You have had enough!
Letters to Congress won't work.
Despite your letters, and thousands more, it appears that they will
nonetheless issue permits for still more oil platforms off the
California coast. So you and your friends have organized a
demonstration in Washington in front of the Rayburn House Office
building, while inside a final Congressional review of the issue is
being conducted by the House Interior Committee. At that moment,
testimony is being offered in support of the platforms by lobbyists
for the oil companies.
Suddenly, a Sergeant-at Arms from the committee room walks out the
front door and beckons to you. He tells you that the Committee
Chairman has asked him to select a random demonstrator and to invite
him inside so that the Committee might hear the protesters' point of
view. By sheer chance you have been selected.
Shortly thereafter you are seated in
the committee room. The Chairman asks: "Why shouldn't we continue to
extract oil from offshore California? You reply that to do so would
be morally atrocious. You are then asked: "Very well, in what sense
do you believe it morally atrocious?" And, "Will you please defend
your position -- that is, will you give the Committee reasons why it
should agree with you?"
What would you say? Would what you say be new, or would the
Committee have heard it all before (apparently to no avail)? Would
your case be logically cogent? Well informed? Persuasive? When asked
to put your mouth where your feet were, could you do so without
putting your feet where your mouth is?
No doubt, many of you have strong feelings about the future and
fate of the natural environment. That is why many of you are taking
this class. But are you prepared to defend these feelings?
In Utah, where I lived for many years, most citizens will tell you
that Lake Powell is a marvelous "improvement" in the southern Utah
landscape. Whereas only a few dozen hardy backpackers and rafters saw
the now-impounded Glen Canyon, today tens of thousands of boaters,
fishermen and water skiers can enjoy it. The figures seem to be
correct. But does this justify the impoundment of water in Glen
Canyon -- "The Place Nobody Knew"? If you think not, are you prepared
to say why not?
Further cases can easily be cited:
- Loggers will tell you that if they are allowed to cut the last
of the Northwest old-growth forests, and then move on to Alaska
and Siberia, your homes will cost considerably less.
- Nuclear Power proponents will say that if they build their
plants, your electricity bills will be reduced.
- The oil companies claim that oil
spills, though regrettable, are unavoidable but acceptable costs
for our civilized condition.
- Developers will tell you that new
dams in the northern Sierras will benefit the economy of the
entire state of California.
All will claim that if they have their way, fewer people
will be out of work and that the gross national product will continue
to grow.
Suppose they are right! Have you an answer to this "cost-benefit"
approach to environmental policy-making? Can you propose and defend a
different approach to policy analysis? After all, environmental
decisions must be made. If the present decision-making rules and
methods are inadequate, what alternatives might we propose?
Have you studied the developer's arguments? Are these arguments
based upon some unexamined yet highly questionable assumptions? What
are these assumptions and why are they questionable? Are you prepared
to refute them?
Do not underestimate the persuasive strength of the arguments of
"the opposition"! Those who argue for "constant growth,"
"development," and "the subjugation of nature," defend their
positions from assumptions and from a point of view that have long
dominated the beliefs and attitudes of Western culture. These
established beliefs and attitudes concerning man's place in the
natural world (often seen as "nature's place in man's world") are so
deeply woven into the fabric of our culture that most of our
neighbors, and (let's face it!) often we ourselves, accept them
uncritically and even unconsciously. What beliefs and attitudes?
Basically they are beliefs and attitudes that issue from a point of
view that highly values the significance of one species, homo
sapiens, in the natural community, and which affirms the right
of this species to impose its will upon the remainder of its natural
estate. It is a viewpoint that not only restricts interests to
members of the human species but, even more, may confine its temporal
concerns to the lifetime to one's own generation, or at most that of
oneself and one's children. The legacy from the past and on to the
remote future is "discounted".
If we feel that a man-centered view of nature is myopic,
inappropriate and fallacious, are we prepared to demonstrate how it
is so? Have we a better view concerning man's responsibility to
nature? Are we prepared to explain this "better" environmental ethic
and to defend it? As we endeavor to do so, I suggest that we may find
that a coherent and cogent environmental ethic will have to be based
upon some premises and perspectives that we are not familiar with.
