Ernest Partridge
From Ecological Consciousness
Robert C. Schultz and J. Donald Hughes, eds.,
University Press of America, 1981
I. Obstacles.
Is it too late to play the "historical
roots game?" If it is not, then anyone proposing to enter the contest at
this late date should be properly forewarned by what has gone on since Lynn
White, Jr. published his celebrated paper, "The Historical Roots of Our
Ecological Crisis," in 1967. In the first place, as John Passmore, Lewis
Moncrief and others have correctly pointed out, the task which White
attempted is simply too large for anyone to rationally expect to resolve in
a brief space. Perhaps, as White suggests, Western Christianity bears a
portion of the blame for our ruinous attitudes and practices with regard to
nature. But what portion of blame and to what degree? And what other "roots"
are there? Once we turn to these questions, the task quickly expands beyond
manageable size. White would thus have better titled his essay "Some
Historical-Theological Ingredients of the Ecological Crisis."
Thus forewarned, I will attempt a much humbler task; namely, a search not
for "historical roots" to prevailing Western attitudes toward nature but
rather for some factors in the history of philosophy that might serve to
explain a remarkable lack of contemporary interest among philosophers in the
question of environmental ethics -- of "man's responsibility for nature," to
borrow John Passmore's apt phrase.
It seems clear that contemporary philosophers, and in particular moral
philosophers, are grossly under represented in current discussions
concerning environmental ethics and policy. A glance at the listings in
The Philosopher's Index will indicate this. This condition of neglect is
readily noticed by those who, like myself, have assembled or are assembling
anthologies in the field of environmental ethics. From these and other
indications, I would roughly guess that no more than two dozen American
philosophers are presently devoting a major portion of their professional
attention to the question of man's moral responsibility and constraints
regarding the natural world. Quite possibly half of them are seated in this
room today.
Why is this so? The question is of more than idle interest in view of the
disproportionate influence of historically prominent philosophers on public
thought and policy. This influence is not direct, of course. To my
knowledge, no social or political revolutions were instigated by a public
that was spontaneously moved to direct action by a widespread reading of a
philosophical treatise. Nonetheless, philosophers do significantly influence
history and society through the acts and policies of those who read their
works. Consider, for instance, the historical significance of Locke by way
of Jefferson, of Hume by way of Adam Smith, of Hegel by way of Marx.
The philosophical indifference to ecological concepts and issues is
noteworthy for still another reason: it reflects a similar disinclination in
both intellectual and practical communities of Western civilization to deal
reflectively and consistently with the question of moral responsibility
toward nature. In short, the lack of involvement by the philosophical
profession in environmental issues is of considerable interest to us, since
that neglect indicates that there is something deeply woven in the fabric of
Western philosophy, and of the civilization that it reflects, that resists a
rational clarification, articulation and assessment of man's place in, and
responsibility toward, the natural environment. Thus it is crucially
important for us to locate these conceptual, methodological and theoretical
obstacles so that we might either remove them or circumnavigate them.
A final preliminary point: Unlike White, Moncrief, Passmore and others, I
will not here examine the content of professional and public philosophy as I
search for obstacles to an environmental ethic. Instead, I am looking for
methodological presuppositions; that is to say, for the epistemological
perspectives that lead to these doctrines. This interest follows from a
concern that the philosophical profession is to be faulted less for its
erroneous assessment of environmental responsibility than for its
indifference to the question. I wish to examine the "roots" of that
indifference – the uncritical, perhaps even pre-critical, conditions of
philosophical method that have deterred active involvement of the profession
in the current environmental debate. There are, I think, three such
fundamental methodological assumptions: (a) methodological egocentrism
(subjectivism), (b) reductive analysis, and (c) metaethical non-cognitivism.
Methodological Egocentrism is the assumption that secure moral and
descriptive knowledge begins with simple data of immediate experience or
contemplation and "moves out" by inference to comprehend "external" objects
of knowledge. One person in particular (the "subject"), and then "mankind in
general," thus becomes "the measure" of knowledge and moral commitment.
Reductive Analysis reflects the belief that knowledge must be
assembled, not only from "the inside out," but also from the simple parts,
and the external relationships of the parts, to the systemic and complex
whole. The primary task of philosophy, then, is to identify the parts of
knowledge (and of moral obligation) and their rules and contingencies of
combination. Only after this task of analysis is accomplished are we
prepared to deal with wholes--i.e., to have warrant to claim knowledge of
these wholes.
