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THREE WRONG LEADS IN A SEARCH
FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC
Tom Regan on Animal Rights,
Inherent Values and "Deep Ecology"
Ernest Partridge
(Original Version: Ethics and Animals, V. 3, Sept.,
1984)
In this essay, I would like to examine critically Tom Regan's
attempt to articulate an environmental ethic upon a strongly individualistic
foundation -- namely, upon the concept of "rights of nature," which, in
turn, he derives from a theory of "inherent value." Regan's attempt is
impressive in the scope of his enterprise, in the clarity and eloquence of
his language, and in the subtlety and structure of his argument. For all
that, I believe that he fails to accomplish his objectives. However, as is
so often the case, the lessons learned through errors of this skillful
philosophical effort may prove to be of considerable value to further
investigation.
Early in his book, All that Dwell Within, Regan writes: "I wanted to
provide vegetarianism with a moral basis without resting it on extremely
controversial moral views."1
Because this is sound strategy for a philosopher to adopt in defense of any
position, it would be appropriate to ask whether Regan has, in defending his
basic views on animal rights and environmental ethics, avoided "extremely
controversial" assumptions. I submit that he has not, but rather that he has
utilized, and failed to defend effectively, three crucial yet highly
controversial, and perhaps untenable, assumptions: (a) that there are no
morally significant differences between humans and other animals; (b) that
"inherent value," as Regan defines it (i.e., apart from personal
evaluation), is an intelligible concept, and (c) that the views in defense
of "animal rights" presented here are compatible with a "deep ecological"
approach to environmental ethics. These claims, I will argue, are countered
by a large and familiar body of refuting arguments, highly regarded and
widely supported, both within and beyond the philosophical profession.
Regan's difficulties arise, in large part, from his allegiance to an
individualistic conception of environmental ethics. Near the close of
this essay, I will suggest how many of these pitfalls might be avoided
through an accommodation of "individualism" and "holism" in environmental
ethics.
I
ANIMAL RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Regan's most recurrent strategy for validating animal rights is to
demonstrate that if human beings can be said to have rights, some animals
can likewise be said to have rights. (1) This argument is based, in turn, on
the propositions that (a) human and animal experiences and interests may be
"comparable" (8, 12, 86) or even "equal" (31-2, 50, 86), (b) Human and
animal experiences differ in degree but not in kind (159), and (c) no traits
that are universal among humans are exclusive to them (28, 36).2
There is a large body of published opinion that would deny (a) and (b), and
which would hold that (c), though true, is unsupportive of Regan's
conclusion.
It is crucial, at the outset, to point out that, in attempting to derive
animal rights though an analogy between animals and humans, Regan fails to
come to terms with the strongest rival position: namely, the argument that
so-called "human rights" attach, not to "humans" (a biological category) but
to "persons" (a moral category) and "potential persons." "Personhood" refers
to a set of capacities -- self-consciousness, self-awareness, rationality,
ability to act on principle, etc. -- which are possessed by most members of
the species homo sapiens, and, to the best of our knowledge, by no
other animals in a remotely comparable degree and kind. This close (though
imperfect) correlation between species and capacity-set leads to the common,
though strictly incorrect, term "human rights." Regan's analysis takes
advantage of this linguistic inaccuracy. (The error is also rampant in
public discussions of "the right to life" of fetuses). The defender of
"person-rights" (rather than "human-rights") will have a much easier time
responding to Regan's arguments, for the simple reason that he will readily
accord these rights to any non-human being (animal, cybernetic, or
extra-terrestrial) shown to possess personal traits. However, this advocate
would claim, it is a simple empirical fact that no such beings have yet been
shown to exist.
It does not follow from this analysis that non-humans possess no rights
whatever. Several philosophers have argued that sentient animals have a
right to humane treatment.3
However, no animals can be said to have such "person-rights" as "freedom of
worship," or a "right to a college education," simply because they have no
capacity to exercise such rights.
What, then, of so-called "marginal cases" of human beings with only partial
or potential person-traits? As with animals, they might be accorded such
rights as they have the capacity to exercise. Also, potential persons, such
as infants or temporarily comatose individuals, are plausibly accorded
rights "in anticipation" of later capacities. But again, personal capacity,
not species membership, is the key to such an analysis of rights. Surely it
is, to say the least, a prominent analysis among philosophers who deal with
this issue.4
Yet it is not the approach adopted by Regan who repeatedly writes of
"humans" (as a species) and only rarely of "persons."5
Why should "personhood" loom so large in a philosophical analysis of human
and animal rights? Essentially for these reasons: (a) the quality of
personal life, and of the experience therein, may be fundamentally different
from that of non-personal life; (b) this qualitative difference is such that
personal life may be said to be richer, more comprehensive, and more
valuable to the person, than a life of a non-personal being to that being;
and (c) "personhood" denotes a set of capacities that appears to be
exclusive to the human species (a contingent fact), though not universal
thereto.6
If these claims can be sustained, then it follows that the rights of persons
(i.e., most humans) are both more comprehensive and more morally significant
than the rights of relevant non-persons (i.e., some animals). This, of
course, is a conclusion to which Regan strenuously objects.
