Environmental Virtue Ethics

President Bush signed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) into law Monday. It expands criminal prohibitions against the use of force, violence, and threats involving animal-related businesses, including biomedical research, and increases penalties for violations.

Sponsored by Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Representative Thomas Petri (R-WI), the law amends the Animal Enterprise Act of 1992, addressing the new tactics of secondary and tertiary targeting employed by SHAC and other extremists. (more…)

During the taping of a documentary aired on BBC2 Monday night, philosopher Peter Singer said that the use of monkeys in Parkinson research at Oxford was “justifiable” because of the benefits it subsequently brought to thousands of human patients.

In the documentary, “Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing” Singer comes face to face with Tipu Aziz, an Oxford neurosurgeon whose research involving monkeys has helped to develop pioneering ways of treating Parkinson’s disease. (more…)

The Real Environmental Crisis. Jack Hollander.
I assume you will not need any help with this book, since it is data driven and not philosophical. (I am going to run through the big points, and I have an outline to go with that for you.) But it is just absolutely crucial to read for the sake of your papers. Why?
It seems to me (correct me if I am wrong) that philosophers have nooo business making up facts. And even our simplest ethical recommendations, when it comes to this field, often depend on factual assumptions. (I promise you, in your drafts, you’ll probably find it natural to mention a few facts.) This book is our check on any explanations we offer of the situation we are in, as regards the environment. It is written by a very well-respected authority on such matters, and the data he presents complicates some of the easy conclusions philosophers might be tempted to draw.
In fact, they complicate common sense. If he is right, our common sense views about the “cause of environmental destruction” are wrong. (So I should not just accuse philosophers of this—it just seems more of a waste of time if a philosophy paper is poorly premised.) If it is poverty, and not affluence that harms nature most: so much has changed.
Let me point out a few obvious things (these overlap a bit):
1. Anthropocentrism/ human vices/ lack of a connection to nature are no longer good contenders for being the MAIN problem. It is not that simple. Poverty is a much harder evil to tackle, I’d say. Philosophically and practically.
2. Concern/ care for people matters JUST as much prudentially, as concern for nature. Given this data, there is no way we can say humans needs have to take a backseat for a while— dire and unmet human needs are causing the greatest destruction.
3. The solution is, given this data, not going to be simply a matter of stopping something we are currently doing. That is not to say that it does not help to be more conscious in our current lives, of course, and all the old recommendations might still apply: but put in the context of this data: the changes we can make in our lives do not address the real problem.
So what is an environmentalist ethicist to do? What do we have to ethically recommend?
I can’t wait to hear what you decide.

Hi you all,

Core argument

The book’s main conclusion is that we should respect life on Earth out of humanity (p.4). This conclusion is nuanced in lectures 6 and 7, where I argue we should respect life on Earth increasingly out of common humanity.

The argument for the conclusion is that

P1: Respecting life on Earth is an indirect and seemingly unavoidable means to fulfilling our duties of humanity to each other (lecture 2).
P2: Respecting life on Earth is a most prudent means to being prudent with our own humanity (lecture 3).
P3: It is possible to directly respect life on Earth as an _expression of humanity (lecture 4).
P4: Human cultures already do respect life on Earth as an _expression of their humanity, and the result isn’t bad (lecture 5).
P6: We cannot be true to ourselves as human beings -i.e. be authentically human- without respecting life on Earth increasingly (lecture 6).
[P7: As a matter of humanity, we should do (i) what appears unavoidable so as to respect each other as human beings, (ii) what is most prudent when it comes to being prudent with the human species, (iii) what is necessary for being authentically human.]

A few clarifications. First, P7 is [implicit] and holds all things being equal. Clearly, we can conceive of cases where, e.g., (ii) is in tension with either (i) or (ii). These cases need to be worked out in detail as exceptional cases requiring a balancing of ethical norms. Second, in lectures 1 and 2, I speak of common humanity, whereas later I drop the adjective. I do not think there is an important conceptual difference between the two expressions. The first refers to the humanity we share with each other, which is implicit in the latter _expression anyway. P3 and P4 don’t do work in the above argument but are there, idly, in case someone argues we cannot respect life directly as an _expression of humanity (something some environmentalists would say).