Still less is the public or the "establishment" familiar with
radically different approaches to the issue of man's responsibility
to nature. And this seriously complicates our task.
II
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS
Philosophers are those troublesome individuals who "ask the next
question." They look for, and then critically examine, concepts and
assumptions that are generally "taken for granted." Philosophers ask
such annoying questions as "What do you mean by that?" "How come?"
"So what?" (Short for "so what follows from your assertion?") And,
most discomforting of all, "Why should I, or you, or anyone believe
that?" The philosopher's job is primarily to ask questions, not to
answer them. His task is not to comfort the afflicted but to afflict
the comfortable.(1)
Often the philosophers' attempts to rouse others "from their
dogmatic slumbers" (as Kant phrased it) are icily ignored. Sometimes
the philosophers' attempts to provoke active thought succeed all too
well. (Witness the case of Socrates).
Within the general field of philosophy is ethics and moral
philosophy -- the philosophical study of values ("goods" and "bads")
that are, to some degree at least, under the control of some
responsible, rational and deliberative person or persons. Ethics
deals with such general concepts as obligation, justice, rights,
duties, virtue, beneficence, etc. Moral philosophy deals, in general,
with the evaluation of personal acts, conduct, motivation and
policy.
Viewed descriptively, the institution of morality is social in
origin and orientation and essentially systemic. Like economic
systems, moral codes evolve out of competition and cooperation: the
competition for scarce goods, services, satisfactions and the
security of personal interests, and cooperation to gain and enhance
mutual welfare and security. Thus moral philosophy describes and
prescribes constraints and liberties (duties and rights) that
regulate social life so that all may fairly contribute to the just
maximization of benefits and satisfactions for each.
The concept of a "person" is central to moral philosophy. While
the list of criteria that identify "personhood" is in some dispute,
most moral philosophers would include most, it not all, of the
following characteristics in that list:(2)
- sentience, or the ability to feel pain.
- consciousness of external objects and events.
- reasoning, the ability to solve problems.
- self-motivated activity.
- the capacity to communicate through the use of a complete,
syntactic system of significant symbols (i.e., a language).
- a concept of oneself as a being continuing through time.
- a capacity to conceptualize and choose among alternative
futures.
- a capacity to act on principle -- to deliberately govern one's
behavior according to rules.
- recognition of the personhood of other persons.
The reason that this definition is crucial to moral
philosophy is that only such a being as that described above can be
said to be "morally responsible" or "duty-bound" (as, for example,
infants and animals are not). Because the only "persons" we know of
are human beings, there is a widespread temptation to treat the terms
"person" and "human being" as synonymous. This careless equation of
meaning leads to a great deal of confusion and befuddlement in moral
arguments, most notably arguments over such issues as abortion,
euthanasia, and environmental ethics. The distinction between person
(a moral concept) and human being (a biological concept) can readily
be grasped by citing contrary cases. In the TV series, "Star Trek"
the android, "Data," not to mention numerous "aliens" are depicted as
non-human persons, as is the cuddly (?) alien, "E T" in the movie of
that same name. Dolphins may be persons, although we have not
determined this to be the case. On the other hand, a severely brain
damaged or irreversibly comatose human being is not a person.
The question of whether a being is or is not a person has
fundamental bearing upon our moral conduct toward that being. Persons
are afforded dignity, deserve respect, assume duties and
responsibilities, and hold rights to a degree that non-persons do
not. Thus, if we were to find that dolphins were, in fact, persons,
our attitudes toward them would change at once, and we would (for
example) require, by law, that tuna fishermen be much more careful
about the dolphins' "personal" safety. The vocabulary and the
rationale of moral philosophy has traditionally been applied to the
community of human persons. Thus the attempt to extend ethical
inquiry beyond human contexts to life communities (i.e., to
ecosystems) introduces deep conceptual and methodological problems.
The ecological moralist who ignores these problems, does so at the
risk of trivializing and even invalidating his moral theory.
