environmental ethics - what is good for the goose is good for the gander?
mollybmolly
the question of to whom a pleasure or pain belongs is irrelevant to
the calculation and assessment of the rightness or wrongness of
actions. Hence, the eighteenth century utilitarian Jeremy Bentham
(1789), and now Peter Singer (1993), have argued that the interests of
all the sentient beings (i.e., beings who are capable of experiencing
pleasure or pain) -- including nonhuman ones -- affected by an action
should be taken equally into consideration in assessing the action.
Furthermore, rather like Routley (see section 2 above), Singer argues
that the anthropocentric privileging of members of the species Homo
sapiens is arbitrary, and that it is a kind of “speciesism” as
unjustifiable as sexism and racism. Singer regards the animal
liberation movement as comparable to the liberation movements of women
and people of colour. Unlike the environmental philosophers who
attribute intrinsic value to the natural environment and its
inhabitants, Singer and utilitarians in general attribute intrinsic
value to the experience of pleasure or interest satisfaction as such,
not to the beings who have the experience. Similarly, for the
utilitarian, non-sentient objects in the environment such as plant
species, rivers, mountains, and landscapes, all of which are the
objects of moral concern for environmentalists, are of no intrinsic
but at most instrumental value to the satisfaction of sentient beings
(see Singer 1993, Ch. 10). Furthermore, because right actions, for the
utilitarian, are those that maximize the overall balance of interest
satisfaction over frustration, practices such as whale-hunting and the
killing of an elephant for ivory, which cause suffering to nonhuman
animals, might turn out to be right after all: such practices might
produce considerable amounts of interest-satisfaction for human
beings, which, on the utilitarian calculation, outweigh the nonhuman
interest-frustration involved. As the result of all the above
considerations, it is unclear to what extent a utilitarian ethic can
also be an environmental ethic. This point may not so readily apply to
a wider consequentialist approach, which attributes intrinsic value
not only to pleasure or satisfaction, but also to various objects and
processes in the natural environment.
Deontological ethical theories, in contrast, maintain that whether an
action is right or wrong is for the most part independent of whether
its consequences are good or bad. From the deontologist perspective,
there are several distinct moral rules or duties (e.g., “not to kill
or otherwise harm the innocent”, “not to lie”, “to respect the rights
of others”, “to keep promises”), the observance/violation of which is
intrinsically right/wrong; i.e., right/wrong in itself regardless of
consequences. When asked to justify an alleged moral rule, duty or its
corresponding right, deontologists may appeal to the intrinsic value
of those beings to whom it applies. For instance, “animal rights”
advocate Tom Regan (1983) argues that those animals with intrinsic
value (or what he calls “inherent value”) have the moral right to
respectful treatment, which then generates a general moral duty on our
part not to treat them as mere means to other ends. We have, in
particular, a prima facie moral duty not to harm them. Regan maintains
that certain practices (such as sport or commercial hunting, and
experimentation on animals) violate the moral right of intrinsically
valuable animals to respectful treatment. Such practices, he argues,
are intrinsically wrong regardless of whether or not some better
consequences ever flow from them. Exactly which animals have intrinsic
value and therefore the moral right to respectful treatment? Regan's
answer is: those that meet the criterion of being the “subject-of-a-
life”. To be such a subject is a sufficient (though not necessary)
condition for having intrinsic value, and to be a subject-of-a-life
involves, among other things, having sense-perceptions, beliefs,
desires, motives, memory, a sense of the future, and a psychological
identity over time.
Criticizing the individualistic approach in general for failing to
accommodate conservation concerns for ecological wholes, J. Baird
Callicott (1980) has advocated a version of land-ethical holism which
takes Leopold's statement “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” to be the supreme deontological
principle. In this theory, the earth's biotic community per se is the
sole locus of intrinsic value, whereas the value of its individual
members is merely instrumental and dependent on their contribution to
the “integrity, stability, and beauty” of the larger community. A
straightforward implication of this version of the land ethic is that
an individual member of the biotic community ought to be sacrificed
whenever that is needed for the protection of the holistic good of the
community. For instance, Callicott maintains that if culling a white-
tailed deer is necessary for the protection of the holistic biotic
good, then it is a land-ethical requirement to do so. But, to be
consistent, the same point also applies to human individuals because
they are also members of the biotic community. Not surprisingly, the
misanthropy implied by Callicott's land-ethical holism has been widely
criticized and regarded as a reductio of the position (see Aiken
(1984), Kheel (1985), Ferré (1996), and Shrader-Frechette (1996)). Tom
Regan (1983, p.362), for example, has condemned the holistic land
ethic's disregard of the rights of the individual as “environmental
fascism”. Under the pressure from the charge of ecofascism and
misanthropy, Callicott (1989 Ch. 5, and 1999, Ch. 4) has later revised
his position and now maintains that the biotic community (indeed, any
community to which we belong) as well as its individual members
(indeed, any individual who shares with us membership in some common
community) all have intrinsic value. The controversy surrounding
Callicott's original position, however, has inspired efforts in
environment ethics to investigate possibilities of attributing
intrinsic value to ecological wholes, not just their individual
constituent parts (see Lo 2001 for an overview and critique of
Callicott's changing position over the last two decades; also see
Ouderkirk and Hill (eds.) 2002 for debates between Callicott and
others concerning the metaethical and metaphysical foundations for the
land ethic and also its historical antecedents). Following in
Callicott's footsteps, and inspired by Næss's relational account of
value, Warwick Fox in his most recent work has championed a theory of
“responsive cohesion” which apparently gives supreme moral priority to
the maintenance of ecosystems and the biophysical world (Fox 2007). It
remains to be seen if this position will escape the charges of
misanthropy and totalitarianism laid against earlier holistic and
relational theories of value.
