Teresa Kwiatkowska
Universidad Autonóma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa
Department of Philosophy
The Two Stories: ecological facts and environmental values
In
the year of 1893 Thomas Henry Huxley, taking a stand on the discussion regarding
the legitimacy of evolutionary ethics wrote: “Let us understand, once and for all, that the ethical process of
society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
away from it, but in combating it”. Questions as to whether
the science is knowledgeable with regard to human values are as old as the
science itself and have provoked centuries-old debate. Modern environmental
ethics faces a similar dilemma. It would seem reasonable to assume that physical
or biological sciences that illuminatethe facts of nature would have a binding relevance
for the discussion about environmental ethics. In spite of many disapproving voices, some philosophers
believe that ecology can generate values appropriate to our environmental
concerns. We share the biosphere with many other species. Do we have the right
to alter the biosphere –otherwise known as the environment- in ways that put in
peril the life of other species? Physical and biological nature is continually
altering the environment in ways that change the relationship between species
and causes local or global loss of some of these. Shall we follow paths of
nature that ecology is trying to unravel, or shall our moral values predominate?
These and many others questions pose
enormous challenges to environmental ethicists. They raise difficult problems
with respect to the foundations of environmental ethics.
In
1975, E. O. Wilson in his classic text Sociobiology
affirmed that human behavior, human values and ethics can be understood from an
evolutionary perspective. In his own words: …’the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands
of the philosophers and biologicized’. And before him Aldo Leopold in
his essay The Land Ethics wrote: One of the requisites of the ecological
comprehension of land is an understanding of ecology…
Science of the environment or
ethics for the environment
Environmental
ethics approach nature with the objective of encountering the proper ways in
which we should relate to it. It addresses concerns such as a respect for life,
intrinsic and aesthetic values of wild places, and compassion for non-human
animals. It rests on our moral intuitions about the rights of persons to be free of the
coercion implicit in pollution, the rights or interests of animals in not
suffering at our hands, the claims of future generations to resources we
expend, and the quality of life that may be attained by a commitment to
conservation rather than consumption.
Ecology (from the ancient Greek words oikos) studies our natural home, including other living organisms
inhabiting it, and their relationships. We can scrutinize ecological knowledge
in order to comprehend the relationships through which an organism is
constituted within its environment. As a
science of nature, ecology pursues an understanding of patterns, structures and
processes within the complexity of all aspects of nature. But whatever light ecology throws on the
workings of natural systems, its answers are non-normative. Only as a part of
our knowledge and interpretation they become part of morality. Science exposes
myths and modifies obsolete interpretations by bringing in new facts or by
offering a new understanding of old facts. It increases our experiences and
educates us so we are able to achieve different and more effective methods for
overcoming and managing the variety of multifaceted environmental problems. The
environmental sciences might seem to rely primarily on observation and
experiment to determine patterns of causality, of what causes what. Normative concerns, such as the rights and
duties we should respect toward nature and toward each other in relation to the
environment are beyond the reach of an empirical science such as ecology. Ecologists can let us know the possible cause
of extinctions of species or forest loss, and therefore recommend some method
to protect them. They cannot, however, tell us that we ought to protect this or that creature or ecosystem. Ecologist
Michael Rosenzweig (2001) has written: The
words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ constitute value judgments and so lie beyond the
bounds of science. Were exotic species
to reduce diversity by 30%, no ecologist could test whether that loss of
species would be a bad thing.”
Although environmental ethics and the science of
ecology share similar fields of research, even some basic concepts or
assumptions, there really is no scientific guidance of life. Science can and
often does serve noble interests. Science can, and often does become a means of
perpetuating injustice, of violating human rights, of making war, of degrading
the environment.[1]
Furthermore, the project of inferring normative
consequences from life sciences requires the privileging one theory over
others. However, none of the authors that assume that environmental ethics should have rigorously tested biophysical
underpinnings on which to develop the ethical components give compelling arguments- certainly not
empirical arguments- that would justify their choice over and against the
alternatives. (Laplante, 2004)
Screening Environmental ethics
Environmental ethics indicates the right thing for
humans to do with respect to the natural environment. It includes a wide
spectrum of ethical positions that come in many often competing forms. One
thread guiding the thinking of many is a commitment to the conservation of
biological community of life. As such it seeks to accomplish the task of
extending moral concern beyond human interests, and to indicate the ways in
which we have to include other species, ecosystems and the Earth as a whole in
our moral thought and daily practice. One of the most distinguishing features
of environmental ethics has been the effort to develop a non-anthropocentric
value theory that is a definition of the good
independent of any humanistic qualities, the good whose properties are found in the terrestrial non-human world.
