postmodernquestions

The Inconsistent Hybrid of Aristotle and Newton Within Nature Ethics

   When the tectonic plates of science shifted from an Aristotelian to a primarily Newtonian paradigm, a powerful chain reaction was irreversibly set into motion. The subsequent ripples of implications are still being felt more than 280 years later, and worked out within philosophy, science and ethics. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, much of the current language employed in discussion of nature conservation ethics contains an inconsistent hybrid of the two respective Aristotelian and Newtonian systems. Next, even a strictly Aristotelian view of ecological ethics is internally inconsistent. Lastly, environmental ethics should be primarily shaped, understood, and articulated from an unabashedly anthropocentric position. 

   One of the most important innovations of Newton was to dispense with the fundamental cause of telos to explain phenomena in the material world. This move radically banished any presuppositions professing to claim the intended or predetermined state or function of natural physical elements. From this position explanatory mechanisms can be postulated, put forth, and tested against reliable recorded data. Thus, the pursuit of legitimate science was born. However still to this day there are some people within the scientific community that attempt to superimpose a teleological vision onto a mechanized understanding of ecology. Dr. James Lovelock put forth the Gaia hypothesis as a way to understand our ecological environment. He defines it as, “a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” (Lovelock 10) The last part of this statement is crucial as it attributes agency to the entire ecological system as a whole. It further asserts that, as a self organizing system, the ecological system has a seemingly altruistic or benevolent propensity towards a preferred state of affairs. This has the unmistakable ring of what Aristotle called eudaimonia. In his book, The Extended Phenotype Dr. Richard Dawkins persuasively points out that this theory requires the implausible belief that, from the most basic of individual to elaborately complex, organisms can act in concert with prodigious foresight and planning (Dawkins). Also contained within the rhetoric of environmental ethics is a position of assumed monolithic integrity or equilibrium within nature as a whole. Dr. Holmes Rolston puts it this way: 

“When humans gain a description of how ecosystems work, Leopold believes that a prescription arises to respect the beauty, integrity, and stability of such systems. That is not all of ethics, only an extension of it. Duties to other humans remain all they have ever been, but ‘the land’ now counts too. Duties to humans (feeding the starving) that conflict with duties to ecosystems (preserving tropical forests) remain a quite unfinished agenda.” (Rolston 182) 

This position, however, is palpably problematic, and therefore dangerous, given that Dr. Slavoj Zizek convincingly points out that nature, far from being static or harmonious, is in reality a series of violent reactions or catastrophes from which homo sapiens are often the beneficiaries. Case in point would be the exploitation and benefit from fossil fuels (Zizek). 

   Even within a purely Aristotelian view, undoubtedly the most disturbing notion of all arising from this so-called deep ecology is that, as Dr. Arne Naess puts it, “All life has intrinsic value, irrespective of its value to humans.” (Harding 51) This statement as an ethic fails to meet any sort of applicability requirement for the several reasons. First, it fails to offer any non-arbitrary criteria to differentiate what state of affairs are preferable, but also any sort of life hierarchy informing those subsequent decisions. For example, if all of life is equally intrinsically valuable, then there is no framework giving a predator any more right to live than its respective prey. Another way to frame it is to draw the analogy between a smaller component of a larger living system, such as a kidney or eye is to a body. In this system no deference is even given to sentient over non-sentient life. Dr. Janna Thompson succinctly put it this way: “How we divide up the world depends upon context and convenience. But surely an environmental ethic which claims to discover intrinsic value in nature shouldn’t depend upon the way we happen to look at things.” (Thompson 147) In short, it dismally fails the litmus test principle of nonvacuous contrast. 