Why, then, should personal life, contrary to Regan's contention, be
qualitatively different? The key, most commentators agree, is language,
defined, not as "sign communication," but as a syntactically structured
system of significant symbols.7
With language, an organism is able to respond, not only to mental images of
objects of experience (a capacity perhaps attainable without language), but
also to types (abstractions), facts (as propositions),
projections, hypotheses, time frames, argument forms, and moral
principles. Furthermore, all this and more can, through grammar, be
combined and structured in an inexhaustible variety of ways. Finally,
through language, one may acquire a self-concept, and view oneself as an
entity continuing through time.
In view of all this, Regan's treatment of "the language difference" is
remarkably restrictive. Though the point of view outlined above has been
extensively and recently argued by philosophers (such as Mead, Dewey,
Cassirer, Langer, Wittgenstein) and many linguists, psychologists and
anthropologists, Regan chooses instead to take on Rene Descartes -- and no
one else. (6-7) Regan writes: "one might dispute the view that being able to
use a language is a necessary condition of being a conscious being."
(6) Later he asserts: "whether or not a person is experiencing pain. . .
does not depend on his being able to perform one or another linguistic
feat." (7, cf 32) However, by "linguistic feat," Regan seems to mean the
capacity to speak or write -- i.e., to "produce" discourse. He thus
dismisses "the linguistic difference:"
Imagine a person whose vocal cords
have been damaged to such an extent that he no longer has the ability to
utter words or even to make inarticulate sounds, and whose arms have
been paralyzed so that he cannot write, but who, when his tooth
abscesses, twists and turns on his bed, grimaces and sobs. We do not say
"Ah, if only he could still speak, we could give him something for his
pain. As it is, since he cannot speak, there's nothing we need give him.
For he feels no pain." We say he is in pain, despite his loss of the
ability to say so. (6-7)
Here Regan attacks a position with no
adherents, and draws our attention away from a significant rival position.
Of course, animals and language-deprived humans can suffer pain, and may be
said to have a right not to endure gratuitous pain. However, paralyzed
humans who cannot "perform linguistic feats" may not be
language-deprived, since there may be a great deal "going on inside."
Speaking and writing, in fact, are not even the most significant "linguistic
feats." They are, instead, the outward manifestations of an inward
accomplishment which supports advanced thought -- the basis of uniquely
personal (presumably human) experiences.
With language and personhood, life-quality is transformed. The life and
experiences of persons and of non-persons are no longer "comparable;" they
are "different in kind." Regan would have us believe otherwise. His defense
of "animal rights," as we have noted, stands repeatedly on the contention
that human and animal experiences might be regarded as "comparable," or even
"equal," and thus that human and animal "interests" and "rights" might be
"equal." Such a contention seems to rest upon a presumption that human and
animal lives, like safe-deposit boxes containing coins and notes of debit,
are composed of discrete and transferable experiential (and derivatively
moral) counters. But surely, this is not how it is. On the contrary, because
human experiences are interactive, organic, and systemic, an “autobiography”
is more than a sum of discrete sequential experiences. Because human
experiences are contextual, they come out of an ongoing life, and effect the
future of that life. Experiences which "happen to" a life -- a stubbed toe,
a toothache, an unexpected prize, etc., have sense, meaning, value, in the
context of that life. Thus the quality of a pleasure or pain can not
be assessed apart from the quality of the life it happens "in" or "to" --
apart from the matrix of attitudes, expectations and evaluations that make
up that life. Now if, as Regan's argument seems to require, the differences
between human and animal lives are simply matters of degree (not kind, cf.
159) among isolated phenomenal bits, then some sense and use may be made of
his arguments by analogy. Our account of "personhood" seems to suggest,
however, that this position is radically mistaken. Humans, qua
persons, deal with each other in conversation and with themselves in
thought, with and through concepts articulated through syntactical language.