The concept of a person leads directly to the distinction
between moral and non-moral value. A "moral value" is a value that
reflects upon the worth of a person (or, in other words, upon one's
"moral virtue"). A "morally good act" is an act that is prompted by a
meritorious personal will. The term "non-moral value" applies to
anything else that might be "graded" (termed good or bad). "Non-moral
values" include price (of goods and services), beauty (of art objects
or landscapes), function (of machines), viability (of species or
organisms), stability (of societies or ecosystems), and even (if
somewhat confusingly) enjoyments (of experiences)(3)--
in short, any values that do not reflect upon the worth of persons.
Axiology is the branch of philosophy that deals with values
in general, while ethics, a subdivision of axiology, is concerned
with moral values, or with non-moral values as they relate to moral
values.
Environmental ethics is concerned with the issue of responsible
personal conduct with respect to natural landscapes, resources,
species, and non-human organisms. Conduct with respect to persons is,
of course, the direct concern of moral philosophy as such. (Strictly
speaking, "environmental ethics" could be interpreted more broadly to
include questions of responsibility toward artificial environments,
but such an interpretation is not directly our concern, and we will
thus confine our attention to matters of moral significance regarding
natural environments).
"Moral responsibility" normally implies knowledge, capacity,
choice, and value significance. That is to say, if a person is
morally responsible to do something, then he (a) knows of this
requirement, (b) is capable of performing it, (c) can freely choose
whether or not to do it, and (d) the performance thereof affects the
welfare and/or liberty of other beings. Because one's response to
these requirements reflects upon his value as a person, we say that
this response has "moral significance." This analysis of "moral
responsibility" might help to explain why "environmental ethics" has
only recently attracted the attention and concern of moral
philosophers. Quite simply, until recently our effects upon the
natural environment were regarded as morally neutral since nature, we
assumed, was both impersonal and too vast to be injured by our
interventions, or else, at the very least, we were quite unable to
foresee the harm resulting from our dealings with nature. Now, of
course, we know better. We know that we can cause massive and
permanent damage to natural landscapes, resources and ecosystems. Not
only do we know that we can cause these insults, we also know how we
can cause them, and how we can prevent or remedy them. Knowing all
this exacts a moral obligation to act with care, foresight and, at
times, with forbearance and constraint. In our dealings with the
natural environment, we are, in short, called upon to reflect, act,
or perhaps to refrain from acting, in a manner which testifies to our
worth as persons and as a culture -- in a word, to respond
morally.
Environmental ethics, then, might include such issues as the
following:
- Why care about nature "for itself" when only people "matter"?
If you deny that "only people matter," on what grounds can you
defend that denial? (After all, if no people are around to regret
it, what difference does it make if a species, a canyon, or even a
planet is destroyed? If people who are around prefer to destroy
natural objects and landscapes, then so what? Why not?
- When species or landscapes or wilderness areas are destroyed,
what, of value, is lost to mankind?
- Will future generations "miss" what we have "taken from them"?
(How could they if they never will know what they have
"lost"?)
- "Should Trees Have [Legal] Standing?" (as Christopher
Stone contends). On what grounds, if not for mankind's sake?
- Does "land ownership" make moral sense, or is it a morally
absurd and repugnant concept in Western culture (as the native
Americans would claim).
- Do human beings have a need for nature that implies an
obligation to preserve it? What is the evidence for this?
- What are the ultimate grounds of an affirmation to protect the
environment? Are they rational? Irrational? Non- rational?
Mystical?
- What, basically, is wrong with the developer's anthropocentric
and utilitarian land ethic? Why not treat land as a "commodity"
rather than a "community"?
- If five-hundred backpackers and river runners per year enjoyed
Glen Canyon before 1962, and fifty thousand power boaters and
water skiers enjoy it now, then why not have a Lake Powell
there?
- Do future generations (who, after all, do not exist now) have
a "right" now to a clean and natural environment when their time
comes?
- Can man "improve" upon nature? How? What constitutes
"improvement"?
- Do the facts of environmental science have moral
implications?
- Are human beings psychologically capable of caring for nature
and for future generations? If they have this capacity, are we
morally obligated to nurture it?
. . . and so forth . . .
One of the most serious problems with the environmental
movement today is that its moral position is badly articulated and
defended -- it is more "felt" than thought through. This paper, and
this class, are intended to help us to remedy that defect.
