1st journal articles in environmental ethics (1973-1975)
(Naess/Norway; Routley/Australia; Rolston/US)
Dedicated journal Environmental Ethics (1979)
Exponential growth in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s:
Proliferation of college courses
More journals, anthologies, textbooks, monographs
Two learned societies (ISEE, IAEP)
Two-volume A-Z encyclopedia (2009)
Seminal Text
Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic
Crisis” (Science 1967)
modern science —> modern technology —>
environmental crisis
European origins—Judeo-Christian worldview
Genesis 1:26-28:
man created in image of God
given dominon over creation
commanded to multiply and subdue
White’s Seminal Subtext—repeated refrain
Axiom: What we do depends on what we think
Corollary: To change what we do we must change the way
we think
?????
Environmental crisis = Nature’s way of speaking back:
We thought Nature was constructed like a big machine
We thought God was the cosmic engineer
We thought we were junior engineers
Our engineering produced many wonderful benfits
but also many unanticipated consequences
Can Philosophy Save the World?
What must be rethought?
the nature of Nature
human nature
the relationship between “man” and nature
Thinking about such big questions is the job of philosophers
In the 1970s, the fate of the world seemed to lie in the hands
of us philosophers
These are the oldest philosophical questions raised anew
Rethinking Like a Presocratic
20-century Anglo-American Analytic philosophy conceded
these questions to science and assumed they had been
answered definitively. Pursued narrow problems
of word-object relations
20th-century Continental philosophy (phenomenology) turned
away from nature into the structure of human
consciousness
Environmental philosophy = a neo-Presocratic philosophy
The Tasks of Environmental Philosophy
Two primary moments of environmental philosophy
(1) Critique legacy of Western ideas
(2) Reconceive
The nature of Nature
Human nature
The appropriate relationship between “man” and Nature
The Critical Moment
White had begun by critiquing Judeo-Christian legacy
What about Greco-Roman legacy?
Democritus/Epicurus/Lucretius—atomism/materialism
Plato’s otherworldliness
Aristotle’s teleological anthropocentrism
What about modern legacy?
Bacon’s coercive philosophy of science
Descartes dualism and dominionism
Newton’s mechanism
Locke’s concept of private property and property rights
The Creative Moment
White offered two suggestions for second moment:
(1) Comb the Western legacy for “recessive memes”
Pythagorean/Franciscan panpsychism
Heraclitean/Whiteheadian process philosophy
Aristotelian orgnicism
Spinozistic monism
(2) Adopt nature-centered non-Western worldviews
Zen Buddhism—control desires, not nature
Hindu monism and holism
Daoism
American Indian “all my relations” ideas
The Creative Moment Revisited
Neither historical Western ideas nor borrowed exotic ideas
likely to influence the contemporary Zeitgeist and
become the prevailing worldview
My preferred approach:
Explore the wonderful metaphysical and moral
implications of the second scientific revolution
Special and General Theories of Relativity
Quantum Theory
Evolutionary Biology
Ecology
NeoPresocratic Philosophy for the New Millennium
Environmental Crisis of the 20th century a crisis of ideas
Raises anew the oldest questions of philosophy
first posed by the Presocratics:
The nature of Nature
Human nature
The proper relationship
between “man” and Nature
Domains of Environmental Philosophy
Metaphysics and Ontology: Of what is Nature composed?
Physics: matter or energy? particles or force fields?
Ecology: organisms? boiotic communities? ecosystems?
Epistemology: Is ecology an exact experimental science like
physics or a descriptive, historical science like geology?
Is science the only way of knowing Nature? What about
indigenous traditional ecological knowledge?
Axiology: What is the ethical and aesthetic value of Nature?
Is Nature intrinsically valuable? What is natural beauty?
The Nature of Nature & Human Nature
General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Field Theory
Space-time not a vacuum but a universal
continuum
Matter and energy are interchangeable configurations
of the universal space-time continuum
Moral analogy: Human beings and other organisms
are as structured vortices in a flux of matterenergy in the dynamic space-time continuum
The Nature of Nature
Newtonian image of nature: machine composed of externally
related, independent parts.
Old ecological image of Nature: organic whole composed of
interdependent parts performing “functions”
New ecological image of Nature: a self-organized system
forming an emergent functional whole. Ecosystems
self-organize like economic systems; ecosystem
“functions” are by-products of primary survivalreproductive activities of organic components.
