per ariansen on values and the environment · •objectivism: non-conscious entities can detect...

© Per Ariansen

Per AriansenOn Values and the

Environment

© Per Ariansen

The intrinsic value - anthropocentrism sequence.Stations we will stop by during the two first sessions

1. Problems as a blend ofvalues and facts

2. Three types of values3. Values and protection4. Meta-ethical interlude5. Extending morality to

non-humans6. Singer: sentientism7. Regan: animal rights8. Taylor: biocentrism

9. Leopold: land ethic10. Rolston: value in

all of nature11. Cahen: Can an eco-system

have a good of its own?12. Katz: The conflict between

individualistic and holistic ethics.13. Ariansen: anthropocentrism14. Norton: Weak anthropocentrism15. Summary of ethically relevant

properties.

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Problems as a blend of facts and value

• Environmental issues involve an explicit or tacitassessment of values. Values are not easily visible.

• Problems are easier to detect and function as a focusinglens for value: To announce a problem is to announce thatsome(thing of) value is endangered.

• Problem analysis is value analysis. You cannot decide if aproblem is solved, if you do not know which value is atstake.

• The traditional framework for values is the is-oughtdichotomy. Value is a “property” conferred on facts.

• This traditional view is the backdrop for the concepts ofinstrumental, intrinsic, inherent value.

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Three types of value

• Extrinsic value (good as a means, instrumental value)• Literally: “external value” or “heterotelic value”. The value of the item is

parasittic on the value of the end that it serves. Aka Instrumental value [agood term is indirect appreciation value. See next point], value as meansto an end. Subjective instrumental value entails chosen means to targetedends. Objective instrumental value entails no more that causal sufficiency.

• Intrinsic value 1 (directly enjoyable, appreciation value)• 1. Intrinsic value as direct appreciation value: this is value of the

appreciated end (aka “autotelic value”), served by extrinsic or instrumentalmeans. It is clearly relational: the appreciation value is value for. Subjectiveappreciation value entails experienced appreciation. Objective “appreciation”value amounts to the “good” for sth. E.g. wolves appreciate large roamingareas.

• Intrinsic value 2 (moral value in itself, inherent value)• 2. Intrinsic value as moral value: It can be conferred on an item, giving it

moral worth or standing (as with humans) (Wetlesen: as inherent value), or itcan be conferred on a state of the item (like happiness) or on an achievementof the item (like courage). Intrinsic value 2 places demands or restrictions onhuman agency regardless of our appreciations or of our instrumental efforts

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and protection

• Nature as merely instrumentally valuable: no moral protection• Here is the source of the anthropocentrism debate: nature is no more than a

collection of means that can be treated in any manner by humans for their ends.Nature is only indirectly protected as property.

• However: Humans may come a long way by conferring appreciationvalue on nature

• Humans decide over ends and means, and may decide to protect the snail darterout of appreciation - even at the loss of valuable means to human ends. Link toO’Neill on emotivism. May give protection, but not ethically obligatory protection.

• But: Protection based on instrumental (and appreciation) value mustovercome the tragedy of the commons

• Both what is instrumental to humans and what they appreciate intrinsically isthreatened by the tragedy of the commons: efforts of env. protection are onlyrational if all participate. If not so, it will be more rational for each to defect. (SeeGardiner on the perfect moral storm) Therefore, a moral protection is (instrumentally[sic!]) better since morality is not negotiable.

• Challenge: find a basis for moral protection of nature• This spurs a search for the morally relevant empirical properties of objects. The aim

is protection on nature’s terms. Thus non-anthropocentrism. Thus the fear ofconstructionism.

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Meta-ethical interlude• Is value objective or subjective?

• Must value be sensed, or experienced? Subjectivists: Yes. Objectivists: No - e.g. water isobjectively good for plants. Moderate objectivists (Kantians): value need not be felt, butmust be understood.

• Who or what can detect value?• Objectivism: non-conscious entities can detect value (proof: in that they flourish or

wither). Subjectivism: Only conscious beings can detect value. Advanced consciousbeings can detect that sth. is valuable for others.

• Source and locus of value• Value may have its phenomenological source in the consciousnesses of humans, but the

valuable object (the locus of value) may be (in) a non-human. If the phenomenology itemdictates moral obligation, then the object in the locus position has inherent value

• Must value be relational?• Subjective value is always relational. Objective value may be valuable (instrumental) for a

system (like an individual or a whole), thus relational. Rarity is valuable in relation tocollections. What of life? Supposedly on-relational and paragon of inherent value).

• Is relational value always instrumental?• No. e.g. rarity. And “instruments” are often constitutive of being (arms and legs, torso).

• Does objective value imply moral protection?• No, We know what is objectively good for dictatorship (O’Neill), but we have no duty to

promote it.

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Extending morality to non-humans• The consistency strategy

• Consistency demands that ethical protection be extended to (parts of ) nature.• The procedure is to look (quickly?) for what confers intrinsic value 2 (moral

worth) on humans, and ask if we, in the name of consistency or fairness,ought to extend moral consideration to non-humans.

• Extentionism invites several rounds of investigation:• (1) What are the relevant empirical properties we believe confer worth on

humans?• (2) For any candidate human property: Is there a sound argument that it really

confers moral standing?• (3) Do non-humans really have the same relevant empirical properties as

humans?• (2) Even if such properties may confer moral standing on humans, will they

also confer moral standing on non-humans?• Supposing the moral standing of non-humans can be established, what

obligations are implied for humans. Note questions of moral overload andunreasonable demands. (Re method of reflective equilibrium).

