UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY. Rethinking Environment: Frank Joseph Jankunis A THESIS DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY

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1 UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Rethinking Environment: The Ethics of a Constructionist View of Our Relation to Nature by Frank Joseph Jankunis A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY CALGARY, ALBERTA April, 2016 Frank Joseph Jankunis 2016

2 Abstract In this thesis I argue that the constructionist theory of the relation between organism and environment has several important implications for ethics. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for later chapters by elucidating the concepts and terms used in later discussions and providing the motivation for the project. In Chapter 2 I introduce the constructionist theory of the relation between organism and environment. In Chapter 3 I argue that the constructionist theory can be used to criticize exemplars of individualism and holism in ethics and to criticize the idea that individualism and holism are incompatible. In Chapter 4 I turn to climate change and geoengineering, arguing that a class of objection to geoengineering cannot be sustained in light of the theory of the constructed niche. In Chapter 5 I argue that the constructionist theory provides reason to recognize moral obligations to environments, providing a convincing answer to a central theoretical problem in environmental ethics. ii

3 Acknowledgements The goodwill and support of so many has been an integral part of finishing this project. I would like single out the love, support, and encouragement of my wife, Val Jankunis, my daughters, Julianna, Lily, Madelyn, and my parents, Frank, and Marion Jankunis. I would also like to single out for acknowledgement my thesis supervisor, Allen Habib, who was just the right man for the job. My fellow students and colleagues over the years each deserve special recognition for their own unique reasons. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary, and the university as a whole, for its financial and intellectual support over the years. iii

4 Table of Contents Chapter 1: The Project... 1 Anthropocentrism, Indirect Moral Obligations, and Direct Moral Obligations... 4 The Motivation for the Project Chapter 2: Constructionism in Biology Evolution and Constructionism Development and Constructionism Constructionism as a Positive View Chapter 3: Constructionism, Individualism, and Holism The Land Ethic Animal Liberation The Compatibility of Individualism and Holism Chapter 4: Constructionism, Climate Change, and Geoengineering Introduction to Climate Change Conventional Responses to Climate Change The Argument from the Lesser Evil Chapter 5: Constructionism and Non-human Moral Status Reconsidered Towards the Ethical Implications Morality, Environment Construction, and Organism Construction Taking a Relational Environmental Ethics Seriously References iv

5 Chapter 1: The Project The idea that humans might have moral obligations to the non-human world is a relatively recent development in the history of moral philosophy. There is, of course, a sense in which moral obligations to non-humans are neither controversial nor philosophically revolutionary. This is the sense in which we have indirect moral obligations to non-humans, or obligations involving non-humans or other things in the non-human world. Amongst ethicists it has been understood for a long time that people have moral obligations not to tie up each other s dogs and moral obligations not to drop radioactive waste on each other s lawns. What s new and controversial (at least against the history of moral philosophy) is the idea that I have a moral obligation to your dog or to the land to not do these things. This is the sense in which we might have direct moral obligations, or obligations to non-humans. Ethicists have taken two general strategies in advancing philosophical arguments for direct moral obligations to the non-human world. On the one hand, individualists argue direct moral obligations to certain non-human individuals, like this tree or that bunny. Holists, on the other hand, argue direct moral obligations to certain collections or systems, like a species, ecosystem, or the environment. There are, then, two main and distinct lines of argument offered by those who defend direct moral obligations to the non-human world. These two lines of argument correspond to two ways of parsing the nonhuman world. By parsing the non-human world I do not mean taking a stand on what exists and what does not exist; rather, I mean categorizing whatever does exist in the non-human world. Individualists parse the non-human world into non-human 1

6 individuals. Holists, on the other hand, parse the non-human world into collections or natural systems. These are two distinct ways of categorizing one thing, the nonhuman world. When I use the phrase non-human world in the following I should be taken to mean that which the individualist and the holist categorize differently for their own purposes. Parsing up the non-human world in one or the other of these two ways can be a good idea for some purposes. For example, if we want to do an environmental assessment of an area designated for a future oil well, we might want to conduct a population survey to determine what kind of species are in the area. On this occasion, we re not so much concerned with whether this or that organism frequents the area, but rather with whether this or that species frequents the area (and whether it is present in other areas as well). On some other occasion, like in cases of wildlife management, we might be worried about whether some particular grizzly bear is in the area rather than whether there are grizzly bears (the species) in the area. However, in this thesis I will argue that parsing up the non-human world into individuals on the one hand and collections of individuals on the other, and the resulting pursuit of two dual (and, we will see, duelling) lines of argument for direct moral obligations to non-human world, is a mistake. It is not a mistake because there are no purposes to which this way of parsing up the world can be profitably put. It is not a mistake because it doesn t carve nature at the joints, whatever that means. Rather, I think it is a mistake given the purposes of investigating the ethics of the non-human world. It is a mistake because it obscures the relation of mutual and 2