   In light of these blatant contradictions and inconsistencies, nature conservation ethics should be articulated from a clearly anthropocentric position in strong divergence from and opposition to biospheric egalitarianism. This is not a radically irresponsible position of après mois le déluge; but rather is profoundly consistent with an appropriately Darwinian survival of the fittest understanding. Ecologies are dynamic systems constantly in flux with no inherently preferred state containing intrinsic value. They should be undauntedly cultivated toward states with the greatest and most sustainable extrinsic benefits for homo sapiens. This position is more honest and consistent in providing an ethical framework for informing and motivating decisions aimed at ensuring and enriching the continued existence of our own race as homo sapiens. Under this framework, even aesthetic and emotional benefits would be admissible motivators for maintaining or changing the environment in view of their necessarily extrinsic advantages. This position, unlike deep ecology, does not claim to have access to any sort of objective position (void of prejudice) from which to evaluate the inherent value of all of life in its various forms. This position could predictably be derogatorily described as human chauvinism, to which the appropriate response is of course it is. Claiming to have any other set of motivations of an objectively altruistic nature, is not merely blatantly false but palpably dishonest. Furthermore, this position lacks the false dichotomy of viewing humans as somehow distinct from nature, but instead sees them as a deeply integral part fighting for continued survival like any other species or organism. Essentially, the deep ecology movement is best described not as a valid scientific theory, but as an ideology or dogmatic religion. This position brings with it an entire set of assumed and often times unarticulated metaphysical presuppositions. As such it should properly be criticized as beyond the scope of legitimate scientific discourse which concerns itself with empirically verifiable hypothesis. 

   In conclusion, as with any scientific revolution, previously viable positions are often incalcitrant and tend to linger past their relevancy. A teleological cause is no longer needed to explain natural phenomena, and has become a troubling impediment to the continued progress of understanding. The continued illegitimate mixing of the mutually antithetical Newtonian and Aristotelian systems falls short of being consistent or helpful in discussing and discovering a proper method with which to approach the increasingly important subject of nature conservation ethics. The solution is not to regress to a purely teleological ethical framework because it is deeply inconsistent and fails to pass the non-vacuity requirement. Instead, the way forward must be to fully embrace the new paradigm and allow it to structure and inform an unashamedly anthropocentrically motivated framework with which to guide ecological conservation efforts and decisions. 

Works Cited

Holmes, III. Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Taylor, Paul. Respect for Nature. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1999.

Taylor, Astra, et al. Examined Life: Philosophy Is In the Street. Educational ed. [New York, N.Y.]: Distributed by Zeitgeist Films, 2009.

Thompson, Janna. 1990. 'A Refutation of Environmental Ethics', Environmental Ethics 12: 147-160.

Lovelock, James. Gaia. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

Harding, Stephan and Lynn Margulis. Animate Earth. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2006.

The Clash of Justice

 

    With all of the recent buzz lately over the shocking comments of Glenn Beck concerning his view of social justice, I began to think about the very concept of justice itself. It is one of those words where we all think we know what it means until we have to begin to explain it. Part of the problem for me here is simply the sheer scope that the word justice necessarily entails. People have used this word in countless ways to imply an infinite number of meanings. However, I would like to take it all the way back to the big three of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and see what, if anything, we can learn. In the Republic, Plato essentially equates the practice of justice as a craft to be practiced like any other. He points out that every craft is performed to the benefit of its subjects. So, when a doctor performs medicine, she is doing it not to her own benefit but rather to her patient's benefit. When a ruler rules, she is only a ruler insofar as she benefits her subjects. When a teacher teaches, he is doing it for the benefit of his students. So, when a judge practices justice, he is supposed to be increasing justice and thereby benefiting those who are brought before him. Therefore it is not the function of a judge to harm anyone but rather, by performing the function of x, increase the level of x. If in fact that means ordering the offender to pay punitive damages, this then is meant to accomplish two things simultaneously. In the case of the defendant, he is being prescribed a medicine of sorts for the state of his soul. The plaintiff, on the other hand, is being given back what was unrightfully taken, or some substitute in order to return to some semblance of previous order and balance. The point being that this is the opposite of vengeance whereby the goal is to harm by way of violence. 

    In the dialogue of Gorgias, the wily Socrates beautifully argues that it is indeed better to suffer injustice rather than to commit it. The beauty of the argument is that it indeed scales. Therfore this applies to the smallest of transgressions of injustice as well as to a brutal tyrant committing unspeakable heinous acts and everything else in between. This sentiment has indeed been echoed in all of our great religious sages such as Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and many others. 