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END OF FIRST SESSIONSTART OF SECOND SESSION

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Singer: Sentientism• The anthropocentric Western tradition

• Animals serving man: Aristotle, Jesus, St. Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Kant• Speciesism

• Singer: Disregarding pain in animals is like disregarding pain in black slaves. We all know that skincolour cannot waive equal consideration of interests - anchored in subjective experiences ofpleasure and pain. Note Singer’s link to utilitarianism.

• Dealing with conflicting interests• The stronger interests (more intense mental awareness) trump the weaker. Normally humans

trump animals, but the reverse may occur.• Rights?

• Utilitarianists dislike rights. Any interest can be overruled for a gain in total happiness.Nevertheless: Animals have the basic right not to be wantonly harmed. Other rights are contractualand exist only among adult humans. Infants and mentally disabled are classified with animals.

• Killing (painlessly)• Humans fear death. Humans grieve the dead. And: humans have preference for a continued future.

Animals have preferences? (If yes: does biocentrism follow?)• Practical applications

• Ban factory farming! Be a vegetarian! Avoid clear-cutting of woods, avoid pesticides with spilloverto harmless species.

• Rarity, species• Species or animals gain no direct protection from rarity. Species have instrumental value to

humans and animals and this should be taken into account. Possibly species have value as work ofart, but then Singer ‘s last man on earth may rightfully burn “Mona Lisa” if it gives him enjoyment.

© Per Ariansen

Regan: Animal rights.

• Anti-cruelty and Pro-welfare• Anti-cruelty (Non-maleficence) prohibits unnecessary pain. No agreement about

what is unnecessary. Pro-welfare adds positive duties of care (Beneficence):animals should be made to thrive with humans. But animals are still allowed to bedomesticated and “harvested”. Further there is usually (utilitarianist) replaceability:the welfare of some may be sacrificed to raise that of others (medical experiments).

• Animal rights as abolitionism, not anti-cruelty or pro-welfare.• Animal Rights is not interest based. It can well be in an animal’s interest to be in a

zoo. But it is wrong. First priority: see to it that animals are free. Then considerinterests (conflicts between humans and animals).

• Empirical basis for animal moral standing - being subject-of-a-life• Necessary: a complex mental life: perception, desire, belief, memory, intention, and

a sense of the future• Critique of Deep ecology (Leopold variety, ecocentrism):

• With focus on ecosystems, individuals become expendable. This is eco-fascism. Notso in Animal rights. Meat eating as a litmus test. Rarity does not trump individualrights. Species have no rights. Aesthetics and rarity are valuable, but cannot besummed up to outweigh rights.

• Practical policies.• Abolition of test animals for cosmetics or medical purposes. Abolition of hunting, fur

and skin trade, animals for entertainment.

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Taylor: Biocentrism• The “bad” anthropocentric view

• Nature has instrumental value only :-(. Restrictions may apply only as a consequence ofinter-human morality (property). Taylor: This limited attitude is morally impermissible.

• The biocentric outlook (content)• Taylor: All living things are full bio-community members. All things are interdependent.

Living beings have a good of their own. One ought to identify with their telos. The goodof humans (who are biotical newcomers: The gnat is older than man) have no automaticpriority. (Note similarity to Næss)

• The biocentric outlook (form)• 1. A belief system (What sth. “is”). 2 A moral attitude (that what “is” has inherent value).

3. Sets of norms (what we ought (not) to do regarding the inherently valuable). Eachitem of nature interfaces with” 1-3. What sth. is informs of its value which in turnindicates treatment. Note link to phenomenology (coming topic).

• On ranking of worth and interests• Ranking by merit or achievement is biased in favour of humans. Elevating humans

because of their morality will not work. Animals are not immoral but amoral. Livingbeings have worth, and only caste societies consider worth rankable. But they do nothave more worth than humans, so we do not have to forego vital interests. But non-vitalmust cede to vital non-human interests. (Except the need for museums and airports etc.)

• Comments• The idea of an outlook (attitude of respect) evades the question of normative legitimacy.

Also, see William French in “Dialogues”: human interests get unwarranted priority.

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William French (Dialogues p.135 ff) on Taylor• Equality of interests

• Taylor requires species-blind assessment of interests where vital should trump non-vitalinterests. But several human non-vitals are given priority if of high cultural and technicalimportance.

• Priority-relevance of moral agency• Taylor: Self-defence should be species-blind, but (French): this will favour humans

because of their moral agency Per: Humans can do vicarious self-defence because oftheir capacity for moral reasoning. I practice this gives an advantage (a moral right of way)to humans.

• The weight of non-basic human interests• Contradiction: On the one hand human achievements (museums, airports) are valuable to

the degree that promoting them overrules vital non-human interests. On the other, allbeings have the same worth. Per: must not their achievements be judged from within theirspecies perspective?

• Killing equal interest-holders• All interest holders have a right to a sufficient share of resources (e.g. land), but humans

can kill animals because they do not have a higher worth than humans.• Per on on Taylor in light of French’s critique

• Taylor seems split between two kinds of egalitarianism: one of equal sharing and one ofequal claims. Since humans are more clever claimants, they can claim a larger share. Allbeings are entitles to what they can lay a hand on. Too bad animals don’t have hands.

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Leopold: Land ethic

• The scope of ethics has expanded through history.• Odysseus and the slave girls

• Ecological evolution of ethics:• Ethics as restriction on action in the struggle for existence. Community instinct. (See

Donald Scherer’s liberalist perspective on sustainability)• Extended community should include the land.