7 ongoing construction between individual organisms and their environments. The relation of mutual and ongoing construction is, I will try to show, morally significant. Thus both strategies for investigating our moral obligations to the non-human world obscure something that is morally significant the individualist obscures the relation by parsing the non-human world into individual non-human things, the holist obscures the relation by parsing the non-human world into collections or systems. The evidence I will review for the claim that the relation between organism and environment is one of mutual and ongoing construction comes from biology. Reviewing this evidence will be the focus on Chapter 2. I will focus primarily on the work of biologist Richard Lewontin. Lewontin argues a view of evolution by natural selection we will call constructionism. The main claim of constructionism is that organism and environment co-evolve in evolution by natural selection. Lewontin argues, we will see, that the co-evolution of organism and environment has important implications for biological theory. It also, I allege in this thesis, has implications for theoretical and practical issues in the ethics of the non-human world. In the balance of this chapter I will set the stage for a discussion of these implications by clarifying some of the terminology used in the discussion of the ethics of the non-human world; explaining why I think the constructionist view has ethical implications; and by briefly considering an objection to this project. 3

8 Anthropocentrism, Indirect Moral Obligations, and Direct Moral Obligations In the present section I wish to get clearer about how the central concepts of direct and indirect moral obligation relate to other central concepts in the ethics of the non-human world, including anthropocentrism, nonanthropocentrism, moral standing, moral status, intrinsic value, and inherent value. Sometimes some of or even all of these terms are treated as equivalents. While this can be appropriate for some purposes, I think it clouds distinctions worth making in the interests of clarity for later discussion. Consider first anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism. It has at times been thought that the dispute over whether we do or do not have direct moral obligations to the non-human world is the dispute over whether we should be anthropocentrists or nonanthropocentrists. Let us consider the issue. The basic definition of anthropocentrism is that all ethics is human-centered (Light & Rolston, 2003, p. 8; Palmer, 2003, p. 18). Nonanthropocentrism, then, is the denial of anthropocentrism; nonanthropocentrism maintains that it is not the case that all ethics is human-centered. Whether the dispute between anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism is the same as the dispute over whether we have direct moral obligations to the nonhuman world is a matter of how we interpret the human-centeredness of all ethics. There are, of course, a number of senses in which all ethics could be said to be human-centered. Some, but not all, of these interpretations take the humancenteredness of ethics to be a matter of direct moral obligation. For example, Holmes Rolston III describes the anthropocentric history of Western philosophy and 4

9 theology as one where People were all that counted in ethics (Rolston, 2012, p. 2). If we interpret the sense of counted here in terms of direct moral obligations, as we could, then anthropocentrism for Rolston III is the view that all and only direct moral obligations are to human persons. Nonanthropocentrism, in contrast, is the denial of that claim. For others, however, anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism are interpreted in alternative terms. For example, Tim Hayward writes that, anthropocentrism is the mistake of giving exclusive or arbitrarily preferential consideration to human interests as opposed to the interests of other beings (Hayward, 1997, p. 51). 1 On Hayward s proposal, we might have direct moral obligations to non-humans, or we might not it s just that all ethics is humancentered in the sense that whatever direct moral obligations we have to the nonhuman world are less preferentially considerable. For a second example, we might, with Katie McShane, interpret anthropocentrism as a claim about value rather than obligation. Anthropocentrism for McShane is the view that the nonhuman world has value only because, and insofar as, it directly or indirectly serves human interests (McShane, 2007, p. 170). It seems, then, as though there are at least two interpretations of anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism (as the denial of anthropocentrism) that don t connect up with any particular view of whether we have direct moral obligations to the non-human world. For these views, at least, the dispute over 1 This definition is noteworthy since anthropocentrism is defined as a mistake, thereby rendering circular any argument that anthropocentrism is false. 2 I will fluctuate between these two terms in both my exposition of others 5

