Transcript Important Questions In Environmental Ethics

Environmental Ethics
& important types of
environmental ethics
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The roots of environmental
degradation
What are they?
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Agriculture displaced sustainable
foraging lifeways, beginning 10,000
years ago
Agricultures destroyed ecosystems and
the foraging societies that had coevolved with them
Paul Shephard
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Western Monotheistic Religion?
Critics cite 4 anti-nature
tendencies in western
religions
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1) Domination of Nature

Genesis: God commands humans to "fill
the earth and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea and
over the birds of the air and over every
living thing...”
 After
the great flood God says to Noah: the
animals will dread and fear you, and I will
give you dominion over "everything that
creeps on the ground, and over all the fish of
the sea."
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2) Rejection of animism and pantheism

Animists believe that every part of the
environment, living and non-living, has
consciousness or spirit. Therefore, all
beings deserve reverence.

Pantheists identify deities with natural
objects and processes. Therefore nature
is sacred or holy and people should have
reverence for it
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3) Wilderness is cursed; Pastoral,
agricultural, and City landscapes are
Holy, Promised Lands
4) The sacred is beyond the
world - earth is devalued in
favor of heavenly hopes
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
Our traditions promote a care-giving stewardship not
domination of nature. (Noah story)
 Some
admit the general destructive tendency, but say:
 Minority
"traditions within the wider tradition" are
nature-beneficent.

Both traditions are currently mutating into forms
increasingly concerned with the environment
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Western Philosophy another culprit?
Critics blame its “dualism,”
viewing humans as
separate from and
superior to nature
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Rene Descartes sering “Salah”


Rene Descartes (1596-1650):
believed that animals have no
minds and cannot suffer
Humans have minds and
souls, they are different from
animals

His famous dictum -- `I think,
therefore I am’ -- suggested to
him that thought reveals not
only existence, but also
human superiority



So for Descartes,
HUMANS are separate
from nature and
superior to it.
And the natural world
became an objectified
"thing."
Some critics say this
objectification of nature
is a key to science and
‘progress’
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Francis Bacon juga “Salah”



Francis Bacon
(1561-1626) was the
father of the
Scientific method.
Critics say he
promoted a view of
nature as a
machine.
See, e.g., New Atlantis "a
mechanistic utopia"--1624


Many passages reveal that
he thought nature was like
women and slaves: They
should be bound into the
service of men
Many scholars think such
thinking shaped the anti-nature
views of Judaism and
Christianity, and thus warped
human-nature relations in the
west
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Akar-masalah kerusakan
ekologis :
* industrial civilization
* technology
* patriarchy
* hierarchy
* overpopulation
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Akar-masalah
kerusakan ekologis :
* consumerism
* socialism/capitalism
* Agricultures
* Pastoralism
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Dua tipe utama Etika Lingkungan:
Individualistic
&
Holistic
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Both holistic and individualistic
environmental ethics address --
Whose interests count?
Whose interests must
we consider?
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I.e.: Who has ‘standing’?
Human Individuals?
Anthropocentrism:
The environment is
valuable to the extent is useful or
necessary for human well being
 Usually
"rationality" or some "intellectual" criterion is
critical in the West for moral standing
• E.g. Kant & Descartes: only humans have "consciousness"
• William Blacksone: all have a right to a liveable environment
(EE, 105)
• Kantian, deontological defense of human rights.
 Not
much new here in the overall approach
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Who has standing?
Sentient animals?

Sentient animals are those who can
experience pleasure and/or pain
Jeremy
Bentham: an early utilitarian theorist,
provided a basis for extending moral
standing beyond humans
Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" theory
provides a utilitarian argument pro-Animal
Liberation
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Who has Standing?
Entities with ‘Interests”


Living entities that have "interests" -- a
good that can be harmed -- have moral
standing
Christopher Stone: Individual natural
objects, including trees, can have
standing
 Conservator/trustee
notion analogous to
mentally deficient humans

Tom Regan: Animals who are "subjects
of a life" have a "right" to that life.
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Problems with individualistic approaches:

(1) Animal Liberation: How
can you measure
pleasure/suffering
a
perennial problem with
utilitarianism

(2) Animal Rights: boundary
of moral considerability is very
restrictive
 and
many plants and animals
left out.