• Analogously one owes respect to all members of the land community and to the wholeof the community.

• Conquest (of land) without respect is doomed• Kentucky settlements produced bluegrass. Oklahoma settlements produced dust-

bowls. The land ruled. (Note respect as instrumental insight)• Tragedy of the commons

• Wisconsin 1930-40: No farmer is willing to sign collective restrictions on land use.• Conservation must be motivated beyond individual economic gain.

• Preservation of predators is so far explained in instrumental terms. Now wildlife mustbe seen as inherently valuable. The moving image is the food chain, the land pyramid.All entities are interdependent, they give and get. We should protect the beauty,stability and integrity of the land.

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Rolston: Value in all of nature. Teloscentrism• Value detection

• Value result from objective properties being detected by a human consciousness.Analogous to secondary qualities. Grass is green, but it takes an eye to see it. Per: doesthe analogue hold?

• Value i humans• Humans are conscious valuers and can compare value and appreciate value for others.

• Value in animals• Animals value in that they seek something rather than anything. They can only value

themselves (and offspring?) intrinsically. Others and other things are of instrumentalvalue.

• Value in plants• Objective value. Conatus. But no consciousness, so plants are holders of value, not

beholders of value.• Value in species

• The telos is the spreading and increased adaptation of the gene set. Species can beimproved. They are value-able. And can be destroyed - harmed.

• Value in ecosystems• Stability and adaptability are telos. Can be harmed.

• Value of Earth• Telos is the life-supporting ability. It can be strengthened or weakened.

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Cahen: Can an ecosystem have a good of its own?

• Moral considerability requires having a good of one’s own (interests)• And also requires that it is wrong towards the interest-bearer to frustrate these

interests. Sentience provides such a good, and so does the goal-directedness(conatus) of plants. Do systems have an analogous conatus?

• Suggested criteria for goal directedness• Ernest Nagel: Required: when goals are defended by rejecting disturbing attacks,

plus: when goals are reached by more than one route.• Charles Taylor: Required: when the cause is “for the sake of” the effect. Artefacts

are designed for an effect. Natural selection designs for fecundity. Accidental goals(tendencies and behavioural by-products) are fended off, since they are not the“purpose” of the design. Plants are “saved” by natural selection (the designer of“objective” purposes).

• Problem: no group selection• The stability of systems serves and is caused by individuals, not the system. The

case of “only four eggs”. For the good of the species? No, for the optimal chances ofgetting offspring which survive. More eggs would jeopardise the litter.

• Per: perhaps only humans can have goals for supraindividual entities? Why shouldorganisms have the spreading of genes as a goal? What is so good aboutspreading? Or even of living?

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Katz: The conflict between individualisticand holistic ethics

• Requirements of an env. ethic• (1) Some interface with existing ethics. (2) Conducive of current env. policies.

• Re ecosystem-holistic env. ethics:• Holistic and individual-oriented ethics are incompatible (1). Animal and human

interests are on a par and subordinate to ecosystem health (1). Rarity per sehas no significance (2). Thus: holism fails to satisfy (1) and (2)

• Re species-holistic env. ethics• Species as “moral individuals”. Accommodates rarity. Indirectly protects

ecosystems. Incompatible with animal liberation. Weak indirect protection oflandscapes. Katz’ objection:Strange to award moral status to a collection. Whatis the ethically relevant subvenient carrier?

• Re an ethic protecting individual entities.• Problems identifying the across-the-board morally relevant property. Even with

life as a criterion, non-living entities (landscapes, rivers) are excluded.• Synthesis?

• Lexical ordering of moral priority: Ecosystem health first, then individual well-being. Individual are protected unless they threaten the ecosystem. Per: Whatof humans in that respect?

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Ariansen: Anthropocentrism• The breach with nature

• Humans are expelled from happy but heteronomous Paradise: no automatic way of life.Reason expelled us. Can reason regain an autonomous Paradise?

• Autonomy as self-legislation.• Reason as the servant of desires will not give autonomy, but “slavery” under whims.

Autonomy is non-whimsical (disciplined) agency. Discipline under divine commandswould be heteronomy. Therefore autonomy is obeying self-imposed rules, These cannotbe “private” (whims again), but must be rules for general human conduct. Rules must beuniversalizable..

• The analogy of games and rules.• The rules of chess constitute the world of chess players. The rules of ethical reason

constitutes the moral world of humans. As rules they are should not generatecontravolitions or contradictions. Players will have player rights and duties derived fromthe rule-set:This is the inherent value of players. Only beings that understand the gamecan be players. The result is anthropocentrism. (Note the marginal case objection.See next slide).

• What of non-humans?• Self-legislation loses its meaning unless there is a tacit respect for pain in others. But

compassion alone is pre-ethical. Ethics is rationalised management of compassion, andas such builds on the general respect for suffering in others. Offending animals offendsno specific ethical norm, but it offends or mocks the project of ethics. Analogous torespect for the (judicial) law: no law specifies it, but it is required for the rule of law.

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The Marginal Case Argument• Morality and abilities - a problem

• If one restricts the moral community to those that have certain abilities, the the moralcommunity will either 1) contain no animals and not all humans (advanced abilities) orall humans plus some animals (less advanced abilities). The humans that run the riskof being left out are the senile etc. - aka. marginal humans.