Environmental ethicists of both bio-centric and eco-centric factions try to ground
definitions of intrinsic values upon empirical properties of living systems. Many
forms of ecocentrism adopt one of the most alluring forms of argument, namely
an appeal to inherent or existing features of the observable world. Fox (1995)
asserts holistically that given a deep enough understanding of the way things are … one will naturally be inclined to care for the unfolding of the world
in all its aspects. In other words, they attach the label of ‘intrinsically
valuable’ to the living things, and entities by describing their intrinsic
natures, so having good in itself really means having possessing these or those
constitutive properties: the property of being aesthetically pleasing,
spiritually enhancing, scientifically useful or simply creative. What kind of
property we may ascribe to nature depends on our state of mind, knowledge or
ignorance, self indulgence etc. But if we try to define real goodness in terms of these properties we are facing trouble. Having a good
in itself it is not just the synonym of “having such and such properties,
instead it means having and existence that is ethically required. Ethics
concerns systems of attitudes developed
particularly by interaction between people in societies “(Mackie, 1977). Non-human
nature knows no human ethics, it simply exists (Eckersley, 1992). There is nothing ‘in the fabric of the world’
that backs up and validates the subjective concern which people have about this
or that: protecting the vanishing
species or the wild land, or anything else you come to name. In a
natural world from which human beings were absent, no ethics, no concept of
“rights”, indeed, no notion of “intrinsic” worth could possibly exist. (Bookchin,
1994)
J. B. Callicott (1989) an eco-centrist, promotes
the definition of good that arises
from moral sentiments developed in humans over the course of evolution,
sentiments which promote the survival of us, our kin, and society in general. He
identifies ethics as system of values that differentiate social conduct from
antisocial conduct, and concludes that the sentiments that promote overall
community survival must define the good.
He assumes that intrinsic value actually reside in a natural world. What’s more
he insists that modern ecology explaining what constitutes biotic community
reveals new relations among objects,
which, once revealed, stir our ancient centers of moral feeling”. Ecology,
he continues, informs us of “the
existence of something which is proper object of our most fundamental moral
passions. The biotic community is proper object of that passion….”
The good
is therefore defined as an existential condition since we are supposed to favor
the community to which we belong. There is a fact of life that we are social
species, and the task of ethics is to make our “sociality” obvious. However,
there is a long and windy road from stating that humans are social creatures to
the definition of good. To identify
human “natural” sociality with a definition of good is, to say the least, arbitrary. To identify moral sentiments
in humans may presume a definition of good,
yet does not define it.
Nature
oriented ethical suggestions
Radical versions of
non-anthropocentric ethics claim the right of every form of life to function
normally in its ecosystem. Ecological egalitarianism rejects any hierarchy and calls
for a ‘biotic justice’. All life forms, both individuals and species, have a
prima facie right to a ‘fair share’ of the environmental goods, including the
habitats necessary for their wellbeing. This thesis seeks to
reverse the relationship we have with the natural world, to overcome the
species boundaries, and integrate human
world into the organic life of the natural environment. Nature functions as a
model of social virtue rather than a means of human comfort. O’Riordan (1982) talks
of a ‘natural morality’ that displaces the morality derived intrinsically
through human cultural institutions.
The
anthropomorphic idea of universal moral benevolence flows directly from the
images of organic interdependence. The illusion of T. Berry “requires that we submit and humbly follow
the guidance of the larger community on which life depends”. (
Holmes
Rolston, III assumed that living systems are self-organizing, and that the “ecosystem generates a spontaneous order that
envelopes and produces the richness, beauty, integrity, and dynamic stability
of the component parts.”(Rolston, 1995) As systems ecological communities
are sufficiently organized to have a “good” of their own worthy of our respect.