III
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS:
DESCRIPTIVE, NORMATIVE AND
CRITICAL
Moral philosophers have found it useful to distinguish three
"levels" of study in their discipline. The first "level,"
"descriptive ethics," consists of accounts of what people and/or
their cultures do, in fact, value. Imagine, for example, a
hypothetical public opinion survey reporting that 55% of Californians
favor extraordinary and costly measures to protect and preserve their
northern forests, that 30% oppose such measures, and that 15% are
undecided. Since the survey reports the moral opinions of the sample
population without offering a moral judgment of these
beliefs,(4) the poll is an
exercise in descriptive ethics. Similarly, an anthropological report
that such and such a tribe values head hunting describes the values
of that tribe. Descriptive ethics, then, can be regarded as a
specialized type of social science.
The second level, normative ethics (also called "prescriptive
ethics") deals with moral issues in the conventional sense of that
term -- that is, with questions of right or wrong, duties and rights,
justice and injustice, virtue and wickedness, and so forth. On this
level of ethical discourse, judgments are made and defended
concerning the moral value of acts, motives and policies, or of the
persons or communities responsible for these acts, motives or
policies. Also, in particular cases, recommendations are made as to
the morally "best" course of action or conduct. Thus a normative
response to the hypothetical poll on the Northland forests might be
"how dreadful that our fellow citizens should care so little about
their biotic legacy!" Or, on the other hand, "I am glad to see that
our citizens are at last coming to their moral senses and recognizing
that human beings are more important than a bunch of trees!"
Similarly, one might normatively condemn the practice of head hunting
accurately described by the anthropologist.
The philosopher, accustomed as he is to "ask the next question,"
is not content simply to hear a normative opinion. He insists upon a
clear and precise statement of the meanings of the concepts employed
in the opinion. When the philosopher seeks to clarify the meaning of
normative terms or to examine the structure, grounds and
justification of normative arguments, he is engaging in the activity
of critical ethics, or "metaethics." He is thus, in a sense, an
intellectual spectator of the normative judgment. It is the task of
the critical moral philosopher to take account of the logic, language
and methodology of normative discourse and argument. Thus, if a
moralist condemns capital punishment as "unjust" or head hunting as
"barbaric," the meta- ethical philosopher will ask the meaning of
"justice" and "barbarism" in these contexts. He will also inquire as
to the nature and soundness of the arguments offered in defense of
these normative (i.e., moral) claims.
The Drawing is by Janice Wightman (1980)
An Administrative Assistant at the Environmental Studies Program
University of California, Santa Barbara
A failure to discriminate among these levels of ethical inquiry
can lead to considerable confusion and error. For instance, a failure
to distinguish between descriptive and normative ethics can draw one
into a naive cultural relativism ("Oh well, if the Wadjacallem
believe in head hunting, I guess it's good for them"), or even a
subjective relativism ("So you're a serial killer! Well, whatever
turns you on, baby!") Failure to distinguish normative ethics from
critical ethics can lead to hasty moral conclusions. For example, if
we affirm (metaethically) that future generations can meaningfully be
said to "have rights," it does not follow that they (normatively)
have a right to share the company of snail darters or to find the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area in a natural state. Furthermore, if
someone (normatively) argues that dumping nuclear wastes in the ocean
is "inherently unjust," we should neither accept nor reject his claim
until we have (metaethically) determined what he means by "inherently
unjust" and have examined the structure of his argument and the
premises and point of view from which it is argued.
Let us now apply these three levels of ethical inquiry to
environmental ethics. First, descriptive environmental ethics is not
a significant problem in environmental ethics for the simple reason
that, strictly speaking, "descriptive ethics" isn't really a part of
moral philosophy at all. Rather, because it is "descriptive," it is
really a type of social science. If we ask "what do 'the American
people' think of their national parks? Do they believe the parks to
be 'valuable'? Worth the cost of their preservation?" Such questions
as these can be answered through the polling techniques of a Gallup
or a Roper.
If we judge the environmental values of most Americans to be
"deplorable" (a normative judgment) and thus feel moved to "do
something about it," we might attempt to change these attitudes. And
so we would enter the fields of environmental education and moral
education. And what teaching methods most effectively produce the
attitude we approve of? This too is a descriptive question;
specifically, a question of educational psychology.
