so long as we can agree that ethics is a negotiation of values between subjects, — unenlightened

Firstly, I'm thinking this is going to be a problem. If ethics is just a negotiation between subjects, then how does the non-human (non-speaking) world take part in that negotiation?

If we, instead have to speak for them, then what is that compels us to presume their needs would be anything like ours. What does a bat actually want?

I can't see any way of assigning rights (and therefore contingent duties) to the non-human world on the basis of ethics as negotiation. How would we hold animals to account for failing in their responsibility to us, or is the system just one way?

I'm passionatly in favour of fostering a better relationship between humans and the natural world, but I think talk of 'rights and responsibilities' to it just leaves open too much room for people to simply discard the concept on axiomatic grounds and it ends up preaching to the converted.

Firstly, I'm thinking this is going to be a problem. If ethics is just a negotiation between subjects, then how does the non-human (non-speaking) world take part in that negotiation? — Pseudonym

It's not a problem with infants. We understand their wants and needs as best we can, and speak and act and legislate for them. Sometimes we do the same for refugees that cannot speak our language We know quite well that bats want insects and cave like roosts and so on. We can see how they flourish.

There's nothing radical about the idea of stewardship. The idea that we have an obligation to reduce the size of the human population also isn't particularly shocking. Its just maximally dubious.

Nice thought, though.

I agree that ethics emerges as a negotiation between subjects, however negotiation is intrinsically linked to power. Where subjects have similar levels of power, negotiation is fair, and fair ethical principles evolve. Where there is a large power differential between subjects, the negotiator of higher power usually just takes what they want, and no ethical norms evolve at all (e.g. human-ant interaction). I agree with the principle of assigning human rights to all individuals, however I would argue that this idea is an insurance policy that has been negotiated between a community of individuals with relatively equal levels of power.

Now most non-human life has very little negotiation power, and as such there is no moral imperative to ensure non-human life is treated well. Of course there are exceptions, where a police dog will form a mutually beneficial relationship with its trainer, and a horse with it's rider, however in the main this isn't the case as most animals have little to offer us.

I disagree with cruelty to animals, due to an emotional sympathy for the creatures, however I don't believe there is an ethical obligation to them.

in the main this isn't the case as most animals have little to offer us. — Kenshin

Think again. Animals and plants provide numerous and essential services to us (and each other) that we have ignored at our peril. Take bees: Every plant that produces a fruit or a seed (most of our fruits and vegetables) require pollination which is performed by various species of bees and other insects. Rampant insecticide use in agriculture, mono-cropping, widespread herbicide use, urban sprawl, and other factors have reduced the population of various pollinators.

Birds and bats are responsible for poison-free insect control.

Even algae in the ocean are important providers--a good share of the oxygen we breathe comes from these single-celled creatures.

As we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, aggravate global warming, vast ecological changes (like the acidification of the oceans or spread of parasites and diseases into the northern conifer forests), we are endangering ourselves, as well as many other creatures to whom much is owed.

It's not a problem with infants. We understand their wants and needs as best we can, and speak and act and legislate for them. Sometimes we do the same for refugees that cannot speak our language We know quite well that bats want insects and cave like roosts and so on. We can see how they flourish. — unenlightened

Then ethics is not a negotiation is it? If it is possible to act ethically to someone (or something) whose preferences you have not had a chance to hear, then you're claiming that you can know what other beings want.

Once you've made that claim, you have an ethic without negotiation. How do we deal with the child who insists on that third chocolate, we act not according to their expression of their desire, we act according to what we think they really want.

I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it. Maintaining the acceptable face of moral relativism with other adults, but then implying a paternal 'we know what you really want' with children and the natural world. I had a similar argument on an ethics board discussing a nature conservation project. The conservationists argued moral superiority because they were working for 'nature' restoring a wildflower meadow. I pointed out that the bulk of their proposed work involved bracken clearance. It was clear to me that 'nature' wanted the whole field covered in bracken, and wanted that pretty strongly. It was the humans that wanted the wild flower meadow.

The point is, not all creatures can 'flourish'. Most of them eat each other. Does the gazelle 'want' to to be eaten by the lion? So are we obligated to try and solve the problem? If we could produce cultured meat (a real possibility) are we obliged to feed it to lions. It could be argued that we can see that London don't want to hunt (they only do so when they're hungry), and gazelles don't appear to want to be eaten.

Then do we value bacteria as much as elephants? Are we obligated to actually maximise diversity? That would certainly require us to green the deserts, meadows are more diverse than the native woodland here in England.

Bat's may want insects, but do insects want bats?