10 anthropocentrism or nonanthropocentrism is not the same as the dispute over direct moral obligations to non-human world. This is an important point, for in Chapter 5 we shall see how playing fast and loose with terms like anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism can lead to a mistake. This brings us to the relation between direct and indirect moral obligations to the non-human world and moral standing and moral status. I take moral standing and moral status to be equivalents and will refer to them interchangeably. 2 The relation between moral standing and direct moral obligation is much more clear than the relation between direct moral obligation and anthropocentrism. Let us now spell it out. Moral standing has been characterized in a number of different ways in the literature. The basic idea of moral standing is to matter from a moral point of view, to be something whose needs, interests, or well-being must be given weight in our deliberations (Warren, 2000, p. 3). Some candidates for moral standing include: embryos, foetuses, adult humans, adult so-called higher animals, adolescent so-called lower animals, species, ecosystems, land, the environment, and environments. 3 2 I will fluctuate between these two terms in both my exposition of others arguments and the course of making my own arguments. 3 This list highlights the fact that disputes over precisely what and who has moral standing are not the exclusive province of ethicists working on the non-human world. Bioethicists concerned with the ethics of, for example, abortion or euthanasia also rely on theories of moral standing. This explains why influential discussions of moral standing like those of Peter Singer (Singer, 2011) and Mary Anne Warren (Warren, 2000) include applications of their respective accounts of moral standing to issues in bioethics as well as environmental and animal ethics. 6

11 In addition to its varied applications, moral standing has a noteworthy history. The terms moral standing and moral status are imported to ethics from legal discourse (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013, p. 62). An early example of this in environmental ethics is Christopher Stone s oft-anthologized essay Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Stone, 1972). In arguing his case for giving legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers, and other so called natural objects in the environment indeed, to the natural environment as a whole, Stone makes some comments on legal standing that are germane to our purposes here (ibid., p. 456). According to Stone, a necessary condition of these things being the holders of legal rights is that they have standing in the legal system. Stone describes a polluted stream s lack of standing as follows: So far as the common law is concerned, there is in general no way to challenge the polluter s actions save at the behest of a lower riparian another human being able to show an invasion of his rights (ibid., p. 459). There is a connection between moral standing and direct moral obligation revealed by the discussion of things like legal standing for streams. The stream to which Stone refers does not have legal standing, so it can at best be owed indirect legal obligations, whereas the people around the stream do (let us assume) have legal standing, so can be owed direct legal obligations. In summary, something has legal standing if and only if it can be owed direct legal obligations. The same logic applies when it comes to moral standing and moral obligations. Something has moral standing if and only if it can be owed direct moral obligations. Things that fail to have moral standing can at best be owed indirect moral obligations. 7

12 The analogy between moral standing and legal standing should be welcome news for those ethicists who wish to assert direct moral obligations to the nonhuman world, for recent developments in the legal realm suggest that Stone s proposal for attributing legal standing to non-humans is not so far-fetched after all. Consider recent developments in New Zealand involving the legal status of the Whanganui River. In light of an agreement between the iwi living along the river and the Crown in Parliament the river has recently been given legal status (Shuttleworth, 2012). A panel composed of iwi serves as the legal representative for the river itself in discussions over future land development and other legal matters. So in the example of New Zealand we find at least one legal system that has evolved to grant legal standing to a natural thing. Similar developments are both possible and compelling in the case of moral status. For example, in Chapter 3 we will review Peter Singer s case for the moral standing of animals. This case is, I think, compelling. Against a hedonistic utilitarian moral theory, and also a preference utilitarian moral theory, as we will see, Singer provides good reason to think that many non-human animals have moral standing. The content of the claim that non-human animals have moral standing is, on my analysis, that non-human animals with moral standing are owed at least some direct moral obligations. For the purposes of this thesis it is important to notice the role of an ethical theory in advancing the case for the moral standing of the non-human world. Whether some non-human or the non-human world will qualify for moral status will vary according to the ethical theory against which the moral standing of non- 8

13 humans or the non-human world is being argued. Thus, for example, a thing s sentience might be good evidence for its moral standing if it is evaluated against a hedonistic utilitarian ethical theory, but not so good evidence when evaluated against a deontic ethical theory. On the other hand, an argument for a thing s inherent value might be good evidence for its moral standing against a deontic ethical theory, but be completely irrelevant when judged against a hedonistic utilitarian theory, which does not place significance on inherent value. Recognizing that moral standing is theory-laden in the sense that what considerations count as good evidence for standing helps to distinguish moral standing, and hence direct moral obligation, from inherent or intrinsic value. The property of being of inherent value and the property of being of intrinsic value is not plausibly theory-laden. This follows from the meaning of inherent and intrinsic. What doesn t follow, of course, is the moral significance of inherent value or intrinsic value. That is, even if we can determine that some non-human or the nonhuman world is of inherent or intrinsic value we cannot draw any conclusions ipso facto about its moral status. Like what is of legal status varies from legal system to legal system, so what is of moral standing varies from ethical theory to ethical theory. In summary of this section, the following picture has to this point been outlined. Something has moral standing if and only if it is a thing to which we owe at least some direct moral obligation or obligations. Moral standing is theory-relative in the sense that just what sorts of things have it in the world is relative to the criterion or criteria for moral standing operative in that ethical theory. Intrinsic or 9

