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Tuesday, 07 November 2006 17:38 |
By JIM GENARO
Environmental ethics can be approached in a variety of ways, depending on oneës perspective about what are the most critical criteria for value, according to Grace Campbell.
Campbell, a lecturer in humanities at UNC Asheville, outlined these positions and some of their philosophical foundations to several hundred students at the schoolës Humanities Lecture Hall last Friday afternoon.
"You know, ethics is a very ancient subject of human study ÇƒÓ probably older than philosophy," Campbell said. "And yet, environmental ethics is very new." This, she argued, is because humans have only recently begun to face the threats of environmental damage caused by their choices.
Environmental
ethics touch on extremely deep philosophical questions, Campbell said.
"Not all environmental problems are simply technical problems ... They
are problems rooted in human ethics."
For this reason, science will not provide the answers to those problems by itself, she said.
Despite the
common perception that science is objective, a number of subjective
factors affect the solutions that scientists will find, she said.
Scientific discovery is "a function of the questions you ask" and "a
function of who is paying for the research," Campbell noted.
Philosophical
questions ÇƒÓ such as whether wilderness has an intrinsic value beyond
its usefulness to humans and whether all species deserve protection ǃÓ
must be asked as the foundation of any approach to environmental
ethics.
At the heart of
most of these questions is what Campbell termed the "nature-culture
split," the idea that "human societies are increasingly separate from
the natural systems on which they depend."
While many
people in the world do live in close proximity to nature, she said, the
trend is towards greater development, urbanization and machination.
While many view this as progress, she noted, it leads to a greater
alienation from nature and a less sustainable mode of existence.
"As societies become more affluent, we are further and further away from the source of all our food," Campbell said.
The English
language is full of expressions that belie this separation, she pointed
out, giving as an example the term "all-natural ingredients."
"Does this mean everything else comes from space?" Campbell asked, rhetorically.
Many such examples can be cited, she said, which "fetishize and commodify nature."
As to the
origins of this split, a number of factors can be blamed, Campbell
noted, including Newtonian physics, religion, Enlightenment thinking
and industrialism.
Practices such
as strip mining and clear cutting of forests have been "made legitimate
by a notion of nature as object," she added.
The central
question behind all environmental ethics is, "Why is nature valuable?"
she said. Answers to that question are either instrumental, meaning
that nature is valuable as a means to an end ÇƒÓ or intrinsic, meaning
that nature is a value in itself.
Environmentalists
generally take one to three fundamental philosophical approaches to
ethical questions. The first ÇƒÓ and most common ÇƒÓ is anthropocentrism,
Campbell said.
Anthropocentrism holds that the well-being of humanity is the primary value to be upheld in all ethical questions.
"This seems very sufficient in lots of uses," she noted.
For instance,
the National Forest System was established "for the use and enjoyment
of the American public," according to its charter. This, Campbell said,
is an example of valuing nature because it serves a human need or
desire.
This approach is
very ancient, she noted, and can be observed in the writings of
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, among others.
Furthermore, she
stressed, "Anthropocentrism does not mean that you cannot value nature
ÇƒÓ itës just that you do so for human-centered reasons."
This perspective can be seen in such common terms as "natural resources" and "resource management," Campbell noted.
Even the concept
of sustainability, is generally motivated by antrhopocentrism, she
said, as the goal is to protect the environment so that future
generations of humans will thrive.
However, this view has several flaws, she argued.
For one thing,
it often fails to protect those future generations, whose wellbeing is
seldom valued above the interests of living people, Campbell said.
Secondly, the "line is drawn too close," she added. Species which do not serve humanity are not valued in such a belief system.
Therefore, an alternative perspective has evolved among environmental ethicists ÇƒÓ biocentrism.
This approach holds that "the primary locus of value is not necessarily the human person, but life itself," she said.
This view holds that all life has value and that any killing is "ethnically questionable," Campbell told the audience.
While such a
view can generally be considered absolutist, one more moderate
interpretation is that while all live has value, that value is
proportional to the degree of sentience possessed by an organism, she
said. Sentience, Campbell added, is "the capacity to experience
pleasure or pain." By that definition, a dogës life is more valuable
than that of a fly, she said.
However, a
stronger expression of biocentrism is the position that animals have
intrinsic rights, just as humans do, Campbell said.
