Why Environmental Philosophy Advent of environmental crisis in

Why Environmental Philosophy? Advent of “environmental crisis” in the 1960 s: oil spills fouling beaches and killing shore birds municipal and industrial offal polluting water urban smog making city breathing toxic [2 nd wave of the environmental crisis in 1980 s 6 th mass extinction stratospheric ozone depletion global warming / climate change] Student demand for “relevancy” in university curriculum

Advent of Environmental Philosophy Response in the 1970 s: 1 st college course in environmental ethics (1971) 1 st journal articles in environmental ethics (1973 -1975) (Naess/Norway; Routley/Australia; Rolston/US) Dedicated journal Environmental Ethics (1979) Exponential growth in the 1980 s, 1990 s, 2000 s: 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 1970 s, 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 20 th-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

Neo. Presocratic Philosophy for the New Millennium Environmental Crisis of the 20 th 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 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?