• Criterion: The ability to detect injustice• The suggestion by Ariansen and other Kantians is that the criterion is the ability to

understand morality, minimally having an awareness of justice and injustice. What ofmarginal people in this respect?

• Latent morality• The reply is that morality may be latent in people - like when they sleep or are

unconscious. Senile people may have a longer moral “pause”, but they may well yetunderstand justice, either in bright moments to come or in the present, but concealedbehind an inability to communicate clearly. Marginal humans get the benefit of thedoubt.

• Why not the same for animals?• Because only humans - no animals - have a “normal” case where the ability to detect

injustice unquestionably is present. Further: whoever believes that animals mutelyknow justice, should hold them morally responsible for their acts. Few animal-supporters are prepared to do that.

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Norton: Weak anthropocentrism• Felt and considered preferences

• Narrow human preferences seem “immoral”, but there are considered preferences (thataccord with a considered world view).

• Strong and weak anthropocentrism• Strong: value decided by felt preferences. Weak: value decided by preferences considered

in relationship to a world view.• Objections

• Regan:Ideals of harmony imply intrinsic value to nature. Norton: no, possibly instrumentalvalue or value in ideals of spirituality (improving the soul). Reductionists claim:considered preferences are just preferences; there is no essental distinction between weakand strong p.. (analogous to util: all is satisfaction). Norton: No. Per: content can’t beseparated from preferences. There is no such thing as a general preference. Thus noreductionism.

• Norton on fulfilling (felt) preferences of future generations (suspend tofutgen?)

• The Parfit paradox precludes ethical concern for future individuals. We have such concern,thus the concern can go beyond individuals, not merely stop by individuals’s feltpreferences. The task of maintaining and increasing a bequest needs not bring in its effecton individuals (Such effects concern distribution).

• Distributional concern is politics as usual. Long term bequests are guided by consideredinterests in what is a good life in a good environment. Entail both use and conservation andsubstitute technologies.

© Per Ariansen

McShane: Still an advantage to non-athropocentrism?

• The anthropocentrism battle: and the winner is ....• ”if we take serious the interests of future generations of humans and get

clear about all the ways in which the health of the natural environmentimproves the quality of human life, we will have all the arguments weneed [to behave environmentally responsible]”

• Non-a. have been charged with metaphysical, epistemological and/ornormative inadequacy.

• A. requires only minor changes in philosophical outlook.• Non-a. is nevertheless relevant for how we feel

• Feelings governs acts, influences what we care about and what properhuman existence should be.

• Love, awe and respect requires that the object be seen as valuable in itsown right (non-a.). Such an attitude might, since feelings govern acts,influence the way we manage nature.

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Summary of ethically relevant properties

• Sentience (Singer):• non-cruelty, welfare

• Life-experience (Regan):• rights to non-interference

• A good of its own (Rolston):• non-interference

• A good of its own (Leopold):• ecological management

(doctoring nature)• Conatus or life (Taylor):

• minimalist non-deceivinginterference, retributive justice

• Conatus or life (Schweitzer):• devout care

• The ability to understand ethics(Kant and some athropocentrists):

• strict negative duties. Lessstrict positive duties to humans.Ban on wanton pain anddestruction of non-humans.

• Being a natural “something”(Næss T):

• promotion of flourishing or self-realization for other and self,other being ultimately all other.

• Being an object of God-ordainedhuman custodianship (Christianstewardship):

• gentle civilizing of nature

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END OF SECOND SESSIONSTART OF THIRD SESSION

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Everyday experience as a “premodern”unity of fact and value

• Value laden entities,• What something is and what it is good for (its value) is often

indistinguishable in everyday life.• The life-world

• Everyday values are intersubjective: we live in a common world ofvalue/fact, a “life-world”, where e.g. defects and problems seem to beempirically observable.

• A fundamentalism of everyday life?• Visible in conflicts e.g. like gender roles. Note deviance and opposition to

practises as a point of departure for a separation of fact and value. Notethe difference between what something. is (fixed) and how it should beused (variable) [transcendental and empirical conditions]

• The Life-world and normality• Note how statistical normality (a fact) is often taken to be a normative

normality (a value position). Is this warranted?

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An “ought-conflict” as an “is-conflict”

• Is the waterfall an energy resource or a sublime manifestation of nature? The answer determines itsmanagement.

• Objects are partly “constructions”. We cannot decide what natural properties the object has, but we candecide which make up the set of important ones - including those that are the most important - for apurpose (and we can look for more properties or place the object in a setting where existing propertieschange value).

• When further description reclassifies the object, either by reconsidering what is important about it or bydiscovering new facts about it, management may dramatically change.

• Here is also the key to subjectivity and objectivity: the view from my interests and the view that tries torise above interests. Re Max Weber on objectivity. Re views of death penalty on Death Row.

The time dimension

Competing categorieswith competingsuggestions formanagement

Object (e.g. a waterfall)

Property 1

Property 2

Property 3

Property 4

Property 5

Engineer perspective

Environmentalist perspective

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What is is industry?

”Cancer”Sigmund Kvaløy Sætereng (Norw. eco-

activist)

”The nature-spirits have been tamed, The power-plant glows like agolden castle.”

Theodor Kittelsen (romantic Norw. Pauinter)

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What is whaling - “really”?

• What will be the whale’s central property/ies in each case below?• Whaling is:

• Just another of the world’s food-industries.• A crucial means of survival for marginal communities.• Ordinary harvesting from nature’s abundance.• A display of macho traditions and abilities.• A display of insensitivity to suffering.• Violation of the right of a living being not to be interfered with.• Systematic extinction of a species.• Survival of the fittest (normally the whalers).