Normative ethics deals directly with the "nerve" of morality;
namely, the question "what should we do?" Thus normative
environmental ethics is apparent in Congressional debates over policy
and funding. For example, such issues as: What is the optimum use of
this canyon, or forest, or desert? How should we treat this natural
area? Use it up? Protect it? Preserve it intact? What "good" is a
"useless" endangered species? How much effort and cost should we
devote to protecting it? What damage to the environment and what risk
to future generations is acceptable in return for the development of
synfuels and nuclear power?
Critical ethics ("metaethics") is concerned with the meanings of
ethical concepts and with the justification of normative claims. Thus
environmental metaethics brings to policy and legislative debate such
questions as these: Upon what unstated moral assumptions are these
contending positions based (e.g., the positions of the "developer"
and the "preservationist")? What are the meanings of the key concepts
in the debates -- concepts such as "wise use," "preservation,"
"ecological integrity and stability," "human enrichment," "rights and
duties," etc.
What sorts of arguments are offered in defense of the competing
value claims? Are these cogent moral arguments that warrant their
conclusions? Can any conclusions be drawn in such arguments, or do
disputes about the "optimum use" of nature or the "duty to preserve
and cherish wilderness" merely reduce to differences of feeling,
taste or cultural bias? And if they do, are they not, in principle,
be basically subjective and beyond resolution? (This is the
"non-cognitivist" position in metaethics.) On the other hand, can
such disputes be settled by appeals to facts and logic, so that two
well-informed unbiased and rational disputants in an environmental
policy issue might, in principle at least, arrive at an agreement in
their normative views regarding policy? (As, for example, disputes in
science are "settled" by appeals to evidence through scientific
method.) The metaethical view that moral disputes can, in principle,
be settled by objective, rational analysis is called "moral
cognitivism."
We are now prepared to clarify a crucial distinction:
"Environmental Ethics" is to be identified in this Introduction, and
in this writer's contributions to this collection, as a metaethical
term designating any ethical position that expresses a viewpoint
concerning man's responsibility to nature. "Ecological morality," on
the other hand, identifies the particular normative environmental
ethics of such writers as Aldo Leopold, who view man as a part of the
natural community with duties of respect and forbearance toward that
community.
Possibly the most crucial and fundamental problem faced by the
ecological moralist is contained in this metaethical question: "Do
the facts of ecology bear value implications?" In other words, "does
the study of the integrated life community of nature, persisting and
evolving through time, inform us morally?" Most ecological moralists
seem to affirm this claim. Yet by doing so, they are embracing the
highly controversial metaethical position of moral cognitivism. It
may be no exaggeration to suggest that unless and until environmental
ethics can present a persuasive solution to the metaethical problem
of moral cognitivism (that is, the problem of justifying normative
claims with both objective facts and rational arguments),
environmental ethics will receive, and even worse will deserve, no
serious attention from moral philosophers.
Because of deep and persistent problems such as this, many
environmental philosophers (including myself) believe that the most
urgent attention in environmental ethics should be devoted to
metaethical issues; not because normative environmental questions
("What shall we do?") are not important, but because these normative
issues are ill-defined and because we are ill-equipped to go about
the task of settling them. Thus, for the sake of finding solutions to
the normative questions, we must first solve some prerequisite
problems of ethical meaning and justification; that is to say,
problems of metaethics.
And so, even splendid and enduring statements of normative
environmental ethics such as Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic" or Henry
David Thoreau's "Walden" leave us short of final resolution. We read,
for instance, such inspiring normative sentiments as this from Aldo
Leopold: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity,
stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it
tends otherwise." ("Land Ethic"). But while many of might read this
with enthusiastic approval and warm affirmation, do we grasp the full
meaning of this claim? And are we prepared, after reading Leopold's
essay, to offer a careful, structured, and informed defense of this
maxim? Do we even know what would constitute such a cogent defense of
"the land ethic"? I submit that for the most part, the defenders of
Leopold's position are not well-prepared to answer these challenges,
not because these defenders are careless, irrational, biased
romantics and partisans, but because the metaethical issues of
meaning and justification emerge from and deal with some of the most
profound, obscure and stubborn problems of moral philosophy. Yet some
sort of informed, thoughtful and critical response to the metaethical
issues of environmental ethics is essential if this new field of
ethics is to receive the scholarly attention that its normative
urgency demands.
