Think piece 4 arising from What Is Wilderness And Do We Need It, chapter 9 in the book Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology

We need to attribute value to what is described generally as wilderness in order to inform how we treat it. Before we can consider what value to afford wilderness we need to define what we mean when we use the term wilderness. 

Wilderness is not a straightforward concept. This chapter offers a number of voices in a variety of literary styles in its attempt to pin down a definition of wilderness. What results is a sense of the breath and depth of the debate. A strong definition of “wilderness” is a habitat absent of any human presence or influence. Calicott observes that this popular but unproductive definition ignores the impact of indigenous peoples on what is mistakenly thought of as pristine land (1989: 348). The difficulty with this definition is that it leaves no room for the concept of wilderness preservation as the areas that meet this definition on today’s planet Earth are vanishingly small. It could be argued that there are no such areas as human induced climate change and the effects of pollution leave no place untouched. The weaker definition is that used in the United States Wilderness Act (1964) which circumscribes areas where a man is a visitor and does not remain. Yet another definition, cited in the article as being used by Thoreau in “Walking” sees man as part and parcel of Nature (2008: 284). This last might be denoted wildness rather than wilderness (ibid., 280). The difficulty with this definition is that man (and it is acknowledged to be usually men) is thereby set apart from man.The chapter asks whether wilderness is the province of men, and white men in particular (ibid., 281). A third world critique of the wilderness notion is made by Guha (2013).

What of value? Roderick Nash offers eight values mostly anthropocentric,  but including two potentially intrinsic- as a reservoir of normal ecological processes and as sustainer of biological diversity (Adelson 2008: 293-299). Therein lies the nub of the value issue -is it to be intrinsic or instrumental? Callicott suggests the answer might lie in  symbiotic philosophy of conservation, thus perhaps a benign instrumental approach is the way forward (2013: 357).

Bibliography 

Adelson, G. (2008) (eds) Environment: an interdisciplinary anthology null: Yale University Press. pp 280-309

Callicott, J. (2013) The Wilderness Idea Revisited: the sustainable development alternative in Gruen, L. et al (eds) Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy. null: Oxford University Press. pp. 252-264

Guha, R. (2013) Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: a third world critique in Gruen, L. et al (eds) Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy. null: Oxford University Press. pp.241-251

Think piece 3 arising from Michael Zimmerman‘s Deep Ecology, Heidegger, and Postmodern Theory from the book Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity

Zimmerman employs a truncated argument to establish that Heidegger is a forerunner of deep ecology.  Many ecologists distance themselves from Heidegger because of his political views, Zimmerman however identifies that significant parts of Heidegger’s thought are compatible with deep ecology. This is unsurprising as much of the deep ecology platform is intended to be a minimal common denominator around which people can unite (McLaughlin 2010: 235). There are core issues upon which the two differ.

Zimmerman criticises the ad hominem approach to Heidegger’s ecological thinking (Heidegger was a supporter of Nazism). Zimmerman argues that for Heidegger the anthropocentric subject has in modern times inserted itself and it’s rationality in the place of God. This has lead to damaging subjectivism, dualism, and the rise of the technological age in which everything is more material for consumption. He notes that Heidegger believed that the existential need to improve a treatment of nature could not arise from the metaphysical framework of humanism but only from a new ethos. Additionally Heidegger suggests that animals are not inferior to rather different from humans because importantly animal drives are self-limiting where that of humans lack such limits. Humans desire self realisation but this has increasingly been diverted into a craving for things. Zimmerman establishes that some of Heidegger’s key thinking is compatible with deep ecology (1994: 104-121). 

On the other side of the coin Zimmerman suggests that although deep ecology takes a progressive view of history (acknowledging that deep ecologists themselves might resist this), progress is to be understood as a very long-term affair not something that can be completed in a few centuries.  Zimmerman posits that this as a more mature attitude, one which may come about as a result of something consistent with Heidegger’s later notion of conversion experience and that deep ecologists say that reform will only reinforce the status quo unless people undergo a “spiritual conversion” (ibid., 120). Zimmerman suggests that Arne Naess might sympathise with some of Heidegger’s views to which Naess responds “Zimmerman belongs to those supporters of the deep ecology movement who seriously study and look for important help from the works of philosophers who most philosophically concerned supporters do not expect can be of much help.” (Naess, 1999: 6). Naess also notes that Zimmerman discusses only DEP level 1 points and says at this level the supporters of the deep ecology movement recognize widely, in part incompatible, views. Whilst one deep ecology supporter may accept nothing Heidegger says, on another may accept everything (1997: 2,3). Zimmerman does acknowledge that there are problems in attempts to read Heidegger as a forerunner of deep ecology not least because of his perceived anthropocentrism and his concerns that the deep ecology platform manifests modernities control-impulse (inter alia 1994: 97).  