© Per Ariansen

The missing type of value: constitutive value• The objective properties of an object emerge as we engage facets of the

object in a causal exchange.• We can decide what to engage, but not what emerges (although we have

(limited) freedom to describe it in various ways).• We can rank the importance of what emerges.• Human projects both decide and are decided by what we engage and what we

find important in what emerges.• The running and participation in projects are vital for our survival, including

mental survival by providing meaning to our quests.• The value-laden description of nature not merely mirrors our interests, it

constitutes our identities. Tell me what nature contains, and I’ll tell you whoyou are.

• If these options are destroyed as a result of the destruction of the hardwood ecosystemhe has grown up with, this outcome would leave him poorer by eliminating options thatgive meaning to his life, that connect him to his past, and that give him hope for thefuture. Following Ariansen (1997), we have called the values associated with theseoptions ‘constitutive values’, because, if they are lost, the integrity of a place – its identityas a place – is diminished, as is the sense of self of community members.

• (Norton, Bryan G., and Anne C Steinemann. "Environmental Values and Adaptive Management." Environmental Values 10, no.4 (2001): 473-506.)

• Note the distinction between transcendental and empirical conditions of life.

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END OF THIRD SESSIONSTART OF FOURTH SESSION

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The Constituted AnglerGjermund Andreassen interviewed in

Dagbladet (Oslo) Sept. 19. 1995

• – What is so fascinating about fishing for sports?• – It is partly that one tries out schemes to conquer nature. Partly it is

the undescribable experience of being in nature. But all aspects arefascinating: fishing, the flies, the casting, light, rain, wind etc.Therefore I try to examine all these archetypes in distinct texts in mybook.

• – Do you like fish?• – Yes, and I eat them. The meal is, as Isaac Walton maintains in his

classical book, The Compleat Angler of 1653, part of the process. TheBBC-series on sports fishing which one can see on television thesedays, is a marvellous tribute to the pastoral mood which surroundsthis type of activity. But I think it is absurd that they release the fishinto the water after catching it. When you don’t make use of thecatch, you cut off the cord to the source of your own self. We humanbeings seek rooms within us that can tell us who we are. If you don’teat the fish, then you deny yourself this fulfillment.

© Per Ariansen

Constitutive values and concepts of nature

• Nature as untamed wilderness• Negative instrumental value - nature is destructive [irony: now

constitutive conservation value]. Positive constitutive value as a worthyadversary.

• Nature as innocence and harmony• Arcadianism: romantic symbiosis between man and nature. Relief from

the guilt of culture. Links to the Fall of Man. Constitutes the city as a“sinful” construction of culture.

• Nature as mysterium tremendum• Religious constitutive value through the immensity of scale and force in

nature. Constitutes humans as limited beings. Constitutes hubris as asin.

• Nature as blind necessity• Constitutes the realm of freedom and responsibility unique to man.

Constitutes nature as a fundamental resource. Backlashes are notrevenge, but due to lack of foresight.

See also Hans Fink 1993

© Per Ariansen

Attitudes to the environmentgrounded in world pictures (deep constitutional values)

Social(political)

Intellectual

Authoritarian

Decentralised

UtopianPragmatic

7. Complex thinker

1. Ecologist

2. Ecocrat

8. Eco-activist

5. Spiritual ecologist

6 Eco-Anarchist

3. Eco-philosopher

4. Conservativegreen

Adapted from © Reinhard Heerkloß[email protected]

Adapted from: http://www.agr.uni-rostock.de/~oekotext/

© Per Ariansen

Culture and Nature, breach or unity?Four “deep” constitutive value-sets.

Transition to a historical perspective.

Unity withnature as avalue

Breach withNature as avalue

Stasis as a value Dynamis as a value

Traditional societies. Cul-ture given by the gods orprimaeval forefathers.

Deep ecology?

Bellum omnium contraomnes. Survival of thestronger.

Normative sociobiology

Moral and technicalenlightened self-interest.The utopia of the earthlyParadise. (Sustainable)entrepreneurism

Christian stewardshiptradition.Value conservatism

© Per Ariansen

Warren&Cheney: the view from somewhere

• Feminism and the idea of research investigation perspectives• Traditionally ecology focuses on population dynamics or on energy flows. These

exemplify two among other possible observation sets. Systems change identity as wefocus on them from different points of view.

• Feminists investigate with an interest in hierarchies and power structures.W&Ch:Rather than being seen as a prejudice or a mix of fact and value, this interest should beconsidered a legitimate observation set.

• The gendered observation set• The hypothesis is that much hidden oppression has been masked in gendered

observation sets. Even universalist traditions of rationality may reflect a male(oppressive) observation set. Since all observations come in sets, and all sets arehistorical, then all assessments need to take account of all available narratives. Andmyths of a place are as relevant as is the soil composition of the place.

• Soft ontology allows particularist bias?• What something is, is relative to the perspective set that produces it. BUT (Per): The

struggle between narratives also has a history that needs to be considered.Universalism breaks through in competition with particularism. The latter cannot beredeemed merely by saying that it is just as much a point of view as universalism. Per:Is scientific description just poetry? Are there across the board criteria of truth? If not,what is the basis for substituting one description set with another? Power? Can situatedknowledge justify bias and favouritism? If not, where are the boundaries? If yes, can agendered set, or any set, be “wrong”?

© Per Ariansen

Extending the scope from “me” to “all”• Me now + me in the future.