They think abstractly of themselves, of others, of community, of time, of
their past and future, of concepts such as rationality and of morality. As
persons, humans experience unique dimensions of mental and emotional pain;
self-reproach, dread of impending loss, regret for abandoned projects, fear
of death, and such moral sentiments as guilt and shame. Persons also
uniquely enjoy such pleasures as self-respect, intellectual and creative
accomplishment, patriotism, irony, humor and pride. In sum the transcending
and transforming fact that human beings are persons gives them a
moral considerability far beyond that of animals. Thus if we regard the
human condition of personhood seriously, talk of "comparability" or
even "equality" of experiences of animals and human beings becomes
insupportable.
Having said all this, we must not coast off the deep end. In particular,
acknowledgment of these significant differences does not entail that animal
experiences do not morally "matter," and that gratuitous torture of animals
is not morally reprehensible. However different and even unknowable animal
pain may be, it is pain nonetheless. Furthermore, this point of view need
not be regarded as "species chauvinism." If homo sapiens is the only
terrestrial personal species, this is a contingent fact. Personal
capacities, and the entailed transformation of experience, are logically
attributable to any creatures. The limitation thereof is based upon
empirical fact and circumstance. If we were to discover that chimps or
dolphins could be educated to personhood, our moral stance toward them would
and should be radically transformed. So too if we were to encounter an
extra- terrestrial person. Indeed, if recent experiments with "ape language"
are as significant as some claim then a reassessment of our moral stance
toward these cousins is overdue.
In an effective defense of human rights, Regan points out that: "The
world contains individuals (e.g., human beings) who not only are alive but
have a life; these individuals are not mere things (objects), they are the
subjects of a life; they have, in James Rachels' helpful phrase,
autobiographies." (70, cf. 94, 135) Predictably, he then attempts to extend
this argument to animals.8
It won't do. While some non-personal animals may be said to "have a life,"
being without time- and self-consciousness they can scarcely be said to have
"autobiographies." Given these dimensions of consciousness in personal life,
the significance of one's life to oneself is utterly transformed. A steer
does not look upon its scheduled slaughter with the sense of dread and
foreboding suffered by a condemned prisoner. "Capital punishment" for beasts
simply makes no sense (as Regan himself tacitly admits, 150-2). To a person,
a life -- his life -- is a continuity and a unity. This
phenomenological fact entails rights to life that are unique to
persons.
Regan asks: "on what grounds, precisely, might it be claimed that no animals
can reason, make free choices, or form a concept of themselves?"(13) The
answer is richly represented in recent philosophical, linguistic and
psychological literature: on the grounds that animals lack articulate
languages -- a rejoinder that Regan has utterly failed to address. He
continues, "what one would want [to support this claim] are detailed
analyses of these cooperative concepts together with rationally compelling
empirical data and other arguments that support the view that all non-human
animals are deficient in these respects." (13) Again, there are such
arguments, based upon well-known studies of problem-solving skills with and
without language, studies of aphasia, of animal behavior, of children raised
without language, of language-using blind-deaf (e.g., Helen Keller), and
more. In addition, there is a vast philosophical literature on the function
of language in personality. Among the prominent contributors to this field
of study are Mead, Dewey, Cassirer, Langer, Wittgenstein and Chomsky (to
offer only a small sample). None of the above are indexed in Regan's book
and, after two careful readings of the book, I can recall none of them being
mentioned in this regard. All these studies, and more, are crucially
relevant to Regan's arguments and theories. His failure to face them and
respond critically must seriously compromise his case.
In summary: Regan's basic strategy in his defense of animal rights is to
stress the similarity between humans and non-human animals, at the expense
of de-emphasizing and perhaps devaluing that which sets humans apart from
the animals; namely, the moral significance and dignity of personhood. That,
I submit, may be an exorbitant and unacceptable moral cost -- especially so,
since there are other grounds upon which to articulate and justify a humane
treatment of animals.
II
RIGHTS AND "INHERENT VALUES"
Regan has assembled two arguments in defense of the rights of
animals; the first (just considered) might be called "the argument from
analogy with human rights." The second, which appears late in the book
(essays 6, 8 and 9) is "the argument from inherent value." If the preceding
analysis is correct, the first argument accomplishes too little (for Regan's
purposes, at least). The second argument, I will contend, accomplishes too
much. With it, Regan seems to be arguing what might be called "pan-liberationism;"
i.e., with this argument it is difficult to imagine that anything is
without rights. And if everything has rights, then, in effect,
nothing has rights. ("That which denotes everything, qualifies
nothing.")
