Please do not quote or distribute without permission. 1. Background and motivation for Deep Ecology If the arguments of the previous lecture are correct, recent trends in ecology do not support the idea of biotic communities as cohesive wholes or that they exist in a delicate balance. Perhaps this trend away from essentialism would have surprised Leopold. He might not have expected, for example, that the removal or introduction of certain species have only modest effects on the community. Nor was he aware of the extent to which abiotic factors determine community composition. Leopold also lacked information about species turnover rates over tens of thousands of years. Logically, there appear to be three options for contemporary environmentalists. The first is to revise environmentalism so that it no longer depends on holism, nature s balance, or other outmoded ideas. Perhaps there are other (better) reasons for conserving biotic communities that do not conflict with ecological science. The second option is to show that ecological science and environmentalism are not in fact in conflict. For example, perhaps the land ethic (or something similar) can be derived from an abiotic account of community structure, or a populationist account of communities. I will set this option aside for now. The third altermative is to reject the authority of ecological science. This has been a popular theme in the writings of some envrionmentalists. In this lecture I will consider one of the more popular versions of this approach. When faced with a conflict between environmental convictions and scientific claims, Deep Ecologists question the authenticity of science. The leading proponent of this movement, Arne Naess, is quite frank about this stance. As he explains in a 1985 article, Deep Versus Shallow Ecology : The term deep is supposed to suggest the fundamental presupposition of values as well as facts and hypotheses. Deep ecology, therefore, transcends the limit of any particular science of today, including systems theory and scientific ecology. (219) From this statement we can extract the basic idea that Deep Ecology is interested in values as much as it is interested in facts and hypotheses. This comes as little surprise. No environmental ethic rests on facts and hypotheses alone. As we have seen in the case of Leopold and Singer, an environmental ethic requires the adoption of some values, whether those values are rooted in our sense of community membership or in our respect for animal interests, or something else entirely. Where Deep Ecology differs from more traditional views in environmental ethics is in its views about the nature of reality and how we come to know about it. Three claims in particular define this view. 1.1 Rejection of subject/object distinction. Arne Ness rejects the traditional distinction between subject and object. On the traditional view, objects exist in the external world, whereas experiences are representations of those objects. An experience is said to be correct or true if it accurately represents the target object. To the extent that it misrepresents its target object, a representation is false or subjective. This framework provides a means of classifying certain categories of representation as subjective, while others tend to be more 1
accurate. For example, suppose that you are walking through a forest. The canopy of trees has a grandeur that reminds you of a cathedral, the chirping birds strike you as expressing their sheer glee, and everything around you seems to form a unified whole. The traditional view separates some of these impressions as subjective and others as objective. The impression of grandeur and the gleefulness of the birds are typically regarded as subjective. These parts of your experience are not out there in the world. By contrast the trees and birds are real. The impression of a unity, we tend to think, is more controversial. Maybe there is a sense in which these organisms are unified as a part of a single system, maybe not. According to the traditional view, it is up to science to investigate which side of the subject/object divide this impression of unity belongs. Arne Naess proposes an alternative picture where all aspects of experience are on a level playing field. He introduces the term concrete content to refer to the things that we identify through our experience of the world. Concrete contents are neither subjective nor objective. Think of these as components of your experience that occur spontaneously without conscious effort. Perhaps your experience of the grandeur of the forest canopy is as immediate and spontaneous as your perception of the trees themselves. If so, then these components of your experience, according to Naess, are equally real. 1.2 Rejection of fact/value distinction. Deep ecology also rejects the distinction between descriptive and normative claims (i.e. facts and values). This is a distinction that I have mentioned in previous lectures and it appears in various places throughout the readings. A descriptive statement (a purported fact) makes a claim about how the world is. Suppose that someone tells you that five new species of beetle have been introduced to Guelph forests in recent years. This is a descriptive claim. The traditional view states that by itself this claim is value neutral. Bare facts, by themselves, imply nothing about what should be the case or whether something is good or bad. The evidence