Metaethical Non-Cognitivism contends that value assertions are, at
their root, based upon subjective matters of will, preference, or sentiment;
that these assertions are, in a word, fundamentally detached and detachable
from matters of objective, descriptive fact. "Subjective," of course, means
"human," and thus anthropocentrism reappears.
In the survey of Western philosophical thought which follows, I will give
special attention to two philosophers: Rene Descartes and David Hume. Time
will permit only a superficial glance at a few others. Descartes and Hume
are especially interesting to us for three reasons: First of all, both are
very influential figures in the history of Western philosophy and
intellectual history. Secondly, they present a striking case of "identity in
difference." Though their assumptions and conclusions concerning the grounds
and even the possibility of knowledge are radically different (Descartes was
a confident rationalist, and Hume a skeptical empiricist), there are
nonetheless significant formal similarities in their philosophical methods.
And these areas of methodological concurrence have dominated subsequent
thought – especially among subsequent French and English philosophers.
Finally, though it would be wrong to identify these two philosophers as the
"source" of egocentrism, reductionism and (in the case of Hume)
non-cognitivism, they surely are in the mainstream of the traditions of
philosophy that have exemplified these assumptions. Thus Descartes and Hume
reinforced and strengthened an analytic and egocentric approach that was
well established in their own day, as it is in ours.
Consider, then, Rene Descartes – perhaps the first significant
post-Renaissance philosopher in Europe and the founder of Continental
Rationalism. Two features of his thought are conspicuous: First, his quest
for certainty (and, conversely, his determination not to be deceived), and
second his conviction that the certainty which he seeks resides, first and
foremost, within himself--in his "clear and distinct ideas." Thus, in
setting up what he believes to be an infallible and universal philosophical
method, he writes:
In the subjects we propose to
investigate, our inquiries should be directed, not to what others have
thought, nor to what we ourselves conjecture, but to what we can clearly
and perspicuously behold and with certainty deduce; for knowledge is not
won in any other way Method consists entirely in the order and
disposition of the objects towards which our mental vision must be
directed if we would find out any truth. We shall comply with it exactly
if we reduce involved and obscure propositions step by step to those
that are simple, and then starting with the intuitive apprehension of
all those that are absolutely simple, attempt to ascend to the knowledge
of all others by precisely similar steps.1
Clearly, then, Descartes is proposing to
ground human knowledge in bits and pieces of cognitive data. That his point
of departure toward knowledge is within becomes explicit in his famous
"cogito ergo sum." Suppose the worst case, he says. Suppose
. . . there is some deceiver or other,
very powerful and very cunning, who ever employs his ingenuity in
deceiving me. Then without doubt I exist also if he deceives me, and let
him deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing
so long as I think that I am something. So that after having reflected
will and carefully examined all things, we must come to the definite
conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist, is necessarily true
each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.2
To Descartes, then, the ground of
knowledge is subjective and particular (analytically simple).
As most beginning students of philosophy have learned, Descartes moves from
this analytic and subjective beginning to the postulation of two substances:
"thinking substance" (mind) and "extended substance" (matter). In the world
of our experience, mind is confined to human beings. Animals, says
Descartes, are mere automata. Man (better, man's soul and mind--res
cogitans) is independent from, and morally sovereign over, nature (res
extensa). Add to this the premise, just noted, that knowledge begins
with "clear and distinct ideas" from within the self and proceeds outward,
and the clear and distinct result is egocentrism and anthropocentrism.