14 inherent value may be necessary and sufficient for moral standing, only one of these, or neither of them. Whichever of these is the case depends on the specific ethical theory in use. There are, then, two strategies for arguing non-human moral standing where before none was recognized or acknowledged. The first is to carefully examine whether existing ethical theories support the claim that some non-human individuals or collections of individuals have moral standing. This would involve carefully tracing out the implications of accounts of moral status belonging to existing ethical theories. It may also involve re-evaluating the standing of the nonhuman individuals or non-human collections or systems in light of new or emerging information about them. The other, more ambitious, strategy is to offer a new or substantively revised ethical theory that has a new or nearly new account of moral status. In environmental ethics, Richard Sylvan 4 famously argues that a substantive reformulation of ethical theory is required to make sense of everyday moral judgments such as the judgment that cows should not be turned loose on steep slopes prone to erosion (Routley, 1973; Routley & Routley, 1980). Sylvan sees all Western ethics as subscribing to what he calls the principle of human chauvinism. Sylvan formulates this principle as follows: one should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he does not harm others and (2) that he is not likely to harm himself irreparably (Routley, 1973, p. 207). 4 At the time Sylvan used the last name Routley. 10

15 Sylvan challenges the principle of human chauvinism by presenting a thought experiment I will call the Last Human Scenario. In the Last Human Scenario the last human goes about painlessly destroying the living and non-living world around him. Self-harm can be ruled out and there is by design no chance of harming other humans. Nevertheless, there seems to be something wrong with his behaviour. As Sylvan puts it, one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly (Routley, 1973). If this is the case, then we have with the last man scenario a counterexample to the principle of basic human chauvinism, necessitating a new ethics or substantive revision to existing ethical theory. The key premise in the counterexample is obviously that the last human acts badly or wrongly. For his purposes, i.e. the purposes of figuring out whether an environmental ethic would be a new ethic or not, Sylvan simply assumes that this is the case. His presentation suggests that he relies on its intuitive plausibility in order to make his point. Many people who have read and responded to the last human scenario have shared this intuition. Yet others question it. For example, in comment on the Last Human Scenario James Maclaurin and Kim Sterelny write, Asking people to report their intuitions about events that would happen after their death as the last person in existence is rather like asking people s intuitions about what it would feel like to be made of cheese (Maclaurin & Sterelny, 2008, p. 151). As I read them on this point, Maclaurin and Sterelny are pointing out that the Last Human Scenario is too divorced from ordinary experience for intuitions about it to be reliable evidence for anything. 11

16 Unfortunately, Maclaurin and Sterelny do not report whether they find other similar scenarios as intuitively unclear. It is possible to offer more familiar variants that seem to have the same logic. For example, Sylvan himself mentions a scenario that is essentially similar to the Last Human Scenario, but which does not involve only a single living human. In the Last People Scenario things are exactly similar to the Last Human Scenario except that it is a group of doomed people destroying every living thing instead of a sole actor. Perhaps intuitions could be more reliable in this scenario because it is less strange. Nevertheless, it seems as though we cannot go on relying on intuitions forever if we want to have good evidence that the last human acts wrongly. It is hard to overestimate the significance of the Last Human Scenario to contemporary environmental ethics. Andrew Light argues that Sylvan s 1973 paper, along with other work challenging the human-centered nature of prevailing ethics such as that by Arne Naess (Naess, 1973), set the research agenda for the discipline as finding a way to justify the view that nature has value in and of itself that should be respected by humans (Light, 2012). There are signs that this hegemony is waning, and that a more pragmatic focus on environmental policy (such as that adopted by Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Eric Katz, and others) is emerging in its place (Katz, 2014). Yet in the intervening 40 or so years there have been many attempts to make good on the idea that there is more than intuition supporting the premise that the last human acts wrongly in the Sylvan s original thought experiment. 12