Firstly, I'm thinking this is going to be a problem. If ethics is just a negotiation between subjects, then how does the non-human (non-speaking) world take part in that negotiation? — Pseudonym

In the US, there is a common legal mechanism by which trustees are assigned by the government to speak for the environment. Under the Superfund law, various governmental agencies are authorized to act as Natural Resources Trustees.

Another concept, which may not be consistent with the approach @unenlightened is proposing, is the idea of The Commons. There are portions of the world where everyone has a stake and a responsibility. Ownership is not absolute, some is always reserved for the public. That is not consistent with the idea of the environment having separate rights, but it is a approach which shows up in some conservative, even libertarian, views on environmental regulation.

There is lots more to be said, but I think that is probably sufficient irritation for an op. — unenlightened

This discussion is a good idea. This kind of thing doesn't get discussed much here. I'm not sure how much I have to offer, but I'll be interested to read.

In the US, there is a common legal mechanism by which trustees are assigned by the government to speak for the environment. Under the Superfund law, various governmental agencies are authorized to act as Natural Resources Trustees. — T Clark

We have many similar systems here in England. I've had cause to argue with their version of 'what nature wants' on quite a number of occasions.

We have many similar systems here in England. I've had cause to argue with their version of 'what nature wants' on quite a number of occasions. — Pseudonym

I wasn't making the case for any particular approach, only that there are mechanisms by which the "rights" of the environment can be protected, negotiated.

I understand. The point I was trying to make is that it's not the 'rights' of the environment that get protected or negotiated, it's still what the humans empowered to speak want of it. Some may want the environment to be nothing but a source of raw materials, others may want to enjoy its aesthetics, its potential for future harvesting, its peace, even knowledge of its mere existence, but all the time its still just humans arguing about what they want from it. No-one is really speaking for it.

The point I was trying to make is that it's not the 'rights' of the environment that get protected or negotiated, it's still what the humans empowered to speak want of it. Some may want the environment to be nothing but a source of raw materials, others may want to enjoy its aesthetics, its potential for future harvesting, its peace, even knowledge of its mere existence, but all the time its still just humans arguing about what they want from it. No-one is really speaking for it. — Pseudonym

The concept of a right is human, so there's no way to separate an environmental right from a human value. I have a deep feeling that I belong in this world. That I have evolved along with all the other organisms that exist here. That's my feeling, not some tree's.

As we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, aggravate global warming, vast ecological changes (like the acidification of the oceans or spread of parasites and diseases into the northern conifer forests), we are endangering ourselves, as well as many other creatures to whom much is owed. — Bitter Crank

Exactly. This is why I dislike the paternalism of much ecological philosophy. Our very existence is absolutely dependent on our stewardship of the natural world. If we mess up it will spit us out without a second thought. It's neither a negotiation, nor an exchange of rights. It's an absolute imperative to treat the natural world with more respect or else it will destroy us. Our reign has been nothing more than blip in the lifespan of the earth. I don't think it's excessively fanciful to imagine the earth as one living organism, we are a tiny, momentary itch, which will be summarily scratched off if we get too irritating, and we have the audacity to imagine we're part of a negotiation?

The point I was trying to make is that it's not the 'rights' of the environment that get protected or negotiated, it's still what the humans empowered to speak want of it. Some may want the environment to be nothing but a source of raw materials, others may want to enjoy its aesthetics, its potential for future harvesting, its peace, even knowledge of its mere existence, but all the time its still just humans arguing about what they want from it. No-one is really speaking for it. — Pseudonym

Yes, this is all very problematic in practice, which is why I want to really avoid that issue in this thread. Take a couple of steps back. The suggestion is that what humans want, whoever they are, is not the only consideration. At the moment I am more interested in justifying and working out the philosophical implications of this. How we work out in any particular environment, and especially as is usual, one that has been extensively disrupted and degraded by human action, 'what nature wants' which is something that needs some serious philosophical dismantling anyway, is alwaysgoing to be arguable and provisional, but that does not mean we should not do it as best we can.

In this respect, one finds humans in the Amazon, or in Aboriginal Australia or Native Americans, living as a part of an ecology, and it is this very different philosophy that enables them to speak with understanding of the needs of the whole.

Let me put it this way. What is being disputed here, at least in part, is the enlightenment - the doctrine of the rational self-interested individual.

As we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, aggravate global warming, vast ecological changes (like the acidification of the oceans or spread of parasites and diseases into the northern conifer forests), we are endangering ourselves, as well as many other creatures to whom much is owed. — Bitter Crank

I'm taking this to be undisputed, that our way of life is destructive, and in the long run self- destructive. But what we do comes out of the way we think, so we need to think differently. And that is the business of philosophy to investigate.

