🚀 go-pugleaf

Victor Yodaiken writes:

In article <149180992@hpindda.cup.hp.com> alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Alan McGowen) writes:
>Niches perform *functions* that "matter" to ecosystems. That is the sense
>in which this position is ecocentric utilitarianism. Please don't assert 
>that nothing matters to eecosystems as they don't have brains or human
>sociality. Instead read again my remarks about neural chauvinism.

>But, why does "preservation of ecosystems" matter? More to the point, why
>does preservation of ecosystems in some particular form matter? A recent
>president of the United States repeatedly affirmed his belief that
>the earth was due to be destroyed as a prelude to a a quick trip to 
>heavan for the faithful. From that perspective the preservation of
>ecosystems is of no importance whatsoever. If human beings are to survive
>and prosper on this planet, I believe that such viewpoints must be relegated
>to the margins, and a view of the earth as a complex, interrelated system
>which we must respect should prevail. But, here I start with the belief that
>it is good for humans to survive and prosper. There is no escape from 
>human ethics in this issue.

Excuse me, but why does human survival "matter" in your sense? That seems to
be something you take for granted. You have an unequal standard of 
justification here, it seems to me: you insist that only God or Cosmic Purpose
could justify what matters to ecosystems, yet then you don't seem to see that
this makes it incumbent on you to show that God or Cosmic Purpose is rooting
for *us*.

But I disagree about God and Cosmic Purpose. What "matters" is what life is
all about -- all life, not just human life. There would be no "matters" 
without life: life is a business of maintaining preferred states that "matter"
-- core body temperature, enough moisture, the right incubation temperature
for the eggs, the cells bathed in nutrients and oxygen -- in the face of a
very entropy-increasing physical universe. *That* is what "matters" and is
the basis of *everything* that "matters", for humans as well as other species.

Now *that* is *only* possible because of the functioning of ecosystems. 

Ecosystems *make* what matters -- they *make* all life. That is what ecosystem
function does: it makes life, it makes the all potential for "matters", all
the potential for preferred states that exists... in the whole universe, so 
far as we know.  

That puts ecosystems in a preferred position over humans or any one species.
They are in *fact* what we like to imagine God to be -- the actual Creators
of life, the Creators of everything that "matters" and of the very possibility
that anything may matter. They are thus the most rational choice for the basis
of ethics. If you choose one species over another, you need some external
authority to justify that choice -- God or Cosmic purpose. But if you choose
what *makes* the ground of all ethics -- life itself -- you need no external
authority. And what makes that ground is ecosystems, via their ecological
functioning and evolutionary processes.

>>[From past experience I know that the circularity of the anthropocentric 
>>position is truly invisible to many an anthropocentric. No matter what is 
>>offered in the way of ethical criteria, an anthropocentric will always 
>>tacitly assume that *only* humans have moral standing, and that therefore
>>some human interest is required to validate the ethics. Attempts to compare
>>this to, say, efforts to pursuade slaveowners that slaves had moral standing
>>in their own right will be persuasive to some, but others will simply
>
>You are arguing with someone else. I do not suggest that only humans have
>moral standing, I suggest that, absent some religious claim, there is no
>objective grounds for preferring any one moral view over another. I am
>personally in favor of the survival of life on earth and the restoration
>of a healthy global ecosystem, but I do not presume to claim that this
>preference results from scientific imperatives.

It results from *what you are*. You have a vested interest in the continuance
of life because you are structured that way. That vested interest is something
you share with all other life and inherit from prehuman life. Science can show
that that interest is a shared one and an old one, not unique to humans but 
common to all our kin as well. What higher imperative would you want? Is it 
reasonable to ask for any higher one? 

Is there any evidence or scientific understanding which could show that it
would be better if *life* had never existed? Better than what? Life is the
thing that has preferences, that makes the "what matters". Without life there
is no "better" or "worse".

>>But all of this confuses two different aspects of ethics:
>>
>>1) what form the ethics takes in terms of the relations of humans to nature
>>and
>>
>>2) why humans should adopt the ethics.
>>
>>What I am suggesting is that *ecosystem requirements*, e.g. support of niches,
>>are the basis for 1), i.e. they determine the form of the ethics -- that all
>>niches are of comparable ethical weight, or at least that their ethical
>>weight is proportional to their ecological importance, though our lack of
>>knowledge here would argue that a "benefit of the doubt" presumption of 
>>potential importance is always in order. 2) on the other hand, is a matter 
>>of long-term utility to humans and even more importantly of fundamental 
>>fairness. 
>
>I do not see why "ecological importance" and "ethical weight" are related at
>all. The problem with your argument is that you seek to find a scientific
>blessing for your moral view. 