We now cross the Channel to set the stage for David Hume. There we
encounter the English Empiricists, notably Locke and Berkeley and eventually
(and most radically) Hume himself. Qua empiricists, these
philosophers did not share Descartes' distrust of information conveyed by
the senses. Furthermore, they denied Descartes' contention that the mind can
apprehend truths that are not, in the final analysis, derived from
experience. And yet, for all these differences, the similarities are
striking. For while an empiricist might concede that the order of nature
conveys data from the object to the subject (from the known to the knower),
both the rationalist and the empiricist assume that the order
of inferred knowledge proceeds from the self outward, and from "hard"
bits of data (either of experience or of intuition) to "soft" inferences of
general and abstract knowledge. So, once again, man is perceived as standing
fundamentally apart from nature. What man believes about the natural world
is imperfectly constructed from what is directly and discretely before his
awareness. And to a radical empiricist such as Hume, what is before the
awareness is just impressions. Thus, writes Hume,
. . .though our thought seems to
possess . . .unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer
examination, and it is really confined within very narrow limits, and
that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the
faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the
materials afforded us by the senses and experience.3
Hume is noteworthy for taking reductive
empirical analysis to the bitter end, after which he despairs of any hope of
building certain knowledge from the resulting bits of experience. Thus
induction, the external material world, substance, continuing objects, even
the self--all these are fictions that are "feigned" for our convenience, but
ultimately without substantial warrant for belief. As philosopher John
Herman Randall liked to quip in his classes, for David Hume, "Life is just
one damned thing after another," i.e., one discrete bit of experience after
another. Beyond that, all is uncertainty.
Hume's radical skepticism not only pulverized experience, it also detached
reason from experience, and both from morality. Anticipating the Logical
Positivists in our century, Hume argued that reason is appropriately applied
to "relations of ideas" (e.g., definitions and logic) and "matters of fact"
(concerning "external" objects and events). Concerning basic moral
judgments, reason ultimately has no place. The foundation of morality is to
be found in "the moral sense" – which in turn is based upon pre-rational
subjective feelings, sentiments, desires, etc. Consequently, while reason
and empirical knowledge can serve to help us choose the best means to secure
our desired ends, reason can not help us to decide what is ultimately
desirable. Thus our fundamental moral imperatives are radically severed from
our knowledge of facts, and, writes Hume, "reason is, and ought only to be
the slave of the passions" (values).4
The split between "is statements" (of fact) and "ought statements" (of
value), which has bedeviled philosophers since Socrates, has been especially
acute since Hume published his Treatise on Human Nature and
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. "The is-ought problem" is a
key issue (perhaps the key issue) in contemporary moral theory. And yet, as
I shall presently argue, no significant progress can be made in the
justification of an ecologically sound ethics unless certain identifiable
facts are brought to bear upon, and in support of, the moral imperatives of
earth-citizenship – unless, that is, the gulf between facts and values is
effectively bridged.
Descartes and Hume typify and exemplify the philosophical methodology that
has separated the philosophical profession from the ecological debate. And
little has followed in the 200 years of philosophical speculation since
Hume's death which offers significant opportunity for remedy – not, that is,
until very recently. A brief sketch of recent philosophical history may
serve to illustrate this point.
To Immanuel Kant, nature in itself (i.e., as it exists unperceived by
the human mind) is utterly unknowable and inconceivable. All our knowledge
is pervaded throughout by the categories of understanding resident in our
minds. Furthermore, Kant's ethical theory is totally divorced from natural
knowledge. Right conduct is, without exception, action motivated by a
dutiful obedience to the moral law, and the moral law is ascertained by pure
formal reason, unsullied by acquired empirical ("natural") knowledge or by
calculations of practical consequences of the act. "Do your duty, though the
Earth be consumed:" To Kant, moral law is apprehended a priori, and
while moral knowledge is, to be sure, cognitive, its validation is not to be
found in nature.
The Utilitarians totally reject Kant's formalism. To them,
consequences are of ultimate importance. But consequences for what?
Virtually without exception, utilitarians answer that the right action or
rule is that which maximizes the good for the greatest number of persons--or
perhaps, additionally, sentient beings. And so we are back again (or very
close) to anthropocentrism: "Man is the measure" and nature's justification
is its utility to mankind.
While the insights of Darwinism might have encouraged moral
philosophers to reassess nature's place in the scheme of human duties, goals
and values, the prevailing anthropocentrism could not be overcome. Thus such
thinkers as Spencer and Sumner focused their attention upon the competitive
aspects of organic evolution ("the struggle with nature") rather than the
cooperative requirements of ecosystem maintenance. Somehow, of all the moral
exemplars available in nature, they preferred to take their lessons from the
predators rather than (say) the social insects or the cetaceans. Man,
therefore, was perceived to be the dominant species, that prevailed through
its "successful struggle against nature."