for this view is called the open question argument. Given a descriptive claim it s always an open question whether it is good or bad. For example, suppose that you are particularly fond of beetles. Then the aforementioned description is good news. If you are concerned about the integrity of the ecosystem, however, you might view five new beetle species in a negative light, as a potential threat to plants or native animals. Naess rejects this distinction. He insists that facts and values come packaged together in experience. Some concrete contents spontaneously strike us as good, others are obviously bad. Suppose you are walking through the forest admiring the unity of the various plants and animals, when suddenly you approach the sights and sounds of a construction zone. This site might instantly strike you as disruptive. Neass would claim that you therefore know, based on this experience alone, that construction is disrupting the natural balance of the forest. 1.3 The elevation of experience over science A third feature of Deep Ecology involves its prioritization of first person experience over science. According to Naess it is through first person experience that we come to identify concrete contents as well as their normative significance. By comparison, Naess claims, the findings of science are mere 2
abstractions. To illustrate this idea, consider how the scientists might go about determining whether a construction zone disrupts the unity of a forest. The scientist might set out to test this hypothesis by measuring whether the sounds emanating from the site have an effect on surrounding plants and animals. This requires a controlled experiment, where properties like plant growth and animal reproduction are measured across construction and non-construction areas. If no detectable difference across sites is detected, the scientist might conclude that construction is unlikely to be disruptive although most scientists would admit that further investigation is required. The Deep ecologist views this entire approach as misguided. The measurements of science, framed as they are in terms of decibels and growth rates, are considered abstractions away from the reality of the actual sights and sounds of the forest and the construction zone. These elements of experience enjoy primary existence, Naess would insist, anything not immediately present in experience is an abstraction. 2. Why is this article interesting? The reading that I have selected as an introduction to Deep Ecology (DE) is admittedly difficult for beginner philosophy students. It is more standard, when introducing DE, to assign more programmatic writings by Arne Naess. My reasons for assigning this more challenging reading are as follows. Firstly, this article makes direct contact with some of the themes being developed in the course. For example, Nauess invokes Leopold s land ethic (in section 6) and offers his view as an alternative means of defending it. Another reason for assigning this reading is that it employs some moves that have been attempted before in the history of philosophy. One of the things that you will notice if you pursue your study in philosophy is that certain positions become occupied again and again. The position that Arne Naess adopts in article is reminiscent of the Idealism of George Berkley who claimed that there was no reality beyond our experiencing minds. A similar position was revived several generations later in the writings of Phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger, who also attempted to deny the distinction between subject and object. These thinkers encounter a suite of problems, as I will discuss below, which are no less of an issue for Deep Ecology. 3. Questioning the subjective/objective distinction The world of Concrete Contents opens with Naess portrayals of two different ideas about the mind/world relation. The Galilean view is the traditional perspective described earlier. By contrast the Protagorean view (named after the Greek philosopher Protagoras who was known for his paradoxical views) is closer to the one that Naess ultimately endorses. To illustrate the difference between these perspectives Naess imagines placing two hands, one hot the other cold, into a warm bath. The water seems cold to one hand and warm to the other. How would the Galilean or traditional view explain this situation? It would say that the water is neither warm nor cold, these are merely subjective impressions. (Naess calls this the neither nor approach). To determine the 3
objective truth, on this view, one must measure the mean kinetic energy (i.e. the temperature) of the water. Naess contrasts the Protagorean answer, which says that the water is both warm and cold. Naess supports this idea by saying, The most interesting interpretation of matter as far as I can see, is such that it comprises all that man ever can experience in any state (44). Notice the move: matter, the objective stuff, is being defined in relation to experience. Naess realizes where this view leads: Therefore man becomes... the criterion of the existence of things. For all things, in so far as they appear to men, also exist, while those things that appear to no man do not exist at all (ibid) He continues: In what follows, I shall maintain that Galileo s Neither-nor position leads to absurdities. The position of Protagoras is deeply problematic, but can be saved from absurdity if somewhat freely interpreted (ibid). So, on Naess view the choice is between the absurd and the problematic, and he claims to prefer the latter. At this point you must be wondering, What is so absurd about the Galilean answer? Naess defends this claim in various passages throughout sections 2, 3 and 4. I confess that I find his arguments extremely difficult to put in simple terms. For me this alone is a warning sign. I tend to be suspicious when a view is unnecessarily confusing that it is covering something up. But to give Naess the benefit of the doubt let s do our best to understand him. On page 45 Naess states that, As we know them, things have properties referring to sensing, action, and comprehension. Such a primary quality as the shape of a thing varies with perspective. There is no absolute shape of the thing-in-itself. No quality of a thing is such that it is separable from others. Here Naess assumes that every primary quality of an object is perceived from some perspective or other. ( Primary qualities are the properties thought to exist out there in the objective world, according to the traditional picture) Shape is his example. Since shape is always perceived from some perspective, he concludes that there is no absolute shape of the thing in itself. 4
This is a very odd line of reasoning. To begin with it is not clear that shape should be considered an objective property even on the traditional view. Consider instead the property of mass. Every physical object has a particular mass regardless of the perspective from which it is observed. On some planets an object might seem light, on other planets it will seem heavy, but its mass does not change. The point that Naess seems to be missing is that properties like mass objective properties are not defined in relation to any one of these perspectives. We do not define the mass of an object in terms of its weight on earth, for example. Instead we calculate mass by weighing the object and taking the gravitational field of earth into account. Make sure not to get confused by this trick. There is a difference between the way that one measures a property and the way that one defines a property. I might use a thermometer to measure temperature because it is more reliable than my hands. This does not mean that temperature is thereby defined as whatever the thermometer says. Naess is simply confused. He sees people measuring properties from a variety of perspectives, and (correctly) notes that there is no one perspective that offers the best vantage point. But where he goes wrong is inferring that there is no perspective-independent property being measured. A second argument against the Gallilean view emerges in section 3. Here Naess notes that secondary qualities (like warm and cool hands) involve projection onto nature. Indeed this is correct. We do not think that the sensation of coolness or warmth reside in the bath itself rather these impressions are projections of our mind. So it is true that purely subjective properties involve a kind of projection. Naess then claims that, there is no evidence whatsoever of a process of projection (47). Again, this strikes me as very odd. Naess surely has not reviewed the literature on the neuroscience of temperature perception, yet he considers himself qualified to make a claim about the available evidence (without so much as a single citation!) More to the point, one might insist that the fact that we can experience the same bath as both warm and cool at the same time is itself evidence that the mind projects properties onto the world. Elsewhere he suggests that this idea of subjective properties as being a projection of the mind leads to an absurd outcome. These subjective properties, he claims, have only a strange kind of subjective existence: not in the brain, not in space. (46). Here is what he says about our perception of a tree: The tree in the mind does not any longer have the character of an image or a copy, because the external tree of physics has no similarity with the internal one. Furthermore the internal is in the mind in a non-spatial sense. It is not in the brain because then it would have been seen long ago by doctors. It is not even near the brain. If the external tree and the body of the observer are in Rome, this does not imply that the tree in 5
the observer s mind is in or near Rome. It is not nearer Rome than the Andromeda nebula. It is not in physical space at all. Where is it? (48) This might strike you as rather silly. Subjective experiences are produced by the brain, even though it seems like they are out there in the world. This is what the Galilean means by projection. No absurdity stems from this view. Naess seems worried by the fact that the tree in our mind does not resemble the tree in the world as it is described by physics. The tree described by physics is composed of atoms and charges. The tree that we see has branches and leaves. Is this a problem for the traditional view? Hardly. The first thing to note is that even according to science there is more to reality than just collections of atoms. There are also many kinds of emergent properties that are formed by the arrangements of atoms. Our perceptual systems have evolved to detect these emergent properties, and to represent them via subjective phenomena like colours and sounds which are produced by the nervous system. How this all works is fascinating and currently quite mysterious. It is not absurd or self contradictory. 