Most contentious argument

In my view the book’s most original and contentious argument comes up in lecture 6. There, I argue that we -humans- should respect life increasingly, because it’s necessary for being authentically human. I’ve never seen an argument attempting that conclusion in the literature, although I imagine someone has something like it somewhere! (I feel as if Thoreau might have intended some such conclusion.)

Here is my reasoning:

P1: To be authentically human, we should bring out the best in us.
P2: Respect for life as such is part of the best in us.
C: Therefore, in order to be authentically human, we should bring out -increase- our respect for life as such.

Sub-arguments to the above

The argument for P1 above is:

Pi: Humans are idealistic creatures.
Pii: To be idealistic is to be oriented by, among other norms, the best.
[Piii: To be authentic is to manifest one's essence.]
C: Therefore, to be authentically human, we should manifest -bring out- our essence -e.g., our idealistic nature, which includes being oriented by the best.

Piii is implicit, although common knowledge.

The argument for P2 above is the real contentious point for many. It goes:

Pa: Some respect for all life is essential to our being social.
Pb: Some respect for all life is essential to our grasp of being human and of human meaning.
Pc: What is essential to our social nature and to our self-understanding as humans is essential to human flourishing.
Pd: Respecting all life is prudent (lecture 3).
Pe: Respecting all life is an indirect means to justice (lecture 2).
Pf: When we truly respect, we give ourselves to what is respect-worthy, which is a condition on growing (115ff.).
Pg: Prudence, good means to justice, and growing all contribute to human flourishing.
Ph: What contributes to our human flourishing -to what is good, especially developmentally good (pp.114-115)- is what is best in us.
Pi: Moreover, giving our selves to what is respect-worthy or good is highly developmental -i.e., really contributes to human flourishing.
C: Therefore, respect for life as such (incl. really giving ourselves to respect for life) is part of the best in us.

I don’t believe any of the above premisses are implicit.

More soon!

To start, let me put your eyes on the prize. Most environmental ethics, as you must have noticed, explain to us what we are doing wrong, and what we ought to stop. Sometimes these instructions are mostly about how we think “we ought to stop thinking anthropocentrically.” (And of course, sometimes the instructions are just plain ol’ “oughts”, we ought not to harm animals.) But, especially if global poverty is the main cause of environmental destruction, perhaps our environmental ethic ought to inspire us to act in ways we would not have otherwise thought of. I think B-K’s proposal has the potential to do this. I think this because he supplies norms we do not normally encounter (not in our day-to-day life, nor in our reading). What do you think?

Note: I admit, he may not be advocating for new behavior in the way we will be, if our focus is world poverty. He writes: What the world should be like if the argument holds…we will all have the habit of learning as the goal of investigation. I’ll explain this in class.

Another big deal is the way B-K describes his ethic. He argues for something so humanistic that justice is just a matter of prudence—I mentioned this is controversial, but it is also something that virtue ethics (traditional sort) avoids. Can you think about this issue in relation to B-K’s account?

And a third big issue is his confrontation with deep ecological accounts of transformation. As you read, B-K nearly called his book “Greener than you think” (as in, we are all greener than we think, and respect for nature is something that just needs to be pulled out of us.) Can you describe his account of moral psychology and pit it against deep ecology’s in a meaningful way?

And finally, remember when we spend the class brainstorming about why people don’t care and what to do about it? He addresses this directly in Lectures 8 and 9.

Points to note in the reading.
Lecture 7.
Integration:Balancing human needs with those of earth’s life. Example?

P. 124: What is meant by becoming more human. And then contrast this to t. virtue ethics.

Note his listing of the 4 criteria; 4 obstacles; 4 habits (earlier his word habit bothered me: here is our explanation.)

Notice his description of normativity: being able to do what we think should be done.
How is this not t. virtue ethics?

Has he now answered how autonomy and community come from awareness?