17 Those working on the ethics of the non-human world have both followed Sylvan in thinking we need a new environmental ethic and diverged from him in thinking that we simply need to understand the implications of existing ethics in a more thoroughgoing way. For an example of the latter strategy, consider Peter Singer s arguments for the moral standing of non-human animals. In Animal Liberation Singer relies on classical utilitarianism in arguing that animals have moral standing (Singer, 1990). There are also, though, individualist accounts that pursue the first strategy rather than the second. For example, Tom Regan argues the novel criterion of being a subject-of-a-life 5 as necessary and sufficient for moral standing (Regan, 2004). Other examples of individualist accounts pursuing the first strategy include the pluralist account of Mary Anne Warren, which forwards various characteristics that, when in certain combinations, are the sufficient for moral standing, whereas no particular characteristic or property is necessary (Warren, 2000). Holist accounts, too, such as those of Aldo Leopold (Leopold, 1986), J. Baird Callicott (Callicott, 1989), and Holmes Rolston III (Rolston, 1988), have followed Routley in arguing a new ethical theory or a substantial revision of old ethical theory. In this thesis I won t directly weigh in on the necessary and sufficient conditions of moral standing. As an aside, I can t help but mention that I am 5 [I]ndividuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else s interests (Regan, 2004, p. 243). 13

18 convinced that on many traditionally accepted ethical theories, and ethical theories similar or very similar to those that are traditionally accepted, many non-human individuals are of moral standing. It is to my mind a serious embarrassment to foregoing philosophy that the implications of existing ethical theories on the issue of non-human moral status were not generally recognized earlier. But as I said just now I won t try to examine the issue in this thesis. I will not be proposing a theory of direct moral obligation, of moral standing. Rather, my focus is on the relation between the environment and the individuals that do have direct moral standing, whatever or whomever they are. My emphasis is on what philosophers have missed in worrying about what has moral standing. I think both individualists and holists have underappreciated or de-emphasized the moral significance of the relation between organism and environment. The Motivation for the Project As I mentioned above, one of the main goals of this project is to criticize existing accounts of moral status for focusing on individual-independent environments or environment-independent individuals in the course of investigation what are our moral obligations to the non-human world. I begin my argument in what might be thought to be an unlikely place: with a discussion in Chapter 2 of the view of the relation between organism and environment developed and defended by Lewontin and other biologists working on things like contemporary understandings of the theory of evolution, ecology, and organismic development. In other words, these biologists are not working on the issue of moral status. So this might naturally be thought a curious place to start. In the present 14

19 section, I wish to address just why it is that I am using the work of biologists to further our understanding of the ethics of the non-human world. In one of the first collections of papers by Western analytic philosophers offering philosophical analysis of environmental moral issues, Philosophy & Environmental Crisis (Blackstone, 1974), Walter O Briant contrasted two views of man s relation to nature in Western thought: man apart from nature and man a part of nature (O Briant, 1974). On the former view, we are set apart from nature insofar as we are the only rationally ensouled individuals. On the latter view, we are a part of nature insofar as we do not differ in kind from non-human animals we find around us. O Briant implicates a failure to confront this dichotomy as to blame for the crisis of the environment. He sees the man apart from nature view as licensing all kinds of licentious behaviour, or as he describes it, the raping and pillaging [of] this earthly abode, while the man a part of nature view again and again proclaimed that whatever affected any aspect of nature would ultimately have its effect upon us (O Briant, 1974, p. 86). As O Briant recognizes, from the perspective of the biological scientist the dichotomy he develops is a non-starter. We are, of course, organisms subject to evolution, physics, and all of the rest of what might be called the laws of nature. It is not controversial that we are from the perspective of the biological scientist a part of nature in O Briant s terms. There is no ghost in the machine. Traits of all organisms, including members of our species, are evolved. Despite this broad agreement over the fact that humans are a part of nature in O Briant s sense, when we get down to the details of that relation there is an 15

20 important dispute between biologists. On the one hand, following Darwin, some biologists conceive of the environment as related to an individual organism as a prospective solution is related to a problem or a prospective key is related to a lock. Yet other biologists, such as Lewontin, believe that this idea of the relation between organism and environment should be supplanted by a contrary account. These biologists think that individual organisms are related to their environments by way of the mutual and ongoing construction between them. There are ontic, epstemic, and most importantly, causal aspects to this relation. Organism and environment are ontically related in that there is no environment without an organism and no organism without an environment; epistemically related in that we identify and distinguish environments by reference to the life activities of individual organisms; and, finally, causally related in that organisms partly construct their environments and environments partly construct the organisms for whom they are environments. On account of the causal aspect of this relation, which is the aspect of the relation between organism and environment on which I will especially focus in this thesis, a change in organism feeds back into a change in environment, which subsequently feeds back into a change in organism, and so on. This may be fairly called a dialectic understanding of the relation between organism and environment, for the similarity of the causal processes with the Platonic style of inquiry. We will review the respects in which the relation between organism and environment differs from the Darwinian theory of that relation more fully in the next chapter. For now, I mention the two sides of this dispute between biologists over the specific relation between organism and environment to identify the 16