4. Rejecting the fact/value distinction. Many of the features of the world that inspire or move us would be classified as subjective according to the traditional view. Perhaps it is the grandeur of the forest canopy that motivates you to conserve it. If this is not an impression that is shared by others who observe the same forest, then your valued perception of grandeur is subjective. Naess apparently feels threatened by this view. He claims that subjective values are often ignored by people like developers or economists, who view the forest in terms of the profits it might bring. Naess is bothered by the way that properties like grandeur or unity get demoted to the level of merely subjective while profit is regarded as objective. The assumption seems to be that if profit is a value that is more widely shared than forest grandeur, then it is more important. Naess wants to resist this entire line of thinking. His strategy is to identify values as a type of concrete content. He has already argued that all elements of experience all concrete contents- stand on an equal footing in terms of their claim to reality. The unity or grandeur are no less real, he would claim, than the leaves and trees themselves. The next step is to argue that values are also embedded in our experience of the world. Consider how Naess describes the difference between a developer and an environmentalist. Instead of describing this difference in terms of alternative value systems, as I have done, he casts their disagreement as two different estimations of what is real: Confrontations between developers reveal differences in estimating what is real. What a conservationist sees and experiences as reality the developer does not see and vice versa. A conservationist sees and experiences a forest as a unity, a gestalt, and speaking of the heart of the forest, he or she does not speak of the geometrical centre. A developer sees square 6
kilometres of trees and argues that a road through the forest covers very few square kilometres, so why make so much fuss? (49). Naess goes on to claim that the traditional view which separates facts from values provides no way of convincing the developer of the non-economic value of the forest. Naess insists that for the environmentalist this value is identified as a part of the forest itself. By rejecting the distinction between facts and values, Naess suggests that there is no longer the need to convince the developer to accept the environmentalists values. It is much easier, he suggests, to convince them of certain value-laden facts. He claims that. Expressions of the kind object x has value y immediately lead to the question: given an object x, how do I assess its value y? If we start with designations of concrete contents, for instance delicious, red tomato to be eaten at once! or repugnant rotten tomato, the evaluative terms are there from the very beginning of our analysis. And there is no separable tomato to value! (51) A little further along in section 6, Naess suggests that, Perhaps the point of view of Leopold could be explicated by starting with designations of concrete contents of various sorts expressing what Leopold sees and experiences as community (51). Recall that Leopold claimed that biotic communities have moral status. Earlier we attempted to determine whether a rational argument could establish this claim. Here Naess is suggesting another route. He suggests that the moral status of communities can be observed directly as a concrete content. I read this as a subtle rejection of the rationality requirement (described in previous lectures). If we can observe directly the moral status of biotic communities, no further argument is required. These might strike you as bold and unusual claims. Yet I suspect that many students can sympathize to some extent with what Naess is proposing. You might think that anyone who could possibly cut down a beautiful forest for profit just doesn t see what you see. Words can hardly capture the values that this person must lack. Let alone trying to develop a rational argument that could convince someone to adopt those values. Perhaps the only hope for such a person, you might think, is to take them on a walk through the forest and point out the grandeur of the canopy, the unity of the system, the disruption of the development, etc. I agree that Deep Ecology seems to offer a shortcut by which people might absorb certain values through direct experience, as it were. This would be a very interesting phenomenon if it worked in the environmentalist s favour. However, it is naive to think that everyone who wanders through a forest will experience it in the same way. The problem with Naess view is that, if someone does not experience the same value-contents, this leaves no further court of appeal to convince them to conceptualize nature differently. Either you see it Naess s way or you don t. For this reason, one might criticize Deep Ecology as a framework for reinforcing the status quo. Consider an analogy. Suppose that you grew up in a social environment where it was encouraged to see people of particular ethnicities as threatening. 7