The Nature of Nature
Renewal of one of the oldest ecological metaphores:
The Economy of Nature
Ecology / Economy share the same etymology:
Greek oikos — home
Other species occupy niches or “professions” in the economy
of nature and perform roles.
Moral principle: the human economy is a subset of the
economy of nature and cannot be sustained unless we
sustain the larger economy of nature.
Ecology and Economy Reciprocity
The economy of nature (EN) informs the human economy (HE)
EN: materials cycle—the waste of one process the
the resource for another—> HE: industrial ecology
EN: evoloved ingenious solutions to practical problems
HE: biomimicry
But HN also informs EN: Ecological assemblages self-organize
bottom up, as in a free-market economy—each organism
pursuing its own self-interest incidentally provides
good and services for others. EN like HN hierarchically
organized—smaller economies embedded in larger.
The Economy of Nature
UN-sponsored Milennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005):
develops ecology / economy-of-nature analogy
4 categories of “ecosystem services”
Provisioning Services (food, timber, fiber, etc.)
Regulating Services (pollination, flood control, etc.)
Supporting Services (oxygen, soil building, climate)
Cultural Services (sacred sites, ethnic identity)
“Services” amenable to economic valuation techniques—
all have market prices or can be shadow priced
Human Nature
Theory of Evolution
Humans are animals, exquisitly adapted to the precise
conditions on Planet Earth in the Quaternary Era,
which we alter at our peril.
We are co-evolved with our “fellow-voyagers in the
odyssey of evolution” sharing the same Earth
Our genes carry the legacy of ancestral forms of life going
back 3.5 billion years: an awe-inspiring basis
for a new natural spirituality
Human Natures
Special Theory of Relativity—no universal and absolute
physical frame of reference for assessing motion
Moral analogy—no universal and absolute cultural frame of
reference for assessing perception and knowledge
Cultural relativism
Validation of alternative epistemologies, knowledges
Validation of diversity, pluralism,
Validation of multiculturalism
Relationship Between Humans and Nature
Environmental Ethics
Respect our “fellow-voyagers in the odyssey of evolution”
and “fellow-members of the biotic community.”
Conceive the human economy as a subset of the economy
of nature and adapt the former to the latter—
biomimicry, cradle-to-cradle industrial ecology
Conceive of oneself as a node in a vast web of relationships
both social and ecological which define one’s
identity and apart from which one is nothing
Basic Categories of Environmental Ethics
Anthropocentric
Non-anthropocentric
human —> environment—>
human
Human —> environment
Theory
Utilitarian/Kantian
Theory
(1) extend Utilitarian/Kantian
(a) animals, (b) plants
individualistic
(2) Hume, Darwin, Leopold
moral sentiments
holistic
The Land Ethic
Hume: Moral sentiments—sympathy, loyalty, —basis of ethics
Darwin—moral sentiments evolved as a means of social
bonding, vital to individual inclusive fitness
Darwin—as human communites grew in size and complexity
moral sentiments extended more widely: family—>
tribe—>ethnic group—>nation state—>global village
Leopold—adds ecological “biotic community” to this
sequence and a “land ethic” to these other social ethics
The Moral Value of Nature
Humans have intrinsic value? Nature has instrumental value
(ecosystem services). Does Nature have intrinsic value?
Yes, if we choose to value it intrinsically. Ex: US ESA
Confers dignity not a price.
Intrinsic value not absolute—can be over-ridden by other
interests. Shifts the burden of proof to competing
interests
Concluding Statement
Environmental crisis is a crisis of ideas. Incremental changes
in business, industrial, and economic processes—
a bit of industrial ecology here, biomimicry there—will
not get us through the crisis.
A transformation needed in the way we think about the nature
of Nature, human nature, and the relationship between
humans and Nature, between the human economy and
the economy of Nature. We are evolved beings adapted
to specific conditions on Earth. We must value and
respect Nature. Our HE is a subset of the EN. We must
adapt the HE to the EN to achieve harmony with Nature
Postscript
Our biggest environmental challenge is global climate change
GCC eclipses all other environmental problems and
exacerbates them.
Is the enviornmental ethics and philosophy developed over the
last 40 years up to the task.
Do we need an Earth ethic—planetary in spatial scale and
millennial in temporal scale—to complement the
locally and regionally scaled land ethic?