IV
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHICAL
TRADITIONS(5)
While I wish that I could report that my profession of philosophy
offers clear guidance to the task of finding and justifying a code of
conduct toward the natural environment, I must sadly report that many
honored and entrenched traditions, assumptions and methodologies of
philosophy, and even more of scientific and humane scholarship in
general, may be more a part of the problem than a part of the
solution. Accordingly, we may find that if we attempt to derive a
truly cogent, coherent and far-seeing environmental ethic, grounded
in the theory and the perspective of the ecological point of view,
such an ethic may have to be defended in terms that most educated
persons, and even many philosophers, are unfamiliar with; in terms,
that is, that are out of step with current scholarly fashions or
traditions. In particular, a new environmental ethic may have to
challenge four basic traditions:
a) Anthropocentrism. We are used to defining values and
ethics with human beings in the center of our conceptual scheme of
things. Thus acts or policies are viewed as "good" if they benefit
human individuals or communities. (A more generous view would place
non-human but sentient creatures in the suburbs of our moral
concern). Alternatively, other moral theories identify as "good"
those acts and policies that are motivated by a respect for the
"dignity of personhood" of human beings. "Lesser beings" and nature
itself does not, in this view, share such "dignity." The ecological
moralist, on the contrary, is more inclined to view humanity not at
the center of the moral universe but as an ingredient (though
presumably a necessary ingredient) in the realm of morality,
particularly as morality pertains to responsibility to nature.
b) Reductive Analysis. We are accustomed, through our
scholarly traditions, to move from secure knowledge to insecure
conjecture. We do so by acquiring our knowledge in bite-sized pieces
and accumulating this knowledge piece-by-piece until a whole emerges
out of the parts. From such a tradition, it is easy to conclude that
in order to understand something or to solve a problem, we must first
identify the parts and then their rules of combination. The approach
of identifying the parts in order to comprehend the whole is called
"reductive analysis." The ecological point of view reverses this
approach. The ecologist suggests: "grasp the whole -- think like a
mountain -- and then the whole will explain the parts" (Holism). (But
beware! An incautious insistence upon holism and an aversion to
analysis can also limit our understanding. An astute historian or
philosopher of science will acknowledge a need for a dynamic balance
between the apprehension and application of parts and whole in
scientific theory and practice).
c) The Egocentric Perspective. The philosophical method of
"reductive analysis" leads almost irresistibly, to "the egocentric
point of view." Thus, following a philosophical tradition endorsed
and exemplified by Hume and Descartes, philosophers have insisted
that philosophical inquiry "start" with the "hard" and "secure" data
of immediate experience and awareness, and then "move out,"
cautiously and deliberately, to conjectures about "the external
world," "other minds," and so forth. It is not difficult to
understand why, in such a tradition of inquiry, there is a general
neglect of the question of man's moral responsibility of nature. The
ecologist, as we well know, conceives of "nature" as a complicated
system of interacting parts. Such a concept is hopelessly out of
reach of a methodology which "begins" with "immediate" subjective
experience and awareness. Thus the very method of many philosophers
-- their preferred manner of doing their work -- has kept them
uninvolved with questions of environmental ethics. Moreover, by
placing mankind in the center of their theory of knowledge, many
philosophers have been drawn toward the unwarranted conclusion that
humanity is also in the center of nature. (Philosophers have
all-too-often been thus "bewitched" by their preferred methodological
points of view). The ecological moralist, of course, adopts a
different perspective by regarding man as a member, rather than the
master or the justification, of the natural community.
d) "The Fact/Value Gap" (We return here to the question of
moral cognitivism). For centuries, many philosophers have contended
that no amount of factual information can logically entail an
evaluative conclusion. The maxim "no 'ought' from 'is'" (or "no
values from facts") is virtually axiomatic among philosophers today.