Maybe, as a result of this upbringing, you experience a visceral reaction every time you observe people of that targeted ethnicity. For the perspective of your own personal world of concrete contents, these individuals are in fact threatening. To perceive them as such is to identify a truth. The perspective that Naess offers provides no basis for reasoning one s way out of this world view. By contrast, suppose that you draw a distinction between facts and values and between objective and subjective components of experience. Now you can identify that the negative value that you associate with this targeted ethic group can and should be separated from other aspects of your perception of them. You can also identify this value as merely subjective not a reflection of an actual threat in the world. As far as I can tell, Deep ecology lacks the conceptual resources to make these distinctions. This is why I see it as a philosophy of the status quo, not as a philosophy of change. 5. Prioritizing experience over science We have seen that the various elements of one s experience, what Naess calls concrete contents are to be treated on a level playing field. So, the impression that a tree is beautiful and the recognition of a tree, if they appear with equal spontaneity and vividness in one s experience, are equally real. Naess further argues that any features of the word that do not appear immediately in experience are less real than these concrete contents. These non-immediate features are called abstractions. It is important to be clear just how radical a thesis this is. Suppose that you plunge your hands into the bath of warm water and observe that it seems both hot and cold at the same time. These are concrete contents and as such they are real. Your idea that there is a bath of uniform temperature is an abstraction, for Naess. It is something that you derive from your experience. Neass assumes that abstractions are less real than the concrete contents from which they are derived. Hence: The physicist s world of science is entirely one of abstract structure. Even the hues of colours are defined structurally through places in colour-atlases. The ecosystem concept is used to describe abstract structures, and the movement of deep ecology is to a large extent concerned with abstract structures. The importance of abstract structural considerations cannot be overestimated. (52) Presumably Naess is here admitting that we cannot avoid positing abstract structures in order to organize our concrete contents. In order to describe the situation with our hands and the water, we need to assume that there is in fact a single tub of water out there that we are experiencing. However, Naess is quick to add in the next paragraph his views about the importance of these abstractions: But the factors introduced in abstract analysis should not, as is usually done, be identified with objects in the world. They do not belong to the content of the world we are genuinely part of. Abstract structures are structures of the world, not in the world (52) 8
Notice that this is a complete inversion of the argument presented by Kricher in last week s readings. Recall his explanation for the persistence of essentialism. This perspective stems from our limited human vantage point, which sees communities as static and interrelated. For Kricher, understanding reality involves seeing beyond the human perspective. For Naess, the opposite is true. He thinks that reality is grounded in the properties that you observe when interacting with nature. Science, by contrast, is an abstraction: The physicist s world of science is entirely one of abstract structure (52). This position is one that philosophers have found themselves in at various stages over the course of history. I know of no simple argument that refutes Naess. Yet I also find his perspective impossible to accept. It reminds me of the proverbial ostrich who ignores what it is unable to see directly. In our daily lives we find ourselves continually positing the existence of entities beyond our immediate experience. We see the facade of a building and assume that there are stairs and rooms inside. We see unsuspended objects drop to the ground and infer that there is a gravitational field. Naess wants admits that these abstractions are necessary for unifying our experience. Yet he stops short of admitting that they are real. Perhaps the best argument against this view is that it is disingenuous. I doubt that if Naess were standing on the edge of a cliff, he would regard gravity as a mere abstraction. 6. Conclusion In this chapter I have attempted to do justice to the arguments of Deep Ecology, yet in most cases I submit that those arguments come up short of their mark. Perhaps you disagree with my analysis. Or maybe there are aspects of Deep Ecology that I have overlooked. I promise that if this is so, it was not intentional. To the contrary I have attempted to be as charitable to this perspective as possible. Where does this leave us? Recall the three options outlined at the beginning of this lecture. Either environmentalism can be placed on other (better) foundations than the conviction that communities are superorganisms existing in a delicate balance, or perhaps these ideas can be vindicated in some form by ecological science, or ecology is flawed. I have considered one of the most popular attempts to establish the third alternative. Next week I will explore one of the most prominent attempts to place environmentalism on an alternative foundation: on the foundation of aesthetics. Perhaps the reason we should respect biotic communities is because they are beautiful. I think that it is possible to articulate a version of this view without going to the extreme lengths of Deep Ecology. 9