Lecture 8
Respect is an INTENSIFYING CONCEPT p. 157 Does this help answer the above question?

Region of Inconsistency, what is this? Example?

Notice that t. virtue ethics talks of conflicting norms, and he speaks of beliefs? Any similarities? Differences? Does this make him closer to t. virtue ethics than Hursthouse is?

Count the reactions to Singer we have encountered.
Regan, Scruton, Midgley, Hursthouse, B-K. What does B-K say?

In Lecture 10 (not required, 9 is not strictly required either) he explains the merits of his view. He thinks it makes common sense and is insightful and is enlightening. You agree? Give evidence.

In class we will try to piece all the elements of his view together. By “piece” I mean to speak rather literally. You’ll see. I think it will really help. But thanks for doing all this work in advance.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2044/
Above is a link to an article that describes, rather generally (though he brings up deep ecology) what he sees as the challenges facing any promoter of “humanism.” B-K is, of couse, one such promoter.

SOUTH CAROLINA SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY This is a call for papers for the 2007 South Carolina Society for Philosophy (SCSP) meeting, February 23-24, 2007. Papers on any philosophical topic (ethics, politics, religion, science, logic, metaphysics, epistemology, language, etc.) are welcome. Papers should be designed for a presentation time of twenty to thirty minutes (ten or fifteen pages.) Papers will be reviewed by the program chair and two other referees. Submissions from students are very strongly encouraged. If warranted, the program will include a session devoted exclusively to papers submitted by undergraduates.
Graduates and undergraduates who want their papers to be considered for the graduate paper award or undergraduate paper award must state this explicitly on their cover page.

Two hard copies of the paper and cover page, suitable for blind review, should be sent to the Program Chair, to arrive no later than January 2:

David Meeler
2007 SCSP Program Chair
Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies
320 Kinard Hall
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, SC 29733

Journals to which to consider sending your final paper.

This one allows for online submission, it is an undergraduate journal run by Cornell: http://www.rso.cornell.edu/logos/

This is a journal that is for young academics and grad students, click for info.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/Philosophical.Writings/Submission.html

Seeking Wisdom, an international electronic journal of philosophy, religion, and politics seeks articles for its second issue. Seeking Wisdom is dedicated to creating a public arena which is at once democratic and pluralistic and constituted by dialogue around fundamental questions of meaning and value. We are especially interested in articles which address fundamental questions and which bring into dialogue humanity’s principal wisdom (philosphical and religious) traditions. Articles should be submited in MS Word format to mansueto@seekingwisdom.com.

Spring Board Journal a student run journal seeking submissions for all four journal departments (Philosophy, Rhetoric, and English; History and Political Science; Media Studies; and Sociology) springboardjournal@yahoo.com

An essay contest, (click for info.)

To make the reading easier, I have ID’ed 4 big issues.

Issue One: Sacred Spaces and the refutation of Deep Ecology
B-K, in Lecture 5, talks more about sacred places. So if you could think of one last class, you can compare your own explanation for these places/ experiences and his own. I’ll be very interested in your take. And I might need a little help with p. 94, to be frank. If you understand that explanation well, let me know.

We were not going to read Lecture 5, originally, (the syllabus had us skip it) but now I am glad we are. First of all, it points out that B-K is opposed to deep ecology and sees its account of ethical transformation as a threat. His own description of his position, in opposition to deep ecology, however, confuses me a bit. He writes that: We are greener than we think. We only need to look inside to see this. And then, in support of this idea, he mentions sacred spaces.

By class can you try to figure out the connection between looking inside and sacred spaces (the outside)?

Issue Two: What is moral? How is this sense of humanity related to morality?

Notice p. 96: a connection to nature is not sufficient to make you a moral person.
But then, p.97, asking about his mom liking rocks, he goes “why is it moral?”
Jump to p. 100 “respecting zones of life appears to bring meaning into people’s lives and demonstrates a morally ecological side to being human.”
Finally p. 101, he is going to argue plainly that it is moral to respect life out of humanity. That is how he puts it initially. A little confusing. He ends with this summation: In order to be respectful of life, we must attempt to live up to the right ideals.