The most troublesome thing about this maxim is that it is probably
correct -- strictly speaking.(6)
Accordingly, however spectacular may be the coming advances in
environmental science and ecology, a conclusive environmental ethic
will not emerge directly therefrom. Discouraging? Not necessarily,
for even now the facts of ecology (as well as psychology, systems
theory and still other disciplines) may have significant bearing upon
the search for an environmental ethic. Formal logic admits of only
two outcomes: valid and invalid. Practical and scientific knowledge
accepts degrees of warrant. And thus, even if the facts do not
validly imply values, they may nonetheless offer strong warrant for
moral claims. In moral inquiry, as in empirical science, "almost" may
be quite good enough. After all, as David Hume capably demonstrated,
the methodology of empirical science itself is formally invalid. But
that doesn't refute the value and warrant of scientific
investigation, nor should it.
Moral cognitivists insist that too much has been made of the "gap"
between factual assertions and moral claims. While it is true that
formally speaking some value assumptions must be made if a value
conclusion is to be drawn, it may also be the case that these value
premises can be seen to be so basic and "self- evident" as to command
virtually universal assent. Once again, empirical science offers an
instructive analogy. Science, it seems, rests upon such "unproven"
assumptions as these:
- Nature is uniform and will behave in the future according to
the same universal laws that governed it in the past. (Upon this
assumption "the principle of induction" and thus all empirical
science is based. Unfortunately, as David Hume pointed out, this
"principle of the uniformity of nature" is itself based upon
induction -- a clear instance of the fallacy of circularity).
- There are other minds besides my own. (But my mind is
obviously the only one that I can know directly All else is
conjecture).
- Besides minds and their ideas, there are objects and events
that exist in a physical world, that persist unobserved, and which
pre-existed the development of sentient and cognitive life. (All
such conjecture is based upon induction, which, in turn, is based
on a fallacy, as noted above)
Analogously, the axiomatic core of ethics may include such
"obvious" yet unproven (and probably unprovable) assumptions as
these:
- It is better to be healthy than sick.
- A rationally assessed self-respect is worth striving for.
- The satisfaction of desire and aspiration, as such, is prima
facie better than frustration and denial.
- Happiness is to be preferred to misery.
- Even if we cannot fully and explicitly define "happiness", we
all know when we are happy and when we are not.
- If, with equal effort, we can enhance the well-being of others
or harm them, we are duty-bound to choose the former.
- A world with viable life-forms on it is preferable to a world
without them. Still better if the life community is stable and
diversified, and better yet if some of the life- forms are
conscious and reflective (i.e., are moral agents or
"persons").
If that is the sort of "axiomatic core" that the moral philosopher
must "accept as given," then most practical individuals should be
content. Such an evaluative core seems to be quite strong enough to
serve as a basis for a moral theory. Add to this the facts of
ecology, of human nature, of moral psychology and the logic of
systems theory, and we might have more than enough warrant to
articulate and adopt a reasonable and secure set of guidelines for
action (i.e. moral imperatives) and codes of responsibility (i.e.,
moral duties) regarding mankind's dealings with nature and future
generations.
As for those "unproven moral assumptions," they may, for the most
part, be the sort of curiosities that trouble and entertain academic
philosophers (at times suggestively so) in their journals and
seminars. The rest of us, including philosophers off the job, can,
like David Hume himself, safely leave these puzzles behind as we
attempt, as we must, to deal practically and to behave responsibily
in the natural world around us.
In this section I have listed four prominent traditions in Western
philosophy and, to some degree, in other scholarly disciplines, which
tend to discourage and complicate attempts to articulate and defend
an ecological perspective and an affirmative code of responsibility
toward nature. Do these "established" methods and viewpoints of
analytic and moral philosophy constitute grounds for rejecting the
assistance of philosophers or ignoring their traditions entirely? Not
at all. In the first place, we should not overlook the fact that many
philosophers (notably Spinoza and Whitehead) were very much "in tune"
with the ecological point of view. As for the rest, the answer is not
to abandon moral philosophy, but to reform it. This tradition of
disciplined, rational, critical thought should not be hastily set
aside. The ecological moralist has much to learn from the
philosophers and needs the philosophers' persistent and disciplined
criticism. And if, in general, philosophers have failed to be
favorably affected by the ecologists, then the best response to
inappropriate and confining philosophy is better philosophizing.