In the twentieth century we come upon the Logical Atomists (Bertrand
Russell and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein). Here we find a reiteration,
refinement and elaboration of Hume's claim that our knowledge consists of
discrete bits of data "glued together" by external rules of association. But
the atomists went further: the structure of our knowledge reflects the basic
metaphysical structure of the world--i.e., a collection of "atomic facts"
joined only by external relations among them. Herein was a thoroughgoing
rejection of the basic ecological maxim: "everything is connected to
everything else."
Logical Atomism led to Logical Positivism and the emotive theory of
ethics. The positivists contended that meaningful discourse consists solely
of formal truths (e.g., definitions, logic and mathematics), and factual
truths (truth-claims that could, in principle, be confirmed by sense
experience). Accordingly, there is no place in meaningful discourse for
moral truths. Moral claims reduce to expressions of feeling, of commendation
or disapproval – nothing else. (The parallel to Hume is obvious and
historically significant). Thus when David Brower tells Floyd Dominy that
Glen Canyon is "an abomination," and when Dominy replies that it is a
"masterpiece," their entire disputation reduces to "goddam!" and "hurrah:"
respectively. There are no conceivable objective grounds for settling their
differences (unlike, say, the dispute of two physicists). Can nature be
treated as a moral entity? Absurd: says the emotivist. Not even persons can
meaningfully be so regarded in any objective sense. There are no "moral
facts."
Finally (for our purposes) there are the Radical Existentialists
(e.g., Camus and Sartre). They might look more favorably upon the
environmental concern and enthusiasm of a David Brower. Preservation of the
wilderness, they would say, is his "life project." It gives him zest,
meaning and commitment. It is his hedge against mortality, alienation and
anomie. Is the integrity of nature an intrinsic good? Certainly, say the
existentialists – for David Brower. But all the same could be said for Floyd
Dominy who has chosen "reclamation" as his "life project." And if these
projects conflict, to whom shall we appeal for adjudication? To no one
Morals follow from the "radical choice" of free human beings. The natural,
blindly contingent, mindless natural universe is totally indifferent to such
disputes. Like the emotivist, these existentialists are non-cognitivists;
they ultimately concede that there are no moral facts.
Admittedly I have, in this brief sketch, somewhat stacked the deck. Missing
from my list are Spinoza, the New England Transcendentalists, and other
Western thinkers who affirm the intrinsic worth of nature or the
experience of nature. But then I have not attempted to sustain the notion
that nature has no moral advocates in our Western philosophical tradition.
If I have indicated anything, it is a point that scarcely needs an argument,
namely, that there are more ideological "roots" to the ecological crisis
than Lynn White even hinted at. Moreover, unlike White's "roots," many of
these draw their nourishment from secular soil.
But there is a further, and I hope a more significant, lesson that might be
drawn from this recitation. It is this: the indifference of the contemporary
philosophical profession to urgent issues of environmental ethics is not
wholly arbitrary or mysterious. Even to approach these issues requires
radical departure from traditional methodologies and frames of reference
within philosophy. While I have foresworn any careful attempt to find
historical antecedents or patterns in the estrangement of Western philosophy
from ecological ethics, I believe that I might suggest some epistemological
predispositions.
Why, then, has the prevailing mood of post-Renaissance philosophy in the
West been indifferent to questions of the intrinsic worth of nature or of
man's responsibility to nature? My hunch is that such questions were too far
"down the road" of philosophical investigation, and thus that philosophers,
being occupied with "closer" issues (closer, that is, to immediate
impressions or intuitions), carelessly concluded that since the question of
"the worth of nature" was "out of reach," it was, ipso facto,
unimportant. And why has the question of man's moral involvement with nature
been "out of reach?" To answer this, we must go back to the Continental
Rationalists (e.g., Descartes) and the English Empiricists (e.g., Hume) who,
between them, have pretty well defined the predominant tone, scope and
methodology of subsequent epistemology and moral philosophy.