I'm taking this to be undisputed, that our way of life is destructive, and in the long run self- destructive. But what we do comes out of the way we think, so we need to think differently. And that is the business of philosophy to investigate. — unenlightened

Earlier in this discussion, I mentioned the idea of The Commons. Am I correct that you don't find this a satisfactory approach?

The suggestion is that what humans want, whoever they are, is not the only consideration. At the moment I am more interested in justifying and working out the philosophical implications of this. — unenlightened

Fair enough.

I still think the presumption that we could know what a bat wants is problematic, not just by degree (in that it's hard to be sure but we could make a good guess), but as a matter of autonomy. I'm concerned that the presumption of such knowledge could be used to justify intervention in the autonomy of other creatures where no intervention is warranted.

Also, I'm not sure how this approach helps us to resolve conflict between what different aspects of the ecosystem and wants. How do we consider the wants of both bats and insects when those wants will be contradictory?

The native tribes you mention indeed live as part of an ecosystem, but I don't see any evidence that they know what it needs, nor that they act as custodians in any way beyond their own self interest. I think that truly being part of an ecology means that its needs and yours are inextricably linked. It it our anthropocentric distance that causes the problems we all seem to agree exist. I think what's needed is not further distancing by abstraction, but getting closer to the fact that we need the ecosystems we rely on.

I think too many people have 'communion' with nature in an abstract way and too few have skinned and gutted a rabbit for dinner.

Also, I'm not sure how this approach helps us to resolve conflict between what different aspects of the ecosystem and wants. How do we consider the wants of both bats and insects when those wants will be contradictory? — Pseudonym

It's not our business to resolve such conflicts at all, if we even need to conceive it as a conflict. Insects have a right to live, (but not in my hair) and bats also have a right to live, and bats eat insects, so they both need insects to thrive.

It it our anthropocentric distance that causes the problems we all seem to agree exist. I think what's needed is not further distancing by abstraction, but getting closer to the fact that we need the ecosystems we rely on. — Pseudonym

Here is the bite: I agree with your diagnosis, but your remedy continues to be anthropocentric.

I think too many people have 'communion' with nature in an abstract way and too few have skinned and gutted a rabbit for dinner. — Pseudonym

I think this is backwards if it suggests that our distance from nature causes poor thinking about nature; rather it is an impoverished thinking about nature that has led us to largely divorce ourselves from it. Skinning and gutting a rabbit is very easy; far easier than preparing a mango.

I don't think it is satisfactory, for a number of reasons, but I really don't want to get bogged down in policies and action, which is what almost everyone so far wants to concern themselves with.

I want to discuss matters of principle and their possible foundation in whatever world view, religious or secular, Western or Eastern, realist or subjectivist wrt morals. The notion of 'stewardship' for example gives a Judeo-Christian root to the ideas presented here - as though Man is the thinking, directing organ of Nature. However, the mainstream of Western thought has diverged from this to the extent that Nature has been conceived and treated as an enemy to be conquered, and a blind and dumb mechanism to be exploited.

However, the mainstream of Western thought has diverged from this to the extent that Nature has been conceived and treated as an enemy to be conquered, and a blind and dumb mechanism to be exploited. — unenlightened

Love is the basis of all morality. Love for oceans and forests flourishes among those who have been emancipated from hunger. There is no evil ideology here. Just Nature itself.

I think you must be on another planet. On my planet the oceans are choking with acidity, excess heat and plastics, not to mention the radioactive waste pouring from Fukushima. As to forests, see here.

As the song has it, "Where is the love?"

Love is the basis of all morality. Love for oceans and forests flourishes among those who have been emancipated from hunger. There is no evil ideology here. Just Nature itself. — frank

A rhetorical question: Has Mr. Trump not been emancipated from hunger? (a humorous question, I hope … now see that unenlightened got to this roundabout issue before me)

I’m not big on the term “evil” either, but I find that love is far more difficult an obtainment than we’d like to believe. Heck, I’ll even say that we all hold some degree of fear of love, including folks such as Mother Teresa (e.g., if a person has never felt their hart pound when kissing another out of some degree of fear/anxiety that they all the same seek to overcome, than I think one’s been missing out one what first kisses can be). Just that some seek to overcome these fears while others make the most out of love being (to them) a big joke.