I seek to find a scientifically informed ethics which is compatible with 
what science shows about how the world works. The problem with *your* argument
is that you believe that ethics is autonomous from reality -- this is why 
the idea that science could influence choice of ethics strikes you as absurd.
By how can you believe in ethical automony? Ethics affects reality and it 
arises from human brains shaped by an evolutionary history which is very
much part of reality. Ethics is an adaptation, part cultural and part 
biological. *Adaptations* are not autonomous from reality -- far from it.
It's reality which decides in the end what is really adaptive and what is
not -- nature bats last, always.

And that applies to ethics: nature bats last for ethical adaptations, too.
Now science is surely relevant to forming our best estimate of whether
an adaptation will succeed or not, including an ethical adaptation.

So I plead guilty. I most definitely *do* want the blessing of science on
my ethics to the maximum extent I can get it! Just as I want the blessing
of science on any other choice of *policy* for society as one that is
likely to succeed.  

>>In short, the ethic adopted and the human motives for adopting the ethic will
>>by definition be anthropo*genic*, made by humans, but the ethic adopted need 
>>not be anthropo*centric*, but can be ecocentric if we so choose.
>
>Sure. But we must choose on anthropogenic grounds. 

We must choose on anthropo*genic* grounds, by definition, but we need not
choose on anthropo*centric* grounds. Science is anthropo*genic*, but not
anthropo*centric*. It is nature-centric. 

>>>From what vantage
>>>point can one human being weigh the relative claims to life and space of
>>>other human beings, bears, or bacteria? Unless he is receiving messages
>>>from God or from dolphins, he has only a human perspective to rely on.
>>
>>Or understands that e.g. it takes grizzlies to support the selection pressures
>>of predation on other species in many north American ecosystems. To be sure
>
>There is a difference between the assertion "science tells us that 
>griz is necessary for the proper functioning of the north american 
>ecosystem" and the assertion "you are less important than griz". If I donate
>to Sea Shepherds rather than Save the Children, I am making an ethical 
>choice, but I cannot blame my decision on evolutionary biology. 

See my article on "The Ecological Contract" for a response to this. There are
two different issues being conflated here -- the grounds for choosing an ethic
and the form of the ethic. It is further being tacitly assumed that the ethic
has to consist of only one scale of ethical judgment ("me or griz") and that
is not the case -- I present a different, hierarchical formulation in the
other post. 

>>>You mistake my position and weaken your own. I don't see any grounds for
>>>supposing that the goal of preserving species diversity is any less human
>>>centered than the goal of building a Wendys on every available parcel of 
>>>land. The one goal may offend you or even seem suicidal, but they are
>>>both goals of humans, not revealed  moral imperatives or derived from 
>>>the basic structure of the universe ( at least as far as we know right now).
>>
>>Again, I suggest that this confuses the *form* of the ethic -- 1) -- which
>>determines goals for humanity in ecocentric terms -- with the motives for
>>adopting the ethic -- 2). As an example, the *form* of the ethic of a
>>wilderness management system can be either anthropocentric (e.g. maximize
>>the utility of timber yields, mining, recreation etc.) or ecocentric (restore
>>ecological and evolutionary functioning to the point where we have once
>>again autogenic native ecosystems in their full diversity). The *motives*
>
>But no. Suppose I argue that, as I believe, the existence of unspoiled
>wilderness is good for human beings and that a human society based on
>respect for human life must also respect other forms of life on the planet.
>That's an anthroprocentric viewpoint. It does not require me to advocate
>maximization of use of the land, or make me oppose restoration of species
>diversity. 

This is like arguing that slavery is wrong because as a matter of fact it
is spiritally bad and uneconomical for the slaveowners. If it turns out that 
someone can contrive a way to make it economical and a passage of the Bible
to make it spiritual, then your position would have to change. It is also a
silly position for the reason that slavery was *not* uneconomical for the 
slave owners. We *can* trash the environment today, cause many extinctions, 
and not die as a result.  Our descendents will be poorer for it, maybe so much
poorer that their very survival will be in jeopardy, but why should we care?
Why do our descendents matter any more than other species? The timber barons
don't think they do. The libertarians don't think they do. "After me the 
deluge" is the whole of their philosophy. What is there in anthropocentrism
which rules that point of view out? Nothing in it does. And it will be the 
practical result of anthropocentrism, every time. *ANTHROPOCENTRISM IS TIME
SCALE DEPENDENT*. That is why it cannot be the ultimate basis of ethics. The
ultimate basis of ethics has to be a set of principles that operate equally 
on all time scales within human tenure. 