Despite profound disagreements, the Rationalists and the Empiricists
generally agree that sound knowledge must proceed (a) from the direct
knowledge given to the subject to inferred knowledge of the object (i.e.,
"from the inside out"), and (b) from discrete "bits" of data to inferred
wholes (e.g., generalizations, abstractions, theories, etc.). The measure of
epistemological success is how "far out" one can get from "given knowledge
bits" and still maintain an appreciable degree of the "hard certainty" of
the original "immediate knowledge." Most philosophers of knowledge have
conceded that we can't get very far "outside" immediate and discrete data
before our beliefs become very "soft" indeed. It is not difficult to
perceive in this approach a built-in bias against holism and against claims
of knowledge of "things in themselves" and "things for themselves" (i.e.,
apart from human involvement). Man remains "the measure" throughout. Yet the
science of ecology insists that nature is a seamless whole, and
environmental ethics requires that man be treated, not as "the measure," but
as an ingredient in the planetary system--a system with normative
imperatives of its own.
When we review the prevailing traditions of moral reasoning in Western
philosophy, we find that the implications for environmental ethics are even
worse. Traditionally, moral philosophy (a) begins with human experience and
sentiments, personal and social, and then "moves out" (cf. "Leopold's
ladder"); (b) moral inference (unlike scientific inference) tends to be
subjective and private and has, at best, but tenuous connections with
objective data and validations. (To Hume and the positivists, there are no
"basic connections" whatever). This suggests, therefore, that, as
traditionally conceived, human subjectivity and community are much "closer"
to the inferential "reach" of moral philosophy than is the natural world. In
other words, the "nature" and subject-matter of traditional moral
philosophy, and the resulting methodology, is ill-equipped to encompass an
ecological ethics.
The reductive-analytic approach that is so characteristic of recent Western
philosophy has produced a curious result in moral philosophy. This is
"axiological realism" or "definism" – the contention that goodness is a
property "of" or "in" particular acts, motives, and even objects. Such
properties might be identified as natural (as with R. B. Perry or the
hedonic utilitarians), or "non-natural" (as with G. E. Moore). The emotivist
and existentialists, though they reject the definist claim that values are
somehow "in" objects, acts, etc., share with the definists a belief that the
source of values lies in particulars--in particular feelings (the emotivist)
or particular acts of will (the existentialists). These latter
"non-cognitivists" further claim that values are "nothing but" these
particular feelings or volitions and thus that assertions of normative
ethics are without objective, "cognitive" meaning. But what if values reside
not in particulars, but in systems – in organic wholes? The suggestion is
inadmissible to the reductive analyst for whom "wholes" are nothing but
parts joined by their external relations. To a reductionist, if values are
not to be found in the parts, they are not to be found at all. To a
systems-oriented observer, such as an ecologist, this analytic bias is
absurd. The analyst's failure to find value, he might reply, does not prove
that values are meaningless or non-existent; rather, this failure
demonstrates the limitations of the methods and assumptions of reductive
analysis. Values, the critic continues, are properties of systems, and thus
it is only through an understanding of systems that values will be found,
comprehended, appreciated and justified.
If the systems approach to values is the correct one, as I believe it is, we
see at once why traditional philosophical (e.g., Cartesian and Humean)
analysis has been incompatible with normative ethics. Add to this a
subjective, egocentric and even anthropocentric approach, and in such a
philosophical climate, the prospect for a viable and informative
environmental ethics is much worse.
I have suggested some possible causes of the current indifference of the
philosophical profession to questions of the moral significance of nature
and of man's place and role within nature. But this is not the whole story.
On the contrary, there are several trends and developments in recent and
contemporary philosophy that could lead to serious and productive
investigations of environmental ethics – investigations founded upon sound
and well-articulated philosophical positions and procedures. Many of these
new trends and developments challenge or undermine some of the traditions
that have inhibited interest in and investigation of the question of the
moral significance of the natural order and of man's responsibility thereto.
First, as most contemporary philosophers will acknowledge, logical atomism
is virtually without adherents today, and logical positivism is in eclipse.
Although the existentialist doctrine of "radical choice" persists, it does
so through the deliberate and dogged determination of its adherents to
ignore widely-known and generally accepted findings of the behavioral and
social sciences. Furthermore, despite the philosopher's traditional
epistemological dispositions, the holistic systems approach and perspective
is alive, well and flourishing in game and systems theory, cybernetics, and,
of course, in the compelling facts of the science of ecology. For that
matter, the holistic approach has never been entirely cast out from
philosophy. As examples, consider the "logic" of Hegel and the metaphysics
of Spinoza and of Whitehead.