Bibliography 

McLaughlin, A. (2010) Environmental psychologism, The Heart of Deep Ecology in Keller, D. (ed) Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions pp 235-239

Naess, A. (2010) Environmental psychologism, The Shallow and the Deep Ecology Movement Arne Andrew McLaughlin in Keller, D. (ed) Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions pp 230-234 

Naess, A. (2010) Environmental psychologism, The Shallow and the Deep Ecology Movement Arne Andrew McLaughlin in Keller, D. (ed) Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions pp 240-245

Naess, Arne (1997) Heidegger, Postmodern Theory and Deep Ecology Trumpeter: 14, 4. Available at http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/download/175/217/ (Accessed on 14 January 2020)

Zimmerman, M. (1993) Heidegger, Buddhism, and Deep Ecology in Guignon C. (ed.)The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. New York: Cambridge University Press

Zimmerman, M. (1994) Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity.  null:University of California Press

Think piece 2 also arising from J. Baird Callicott’s Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics Chapter 9 in his 1989 book In Defense of the Land Ethic

Callicott’s offers the promising prospect of a a new environmental ethic that is not just a management ethic. However his foundation for this is a shaky tripartite process that is vulnerable to rigorous scrutiny and may be ultimately unsatisfactory. 

Without some inherent value in Nature an environmental ethic would collapse into an ethic for the use of the environment not for the environment, thus it is necessary for a satisfactory environmental ethic to encompass a value for natural entities or at least living beings in and of themselves (Regan 1983).  Callicott therefore begins by arguing that although there is no such thing as intrinsic value, natural entities can be said to have something more than instrumental value. Whilst human values have been primarily determined and standardised by Darwinian natural selection based on what is useful, and are therefore instrumental, there is also room for legitimate human ‘culturally’ conditioned determination and he denotes this as inherent value (1989: 160). Reservations about this first part of Callicott’s argument need not be advanced because his carefully constructed edifice is demolished by the second part of his argument relying on insights offered by quantum physics (1989:167-168) . From these Callicott argues that we can assert value as virtual and virtual value is ontologically objective and independent of consciousness (ibid., 169).  One criticism is that the serviceability of this analysis is dependent on his debatable proposition that physics and ethics are equally descriptive of nature. Callicot says that Aldo Leopold, whose land ethic (1945) is foundational in this chapter, never abandoned a “general, normal scientific outlook” (Callicott 1989:165). Callicott’s analogous use of the science here also is open to criticism in that ascribing any value to natural entities is not consistent with values being potential and actualised upon interaction with consciousness; this would suggest rather that a particular value cannot not exist a priori and thus in and of itself. Callicott argues that the application of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle means that the distinction between the object and subject has broken down (ibid., 165) and this paves the way for his third step relying on a more speculative relational interpretation of quantum physics which he suggests makes no fundamental distinction between subject, object and environment within which they are operating. His proposition can be summed up in this way: things are what they are because of their relations with other things. Callicott formulated his proposition in 1989 when relational quantum physics was in its earliest infancy and his interpretation of the new science which grounds his assertions is troubling. Carlo Rovelli proposed the theory of Relational Quantum Mechanics (1996) and suggests that RQM is sometimes wrongly assumed to be an interpretation where subjects, or agents, play a role, a confusion between relative and subjective. This needs to be mapped more closely onto Callicott’s conclusions.

Bibliography 

Callicott, J. Baird (1989) In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Leopold, A. (1949) A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford Univ. Press

Regan, T. (1983) The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press

Rovelli, C. (1996) Relational Quantum Mechanics,  International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35(8): 1637–1678.

Think piece 1 arising from J. Baird Callicott’s Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics Chapter 9 in his 1989 book In Defense of the Land Ethic

Callicott (1989) convincingly advances a need for a new environmental ethic because he identifies the axiological problem that Western ethics provide only instrumental values for nature. His argument is that there is an insurmountable difficulty in establishing a truly intrinsic value for non-sentient entities because, when analysed, intrinsic value is subjective not objective. Intrinsic value cannot be determined independent of a valuing consciousness. 

The argument is of particular importance in relation to questions of wilderness (if indeed such a concept is permissible) preservation and to nature conservation and it impacts on issues relating to the extent and benefit of human involvement therein. Rolston, a trenchant critic of Callicott’s value theory, suggests that it is would make pristine wilderness and pre-human Nature valueless. Rolston (1988) argues that Nature in and of itself is a value carrier and value is located in natural entities in and of themselves, but in this he only identifies the source and not the value itself. In moving on to consider value differentials Rolston, a trenchant critic of Callicott’s value theory, enters into a complex quagmire of interaction between valuers, value and valuable.

Attfield (1994) suggests that Sylvan and Routley (Routley and Routley, 1980) reached at least partially similar conclusions to Callicott. He suggests that their theory of “nonjectivism” rejects both objectivism and subjectivism thus implying that there would be no value if there never were valuers. Attfield also cites Elliot (1985) as representing that value is always relative to a valuation or framework, which amounts to a valuational subjectivism.

It seems, notwithstanding Attfield’s view (2014: 59) – which appears to be held on the unsatisfactory basis that no superior alternative has been advanced – that we should adhere to a belief that intrinsic value is an objective value, there remains an debate to be had about a well grounded value theory for the environment. 

Bibliography 

Attfield, R. (1994) Rehabilitating Nature and Making Nature Habitable in Attfield, R. and Belsey, A. eds Philosophy And The Natural Environment. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 36. pp 45-57 

Attfield, R. (2014) Environmental Ethics : an Overview for theTwenty-First Century, null: Polity Press

Callicott, J. Baird (1989) In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp 

Rolston III, H. (1988) Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 

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