Mike
Pleasure and pain are subjective experiences relevant to the
individual and not quantitative. And there are differences between
species, sexes, and races. However the human population is
quantitative and relies on the enviornment for all physical sensation.
If right and wrong are independent of consequences then any moral
rules or "intrinsic rights" are arbitrary and irrelavent to beings
having "memory, a sense of the future, and a phychological identity
over time". How would you assign a value to such an individual?
Culling human beings may be necessary if we are not able to control
births. We are dependent on the biotic community for survival so the
question seems to be if individual or species survival has some value.
mollybmolly
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Mike
Unlike scientific experiments, repetition does not make this any more
valid.
mollybmolly
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was hoping you read that section too...hehehehe....did you?
Mike
Why would you assume that I didn't read all of it?
mollybmolly
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Because of your response. Sorry that I was incorrect. I agree that the
question comes down to species survival vs individual survival. I
personally believe that species survival is the better thing to hope
for and therefore die back is a good thing. I will feel differently
after the first disaster I am faced with, no doubt. I have given up on
hope for population control. I can think of this all in the abstract
from my cushy office. It is all just a thought experiment of sorts.
Still and all, it is tempting to consider that ethics of some sort
might prove to be in order to guide our actions going into a future
filled with perils of our own making. Historical fact, evidence,
replicated data of our blithe ignorance, naivete, or worse - gross
mismanagement surely cannot be overlooked indefinitely.
Mike
> On Apr 20, 12:46 pm, Mike <sacsca...@aol.com> wrote:
> > On Apr 20, 9:40 am, mollybmolly <mollyb.mo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Apr 20, 12:38 pm, Mike <sacsca...@aol.com> wrote:
> > > > Unlike scientific experiments, repetition does not make this any more
> > > > valid.
>
>
> > Why would you assume that I didn't read all of it?
>
What about my response?
> I agree that the
> question comes down to species survival vs individual survival. I
> personally believe that species survival is the better thing to hope
> for and therefore die back is a good thing. I will feel differently
> after the first disaster I am faced with, no doubt. I have given up on
> hope for population control. I can think of this all in the abstract
> from my cushy office. It is all just a thought experiment of sorts.
> Still and all, it is tempting to consider that ethics of some sort
> might prove to be in order to guide our actions going into a future
> filled with perils of our own making. Historical fact, evidence,
> replicated data of our blithe ignorance, naivete, or worse - gross
> mismanagement surely cannot be overlooked indefinitely.
If you consider dieback a good thing then any attempt to prevent it is
necessarily a bad thing.
mollybmolly
I know that. Or at the very least not a good thing. We are far gone
from that premise. Now it will be extreme natural occurences that will
bring about die back.
Mike
Good or bad, they usually do.
Mike
Your premise that any attempt to prevent overpopulation is not good
promotes further degradation of the enviornment and a self fullfilling
prophesy of disaster.
Ed
This stresses what is a very minor point, but I worry about positions
that advocate for "stability" in ecosystems. Ecosystems on Earth have
been unstable since the beginning, being perturbed by a variety of
different causes.Environments have always changed, for one reason or
another, and it seem reasonable to guess that they will continue to do
so. It seems that opposing change in an ecosystem is to do it
violence as much as facilitating change (perhaps for some exploitive
purpose). I have no idea how to translate this concern into an
ethical position vis a vis the environment. Mammals crossing the land
bridge from Asia profoundly changed the American environment, was this
a moral or ethical evil?
Mike
You seem confused about the difference between natural changes and man-
made changes and ignoring the affect these changes have on people.
Ed
Perhaps I am. But mollybmolly's post discussed the moral involvement
of all sentients in ecological affairs.
Even inanimate causes, like climate change could, conceivably, entail
moral issues for some species.
Mike
I give up. Play your mystical games if you like but if you are not
part of the solution you are part of the problem.
Ed
I really don't like the idea of being part of the problem, even though
I know I am, but my difficulty is that I don't know what the solution
is. And, I'm skeptical of those who claim they do know precisely what
the solution is. I'm especially skeptical of those who claim to know
what the end state of Earth's ecology ought to be.
mollybmolly
care of overpopulation. We will try to prevent it. In the meantime, we
could try to minimize the amount of havoc we wreck on our planet.
Seems like a sensible approach to me. Without any rational set of
ethics, we will continue to live in chaos. Are ethics mystical?
Mike
I do not claim to know the solution and would also be very skeptical
of prophets. I do know that the moral issues of other species is not
our problem, it is our moral issues that need to be addressed. We are
not responcible for changes beyond our control only the changes we
cause and our impact increases with an increasing population. The
obvious way to reduce our impact is to decrease our population and I
can think of several ways of doing this. But there is the question of
which impacts are positive and which negative, of what value is an
ecosystem if not for the support of human beings? What other species
would assign a value?
Mike
If ethics have a rational base, no. If ethics are based on intuition
and emotion then yes.
tgde...@earthlink.net
Whether there is an ethical point or not, there is a difference. When
thinking about systems, people often confuse equilibrium with stasis.
Ecosystems are not static, but their variability in the short term is
limited, to a great degree because of negative feedback effects. What
humans do is cause changes that would not occur 'naturally' except
over very long time periods.
Again, I make no comment on ethics, but I don't see that a species
going extinct over 100 years from human hunting is *the same* as an
evolutionary change over a million years or even 10,000 years due to
normal variations in climate.
-tg