Consider, then, Regan's concept of "inherent value." In explication thereof,
he writes:
(1) . . . if any given being (x) has
inherent value, then x's having value of this kind is logically
independent of any other being's happening to take an interest in or
otherwise valuing x; (2) . . . x's having inherent value makes it
improper (a sign of disrespect) to treat x as though it had value only
as a means. . .(133)9
The bond that Regan ties between "inherent
value" and "rights" could not be more complete: "all those beings (and only
those beings) which have inherent value have rights." (136, cf 139) (In
logical notation: (x)(IVx <-> Rx) ). Regan's strategy, then, becomes clear:
prove (a) the above "equivalence proposition," and (b) that animals have
"inherent value," then it will follow (c) that animals have rights. Still
more, with (a) and (b') (the claim that "plants, rivers, etc., have
"inherent value"), it will follow (c') that these natural entities also have
rights. Regan believes that this argument establishes the foundations for an
environmental ethic. Why? Because, says Regan, "it would seem to be the case
that it is only if [inanimate natural entities] have value of this kind that
we can develop a genuine ethic of the environment, as distinct from an ethic
for its use." (133, Regan's emphasis. Cf. 167.)
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this concept is the fact that it is
monadic -- i.e., non-relational. While most axiologists regard
evaluation as relational, Regan apparently does not. To Regan, values
are not "values for" or "transactions" between evaluator and evaluated. They
are simply independent and objective properties, which we can take or leave
alone. (199) To some philosophers (this reviewer included), this claim makes
as much sense as the following exchange:
"This thing is bigger"
"Bigger than what?"
"Nothing in particular, just bigger"
In other words, the concept of value, some
contend, requires an evaluator; someone to whom a property or event
matters. That there are "independent and objective properties" (or, if
the Lockean objects, "property-makers") is granted. That such properties
include "values" per se seems contrary to the very logic of the concept.10
Without an evaluator on the scene, the "value" is demoted to the status of a
value-neutral property, "awaiting" evaluation.
The difficulties with "Regan's concept of "inherent value" might become
clearer if we examine his attempts to illustrate the notion. First, cars:
[It will not] do to argue that cars
cannot have a good of their own because what characteristics are good
making in cars depends on what our interests are. For a car has those
characteristics it has, including those that are good making, quite
independently of our taking an interest in them. (177)
The second sentence simply asserts what is
not in dispute; namely, that cars have properties. It does not support
Regan's contention that some of these qualities are "inherently valuable."
Of course these "good-making qualities" (e.g. of cars) exist independently;
but the value of these qualities are not "independent" of our
taking an interest in them. He writes, "cars do not become, say,
comfortable or economical by becoming the objects of our interest." Granted,
but the value of being "comfortable" or "economical" is a matter which
requires our attention and interest.11
A "good" luxury car is not economical; and a "good" racing car is not
comfortable. The characteristics are independent, but the "goodness" of
those characteristics depends upon our interest in these characteristics.
(Better, perhaps, our "appropriate" or "reasoned" interest in them).
Continuing:
If a good car was produced by purely
natural means . . . that would not make it any less a good one. It would
make it an unusual one. . . If we were to transport a good car from our
world to a world inhabited by beings who did not have the interests we
have, it would not cease to be a good car, though it would cease to be
valued as one. A good car does not lose its goodness if we lose our
interest in it. (177)
Again, it would be better to say that the
car would not cease to have the qualities deemed (by us) to be good. In a
word, Regan is once again confusing here certain properties of an object
with the judgment (of value) made of those properties. Shouldn't we instead
say that in this strange case it would cease to be "a good car," even
if i's properties were not altered. When he writes, above, "a good car does
not lose its goodness if we lose our interest in it," all this means is that
the car would keep the properties that we would prize if, contra the
example, we were there to evaluate it -- or, for that matter, the properties
that we now value from our hypothetical standpoint as hypothetical
observers of this fanciful world
Regan next offers us a floral illustration:
A luxuriant gardenia, one with
abundant blossoms and rich, deep, green foliage is a better gardenia
than one that is so deformed and stunted that it puts forth no blossoms
at all, and this is quite independently of the interests other beings
happen to take in them. (179)
If the flower in question is to be found
in a florist shop, it is worth noting that it is an artifact -- an
artificial creation, by a botanist, "assembled" from natural (genetic)
"media," and designed to appeal to human tastes. As such, the "better"
gardenia must mean "better for us." We value the blossoms and
foliage. Another plant with less blossoms and foliage might produce more
pollen -- better for a bee. Or more seeds -- better for a finch. It might be
"better for" the gardenia and/or its species (whatever that means) if it
were allowed to go to seed and reproduce! And would this cultivated plant
survive in the wild as well as its wild relatives? Probably not. Does that
mean that it is not, after all, a "better gardenia"? Note that these
alternative "evaluations" apply differing contexts to Regan's
reductive analysis of the gardenia per se. (A method, by the way,
ill-suited for environmental ethics). Without context, it just makes no
sense to talk of something as blankly "better."
