Why Environmental Philosophy?

Advent of “environmental crisis” in the 1960s:oil spills fouling beaches and killing shore birds

municipal and industrial offal polluting waterurban smog making city breathing toxic

[2nd wave of the environmental crisis in 1980s6th mass extinction

stratospheric ozone depletionglobal warming / climate change]

Student demand for “relevancy” in university curriculum

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 coursesMore journals, anthologies, textbooks, monographsTwo learned societies (ISEE, IAEP)Two-volume A-Z encyclopedia (2009)

Advent of Environmental Philosophy

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 creationcommanded 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 machineWe thought God was the cosmic engineerWe thought we were junior engineersOur engineering produced many wonderful benfits

but also many unanticipated consequences

What must be rethought?the nature of Nature

human naturethe 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

Can Philosophy Save the World?

Rethinking Like a Presocratic

20-century Anglo-American Analytic philosophy concededthese questions to science and assumed they had been

answered definitively. Pursued narrow problems of word-object relations

20th-century Continental philosophy (phenomenology) turnedaway 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) ReconceiveThe nature of NatureHuman natureThe appropriate relationship between “man” and Nature

White had begun by critiquing Judeo-Christian legacy

What about Greco-Roman legacy?Democritus/Epicurus/Lucretius—atomism/materialismPlato’s otherworldlinessAristotle’s teleological anthropocentrism

What about modern legacy?Bacon’s coercive philosophy of scienceDescartes dualism and dominionismNewton’s mechanismLocke’s concept of private property and property rights

The Critical Moment

The Creative Moment

White offered two suggestions for second moment:(1) Comb the Western legacy for “recessive memes”

Pythagorean/Franciscan panpsychismHeraclitean/Whiteheadian process philosophyAristotelian orgnicism Spinozistic monism

(2) Adopt nature-centered non-Western worldviewsZen Buddhism—control desires, not natureHindu monism and holismDaoismAmerican 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 RelativityQuantum TheoryEvolutionary BiologyEcology

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 universalcontinuum

Matter and energy are interchangeable configurationsof the universal space-time continuum

Moral analogy: Human beings and other organismsare as structured vortices in a flux of matter-energy 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 ofinterdependent parts performing “functions”

New ecological image of Nature: a self-organized systemforming an emergent functional whole. Ecosystemsself-organize like economic systems; ecosystem“functions” are by-products of primary survival-reproductive 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 economyof 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 ecologyEN: evoloved ingenious solutions to practical problemsHE: biomimicry

But HN also informs EN: Ecological assemblages self-organizebottom up, as in a free-market economy—each organismpursuing its own self-interest incidentally providesgood and services for others. EN like HN hierarchicallyorganized—smaller economies embedded in larger.

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

The Economy of Nature

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 goingback 3.5 billion years: an awe-inspiring basis

for a new natural spirituality

Human Natures

Special Theory of Relativity—no universal and absolutephysical frame of reference for assessing motion

Moral analogy—no universal and absolute cultural frame ofreference for assessing perception and knowledge

Cultural relativismValidation 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 economyof 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 relationshipsboth social and ecological which define one’s

identity and apart from which one is nothing

Basic Categories of Environmental Ethics

Anthropocentric Non-anthropocentrichuman —> environment—> Human —> environment

human

Theory Theory Utilitarian/Kantian (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 complexitymoral 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 ESAConfers 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 changesin business, industrial, and economic processes—a bit of industrial ecology here, biomimicry there—willnot get us through the crisis.

A transformation needed in the way we think about the nature of Nature, human nature, and the relationship betweenhumans and Nature, between the human economy andthe economy of Nature. We are evolved beings adaptedto specific conditions on Earth. We must value and respect Nature. Our HE is a subset of the EN. We mustadapt 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?