    However, I want to take a step back and look at societal justice as a whole. Aristotle contended that the optimal political arrangement is where the conditions are provided so as to ensure the people are able to have fulfilling flourishing complete lives. This is a much more robust view of the way in which we as individuals participate in justice in our everyday lives. However, it, like every other, encounters problems in the sense that it has the tendency to create a meta layer of justice that is at least one degree removed from the local of people’s actual immediate experience. However, the screaming rhetoric from today’s conservative faction is entirely predicated on an anemic understanding of justice in the sense that it is reduced to only repressing that which they see as an unredeemable inherently savage human nature. This move purposefully restricts the scope of justice to that of overtly legally criminal acts, completely divorced from the larger socio-economic context in which they were committed. This then allows them to avoid the larger context in which societal injustices have been perpetrated by those in power. This is the classic separation between subjective and objective violence. This move, while highly expedient to their purposes, is indeed deeply disingenuous and protects the societal objective violence on which their privileged positions are entirely predicated.  

    Furthermore, on the micro level it is even more violently reductionistic. This move takes all of human complexity and reduces it to a particular negative moral phenomena. It defines humanity through the single dominant lens of the desire to have power over and against all others. This view of power is predicated on the platonic view of ontological power; whereby things are perfect insofar as they can affect others, and imperfect insofar as they can be affected by others. This is a deeply alienating move because it precludes the possibility of mutual relatedness. This lens does not allow the posture of being actively open to being affected by the world and people around us. This denies the fact that we indeed create our very identity out of what we have taken in. Most profoundly of all: it does not allow the possibility of influencing the world around us by first being deeply affected and formed by it. 

    Lastly, I will conclude by arguing that any conception of justice, therefore, must contain within it the idea of returning us to our full humanity as it were. It must view all of life as indelibly sacred, worthy of being protected and served in all of its overwhelming, beautiful, irreducible, infinite, and  complexity; full of faith, hope and love. It must recognize the alterity of the other as anything but an imperial project but, rather, one to be experienced and mutually engaged! As Richard Rohr would say, "life is not about you. You are to be about life!"

What are Ethics?

 

    I think it is interesting that so often when responding to the possibility of there being an ultimate absence of some sort of absolute moral system, whether that be religious or legal, the initial reaction tends so often to be one of despair in the face of vacuum. Whereas, I tend to have proportionately the inverse reply, which is one of hope of the possibility of actual ethical tension. The idea that I would like to explore is whether or not religious and legal systems actually act in such a way in which both society and the individual abdicate living ethically in consideration of the other. 

    One of the classical philosophical questions has been; how do you define justice. Or rather what makes something just or unjust? What defining quality unites all things just and inversely its opposite: injustice? Many philosophers over the centuries have debated this and have yet to come to a consensus. However, one thing indeed has been, I think, made clear; namely that something cannot be just merely by virtue of being legal. There exists a parallel relationship between the religious and the ethical. This is an incredibly important delineation due to the fact that the fallacious conflation of these two are so common. This distinction was beautifully explored by Soren Kierkegaard in his seminal work Fear and Trembling. Regardless however, these systems, legal and religious, in the minds of the masses are all that constitutes living ethically in so far as their mandates are strictly adhered to. 

    In the presence of such systems as absolutes, ethics are reduced to precisely following the letter of religious or legal code. This requires the banishment of living within the tension between what is legal and ethical or what is religiously pious and ethical. Inversely, in the absence of these systems, as absolutes, in the presence of the alterity of the other we are forced into the dialectical tension of how to relate ethically. There are undeniably sacrifices that accompany this symbolic move; namely the feeling of having a peaceful conscience void of existential turmoil. 

    This move in many ways signifies the grasping release of holding what is ethics and in turn opting for always pursuing what is ethical. This means that we no longer know but are on the path to knowing. Furthermore, the most unethical thing to be done is to get off of the path. 