(3) Feinberg,
Regan and Singer
base standing on
human traits: having
interests, capacity to
suffer, beings
subjects-of-a-life"

I.e.: only if animals
are like us in some
important way will
we grant them
standing
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Problems with individualistic approaches:

(4) How can we
determine what the
"interests" of a living
thing are?
 How should we
decide who should
be the trustee for
non-rational,
morally
considerable
entities?

(5)
Individualistic
approaches
provide no
basis for
prioritizing
concern for
endangered
species
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Holistic Approaches -- the basic idea:
The whole is greater (and
more valuable) than the
constitutive parts
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Tiga Pendekatan Holistik



Biocentrism
life-centered ethics
Ecocentrism
ecosystem-centered ethics
Deep Ecology
‘identification’ and kinship ethics
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Biocentrism


Precursors
include Albert
Schweitzer's
"reverence for
life" ethics
and
Aristotle’s
Virtue Ethics:
stressing
character
traits; awe,
the inherent
worth of each
life
life centered ethics
Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature (1986)
 Living things have a good of their own, a
will to live, and end of their own. Thus they
have inherent worth
 With this perspective comes morally
responsible behavior toward nature. Also:
 (1)
humans are member of earth's life
community
 (2)
all species part of interdependent
ecological system
 (3)
all life pursues own good in own
ways
 (4)
Humans not inherently superior (all
life has moral standing)
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Biocentrism - key problem

Still pre-ecological
not really focused on
ecosystems, but on individual life
forms.
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Ecocentrism: ecosystem centered
ethics


Precursors:
Baruch
Spinoza
 Henry
David
Thoreau
 John Muir

Aldo Leopold’s watershed Land
Ethic, 1949
"All ethics rest upon a single premise:
that the individual is a member of a
community of interdependent parts.”
 Leopold
argued that ethics involves
self-imposed limitations on freedom
of action and is derived from the
above recognition
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Leopold’s ecosystem-centered ethics


A land-use decision "is right when it tends to
preserve the biotic community. It is wrong
when it tends otherwise."
Leopold spoke of the land as an organism, as alive.
"the complexity of the land organism" is the outstanding 20th
century discovery."
 This is a mystical revelation that sounds like pantheism and
anticipates James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis


The Land Ethic: "changes the role of Homo Sapiens from
conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of
it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect
for the [land-] community as such."
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Lovelock’s holistic planetary Gaia theory


Arguing the earth is a self-regulating living system
that maintains the conditions for the perpetuation
of life, James Lovelock advanced the Gaia
Hypothesis.
Although not intended as an ‘ethics,’ a biospherecentered (large-ecocentric) ethics has been
deduced from it, claiming:
 People
ought not degrade this wonderful system in
such a way that it can not function to keep its
systems within the various delicate margins
necessary for life
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Deep Ecology - Basic ideas
 All
life systems are sacred and valuable -- apart
from their usefulness to human beings
 All life evolved in the same way and thus, all
are kin, with kinship obligations
 All species should be allowed to flourish and
fulfill their evolutionary destinies
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Deep Ecology
The problem & solution


Anthropocentrism (and reformist approaches)
destroy nature
A transformation of consciousness is needed,
replacing anthropocentrism with a broader
sense of the self


identity should be grounded nature
When we understand that we are part of
nature, eco-defense, as self-defense, will
follow
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Holistic Approaches -- Key criticism:

Individuals get hurt when you ignore them
in favor of wholes
This
is the key criticism of all ends-focused
theories
In environmental ethics, the common
charge is of "eco-fascism"!
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Ethics and Environmental
Ethics
The Gradual Extension of Moral
Concern
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The ‘Earth Charter’
(as global example)
www.earthcharter.org
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