21 motivation for this thesis. In the spirit of O Briant s diagnosis of the crisis of the environment, the motivation for the leading idea of this thesis is that getting clearer about precisely what is our relation to the world around us, including the nonhuman world, can provide some insight into issues of environmental concern. After describing the constructionist theory of the relation between individual organism and environment in Chapter 2, I will devote the remainder of the chapters of this thesis to spelling out some of the insight to issues in the ethics that a turn to a constructionist theory of that relation can provide. I think that recognizing individuals and environments are engaged in mutual and ongoing construction of one another can push the ball forward on a number of specific issues that exist amongst ethicists concerned with the ethics of the non-human world. In Chapter 3 I turn the focus to individualism and holism. As mentioned above, individualists argue direct moral obligations to certain non-human individuals, while holists argue direct moral obligations to certain collections of non-humans or non-human systems. I elaborate what I take to be exemplar accounts from each side of the individualist/holist divide. On the individualist side, I elaborate (one of) Peter Singer s individualist accounts of non-human moral status; on the holist side, I elaborate Aldo Leopold s land ethic. I then take up the issue of the incompatibility between individualism and holism in environmental ethics. I first argue that the alleged incompatibility of individualism and holism in environmental ethics is misunderstood to be much more significant and unique than it actually is. I then implicate the way that individualists and holists parse nature up in raising the issue of the incompatibility of individualism and holism in the first 17

22 place. I argue that constructionism shows us a way out of this alleged problem by turning our attention to the respects in which organisms and environments are related. The division between organism and environment on which the problem is premised cannot be sustained on a constructionist theory of the relation between the two. In Chapter 4 I turn to consider the specific environmental issue of climate change. Climate change poses, of course, great threat to the existence and flourishing of humans and non-humans alike because of the impacts of things like rising sea levels, the increased prevalence of extreme weather events, hotter days and colder nights, and changing precipitation patterns. Responding to climate change means mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to climate change, and/or intentionally changing the climate using technology on a planetary scale. This last idea is called geoengineering. I divide the substantial moral opposition to geoengineering into intrinsic and extrinsic complaints. Intrinsic complaints about geoengineering seek to show that there is something inherently wrong with or vicious about geoengineering. Extrinsic complaints seek to show that there are consequence-based reasons to reject geoengineering approaches to climate change. I argue that intrinsic complaints about geoengineering are a relic of the a preconstructionist account of our relation to the environment. That is, I argue that geoengineering should not be abandoned on the grounds that it is something inherently wrong or vicious. It may, after all, not be ideal from a consequence-based point of view, but, since environmental construction is a basic fact of our relation to 18

23 the world around us, the pursuit of it should not be abandoned on the basis of intrinsic objections. Finally, in Chapter 5 I return to more general issues of moral standing. I begin by taking up a recent criticism of the idea that a turn to constructionism can push forward our understanding of important issues in the ethics of the non-human world. I then go on to identify reasons to think that the relation between individual organisms and their environments gives us indirect duties to the environments of those things that are of direct moral standing. I distinguish between constructing an environment and constructing an environment well, and comment on what a constructionist account can and cannot tell us about the ethics of the non-human world. It is not the case that we need to turn our attention in environmental ethics from nature to malls and other facilities in the so-called built environment, as Steven Vogel has recently argued (Vogel, 2015). Rather, all environments are constructed to some extent or another be these environments urban or rural, wild or civilized for all environments are partly constructed by the individual for whom they are environments. I conclude Chapter 5 with a message of hope; that our environments are partially under our control always and everywhere is a good thing, because it allows us some measure of control and design so as to minimize harm and maximize flourishing for humans and non-humans of direct moral standing alike. Before setting off on a discussion of constructionism, however, it is necessary to address two potential objections to this analysis. It might be thought that there are two different senses of the word environment on the table that are being 19

24 substituted illicitly. One might object, for example, that although those concerned with ethical treatment of the non-human world make moral claims about the environment, the sense of environment invoked is not the same as the sense of environment the biologist invokes. Thus there is the risk of committing the fallacy of equivocation in applying the constructionist argument about environment to the ethicists arguments about environment. I agree that the environment for the biologist is not the same thing as the environment for the ethicist. However I disagree that I am bound to equivocate in applying the constructionist theory of the relation between organism and environment to issues in ethics. The worry would have purchase if the biologist s account of the relation between organism and environment is one he assumes for his particular purposes and only for those purposes. However, the biologist offering a constructionist account of the relation between organism and environment is not, we will see, offering a model or device only for thinking about evolution and development. Rather, the biologist seeks to capture the ways in which organisms and environments are actually related. This makes the conclusions to which the biologist arrives on the relation between organism and environment applicable beyond the boundaries of theories of evolution and development. In conclusion, as I hope is clear by now, constructionism s understanding of the relation between organism and environment is a drastically different way of understanding that relation than is usually operative in the ethics of the non-human world. Instead of the basic category of interest being the environment or this or that section of the environment, the constructionist sees the environments of this or that 20