V
WHY ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, AND WHY NOW?
Why? Because we can't sit this one out! "Not to decide" about
issues of environmental ethics is "to decide" -- in favor of the
status quo, and in favor of "business as usual." But our poor,
battered, plundered and polluted planet can not long endure a
continuation of "business as usual." We have, in the past couple of
centuries, achieved a cleverness that has far overshot our wisdom.
The explosive growth of scientific knowledge, followed shortly by a
parallel growth in technical ingenuity, has created an "explosive
growth" in moral problems -- some unprecedented in human history.
Ethics is a very ancient human preoccupation (older, perhaps, than
philosophy itself). And yet, environmental ethics is very new. In
view of the recent dramatic growth in knowledge and technology, it is
not difficult to see why this is so. Ethics deals with the realm of
imaginable human conduct that falls between the impossible and the
inevitable -- that is, within the area of human capacity and choice.
And now, even within our own lifetime (and ever more so with each
year), we have acquired capabilities and thus face choices that have
never been faced before in the course of human history -- indeed, we
now face many capabilities and choices never contemplated or even
imagined before. These include choices of birth, life, and death for
our species and others; choices that are rapidly changing the living
landscape forever.
When the ecosystem was not understood, or even recognized or
appreciated as a system; when the earth and its wilderness were
believed to be too vast to be damaged by voluntary human choice; at
such a time, there was no environmental ethics. But in our own time
we have revalidated the myth of Genesis, for in our own time, with
knowledge has come power, and with both knowledge and power, we have
lost our innocence.
This knowledge and this power are due, of course, to the
scientific revolution. And therein resides a puzzle and a paradox:
The scientists, steadfastly and correctly, claim that their content
and methodology are "value neutral." In the narrow sense, they are
right. As methodology, science is properly value-free and should be
value-free (an evaluative reflection, you will notice). But this
"properly value-free" methodology has opened up a bewildering array
of capacities and choices to us evaluating creatures. And we are not
equipped with the ethical insights and the moral restraints that are
necessary to deal wisely and appropriately with these choices. Yet
the choices are before us and we can not evade them. "Not to decide
is to decide."
The issues of environmental ethics are momentous, live and forced
(to borrow William James' terms); that is to say, these issues
involve moral choices of enormous importance that we can make and,
even more, that we must make. Our moral responsibility to nature and
to the future is of unprecedented significance and urgency, and it is
a responsibility that we can not escape. In our heretofore careless
and capricious hands lies the fate of our natural environment, our
brother species, and the generations that will succeed us.
Therein lies our inalienable, dreadful challenge -- and our
awesome responsibility.
Copyright 1980, by Ernest Partridge
NOTES
1. I believe this marvelous turn of phrase is
either from Clarence Darrow or H. L. Mencken.
2. The first five criteria are adapted from
Mary Anne Warren's paper, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion"
(The Monist, 57:1, Jan. 1973, p. 55). The final three criteria are my
additions to Warren's list. The relevant portions of Warren's paper
appear in Section II of this collection.
3. How so? Because a person's experiences are
not the person; they are something that the person has. One's
experiences have value apart from the value of the person. Thus a
virtuous person can have a bad experience (such as a toothache), and
a wicked person a good experience (such as a feeling of
accomplishment). All clear now?
4. Of course, an opinion concerning the fate of
the California Condor may have non-moral value components-- e.g.,
aesthetic or economic judgments.
5. For a longer, more technical statement of
the ideas in this section, see my "Environmental Ethics: Obstacles
and Opportunities" in Environmental Consciousness, Schulz and Hughes,
eds., (Washington, University Press of America, l981)
6. A fundamental rule of formal logic states
that no term in a conclusion can be absent in the premises. Thus it
is a formal fallacy to introduce "ought" in the conclusion if it is
missing in the premises. In other words, we must assume some values
in our premises if we are to draw evaluative conclusions, unless
values can somehow be defined in terms of facts. All efforts to do so
have, to date, apparently proven to be unconvincing. (Cf. Chapter Six
of William Frankena's Ethics, Prentice-Hall, 1973.)