• A “me”-perspective (Warren and Cheney: “observation set”) will delimit the world byspikes extending from the hub of the self. Add prudence and the scope is extended intotime: Me in the future.

• The nuisance of others.• Others may intervene in one’s projects. The coordination problem: seeking a prudent win-

win solution: me plus others into time. Hobbes solution. A softer solution works only witha high degree of trust. Universalism: the view from anyone.

• Non-coercion, tolerance and the limits of tolerance• Universalism: One grants others a variety of life projects, thus tolerance within the limits

of freedom plus negative duties of non-interference. What of positive duties of care?Supererogatory? The true core? In the extreme: Care trumps the view from anyone(Schweitzer, Warren and Cheney?)

• A further extension: causes and reasons i humans• This perspective generously yields forbearance (not tolerance) with untoward human

actions: The price: Acts are forever under suspicion of not being entirely free, butcausally determined.

• “Seeing” the mute participants• Extending forbearance. Support all activity in the biotic community (Schweitzer again.

And others). But: biota are causally determined. Can one “help” a causal system?• The view from absolutely nowhere (Thomas Nagel)

• What of “all activity”? The world, then, is always “as it should be”. Responsibility: Poof!

© Per Ariansen

Pluralism vs. Monism. The deeper issue

• At first sight:• The debate seems to be over one vs. several theories of ethics.

One ethics of care for family purposes and another of justice forpublic administration. Here it looks as if theories are chosen tofit the task and not given to direct our actions regardless of task.

• On closer examination• The issue is deeper. It is essentialism versus constructivism.

The monist camp seems committed to a metaphysicalconception of inherent value and to objective goods that weshould be morally forced to respect. The pluralist camp iscongenial with (but does not always hail) a view the anyessence is formed in language as an inter-human response tothe causal exchange between humans and the environment.With Hobbes ethics has no place outside of human agreement.Here we could say that essences have no place outsidelanguage.

© Per Ariansen

Chris Stone: pro pluralism• A monistic env. ethics can hardly meet the following challenges:

• (1) How can monism accommodate non-anthropocentrism, when humans are the onlyvaluers? (2) How can monism identify ethically relevant properties in the wide range ofentities, and argue monistically for their ethical relevance (3) How will m. morally relate toindividuals, system, goal-seeking machines? (4) How can m. specify the duties we owe,say, a lake and a person? (5) How will m. rank duties (preserve a desert or create morelife in it?)

• Pluralism may accommodate the challenges• Stone: Grain of description (which whole does the part belong to?)

• This links to the Ariansen/Warren perspective. Are we saving an animal (save!) orprotecting the ecological balance (let die!).

• Stone: Mood (various “wholes” may allow more than “obligatory”, “prohibited” and“permissible”)

• This may e.g. link to Ariansen’s suggestions regarding entities outside of moralityproper (E.g. Domesticating animals: not morally prohibited, but not recommendable,to be minimised)

• Stone. Logical texture. (Sth. may be both permissible and prohibited.)• An effect of the “grain of description”. An entity or an act may belong to more than

one class (brother and general human being)• Defence of pluralist position

• 1. Many cases can be dealt with in one framework. 2. One may order frameworks lexically3. one may declare some dilemmas to be unsolvable.

© Per Ariansen

Ariansen: pluralism and the frame ofreference for measuring success

• Items and acts are linked in diverse ”systems” (based onobservation sets)

• You confront a bison in distress in the icy river. If this (1) presents a challengeof charity towards a suffering being, then a saving the bison is a success. Ifthis (2) is a challenge of tending to ecosystem health, then saving the bison isa failure (park attendants forbid saving).

• Collecting and transferring success. A question.• Suppose you judge your acts in relationship to the “system of the

environmentally ideal lifestyle”. Accordingly you personally absolutely refuseto pollute beyond what is vitally necessary. This you list as a success in youreffort to protect the environment.

• What systems are involved here and to which extent can successes becollected and/or transferred between them?

• Systems and meta-systems• Are there meta-systems that organise and rank the priorities of the systems

you engage in? Are some systems and meta-systems public, so that youcannot avoid contributing to them - and incur responsibility for yourcontribution? Perhaps systems, like language, must be shared?

© Per Ariansen

Callicott: pro monism

• Review section of C’s article:• Moral pluralism is detected and denounced in a number of writers.

• Contra pluralism• Stone suggests that various ontologies will give various ethical maps of guidance, and

that we may have to live on several ”planes”. Callicott: how to we choose planes? Whynot the Old Testament or the Koran, why Bentham and Kant? The util. plane must bediscarded for failing to protect individuals. The Kantian for being too focused onrationality. So these planes are not only internally incompatible. Each is “wrong”.

• Looming post-modernism• Good postmodernism (Frederick Ferré) merely notices that the times are a' changing,

that we are in an interlude before a new synthesis is worked out. Bad PM (JacquesDerrida and Richard Rorty) dissolves Western civilization with relativism and nihilism.

• Per: systems and merit• Systems are adhered to by groups and individuals on the basis of system merit. Since

the merit of a system is comprehensible not merely by its “owner”, there will exist apublic or common discourse on merits, and it is not to be ruled out that such a discoursewill discard some perspectives to the benefit of others.

© Per Ariansen

Triumphant entrepreneurism

• Modernity: liberation from illegitimate authority andfrom natural toil. Paradise regained.

• In mediaeval Europe the identity of humans and of nature wasgiven by religion. Modernity started when humans decided thatsociety was their “own” realm of freedom.