25 organism. When we look at a forest, a constructionist doesn t see one environment but many, defined and understood not in isolation from the organisms for whom they are environments but in relation to them. We see not some abstract whole with perhaps intricate connections between its parts, but a series of mutually constructive enterprises undertaken by individual organisms and the things around them. We see the forest not as a forest at all, but as a series of overlapping environments assembled and organized by living things. We see not one environment but many environments, as many environments as there are organisms present. I began this chapter by connecting up existing ways our direct moral obligations to the non-human world to existing ways of parsing up the world around us. The goal of this project is to get clearer on the ways in which calling on a biologically defensible account understanding of the relation between organism and environment can help us to get clear on issues in ethics. With that in mind, I turn now to explaining just what is the constructionist account of the relation between organism and environment and what evidence can be provided for it. 21

26 Chapter 2: Constructionism in Biology Now that I ve said the constructionist concept of the relation between organism and environment is what I m going to use to push our understanding of our moral obligations to the non-human world forward, I need to say something about just what is the constructionist view and just what arguments can be made for it. The constructionist account of the relation between organism and environment is argued by Lewontin and others as an alternative to antecedent accounts of the relation between organism and environment in evolutionary and developmental biology. I begin my exposition with the evolutionary side of the constructionist account. I ll then transition to the developmental side of the account. To conclude I ll summarize the ontic, epistemic, and causal aspects of the constructionist relation between organism and environment that will serve as the basis for the discussions of the ethics of the non-human world in the remaining chapters. Evolution and Constructionism In evolutionary biology the account of the relation between organism and environment that constructionist criticizes belongs to Darwinian and neo- Darwinian theories of evolution by natural selection. These theories reflect a view of the relation on which there is an ontic, epistemic, and causal separation between organism and environment in evolution by natural selection. On the contrary, maintains Lewontin, there is reason to reject each of these aspects of Darwinian and neo-darwinian accounts. 22

27 Lewontin locates the view of the relation between organism and environment he attributes to Darwinian and neo-darwinian accounts of evolution in the central concept of adaptation. Adaptation is a central concept of The Origin. How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one organic being to another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and the mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of our quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives through the water: in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze; in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic world (Darwin, 2004, pp ). The adaptation of organism to environment is also a hallmark of neo-darwinian accounts of evolution by natural selection. As Lewontin writes, Our usual description of evolution by natural selection is framed in terms of adaptation. A species environment exists and changes as a consequence of some autonomous forces outside the species itself. This outside world poses problems for the species, problems of acquiring space, consumables, light, and individuals of the opposite sex. Those most successful in solving the problems, because, by chance, their morphologies, physiologies and behaviours make them mechanically the best fit to do so, leave the most offspring and thus the species adapts (Lewontin, 2001, p. 63). For Lewontin, it is the focus on the concept of adaptation that commit the Darwinist to a theory of ontic, epistemic, and causal separation between organism and environment. Adaptation, Lewontin writes, is literally the process of fitting an object to a pre-existing demand (Lewontin, 2000a, p. 43). The pre-existing demand must exist, be identifiable apart from, and have causes independent of, that which adapts to it. These are the ontic, epistemic, and causal aspects of the relation between organism and environment in Darwinian and neo-darwinian evolutionary theory to which Lewontin objects. Let us work through each aspect of this relation in turn. 23

28 Consider, first, the ontic aspect of the Darwinian and neo-darwinian account of the relation between organism and environment. Adaptation as a concept only makes sense with reference to some set of pre-existing circumstances. For example, it is incoherent to say the key is well-adapted to a lock in a world without locks. There must be locks first, to which we can adapt some pieces of metal to possibly serve as keys. This is the ontic aspect of the relation between organism and environment on the adaptationist view of evolution. There are environments without and before organisms. To be adapted to some extent or other to something else implies that the thing to which organisms and species are adapted, the environment, exists already, as a problem space waiting to be solved. Not only do the problems to which organisms are adapted to some extent or other have to exist independently and prior to those organisms, they must be also be known or at least knowable as such. Just as it would be impossible to know what key would fit the lock without first knowing what arrangement the tumblers of the lock are in, so it must be possible, at least in principle, to know in advance of the attempted solution, what exactly the environmental problem is to be solved. So, on the adaptive picture of evolution, the argument goes, not only are organisms related to environments that exist independently from them, the environments, or problem spaces, can be known independently of them. Not only do the problem spaces exist independently of the solutions, they must be specifiable, at least in principle, without reference to any individual organism or species to which this is a problem space. 24