Moreover, there are some exciting opportunities and implications for
environmental ethics stemming from Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work in
philosophical analysis – implications which strengthen and enrich the
systems approach to meaning, understanding and evaluation. Since
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, philosophers have been
more inclined to evaluate philosophical and moral questions in the contexts,
and according to the rules and rationale, of the "language games" in which
they are stated and examined. Accordingly, in a reversal of traditional
analysis, it is now acknowledged by many that "the whole informs the part"
and that, by reducing complex wholes to component parts and their
relationships, one may carelessly, as Wordsworth put it, "murder to
dissect." In short, though philosophers even today are little affected by
much of the content of environmental science, there appears to be a
significant and hopeful congruence of rationale and methodology between the
ecological point of view, on the one hand, and the new contextualist
analytical philosophy on the other. And so the analytical tools may be
available within philosophy to apply the empirical insights of ecology to
ethics and, conversely, to bring nature within the realm of moral
responsibility.
II. Opportunities.
Among recent developments in moral
philosophy that bode well for the development of ecological ethics is the
revival of ethical cognitivism. The claim by positivists and existentialists
that there are no objective moral facts and no valid objective grounds and
procedures of moral justification is not tenable. That moral data and
verification are not to be found in bits of empirical data (as positivists
contend) or in episodes of unqualified, phenomenologically radical decisions
(as existentialists claim) may well be conceded without the further
concession (urged by these non-cognitivists) that moral claims have neither
objective foundation nor justification. The grounds of morality,
cognitivists affirm, lie elsewhere. And where might that be? Well, that, in
part, depends upon the cognitivist.
This cognitivist finds some basic ingredients of morality in a few
unanalyzable bits of data – an a priori bedrock of moral affirmation,
if you wish. Aside from this foundation, I would avoid reductionism and
would, following Wittgenstein, adopt a contextual, systems-oriented approach
to ethics. In this moral theory, hard scientific data and demonstrable
formal theories have an honored place. Facts and logic matter. Thus, what
moral persons should do is a function of what sorts of beings these persons
are. It follows then that moral theory should be sensitive and adaptive to
established and developing knowledge in the behavioral and social sciences.
In addition, interpersonal interaction (the arena of most moral decisions)
is governed by identifiable rules of cooperation and conflict resolution.
There is, in other words, a "logic" of group behavior – of rights, duties,
privileges, and power--that both constrains and articulates our moral
options. (Thomas Hobbes, and later Garrett Hardin, vividly portrayed the
problem raised by competing claims of personal freedom and community
welfare. A related example, taken from game theory, is "the prisoner's
dilemma").
Finally, moral discourse itself contains a rationale, a "point," a purpose,
which is discovered, not "invented," by the moral agent. One's skill at
"doing morality" and making astute moral choices is no more a matter of
simple emotion (cf. the positivists) or arbitrary choice (cf. the
existentialists) than is one's facility at using correct speech. (John
Rawls, among others, has made much of the analogy between the moral sense
and linguistic facility, and I find the analogy instructive). A moral sense,
like a "grammatical sense" is something that one learns through experience
and practice. Indeed, if Lawrence Kohlberg is to be believed, we acquire our
moral sense through well-defined and rationally structured stages of
development, with each stage accomplishing a higher degree of practical and
explanatory adequacy.
And so, we have identified three objective components of moral reasoning and
justification: (a) knowledge of human nature, (b) a logic of inter-personal
cooperation and conflict resolution, and (c) a facile use of moral discourse
and a "moral sense," acquired through practical experience in moral
decision-making. None of these components is, by itself, complete or
incorruptible, but together they are congruent and well-integrated, and they
may serve as a fund of data that bear appropriately upon questions of moral
adjudication and justification. And together these three components serve to
narrow significantly the inferential gap between factual ("is") premises and
normative ("ought") conclusions.
"Ah yes," replies the non-cognitivist, "this hard data may narrow the gap
between the 'is' and the 'ought,' but it cannot, in principle, close that
gap. Hume was right," he continues, "all your facts may serve to indicate
the most prudent means to accomplish desired ends, and all your logic and
linguistic facility may help to organize and articulate your ends. But the
ends themselves--those things ultimately desired and ultimately judged
worthwhile in and for themselves--can never be demonstrated through 'matters
of fact' or 'relations of ideas' (Hume's terms). These ultimately 'primary
goods' (as Rawls calls them)--these things 'desirable no matter what else
may be desired' – are non-rational or, if
you prefer, pre-rational."