There is still worse ahead. Suppose, as Regan argues, that the gardenia is
"good," not to the florist, or the bee, or the finch, or even the ecosystem
-- but just "good, period. What, then, is a "bad gardenia"? A bad (or
good) anything! How can we begin to answer such a question, without
placing an evaluator into the picture, at least hypothetically (thus
deriving, presumably, a "hypothetical value"). Without an answer to such a
question, or at least a decision procedure, the notion of "inherent value"
is unbounded -- it "underlines every word in the book." If the concept lacks
bounds, then everything is "inherently good," and "goodness" fails to
qualify anything at all. "That which denotes everything, connotes nothing."
Has Regan an answer to this objection? Consider his final words on the
subject: "Two questions that I have not endeavored to answer are: (a) what,
if anything in general, makes something inherently good, and (b) how can we
know, if we can, what things are inherently good?"(202) Unfortunately for
Regan's argument, and his concept of "inherent value," these are precisely
the questions that he must answer if we are to make any sense of what he is
saying. Without answers to these questions, his theory has no meaning or
justification. He has, in effect, declared conceptual bankruptcy, by
admitting that he is unprepared to "cash in" his concept of "inherent value"
in the commerce of practical moral judgment and experience.
III
ANIMAL RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
Regan admits to being "attracted" to the "deep ecology" approach to
environmental ethics. (208) But can he embrace "deep ecology" without
seriously compromising his views on animal rights? I think not.12
His primary difficulty follows from his commitment to a "rights approach" to
moral responsibility to animals. As Regan correctly perceives, this approach
"emphasizes the value of individuals (96, cf. 70). Following Ronald Dworkin,
Regan affirms that "the rights of the individual ‘trumps' the goals of the
group." (91) It would seem to follow, then, that the optimum ecosystem, for
Regan, would be that which best secures the rights of each organism therein.
This is not the approach of deep ecology -- not if, (as Regan
proposes) Aldo Leopold is to be a paradigm of "deep ecology." In what is
perhaps his most widely quoted remark, Leopold wrote: "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."13
There is no talk of individuals here. "The biotic community" -- the
system and the context -- is the focus. The whole informs
and validates the part, while the "individual" is but a component in
the system, and the anonymous conveyer of evolution. The prey has no "right
to life;" it must reclaim title to its own life in each encounter with its
predators and the elements. While the wolf is the enemy of the deer, it is
the friend of the deer species, which, through time and a culling of the
"unfit," the wolf makes ever more alert and swift. Thus does the predator
contribute to the "integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community."
Consider some other contrasts between animal rights and "deep ecology." To
the advocate of animal rights, hunting is wicked; in the context of the
"deep ecological" land ethic, hunting could be a moral duty, (e.g., in a
region where the predators have been depleted and where, as a result, the
prey have overstocked the carrying capacity of their habitat -- the Kaibab
deer in Northern Arizona are the classical example). "Rights morality"
demands equal treatment; deep ecology acknowledges the survival of the
fittest and a differential significance of species and individuals to the
"integrity" of the community.14
Regan's "rights approach" is an explicit extension into nature of a
humanistic ethic; "deep ecology" is an environmental ethic derived, in large
part, from non-philosophical, scientific origins.15
So attached is Regan to the individualistic/rights approach that he is led
to suggest that his concept of "inherent value" is the "only" way to
"develop a genuine ethic of the environment, as distinct from an ethic
for its use. (133) In a word, he suggests that by according rights to
the most trivial and detachable bits of nature, we will gain an
environmental ethic by aggregation of the parts. It never seems to occur to
him to take the ecological perspective seriously,thus regarding the "biotic
community" as a whole system, and then deriving the value of the part from
its involvement in and contribution to the systemic whole. That, of course,
is the way Leopold goes about it.