Our responsibility is not to interfere with this self-organizing process. Quite a few philosophers went overboard with
similar ideas proclaiming that ecosystems possess “self-identity” and therefore
“significant moral interests”. Lawrence E. Johnson wrote: “We may think of an ecosystem as an ongoing process taking place through
a complex system of interrelationships between organisms and their non-living
environment. The organisms change, and the interrelationships may vary
somewhat, but there is a continuity to the ecosystem, and a center of
homeostasis around which the states of the ecosystem fluctuate, which defines
its self-identity.” (Johnson, 1991)
Confining the ecosystem
Intellectual
constructs such as epicycles, laws of motion or ecosystems, may either be deep
truths about nature or clever delusions. One
of the lessons of biology is that habitats and ecological systems are not real
entities. One system emerges and overlaps with another without clear
boundaries. The individualistic nature of responses to the environment means
that what we call an ecosystem is in fact an arbitrary subdivision of a
continuous gradation of local species assemblages. In 1920s, plant
ecologist Henry Gleason argued that the community is not a well integrated
entity, but a loose and shifting association of individual species, the
demographic characteristics of which are determined primarily by individual
species responses to variable environmental conditions, rather than by
interactions between species. (Gleason, 1926).
Communities are not
well-integrated units that move en masse.
They are collections of organisms and species that respond individualistically
to temporal variation, as they do to spatial variation. In other words,
individual responses of the species to climate change can result in disruption
of normal association of plants and animals, changing biodiversity and altering
the biological community structure. A definition of the concept ecosystem that allows scientists to test empirically the hypothesis
that ecosystems are organized has yet to be found. According to the Ecological Society of
America, “A dung pile or whale carcass
are ecosystems as much as a watershed or a lake.”(1996) Ecologists concede that “the relationship between self-organization, natural selection, and the
mechanisms and assembly operators of ecology are simply unknown despite a
growing theoretical effort.” (Drake et al. 1999) Others assume that despite “continuous efforts, ecology has not been
able to offer universal laws or precise ubiquitous principles.”(Brecking
and Dong, 2000)
To define the
concept is to select the collection of variables and natural processes, and
then to limit the object under consideration.
That’s precisely why Mayr (1997) writes “one still speaks of the ecosystem when referring to local association
of animal and plants.(…) an ecosystem does not have the integrated unity one
expects from a true system.”
Because the concept ecosystem
lacks an agreed-upon definition, there is no way to distinguish the essential
or defining properties of a system from the accidental and contingent ones. There is no
logical basis to say, then, whether a given system, as a result of a given
alteration, retains its “organizational mode” and thus remains the same
system – whether it displays “resiliency” – or whether it collapses and
converts into a different system or into a mere collection. We have no criterion for determining what
kinds of changes destroy the system and what changes are consistent with its
preservation. Indeed, ecosystems
recently formed or invaded by non-native species that evolved elsewhere appear
indistinguishable from heirloom systems replete with endemic organisms as far
as any observable difference in their organizational mode is concerned.
All in all, ecologists whose interests drift from deduction of the
logical consequences of theoretical models to observation and experiment find
no empirical evidence of an organization, order, design, or structure even in exemplary
ecosystems, such as old-growth forests.
Gilbert and Owen (1990) wrote that any suggestion of pattern or
structure in ecological phenomena “is a
biological epiphenomenon, a statistical abstraction, a descriptive convention
without true emergent properties but only collective ones, wholly referable in
its properties to those of its constituent species, populations, and
individuals.” Equally forest ecologist
William Drury denounced the strong tendency to accept the existence of
self-organizing principles as inherent in natural systems. He wrote, “I feel that ecosystems are largely extemporaneous and that most
species (in what we often call a community) are superfluous to the operation
of those sets of species between which we can clearly identify important
interactions . . . . Once seen,
most of the interactions are simple and direct.
Complexity seems to be a figment of our imaginations driven by taking
the ‘holistic’ view.” (Drury, 1998)
However, we value natural formations, forests, lakes,
oceans, swamps without being convinced or even interested in their
organizational mode. It would be
misleading to suggest that any scientific assumption about ecosystems structure may justify the aesthetic judgment and moral
intuition that ecosystems have a good worth protecting, and that demands respect.
The
ambiguous biodiversity
The question of
biodiversity is one of the most significant in assessing human impact on
ecosystems, consequently for environmental ethics and conservation policies.