• Nature is handed over to politically allegedly neutral science,• Human identity is linked to the project of transforming natural

resources into commodities for consumption - an entrepreneur-consumer identity. The seeming fact that nature is revealed as atreasury of resources (Bacon: knowledge is power), madeentrepreneurism seem ”natural”.

© Per Ariansen

The marvellous inheritance

• Suddenly humanity found itself with a wonderful inheritance. Overimmense spans of time the Earth had prepared for receivinghuman beings. Vast stores of energy had compiled through anincedibly slow and long process. And this inheritance hadremained untouched long after the time humans first appeared onEarth. By fortunate ignorance, the humans had not touched theinheritance before they started to put it to efficient use, they had,for thousands of years, no idea how vast a treasure they hadaccess to. […] Then comes the arrival of the steam-engine and wecan help ourselves to condensed energy, served in the form oflumps of coal. There is as much of it as we can ever want to use.And we are indeed able to access a lot, because, thanks to thesteam-engine, the coal lifts itself up from the shafts: The stream-engines are fueled by the very coals it brings into the day.

• Edgar B. Schieldrop, Moderne teknikk, 1932

© Per Ariansen

The ecological backlash. Responses• 1962, Rachel Carson, The Silent Spring

• Unintended and unforeseen consequences of ”industrial” farming.• 1972, Meadows et al., Limits to growth

• [Suppose] we are utilizing a technological policy in every sector of the world model tocircumvent in some way the various limits to growth. The model system is producingnuclear power, recycling resources, and mining the most remote reserves; withholdingas many pollutants as possible; pushing yields from the land to undreamed-of heights;and producing only children who are actively wanted by their parents.

• The result is still an end to growth before the year 2100.Because of threesimultaneous crises. [1] Overuse of land leads to erosion, and food production drops.[2] Resources are severely depleted by a prosperous world population (but not asprosperous as the present US population). [3] Pollution rises, drops, and then risesagain dramatically, causing a further decrease in food production and a sudden rise inthe death rate.

• The application of technological solutions alone has prolonged the period ofpopulation and industrial growth, but it has not removed the ultimate limits to thatgrowth.

• Four suggested responses to the challenge• (1) Include nature in civil society. Environmental ethics. (2) Eco-dictatorship. (3) The

nature-culture hybrid. Nature paternalism (4) Neo-romanticism, the holistic approach

© Per Ariansen

The emergence of environmental ethics

• Traditional ethics had been anthropocentric• This is som because the position had never been challenged, and also because

society was seen as the only moral dimension (Kant). The exception wereanimal humane societies from the mid 19-century. These were utilitarianist inorientation and mainly concerned with the treatment of domestic animals.

• Three seminal publications attack anthropocentrism in 1973• Peter Singer introduces (in a book review) the concepts Animal Liberation,

sentientism, speciesism. His engangement is in extension for the animalhumane societies.

• Arne Næss writes an article on deep and shallow ecology in Inqiury.• Richard Routley presents a paper in Australia with the title “Is there a Need for

a New Environmental Ethics?” He introduces the concept human chauvinismand presents the thought experiment on “The Last Man on Earth”.

• The human/nature arrangement suggested by environmental ethics:(Part of) Nature ought to be included in civil society

• Regan: higher animals have rights. • Taylor: living beings have rights • Callicott:Landscapes have ”rights”. This is a non-transcending opposition toentrepreneurism.

© Per Ariansen

Environmental problems and theauthoritarian meritocratic response

• The Enlightenment considers humans as ”perfectible” (Rousseau) through the knowledge ofwhat is rational. Points to universalism: All humans are equal in that they are rational. Culturaland political space is rational space.

• Anti-democratic potential: In times of (ecological) crisis politics may be abandoned: Power toa meritocracy of biologists and ecologists: “ It [social design leading to a sustainable society]is a process that can be carried out within present authority structures whether they bedemocratic or dictatorial.” (Pirages, The sustainable Society, 1977, p. 10).

• Hans Jonas is more pessimistic: “And as the “free” economy of Western industrial societies isthe very source of the dynamics which drifts to the mortal danger, we look quite naturally tothe alternative of communism. […]. This much is clear: only a maximum of politically imposedsocial discipline [is needed]. [With] total government power […] in the communist model [wefind that] the decisions from the top, which can be made without prior assent from below,meet with no resistance (except perhaps passive) in the social body. […]. That insuresmeasures which the self-interest of those affected would not have spontaneously imposed onitself [and so] accordingly […] would be difficult to get adopted in the democratic process. Butsuch measures are precisely what the threatening future now demands. [We need a] well-intentioned, well informed tyranny possessed of the right insights.[…] The question is whethersuch an authority has a better chance to originate from the “left” than from the “right”. […]Since the communist party already exists ...[and] in techniques of power it appears superior [itis what we have to turn to].” (Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 1984, p. 145)

© Per Ariansen

The depolitication of society, the politication ofnature and the repolitication of society and nature

• Technocracy - the death of ideologies• The political parties of the 50’ies and 60’ies all promised more material

welfare. In effect, technocratic considerations took over politics. (Reaction:Sstudent revolts)

• The ecologically ill effects of entrepreneurism challenge the idea ofneutral science.