29 An interesting example of the epistemic aspect of the relation between organism and environment from the Darwinian understanding of the relation between organism and environment comes from the search for life on Mars. Lewontin reports scientists investigated this by suck[ing] up Martian dust into a reaction vessel filled with a growth medium for microbial life. The carbon in the carbohydrate of the medium was radioactively labeled so that the carbon dioxide liberated when cells use a carbohydrate for energy could be detected by a radioactivity counter (Lewontin, 2000a, p. 50). Initially, this is just what was observed. Suddenly, however, indications of life ceased in an unexpected way. Scientists were puzzled, says Lewontin, as this could not be explained by existing knowledge of bacterial growth (ibid). Eventually it was decided there was no evidence here of life on Mars after all, just the breakdown of the culture medium on the surface of the fine dust particles (ibid). The trouble with the approach of the scientists who designed the experiment, says Lewontin, is that they parceled up Mars into pre-existing problem spaces defined by way of our knowledge of life on Earth. The investigators believed that ecological niches already exist in the absence of organisms, so that when the organisms evolved on Mars they would come to occupy those empty niches (ibid.). In other words, the scientists assumed that Martian dust is a niche for whatever life there was on Mars as dust is known to be a niche for life here on Earth. So the question of life on Mars was a question of whether anything had come to occupy an already existent and identified niche in the way that early life on our planet did. Lastly, and most importantly for our purposes, there is, on the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, a causal aspect to the relation of separation 25

30 between organism and environment. The organism does not, on this classical picture of the relation between it and the environment, participate in determining precisely what challenges the environment sets for survival and reproduction. Rather, the environment is taken to be a set of challenges or problems that arise by causes other than the organism. Environments arise on account of, and only on account of, non-organism causes. As Lewontin puts it, on the adaptive picture of evolution, [t]he history of the environment is a history of geological change, of the impacts of meteors, of the waxing and waning of glacial ages, of the rise and fall of sea level, of shorter-term changes in weather patters. Other kinds of organisms are also part of the environment of a species, but they appear as given, with histories that are independent (Lewontin, 2000a, p. 42) Lewonftin has here obviously abstracted only a few of the causes of environmental change in the world. He focuses here on distal causes, though there are many more distal causes and also proximate causes as well. We do not need to get too specific about just what it is that actually sets the environmental problem space for organisms on the Darwinian and neo-darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. The point to notice at the moment is that, whatever they exactly are, on the Darwinian and neo-darwinian theory the environment an organism must inhabit in an evolutionary dynamic is not one an organism has a hand in setting itself. Lewontin finds the relation between organism and environment on the Darwinian and neo-darwinian account of evolution by natural selection problematic in each of the three respects we have just reviewed. Let us begin with the causal respect. Contrary to the adaptive picture, says Lewontin, organisms do participate 26

31 causally in setting the environmental challenges they face in an evolutionary dynamic. Organisms construct their environments in the sense that they cause, in part, the problems they will, by virtue of their traits, solve. This causation can take the form of literal environment construction, whereby an organism literally rearranges bits and pieces of the world to create and/or assemble the environment in which it exists. It can also take the form of causing some parts of the world to be relevant. An organism, by virtue of its activities, makes some parts of the world relevant to it and other parts irrelevant. This is a sense in which organisms cause their environments. Lastly, organisms cause their environments in the sense of interpreting brute environmental signals. This is the third sense in which organisms cause their environments. Let us begin with the first sense in which organisms cause their environments, the sense in which organisms literally re-arrange bits and pieces of the world into environments. The present sense in which organisms cause their environments is plausibly done both intentionally and unintentionally. Examples of both kinds of environmental construction can be found just in thinking about our own environments. We construct our environments intentionally, for example when we build buildings such as the one in which I write these words. We also unintentionally cause changes in our environments. We don t need to reach for anything as extensive as anthropogenic climate change to make this point. For example, as I respire I change the chemical composition of the air in this room by way of unintentional processes. In the non-human world, consider that birds build nests and beavers dam rivers to create ponds. These are plausibly examples of 27