Answers are Boring

    Answers, as final destinations, are boring and incredibly unhelpful. I would even go so far as to say that they are unequivocally dangerous. Oh I know the illusory security is seductive. It comes down to a choice really. The question we must all engage; is do I choose to cling to my very narrow understanding or do I courageously begin to free myself from the chains of my own severely limited understanding? Do I refuse to collapse all exterior meaning in the other in terms of myself? Do I choose to value wonderment, awe, amazement, humility and bewilderment? Do I view life as something to be mastered or as a journey to be experienced?
    Much of this, I would suggest, can be explained in terms of narrative theory. We in the west have become increasingly accustomed to clean tidy resolutions in our stories that Hollywood has so masterfully provided. There are significant exceptions such as the TV shows “The Wire” and “The Sopranos”. However these are unmistakably not the norm. Dr. Dan Allender said it well when he said:

“In fact, if a story or life can be summarized as a moral, then it has lost its intrigue.”
Dr. Dan Allender pg. 96 of “To Be Told” 

This requires an intense commitment to forsake the security blanket of certainty and valiantly embrace living within the tension of unresolved story. Great literature always refuses to be reduced to a set of bullet points. Extraordinary literature cannot be reduced for it is always more than words can capture. The next is one of my favorite quotes.

“"[Mystery] must be entered into… For we do not solve mysteries; we enter into them. The deeper we enter into them, the more illumination we get.... a problem is solved, it is over and done with. We go on to other problems… But a mystery, once recognized, is something we are never finished with. It is never exhausted. Instead, we return to it again and it unfolds new levels to us… We live in a universe permeated by a divine reality whose hem we touch when we encounter mysteries. (Diogenes Allen)"

    In short I am speaking what, I think, we all already know instinctively to be true. Answers to the deepest questions of life are only as useful as the questions they engender. If an answer beckons and pulls you further into mystery, then it contains within it the potential to experience a deeper level of reality. It is like a lover inviting you to, with wonder and awe, explore the infinite universe of the other.

East of Eden

    Ancient wisdom cries out that we are all profoundly east of Eden. This knowledge seems to be woven into the very marrow our senses. We all somehow know that, on some level,  things are not the way they should be. Not only is the world broken but so am I. There seems to be two extreme positions on this. On the one hand many people operate under the illusion that they are unique in their confusion, pains, hurts, losses and angst. These people are confused as to how everyone else seemingly has life all figured out. On the other side of the coin there are those that have come to the seductive conclusion that the problem is out there. That somehow if the world would just think and see things the way they do it would all be better. These individuals are convinced that the problem is in the other. In some cases these two paradigms are inconceivably simultaneously present in the same person. Both of these views are incredibly misguided and dangerous but all too common. They are both seductive paradigms for various reasons and their sway is difficult to break. These are lessons that are hard to learn and internalize. I have found that I need constant reminding. Otherwise it is all too easy to slip back into one or both of these paradigms.
    Many people claim to want community but I seriously doubt their understanding of what they are asking for. True community is messy, time consuming, frustratingly impractical and at at times painful. More to the point I need it like I need oxygen. We all need to feel deeply connected to each other. We have all been hurt in some way and carry scars. Some hide them better than others; but they still hide. We yearn to be accepted and loved by the other. But alas here is the snag; this requires being vulnerable to more pain, hurt and the possibility of rejection. It takes madness to step out of the known and into the amorphous unknown of the sacred other. Samir Selmanovic said it well in his new book when he said:

“If I cannot in some way surrender to the unknown, I cannot love, and there is no greater bondage than the inability to love.”

page 112 of It’s Really All About God Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian.

    We can, and many have, speculate endlessly as to how we have, as a culture, become increasingly isolated from each other. Presumably there are many factors that have contributed in varying degrees. Those are important questions worth exploring. However the fact remains; we all in some way sense that things are not the way they are supposed to be. Collectively we all feel the pain, hurt, scars, angst, confusion and deep sorrows that seem to permeate the whole of human experience. Once again I must confess that I lack adequate answers. I confess that I along with the rest of humanity am broken. However I am not afforded the luxury of waiting until all of the evidence and answers come rolling in to tell me how the story ends. Life will not wait and continues to march on. So I choose to step out into the uncertainty and learn how to embrace the other. I am slowly learning how to be connected to the other. I am learning to accept the radical nature of our collective interdependency. I am learning how to live and love well. I am trying to find the way back to Eden.