The basic discord between "animal rights" and "deep ecology" might be
illustrated by a fanciful case. Imagine a national park administrator
determined to carry out a wildlife management policy based on Regan's
principles of "animal rights"? How might he best "liberate" the creatures
under his management and protection? One might propose that he adopt the
"deep ecological" approach and just leave the natural processes to their own
cruel devices and let nature take its terrible toll. After all, Regan will
not fault the predators for doing their thing: "the lamb can have rights
only against those beings who are capable of taking the interests of the
lamb into account and trying to determine, on the basis of its interests, as
well as other relevant considerations, what, morally speaking, ought to be
done." (18)16
It is not, however, quite that simple. For while the predators might be
excused, the hypothetical Park administrator may not be excused for letting
this brutal, if natural, business go on. He can put a stop to at least some
of this carnage; indeed, because he can, the deer (and other prey) have a
right to protection from natural predators.
How might the administrator bring all this about? First, in order to fulfill
his duty to minimize needless pain and death, he would seek to eliminate, as
humanely as possible, predator species. It wouldn't do, of course, to hunt
and kill them; rather, their elimination would have to be accomplished
through sterilization. Perhaps DDT might be reintroduced into the food
chain, since this seems to diminish the reproductive ability of birds of
prey. Carcasses might be laced with contraceptive chemicals, and thus
predatory mammals would be eliminated while avoiding the iniquity of hunting
them.
With the predators removed, it would then, of course, become necessary to
remove excess herbivores, to avoid their increase beyond carrying capacity
and their consequent starvation. Since hunting would be unacceptable, this
control of population might be accomplished through selective and partially
effective birth control methods (again, presumably through the use of
contraceptive chemicals in food, water, etc.)
Of course, the policy would only be partially successful. The elimination of
insect predators would be economically unfeasible, if not in fact
practically impossible. Presumably, insectivore birds would also be allowed
to survive. The primary "beneficiaries" of this "rights-oriented management"
would be "higher order" herbivores. This would be the policy,
notwithstanding Regan's insistence that all animals have "right to
life."
An interesting consequence of this fanciful exercise, is the discovery that,
far from being an "extension" or a "foundation" of environmental ethics,
vegetarianism and "animal rights," unconstrained, run contrary to
fundamental ecological principles. For one thing, by insisting upon the
"rights" of individual beings to be spared unnecessary pain, one loses sight
of the species and the ecosystem -- and the fact that predators, while
"enemies" of individual prey animals, are "benefactors" of the prey species.
In general, by focusing upon the individuals, "animal liberationists" give
inadequate attention to contexts and systems -- the essential
concepts of the "ecological point of view." In short, the "rights approach"
can lead us far astray from Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic."
I'll not go on with a critical task that has been superbly performed
elsewhere. My effort will be successful if I have managed to suggest that
Regan's subtitle, "Essays on Animals Rights and Environmental Ethics" tends,
by simple conjunction, to paper over a massive theoretical crack -- a rift
that he has not recognized, far less attempted to repair, in the body of the
book.
IV
INDIVIDUALISM AND HOLISM: TOWARD A SYNTHESIS
If the foregoing analyses have been successful, we have found that
individualism alone fails as a ground for an integrated environmental
ethics. This failure is most apparent in the attempt to extend to all nature
moral categories (such as "rights," and "duties") which are appropriately
applied within communities of persons. However, neither can holism stand
alone as a basis for a sound environmental ethic. In this final section, I
would like to suggest (and merely that), how these contrasting approaches to
environmental ethics might be integrated.
Some holists contend that the components of an ecosystem have, by
themselves, no moral significance whatever.17
That position is extreme and untenable. For while we might agree with
Leopold's maxim that "a thing is right when it tends to preserve the
integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community," we need not assume
from this that Leopold's maxim is the only test of "rightness." (I am
not aware that Leopold makes this claim). There may be other, independent,
grounds of "rightness." For instance, something may also be "right" if it
enhances the interests of sentient beings, and still more "right" if it
serves the interests of cognitive sentient beings (such as persons).
Hence, in an ecosystem with at best only minimally sentient life- components
(e.g., an alpine lake), the integrity of the system would have a higher
moral claim than that of the "interest" of a trout, much less a dragonfly.
In another system, containing persons, individuals may have valid claims
against the "system".
Thus the moral significance of individuals may be perceived as
increasing incrementally along the evolutionary line of the development of
"sentience." In an environmental ethics thus conceived, the feelings of a
mole might be judged to have some, but very little, moral significance
alongside the significance of the "integrity, stability and beauty of the
biotic community" of which it is a part. However, as neuro-mechanisms evolve
to greater complexity, and therefore toward a greater acuteness to the
experience of pleasure and pain, individualism (the morality of "rights")
gains moral significance. At a certain stage of evolution, neural
complexity, and the psychic life that it supports, reaches a point (perhaps
past the "quantum leap of personhood") at which individuality rates
very high consideration -- often enough to trump the demands of ecological
communities. Thus, for example, a pond or a field might justifiably "give
way" to "development" for a habitat for homo sapiens).