Can you figure out how to make sense of these claims by class?

Issue 3: Spelling out what it takes to be moral. Or why our nature is moral. Or what it takes to be a sociopath.

Necessary conditions on our moral nature/ or, why our nature is moral.
1. we are accountable
2. we are social
3. accountable to ourselves
4. can appreciate life in ourselves
This list is also useful in explaining what a sociopath is. (They lack one of these.)

And, then he says that he can sum up these points more directly: we can be loved into significance. (Hey, why is this uniquely human? There is a good line from a writer, our pets are the animals we implant souls in. Certainly our pets take on all the significance they do because we love them. I wonder what exactly he means by this—and why it is a more direct way of putting his previous 4 points.)

By class, can you become familiar with these four conditions and think about my question, too?

Issue 4: Life is not something we waste.

When it comes to the results of being “attentive” all the time, to everything: I wonder if this means you will end up more like a certain type of person than another. My “friend” who points out every environmentally unfriendly thing I do, and who is very worried about me when I am sloppy, or misspell or gain weight—she is attentive, all the time (and of course, I am using “friend” in the Aristotelian sense of: person I know well.) B-K might, possibly, be recommending a character type rather than mere moral character. I’ll try to explain this better in class. But look to p. 109 and think about “life is not something you waste.” True, but what does this suggest? That time spent not doing _____________ is wasting life.
I don’t know about this. Some of my favorite people are not careful about everything.

Finally, if we have time I’ll introduce Lect. 7 in class. It is going to directly assist us, if we understand our aim as the attempt to find some norms that t. virtue ethics would recommend concerning nature and our behavior.

Some preliminaries: rehearsing the topics from last class.
For starters, please look to p. 70 and 71 again, and re-read that carefully. Those pages are good to focus on, in coming to understand B-K.
Another good place to reconsider and focus on is attached. It is the passage I had trouble finding in class. There is a funny reason why I could not find it. It is after the jump (click on to read it).

Try to memorize his definitions of ecological citizenship (or the outlook) and the content he thinks is part of our humanity.

This does not sound technical but it is: respect for nonhuman life is supposed to “FLOW” from our sense of humanity. The analogue, in virtue ethics would be how automatically we are supposed to do good things. How are these descriptions different? Could you try to guess—and then let me know how I can help clarify?
(more…)

Here are the topics in Lectures one and two.
He argues we should become ecological citizens of the world.
Our sense of humanity demands it.

He gives us a “recipe” for a sense of humanity, he gives us an account of an ecological citizen that differs from the current understanding of what an “environmentalist” is.

An ecological citizen will be cosmopolitan, and there are advantages to this that he lists. One advantage is that being this kind of thinker allows you to care about nonhuman life, which is not national.

He will rely on two types of evidence for the sense of humanity he describes: historical and anthropological. (How is this in accord with what Hursthouse thinks ethical theorists should do?)

And in Lecture Two he argues that a relationship to the land is necessary to our sense of humanity. (How is this not in accord with how traditional virtue ethics gets it recommendations?)

In Lecture Two he also gives the example of driving (please look at this if you failed to the first time) and I changed this in class to mountain biking. How is mountain biking relevant to justice?

In your answer, continue to look for signs of the relationship B-K sees between prudence (activities that are damaging to the viability of our life on earth, short sighted, etc.) and justice. The connection interests me because some accounts of justice better fit this description “let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”

He discusses in Lecture Two the way to argue for a right to ecological justice. This reasoning seems sound to me, I brought up that someone like Amartya Sen might argue that some rights, though deserved, will not have the status as rights that are able to be procedural. The right to ecological justice might be more akin to the right to live free of poverty: deserved but not guaranteed in the same fashion as procedural rights. Please comment.

And finally, the mountain biking example can be used to illustrate what invoking the four modes of attention might do to you, your behavior and understanding. B-K argues that invoking these modes of attention might make you more autonomous and increase community. How might it do this? How does his recommendation differ from that of t. virtue ethics? Which do you (for the moment) prefer? And why?