• This crisis questions the neutrality of the sciences (this is the debate overconstructivism in science). Science is claimed to promote a”political”description of nature, suited to industrial exploitation. The laboratory setups,instruments, concepts etc. all reflect our scientific industrial endeavours. So,there is no politically neutral description of nature! Max Horkheimer and laterLuc Ferry: This is more than a merely academic point: ecological problems,which also are political problems, are true hybrids of science and society.(see next slide)

• The making of nature. Nature paternalism?• With the ecologicqal crises we must now take political responsibility for both

society and nature, and we are seeking a suitable identity for ourselves forthat purpose.

© Per Ariansen

Bruno Latour: Today’s problems are hybrids ofscience and politics. Where is non-political nature?

• “On page four of my daily newspaper, I learn that the measurements takenabove the Antarctic are not good this year: the hole in the ozone layer isgrowing ominously larger. Reading on, I turn from upper-atmosphere chemiststo Chief Executive Officers of Atochem and Monsanto, companies that aremodifying their assembly lines in order to replace the innocent chloro-fluorocarbons, accused of crimes against the ecosphere. A few paragraphslater, I come across heads of state of major industrialized countries who aregetting involved with chemistry, refrigerators, aerosols and inert gases. But atthe end of the article, I discover that the meteorologists don't agree with thechemists; they're talking about cyclical fluctuations unrelated to humanactivity. So now the industrialists don't know what to do. The heads of state arealso holding back. Should we wait? Is it already too late? Toward the bottom ofthe page, Third World countries and ecologists add their grain of salt and talkabout international treaties, moratoriums, the rights of future generations, andthe right to development.

• The same article mixes together chemical reactions and political reactions. Asingle thread links the most esoteric sciences and the most sordid politics, themost distant sky and some factory in the Lyon suburbs, dangers on a globalscale and the impending local elections or the next board meeting. Thehorizons, the stakes, the time frames, the actors – none of these are com-mensurable, yet there they are, caught up in the same story.”

BRUNO LATOUR, We have never been Modern (1993)

© Per Ariansen

What is now nature? Culture?Some puzzles:

• Modern people are the true Naturvölker (Bargatsky).• Nature did not become ‘nature’ before it was scientifically described.

• Saving the Japanese fireflies - and more.• “The Arsenal” in Yosemite. America’s most ironic natural park.• What became of the jungle?• Los Angeles after the earthquake: Humans disturbe and nature

creates order - or?• For me, a basic premise about the way things work is up for grabs. Once I

craved to live "in nature" amid the primeval bounties of hill and sea; but nowit's mankind's works, that I monitor and miss.[…] I was raised to judgeharshly the human role on earth. My bias, received from elders like JohnMuir, grandfather of the ecology movement, is to leave alone as much of myhabitat as possible. Nature creates. I can only mess up. But now that'sobviously reversed. Nature has messed up. And to restore order, we mustbegin to create. (Los Angeles Times 09.02.94)

• ”Mårhunden” (the racoon dog)? Foreigners go home!

*

© Per Ariansen

Urban Wilderness TrailsFrom a tourist folder in Vancouver, Canada

• Vast and untamed, the Urban Wilderness is an areaof varied topogrphy and scenic terrain. Mountainviews, sidewalk flora, shadows and reflections are afew of the meny species of wildlife indigenous tothe area. The urban Wilderness is in fact a wildlifesanctuary. Many rewards are available for thenaturalist and the photographer.

• There are three self-guided nature trail […] Along allof these trailswildlife markers have been placed onthe sidewalk. For example, where a remarkablemountain view is to be seen, the words ”mountainview” and a directional arrow will be found. In thecase of more transient species of wildlife. I.e.shadows, reflections, clouds etc. photos have beenmounted near the marker as additional evidence[…]

• Along Davie Street the walker will find shadows ofall kinds, particularly during the spring and summermonths […] Industrial wildlife of all kinds isabundant on the False Creek trail. Random rocks,unlikely sidewalk flora and scattered debris aretypical of this part of the trail. […] Proceeding onPender street the walker reaches Victory square,nesting ground for the many pigeons of the area. Anotable landmark a this point is the vine abundantlycreeping up the courthouse wall ...

”A local naturalist shows a visitor a prime exampleof backlane flora”

William Cronon, Uncommon Ground 1995 p 373

© Per Ariansen

Entrepreneurism’s Romantic opposition

• The European anti-modern opposition• Goethe, Hamsun, Heidegger (see A. Bramwell (1991), Ecology in the 20th Century).

The conservative green. No ideal of technical progress. Sympathy for Mediaevalpaternalism. Low level technique as a prerequisite for a virtuous society. See alsoT.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound.

• The Romantic opposition• Enlightenment expands into Romanticism and demotes reason to the benefit of

intuition. One forms the idea that the world (the earth, der Geist) speaks throughhumans with civilization as a form of disturbing noise. The noble savage. Fairy-tales.Giants in the earth. The sublime. The local preferred over the universal. Diversity.Heart rather than head. Small is beautiful. Anti-urbanism. Tolerance has a “coffeehouse smell about it”. The wisdom of the wild and the clean cut (Snyder). Beyondethics (Næss)

• Cultivating traditional cultures• Dolores La Chapelle:” Communication, at its best, is called love; when it breaks down

completely, we call it war. And it is a sort of war that is going on now between humanbeings and the earth. It’s not that nature refuses to communicate with us, but that weno longer have a way to commumcate with it. For millennia, primitives communicatedwith the earth and all its beings by means of rituals and festivals where all levels of thehuman were open to all levels of Nature.” (Earth Wisdom, 1978, preface)

per ariansen on values and the environment · •objectivism: non-conscious entities can detect...

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