Why should this be so? What is it about complex neural (ergo psychic)
life that should afford it this consideration? The question is too large to
consider this late in the paper. Briefly, I would suggest this possibility:
First of all, complex brains support "sheer sentience," which demands
immediate moral attention.18
In addition, though less obviously, the brain -- and therefore the mind, the
language, the culture, and thus the "autobiography" -- of a person
claims significance through its replication of the "integrity, stability and
beauty" of ecosystems. Just as there is, in an ecosystem, an ecology of
organisms, there is in the life of a person, an "ecology of mind" featuring
complex interactions between the person-organism, its nervous system, the
natural environment, and the entity called "culture" which intervenes
between organism and natural environment. Most immediate to the mind of the
person-organism is that part of his culture which is articulated by meaning
in his language, and which constitutes his "thought-world." This
"thought-world," in turn, is a complex system of memories, cognitions,
connations and affections. This neural elaboration from brain, through
language and community, to self-consciousness, culture and "thought-world,"
rivals the complexity and integration of the life-community which supports
it. If, as Leopold asserts, "goodness" is grounded in the "integrity,
stability and beauty" of ecosystems, then, by displaying these qualities,
minds too have value.19
There are, of course, times when the values of ecosystems and the values of
person-communities appear to compete -- as, similarly, there are conflicting
demands, well-known to political scientists and moralists, between human
communities and human individuals. Still, such conflicts of claims between
life- communities, human communities and human individuals need not be
exclusive and destructive of each other. Perhaps the valid limits of the
claims of the individual upon the community, and the community upon the
ecosystem, are exceeded when these claims threaten the health and integrity,
even the existence, of the larger systems which sustain the claimants.
Ultimately, the notion of a "competition" between holistic and individual
values may be false; both might be subsumed under a still broader holistic
system which gives due notice to the values and claims of pre-eminently
significant parts of the ecosystem; namely, the dignity, rights and duties
of the personalistic components of that system.20
If this sketch indicates a promising avenue of accommodation between
individualism and holism, it also reveals a fatal weakness in Regan's
individualistic approach to environmental ethics -- namely, the failure of
that approach to make allowance for the incremental moral significance of
neural complexity. In particular, Regan's approach gives no acknowledgment
of the moral significance of the quantum leap which takes place with the
concomitant emergence of language, culture and personhood.
Notice, now, that this sketch has made no claim for a higher moral
significance of members of the species homo sapiens. That
claim has been applied here to persons -- beings possessing a type of
advanced neural complexity which, in turn, supports language,
self-consciousness and culture. Any species might conceivably apply to that
Club. It is a contingent fact, not a logical truth, that only the species
homo sapiens seems able to pass the entrance examination. Other beings
have been portrayed in fiction to be persons (e.g., in the Dr. Doolittle
Tales and in the "Star Wars" films), and some beings (e.g., dolphins, extra-
terrestrials, computers) may yet in fact be found to be persons. So much for
the charge of "speciesism."21
An uncompromising individualistic "rights-approach" to environmental ethics
leads to such absurdities as were portrayed in the "rights-oriented game
management." Total commitment to a holistic ethic is radically destructive
of the rights and dignity of persons and their communities. Clearly a
compromise and accommodation is called for. I have suggested a solution
which may, or may not, deserve elaboration and then survive circumspect
analysis. Whatever the fate of this suggestion, it is more important that
the philosophical community be challenged to scrupulously search for an
accommodation and eventual integration of the individualistic and holistic
dimensions of environmental ethics.
NOTES
1. Tom Regan, All That Dwell Within, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982, p.2. Hereafter, all clear references to Regan's book
will be placed in the text.
2. This characterization of Regan's position is supported by the following
quotations from the book: (a) ". . . because [animals'] interests are
frequently as important to them as comparable interests are to human beings,
their interests must be given the same weight as comparable human
interests." (86) (b) ". . . attempts to mark a qualitative chasm that
separates man from the beasts must fail. . ." (159) (c) "In is not clear,
first, that no non-human animals satisfy any one (or all) of these [rights-
conferring] conditions, and second, it is reasonably clear that not all
human beings satisfy them." (28)
3. Notably, Joel Feinberg in his essay, "The Rights of Animals and Unborn
Generations," in Blackstone (ed), Philosophy and Environmental Crisis,
Athens, GA: University Georgia Press, 1974.