Quite frankly, the non-cognitivist may have us here. And yet I am not
discouraged. Perhaps some "gap" may remain, but it may turn out to be of
vanishingly small practical significance. For when we finally reach moral
bedrock and spell out these "unanalyzable" "pre-rational" moral volitions
and sentiments, what have we? Perhaps something like the following:
"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 better than misery."
"Even if we cannot fully and explicitly define 'happiness' we all
know when we are happy and when we are not."
"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., moral agents or 'persons')."
"If, with equal effort, we can enhance the well-being of others or
harm them, we are duty-bound to choose the former."
Like John Stuart Mill or G. E. Moore, I
would suggest that one who doubts these fundamental maxims and evaluations,
and who consistently maintains and acts upon this doubt in his practical
life is not merely a hard-nosed skeptic; rather, he is being just plain
silly. We just know what "happiness" is, and that it is prima facie better
to have it and to promote it in others. And if we are content simply to
assume these postulates (and a few additional "self-evident" premises of
this sort), then we can adopt a moral point of view and go on to the serious
business of making sense of our lives, of rationally ordering the conduct
thereof, and of participating in the articulation and administration of a
moral order in our society through the body politic. In other words, I would
contend that moral philosophy should be no more embarrassed at finding a
limit to rational demonstration of values than is the philosopher of science
at finding limits to scientific and rational proof. Consider, for example,
the following postulates:
"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
all empirical science is based).
"There are other minds beside my own."
"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."
As David Hume ably showed us, none of
these "bedrock assumptions" can be rationally or empirically demonstrated.
In fact, the principle of induction rests upon a flagrant fallacy of
circular reasoning. And yet an "uncritical acceptance" of these postulates
is a pre-condition of science and common sense, and a practical
accommodation to the ordinary circumstances and challenges of everyday life.
Doubts concerning induction, other minds, and the external world (what
Bertrand Russell called "artificial stupidity") may lead to fascinating and
insightful epistemological exercises. But a person who seriously and
consistently denies the validity of induction and the existence of other
minds and a physical world, and who conducts his life accordingly is not
"philosophical" – he is mad!:
Now I would agree that moral philosophy is based upon certain
"undemonstrated assumptions." To this degree, then, I might concede that
there is a non-cognitive "hard core" to my position. But I would further
urge that when we carry our moral skepticism down to "bedrock," we find that
these assumptions may be no more startling or controversial than the
foundations of empirical knowledge and scientific inference. If the analogy
is a sound one, then moral reasoning may, in principle, be every bit as
"cognitive" as some empirical sciences; for that matter, we could turn this
observation around and say that some sciences may be as "non-cognitive" as
moral reasoning is supposed to be. Yet the logical positivists, who are
unanimous in their affirmation of the "cognitive" soundness of the sciences,
are equally convinced that normative ethics has no cognitive status. I will
readily agree with the positivists' contention that normative ethics does
not rest on "scientific" foundations of empirical data of physical
phenomena, but I wholly reject the inference that it is therefore
meaningless. The data base of ethics includes human affect, motivation and
the logic of cooperation and conflict resolution. This is a different data
base than that of empirical science (i.e., sense experience), but it is not,
for that reason alone, incapable of objective and rational articulation and
inference. Indeed much of the methodology of cognitivist ethics and
metaethics is quite congruent with scientific method, and 'empirical data
serve an indispensable role in well-founded moral discourse and
justification.
It is time to sum up this metaethical discourse. I suggest that the most
telling counter-argument against the positivist and existentialist critique
of normative ethics is this: These non-cognitivists have an unwarranted bias
toward reductive analysis and against a holistic and contextual approach to
moral values. But it is in the context of the whole – in the system of
interpersonal interaction – that normative concepts derive their meaning.