Incidentally, in seeing this as a potential rebuttal from someone out there: love of nature does not then mean one wants that all life be physically immortal either. Yet at least some Native Americans, for example, honored the spirits of the animals they killed by burning their whiskers (indicative of care/sympathy even if one takes it to only be symbolic), and such Earth-based religions don’t give thanks to a Creator deity for daily meals but the spirits of those beings/lifeforms who were sacrificed so that life as whole may be sustained. Not advocating for religious/nonreligious preferences, just trying to illustrate that that the issue of love is a complex thing, especially when it is extended more universally … but I fully agree that love is an important emotion/state of mind to strive for and maintain all the same.

World population is the least of our problems.
Western population is the problem.
Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy. The population is projected to increase by nearly 130 million people - the equivalent of adding another four states the size of California - by the year 2050.

And you just did it. You wanted to de-hitch the topic from practicality and then you brought up practical concerns (such as the world we inherited).

Disconnecting moral concerns from practical ones is like demanding that we hear about Juliet's family and totally ignore Romeo's. It's a pretty meaningless play.

Why did trump undermine the EPA? Because of the principle of rational self interest? No. He's a demagogue. His base suffers from economic uncertainty. De-fanging the EPA is supposed to provide freedom to industry so there will be more jobs.

Hunger trumps love. Almost always.

This fact is all you need to know about Global Warming.
Facts 5: Loss of forests contributes between 12 percent and 17 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. (World Resources Institute)
if we could preserves what we have, and recover what we have lost, there is no amount of CO2 we could throw into the atmosphere that trees could not rebalance.

And you just did it. You wanted to de-hitch the topic from practicality and then you brought up practical concerns (such as the world we inherited).

Disconnecting moral concerns from practical ones is like demanding that we hear about Juliet's family and totally ignore Romeo's. It's a pretty meaningless play. — frank

I'm not wanting to disconnect anything. But my concern here is to change minds, and change the way people think about the issues that the way we think has brought us to. I mention the way things are by way of establishing the problem with the way we think. Let me put it this way we have done what we have done because we think what we think. so in order to do something else we need to think something else. And that is the business of philosophy. Doing something else will follow as politics when we have a new philosophy. but you want to do the politics without having changed the philosophy, and that results in repeating the same errors in a new way.

Yea, I find plenty of self-interest in love—though I don’t know if it can always be properly termed rational self-interest. This from all everyday notions of love to that of universal compassion; it’s not as if Nirvana is not in the Buddhist’s interest to obtain, for example. On a related topic: even haters love—themselves, that is (I don’t think it’s possible to hate in an absence of self-love)—though this at the expense of all else, thereby perverting the term’s commonly understood connotations of it being interpersonal with phrases such as “love for (optimal quantities of) money”. In short, to be alive is to love a set of givens out of self-interest, but what this set of given’s consists of can drastically differ due to differences in that which is intended. And I’ve spoken with enough very educated that take themselves to be rational—such as on issues of economy—that I take to be irrational, such as because infinite growth is irrational when you have finite recourses, me thinks.

Hunger trumps love. Almost always. — frank

Yes, agreed. Still don’t think Trump suffers from hunger, though. Well, and there are the relatively rare occasions of those in want of basic subsistence which nevertheless exhibit far more communal love than most Wall Street Bankers. Won’t reedit the just said, but come to think of it, isn’t it true that that those who are relatively poor give to the homeless and the like proportionally more than those who are rich? (As in, ten dollars for a poor guy is equivalent to some million dollars for the very rich.) I’ve seen rich Christians come near to kicking the homeless in in the street; whereas those who are poor(er)—and, yes, those who are authentic Christians (as in, follow JC’s mores as best they can earnestly)—will give to those in need … and will be called commies by those who don’t.

This fact is all you need to know about Global Warming. — charleton

You mean that whole thing about carbon dioxide being a greenhouse gas? Whose to say? Why, I once heard that there's one scientist somewhere that someone heard about that disagrees. It's all so uncertain. (My compliments to those who don't take me seriously here.)

You mean that whole thing about carbon dioxide being a greenhouse gas? Whose to say? Why, I once heard that there's one scientist somewhere that someone heard about that disagrees. It's all so uncertain. (My compliments to those who don't take me seriously here.) — javra

The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased 0.01-2% in 100 years. The hysterical claims of the green lobby are unable to mobilise physical science to use this fact to explain the Global warming that exists.

Ideas drive human activity? I'm happy to hear you say that. I believe that to an extent it's true. The recent marches for gun control are an example. The young ones involved just don't know that they have no hope of changing things so they go merrily along doing exactly what needs to be done to create change.

I naturally lean more toward trying to understand. That leads me to warn you against trying to make people feel guilty for things they have no control over or that they did to meet basic needs. Look back at the issue of the size of the human population.

I see your point.