The only way to secure the long-term fitness of humanity -- the interests 
of posterity -- is to bite the bullet of evolutionary biology and admit
that *our* long-term fitness cannot be ensured apart from that of all other
life. We have to value the fitness needs of everything we share the Earth
with to keep the Earth a healthy place for us to live. And that means that
their *interests* (fitness needs, habitat requirements) come into the ethical
picture on an basis of ecological parity with our own. That is ecological 
justice.

It should also be a familar argument, since it is essentially just the old
argument for a social contract in a new guise, the idea that the only way
the everyone's security can be ensured is by joining together in a civil
society, governed by principles of social justice. Here *everyone* is every
species and *security* is long-term survival and *civil society* is a 
coevolutionarily stable civilization. The difference is that this isn't a
contract drawn up between humans and other species for mutual security. It's
a contract drawn up by humans to ensure the mutual security of civilization
and the biosphere by forming a single integrated entity out of the two of
them, governed by the principle of coevolutionary equilibrium. This procures
us an ethics which is independent of time scale.

>>Another way of thinking about this (also borrowed from John Rawls) is that 
>>we do not have a single ethical well-ordering of all possible human actions, 
>>but a hierarchy of orderings. The ecological justice ordering comes first.
>
>Sez you.  I see your claims of "ecocentrism" to really be claims of
>privilege for a particular point of view.  For an intersting argument on
>this issue, see the debate between Dave Foreman and M. Bookchin published by
>South End press a few years ago.

I gave reasons as to why ecocentrism (ecological justice) should be the 
privileged ethical principle above -- both reasons having to do with the
*grounds* of ethics and reasons having to do with the *praxis* or success
(stability, survival, adaptiveness) of the ethics. I don't know what reasons 
Dave Foreman would give. I prefer to give my own reasons.

>>Ecological (or "Natural") Justice order >> Social Justice order 
>>>> Market (utilitarian) order.
>>
>>[This idea is due to Holmes Ralston, III.]
>
>It's a silly idea, whoever takes credit for it. 
>
>>In any ordering other than this one, human needs can overrule the 
>>longer-term requirements of the biosphere, and such an ordering will 
>>not be coevolutionarily stable. 
>
>A) Coevolutionary stability is a good only if we so chose. 

We wouldn't exist if it weren't for past coevolution and our descendents 
won't exist if we don't achieve coevolutionary stability. Those are not
matters of choice, they are features of how the world works. You may *choose*
to call something "good" that would lead to the extinction of humanity or 
would have precluded the possibility of any complex life on Earth (including
us). You may *choose* to call something "good" that would lead to the 
extinction of all life.  But your use of the word will have no connection
with the actual inbuilt motivators of life. It will have nothing to do with
what most people include in the meaning of "good." We are not free to choose
our own evolutionary past or fitness needs or what characteristics we share 
and do not share with other species. "Good" is shaped by all of that.

>B) There is no reason to suppose that human beings are ever going to be
>   able to distinguish "ecological requirements" from "human requirements".

This is complete nonsense. Learn some biology before you say things like that.
It's no different from saying that we could never hope to distinguish how
physical systems work from our mythic fantasies about how they work. The 
whole point of science is to do just that. The requirements of ecosystems to
continue functioning are as objective as the requirments of your body. Suppose
I deprive you of water and you die. Shall I tell the judge "I didn't kill him;
I had no intention of killing him; nobody really knows whether water is 
required for life; we can probably just choose otherwise -- it was his own
fault he died. He forgot to call going without water good." 

>C) You have not presented an argument to the effect that "human needs" and
>   the requirement of coevolutionary stability are, in fact, incompatible.

No, because the problem is more complex than that. In the the long term,
they are not only not incompatible, coevolutionary stability is the best 
insurance for human needs. In the short term, however, "human needs" can 
and do lead us down paths which move us ever farther away from coevolutionary 
stability. It is exactly because of this contradiction between what 
anthropocentic interests call good on the short and long -term time scales 
that we need an ethical principle defined in nonhuman terms. The whole 
problem is looking inside ourselves for the foundation of ethics.

But then looking only superficially, only culture-deep. If you look deeply 
enough into humans, you will find a vast commonality of architecture and
function and interests -- *kinship* -- with the rest of life. You will find
an organism whose life depends on the functioning of ecosystems, as any other's
does. Look deeply, and you will find the root of ethics in life, in principles
not made by us. Now ask how to bring those principles forth into the light
of human culture, how to fit them together with society and survival. The
result will be ecological justice.

------------
Alan McGowen