4. This is not the place to discuss the idea that manifestly "unequal"
persons deserve "equal rights." The literature on the topic is vast, of
course. The best recent treatments, in my opinion, are by Ronald Dworkin and
John Rawls.
5. Regan's indexed references to "persons" (152-3, 156) deal exclusively
with "person" as a legal concept -- i.e., entities with juridical standing.
He makes little use of the concept of "person" as an integrated and
continuous set of capacities.
6. Some researchers claim that some experimental apes have broken this
barrier (e.g., the Gardiner's "Washoe" and Paterson's "Koko"). Still others,
(e.g., John Lilly) believe that Dolphins may be "persons" with an articulate
language. If so, and if this can be demonstrated, then these animals are
welcome to the club (i.e., to our "moral community"). The issue, however, is
in doubt, to say the least. (Cf. Herbert Terrace's work with "Nim Chimpsky").
7. By (a) "significant" is meant that a symbol, "x", evokes the same
response (or image) in all parties to the communication. Other criteria of
language are (b) syntactical (grammatical), (c) conventional, and (d)
arbitrary. Cf. Fromkin and Rodman, An Introduction to Language, (NY:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983), Ch. 1.
8. This, however, is not Regan's sole criterion of "rights." He further
contends that inanimate beings have "rights," due to their "inherent value."
(Clearly plants, rocks and rivers do not "have autobiographies.") More about
this shortly.
9. There is a third feature, of which Regan admits in a footnote, "I am
myself confused about this part" (146); a confusion that I share, and thus
will spare the reader.
10. But to say that projects, objects and events contain "value- makers" (or
"valuegens," to use Holmes Rolston's felicitous term) may be quite
acceptable, in that such a notion entails a relation with an evaluator. For
an expanded treatment of the ideas in this section, see my "Values in
Nature: Is Anybody there?", Philosophical Inquiry, 1986, 8:1-2, pp
96-110. Also in this collection. The following three [ms] pages are shared
with that paper.
11. Because I don't necessarily wish to embrace an interest theory of value
here, I would say that "attention and interest" are necessary for value,
though not sufficient. Otherwise, we are perilously close to subjectivism
and relativism.
12. My statement of the final objection will be brief, since I am quite
unable to improve upon Baird Callicott's superb presentation of the same
objection in "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair" (Environmental
Ethics, 2:4 (Winter, l980). Callicott's article is twice cited, but
never answered, by Regan in this book. Another excellent treatment of this
issue is Mark Sagoff's "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad
Marriage, Quick Divorce" Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 22:2 (Summer,
1984). Though in close agreement to those of Callicott and Sagoff, my views
on this issue were arrived at independently.
13. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, (NY: Oxford University
Press, l949), 224-5. Regan does not cite this passage.
14. Callicott, 327
15. Ibid, 321f
16. Regan, who is so anxious to discount the differences between humans and
animals, fails to notice that the very qualities that make a man
responsible, and a wolf not responsible, are the qualities which make human
life much more valuable, and human rights much more urgent, than those of
animals without these qualities.
17. I examine this question more deeply in my "Values in Nature," op. cit,
and in "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics, 6,
(Summer, 1984).
18. Sheer sentience," as a factor in moral significance, may be at "moral
bedrock." The best expression, to my knowledge, of this "Cartesian
certainty" of the evil of pain, is from Charles Schulz' "Linus": Lucy:
"Well, why is pain bad?" Linus: "Because pain hurts!" Beyond this, I'm not
sure what more can, or need, be said. To know pain is to know it's prima
facie bad (whatever the possibly over-riding good results may be). Cf.
Feinberg on "the Interest Principle, in "Rights of Animals and Unborn
Generations," in Blackstone (ed), Philosophy and Environmental Crisis,
Athens, GA:1974. Also see my "Environmental Ethics: Obstacles and
Opportunities," in Schultz and Hughes, (eds), Ecological Consciousness,
Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981.
19. As a necessary condition for the sustenance of communities of persons,
the natural system may also be said to "draw" significance from the
significance of personhood. According to the anthropocentric view, the
ecosystem draws all of its significance therefrom.
20. Let us not forget that the very concept of "morality" presupposes
personhood: persons are the only beings that can be said to have duties, or
can be meaningfully "guilty" or "ashamed" of a violation of moral
principles.
21. Analogously, with considerable imagination, one might conceive of
"super-persons" (e.g., being able to settle inter-communal disputes without
resort to threats of mutual annihilation, or capable of selecting communal
leaders on the basis of intelligence and ability, rather than property,
power or charm). Such beings might then exceed "persons" in moral
significance.
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