Although biodiversity ought to be thought of in a number of different ways (Lovejoy,
1996), the traditional and most popular use identifies it with richness in
taxonomic species. There are many nuances in the debate about what constitutes
biodiversity and how important biodiversity is in terms of the underlying
processes that define the system. (Begon et al., 1990)
There
are many different determinants and many
different measures of biodiversity. It
can be thought of at the level of species, genes, and communities and
ecosystems. All the various levels can be evaluated at several different
spatial and temporal scales. Given the various dimensions and multiple levels
of biological diversity, and its of measures and scales, it is difficult to rely on scientific answers
to determine what is ethical with respect to the protection and conservation of
biological richness, and what we ought actually do to achieve it.
The
biodiversity enigma has to be understood in the context of a change in natural history. In very distant past, it was mostly nature’s
spontaneous course that shaped the quantity and distribution of plants and
animals. More recently, human activity,
whether intentional or accidental, has come to influence the abundance, locations,
and distribution of plants and animals in many ways, two of which may be most
important. In many if not most places,
the majority of plants and animals are not native but have established
themselves from afar in the wake of human actions. Scientists have precisely
dated evidence that Europeans began growing non indigenous crop plants such as
wheat, barley and peas in naturally forested areas about 8.000 years ago.
(Scientific American, March 2005) The central European flora has undergone an
enrichment of diversity over historical time as a result of human–induced plant
invasions.
Human activity also increases the richness or
variety of species globally by creating though centuries of conventional
breeding and more recently though advanced biotechnology huge inventories of
novel organisms. Advances in genetic
engineering suggest that industry might design the greatest and weirdest
variety of creatures for unintentional or deliberate introduction into natural
ecosystems. These may add to the exotic
organisms already there further to increase the species richness of places. Until
we have decided how to define ‘biodiversity’ it would be impossible to justify
nature conservation by the ecological imperatives. It has to be based on human
values.
Dismantling
fantasies
Humans have ethical
responsibilities with regard to the environment. We have ethical
responsibilities to sustain the life support systems of other species that
share the biosphere with us. Science of
ecology does not offer us any guidance to cope with our relations to nature and
natural resources. Science can answer questions, at least sometimes, but it does not make
decisions. Humans do, at least sometimes. And our decisions draw upon the
perpetual problem of the meaning of
life. Any
normative approach to scientific inference that seeks to validate one answer
over another is, in my opinion, a parody of a would-be rational human decision
making process. Yet, even though we cannot rely on the
natural world to shape our moral beliefs in the direction of truth, many
philosophers believe that science can provide information helpful in shaping
human values. It is clear, as
Aristotle nearly 2,500 years ago and others more recently emphasized, that
responsible moral judgment must be based on fully understanding the meaning of
the facts. Factual information may substantially alter our attitudes, our
behavior and our values. As Ernest Mayr
indicated: “An ignorance of the findings
of biology is particularly damaging, whenever humanists are forced to confront
such political problems as global overpopulation, (…) the depletion of
nonrenewable resources, deleterious climatic changes, increased agricultural
requirements worldwide, the destruction of natural habitats (Mayr 1997) .
Can science, that is, the factual content of science be applied to
generate an ethical code? This
suggestion is usually rejected because it raises the is to an ought. One of the greatest barriers for the
development of a new set of values is precisely that perceived levels mismatch.
Moral inferences cannot be drawn from mere facts (norms can never be derived
from empirical assertions alone), nor are facts ever loaded with
prescription.
Scientific
investigation of the physical world, the ethical investigation of our moral
experiences, each of these inquiries has its own domain of data and its own
consequent autonomy, yet each has a close relation to the other as they both
seek a rationally motivated understanding of what’s going on.
It is equally clear that only science can
grasp the intricate interactions that take place in the complex system of
global environment. But science alone cannot explain the inner logic of our
dealing with the natural world. Although
it
can encourage more sensible attitudes towards nature, we
need an ethical theory to account for the idea of people having moral
responsibilities toward nature. If we follow Aristotle’s idea that the
end of ethics is intelligently doing, in order to act we have to use the knowledge environmental
sciences are providing and the values environmental ethics promotes. Environmental ethics and environmental
science thus may depend on each other as reliable allies in supporting the
protection and preservation of the natural world. But as Rene Dubos (1972) once
wrote: “Conservation
is based on human value systems; its deepest significance is in the human
situation and human heart. Saving marshlands and redwoods does not need
biological justification any more than does opposing callousness and
vandalism”.
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