This is the
position held by groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals and the Animal Liberation Front and it is based on the belief
that rights are a byproduct of interests, she noted.
While animals
cannot exercise political rights as humans do, Campbell observed that
they do have interests, in the sense that certain actions can affect
their wellbeing for better or worse. This, a strict biocentrist would
say, infers some rights.
Such a
philosophy, if implemented legally, would ban meat eating, hunting and
other activities that kill animals, she said. This is a form of
absolutism, she admitted, but added, "How many people can live by the
Ten Commandments? Does that mean they should be edited?"
However, there
are other objections that have been raised to such a position, beyond
the argument that it is too extreme, she said, notably the position
that it givers preferential treatment to the rights of individuals over
the collective need of groups or species.
For instance,
such a philosophy would object to hunting even when done to
counterbalance an excess of predators that were threatening another
species.
Therefore, many ethicists have adopted a third approach, that of ecocentrism.
Ecocentrism holds as its central value the well-being of whole ecosystems ÇƒÓ or even of the whole planet, she said.
This position
was first articulated scientifically by James Lovelock, a NASA
scientist who penned the 1979 book "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth."
His argument,
termed the "Gaia Hypothesis," holds that the entire planet is a living
organism ÇƒÓ which he named Gaia after the Greek goddess of earth.
Furthermore, the theory argues, all ecosystems and organisms on earth
are part of the constituent biological elements of Gaiaës body.
This belief is embodied by a system of environmentalism called "Deep Ecology," Campbell said.
Deep Ecology is
based on two beliefs, she noted. The first is that all life on the
planet is interrelated and the second is that human beings have a
fundamental need for self-realization.
"In practice,
Deep Ecology is pretty radical," Campbell told the audience. The system
calls for political decentralization off bioregions and a
self-sufficient but fragmented society.
"The problem
with Deep Ecology is no one is ever really sure what it requires of
individuals." This has caused some to fear its implementation would
result in a form of eco-fascism, with individual rights trumped by
environmental restrictions, she said.
Campbell also
briefly discussed eco-feminism ÇƒÓ the view that "environmental ethics
are feminist ethics" because "nature has a gendered construction."
This position
holds that patriarchal political, social and religious institutions are
responsible for a relationship to the earth that is comparable to the
rape of a woman, Campbell said.
She also touched
on the concept of social ecology, a belief that ecological problems
must be addressed within the larger framework of social issues. One
basis of this theory is that the areas where the most pollution occurs
are often in neighborhoods populated by poor, disenfranchised people,
Campbell noted.
One positive
movement in recent years has been the growth of theocratic
environmental ethics ÇƒÓ the belief voiced by many religious leaders that
environmental stewardship is a sacred duty.
"This kind of talk has suffused even mainstream Catholicism," Campbell said.
This view holds that a "sin against nature is a sin against God," she added.
One basis for
this view is a passage from the book of Genesis, in which God commands
that humans shall have "dominion over" nature.
Though this
passage has been cited by some to support the view that nature should
serve humanity, Campbell noted that "the new interpretation of this
passage is that the real meaning of ǃÚdominionë is ǃÚstewardship.ë"
This constitutes "a divine command to redeem creation, just as God redeems humankind," she added.
Finally,
Campbell discussed postmodern environmental ethics, which she defined
as "an attempt to bring their critique of all ǃÏismës into the academic
marketplace."
Postmodernism
views environmentalism from a "subject/object dynamic," focusing on the
way people observe nature as an isolated object distanced from
themselves by the act of seeing, she explained.
This results in
a "tourist gaze," whereby many people passively view nature without
ever connecting with it in a meaningful way, Campbell said.
An example of
this phenomenon, she said, is the common signage alongside highways
that reads "Scenic overlook ahead." Often a pair of binoculars are
provided at such sites, she noted, but they typically only rotate 180
degrees ÇƒÓ limiting what is considered "scenic" to a specifically
designated region.
From a postmodern perspective, this is important, Campbell said, because "the visual realm is the realm of power."
Images, she
noted, hold great power, as evidenced by the impact worldwide of the
images of oil wells that were set on fire by Iraqi troops fleeing
Kuwait after the first Gulf War.
"It gave visual symbolism to the environmental destructiveness of war," Campbell told the audience.
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