Thus the positivists' and existentialists' complaint that they can "find" no
ethical data among bits and pieces of affect and will is valid enough – and
quite beside the point. They are looking in the wrong place, and their
failure thereby to find moral sense does not support their conclusion that
there is no objective cognitive moral data to be found at all. Jacob
Bronowski concurs when he observes
Positivists. . .believe that the words
is and ought belong to different worlds, so that sentences which are
constructed with is usually have a verifiable meaning, but sentences
constructed with ought never have. This is because (their). . .unit is
one man. . .And it is of course clear that if the only criterion of true
and false which a man accepts is that man's, then he has no base for
social agreement. The question of how a man ought to behave is a. social
question, which always involved several people; and if he accepts no
evidence and no judgment except his own, he has no tools with which to
frame; an answer.5
When we move, then, from the point of view
of the moral agent and his feelings or his "radical will" to the point of
view of the moral spectator, we become observers of the systemic field from
which morality derives its rationale, its cognitive meaning, and its
objective justification. For one to claim that morality has no meaning in
the subjective experience of the individual is analogous to the remark that
one cannot hear the sound of one hand clapping. Of course not; but so what:
That is not how one claps his hands; and the subjective experience of the
individual is not where one looks if he is to find moral intelligibility and
justification.
So far, so good! But can we go further? That question is crucial for the
environmental moralist, for unless we can go further with this metaethical
analysis, we will not depart from the realm of anthropocentric ethics. For
notice, the benign "good reasons approach" to morality that I have just
sketched is a metaethics of social morality, centered in and applicable to
human communities. The task of breaking out and beyond the "extended
anthropocentrism" presented above raises difficulties that must not be
underestimated. There is, after all, a sharp discontinuity between human
communities and natural communities – between reflective persons and
non-reflective sentient animals, and, further, between sentient beings and
inanimate objects. Should trees have standing? Do rocks have rights?
Attempts to answer such questions will not, and should not, be taken
seriously unless the considerable differences between inanimate and
reflective beings are acknowledged and dealt with.
Now I happen to believe that anthropocentrism can be transcended and that we
can regard animals, landscapes, ecosystems and entire planets as morally
considerable. We can do so by regarding these non-personal entities as part
of a system which contains reflective, personal beings, either actually or
potentially. And what system contains all this? Why, the system of nature,
of course! And as the systemic ties bind persons to the whole and to the
other parts therein, thus does moral considerability pervade the whole and
the parts therein. And how do we gain a consciousness of the moral
significance of nature, and with this consciousness, an ecological
conscience? We do so, in part, by becoming informed of the facts of ecology
and by acquiring the "ecological point of view." In short, knowledge of the
facts and of their systemic inter-relationships brings, with descriptive
understanding, prescriptive responsibility. But of course, this paragraph
presents, in the briefest sketch, the outline of another paper – even a
book.
The reductive and egocentric methods and approaches that I have described as
dominant in recent philosophy are not, of course, shared by ecologists.
Quite the contrary. The ecologist, if he is to think and function as such,
must, in Aldo Leopold's words, "think like a mountain." To the degree that
he does, to that degree he is better suited to formulate an appropriate
ecological ethic. On the other hand, if the ecological moralist lacks a
sophisticated understanding of metaethics, he will be vulnerable to some
identifiable and commonplace errors as he attempts to derive his normative "oughts"
of environmental ethics from the facts of ecology.6
An ecological morality is almost irresistibly cognitivistic and
naturalistic, since an environmental ethic can scarcely avoid as a strong
premise the belief that nature can instruct us morally--that the facts of
nature and the appropriate, systems-oriented mode of viewing and
interpreting the community of life speak eloquently in support of the
ecological conscience. This metaethical stance is, I am convinced, correct
and compelling. But it must nevertheless be defended in the face of a
long-standing, entrenched and sophisticated non-cognitivist challenge to
normative moral philosophy. If his environmental ethic is to stand up to
this challenge, the defender of environmental responsibility must be
familiar with the terms, concepts, methods, and discipline of metaethics.
Notes and References
1. Rene Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind,
trans. Haldane and Ross, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol. I
(Cambridge University Press, 1931).
2. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in
Works, loc. cit., Vol. I.
3. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding.
Section II
4. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part
III, Section iii.
5. Bronowski, Science and Human Values, (Harper and
Row, 1965), p. 56.
6. A case in point is Aldo Leopold's commission of the
naturalistic fallacy in his attempt to derive a normative conclusion from a
description of a putative historical "extension" of moral consciousness.
Even if Leopold's historical description were accurate (which I doubt), it
would not follow that such an extension of consciousness is desirable in a
moral sense. For that conclusion, additional normative, premises and
arguments are required.
