environmental ethics & important types of environmental ethics sumber:

Environmental Ethics

& important types of

environmental ethics

Sumber: www.clas.ufl.edu/users/bron/pp/ee2.ppt

The roots of environmental degradation

What are they?


Agriculture displaced sustainable foraging lifeways, beginning 10,000

years ago

Agricultures destroyed ecosystems and the foraging societies that had co-

evolved with themPaul Shephard


Western Monotheistic Religion?

Critics cite 4 anti-nature tendencies in western

religions


1) Domination of Nature

Genesis: God commands humans to "fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing...” After the great flood God says to Noah: the

animals will dread and fear you, and I will give you dominion over "everything that creeps on the ground, and over all the fish of the sea."


2) Rejection of animism and pantheism

Animists believe that every part of the environment, living and non-living, has consciousness or spirit. Therefore, all beings deserve reverence.

Pantheists identify deities with natural objects and processes. Therefore nature is sacred or holy and people should have reverence for it


3) Wilderness is cursed; Pastoral, agricultural, and City landscapes are

Holy, Promised Lands

4) The sacred is beyond the world - earth is devalued in

favor of heavenly hopes


Our traditions promote a care-giving stewardship not domination of nature. (Noah story)

Some admit the general destructive tendency, but say:

Minority "traditions within the wider tradition" are nature-beneficent.

Both traditions are currently mutating into forms increasingly concerned with the environment


Western Philosophy -another culprit?

Critics blame its “dualism,” viewing humans as separate from and superior to nature


Rene Descartes sering “Salah”

Rene Descartes (1596-1650): believed that animals have no minds and cannot suffer

Humans have minds and souls, they are different from animals His famous dictum -- `I think,

therefore I am’ -- suggested to him that thought reveals not only existence, but also human superiority

So for Descartes, HUMANS are separate from nature and superior to it.

And the natural world became an objectified "thing."

Some critics say this objectification of nature is a key to science and ‘progress’


Francis Bacon juga “Salah”

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the father of the Scientific method.

Critics say he promoted a view of nature as a machine.

See, e.g., New Atlantis "a mechanistic utopia"--1624

Many passages reveal that he thought nature was like women and slaves: They should be bound into the service of men

Many scholars think such thinking shaped the anti-nature views of Judaism and Christianity, and thus warped human-nature relations in the west


Akar-masalah kerusakan ekologis :

* industrial civilization* technology* patriarchy* hierarchy

* overpopulation


Akar-masalah kerusakan ekologis :

* consumerism*

socialism/capitalism* Agricultures * Pastoralism


Dua tipe utama Etika Lingkungan:

Individualistic&

Holistic


Both holistic and individualistic environmental ethics address --

Whose interests count?

Whose interests must we consider?


I.e.: Who has ‘standing’? Human Individuals?

Anthropocentrism: The environment is valuable to the extent is useful or necessary for human well being

Usually "rationality" or some "intellectual" criterion is critical in the West for moral standing

• E.g. Kant & Descartes: only humans have "consciousness" • William Blacksone: all have a right to a liveable

environment (EE, 105)• Kantian, deontological defense of human rights.

Not much new here in the overall approach


Who has standing? Sentient animals?

Sentient animals are those who can experience pleasure and/or pain Jeremy Bentham: an early utilitarian theorist,

provided a basis for extending moral standing beyond humans

Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" theory provides a utilitarian argument pro-Animal Liberation


Who has Standing?Entities with ‘Interests”

Living entities that have "interests" -- a good that can be harmed -- have moral standing

Christopher Stone: Individual natural objects, including trees, can have standing

Conservator/trustee notion analogous to mentally deficient humans

Tom Regan: Animals who are "subjects of a life" have a "right" to that life.


Problems with individualistic approaches:

(1) Animal Liberation: How can you measure pleasure/suffering a perennial problem with

utilitarianism (2) Animal Rights:

boundary of moral considerability is very restrictive and many plants and

animals left out.

(3) Feinberg, Regan and Singer base standing on human traits: having interests, capacity to suffer, beings subjects-of-a-life" I.e.: only if animals

are like us in some important way will we grant them standing


Problems with individualistic approaches:

(4) How can we determine what the "interests" of a living thing are? How should we

decide who should be the trustee for non-rational, morally considerable entities?

(5) Individualistic approaches provide no basis for prioritizing concern for endangered species


Holistic Approaches -- the basic idea:

The whole is greater (and more valuable) than the

constitutive parts


Tiga Pendekatan Holistik

Biocentrism life-centered ethics

Ecocentrism ecosystem-centered ethics

Deep Ecology ‘identification’ and kinship ethics


Biocentrism life centered ethics

Precursors include Albert Schweitzer's "reverence for life" ethics and Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics: stressing character traits; awe, the inherent worth of each life

Paul Taylor's Respect for Nature (1986) Living things have a good of their own,

a will to live, and end of their own. Thus they have inherent worth

With this perspective comes morally responsible behavior toward nature. Also:

(1) humans are member of earth's life community

(2) all species part of interdependent ecological system

(3) all life pursues own good in own ways

(4) Humans not inherently superior (all life has moral standing)Sumber: www.clas.ufl.edu/users/bron/pp/ee2.ppt

Biocentrism - key problem

Still pre-ecological not really focused on ecosystems,

but on individual life forms.


Ecocentrism: ecosystem centered ethics

Precursors: Baruch

Spinoza Henry

David Thoreau

John Muir

Aldo Leopold’s watershed Land Ethic, 1949 "All ethics rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.” Leopold argued that ethics involves

self-imposed limitations on freedom of action and is derived from the above recognition


Leopold’s ecosystem-centered ethics

A land-use decision "is right when it tends to preserve the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Leopold spoke of the land as an organism, as alive. "the complexity of the land organism" is the outstanding 20th

century discovery." This is a mystical revelation that sounds like pantheism and

anticipates James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis The Land Ethic: "changes the role of Homo Sapiens from

conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the [land-] community as such."


Lovelock’s holistic planetary Gaia theory

Arguing the earth is a self-regulating living system that maintains the conditions for the perpetuation of life, James Lovelock advanced the Gaia Hypothesis.

Although not intended as an ‘ethics,’ a biosphere-centered (large-ecocentric) ethics has been deduced from it, claiming: People ought not degrade this wonderful system in

such a way that it can not function to keep its systems within the various delicate margins necessary for life


Deep Ecology - Basic ideas

All life systems are sacred and valuable -- apart from their usefulness to human beings

All life evolved in the same way and thus, all are kin, with kinship obligations

All species should be allowed to flourish and fulfill their evolutionary destinies


Deep EcologyThe problem & solution

Anthropocentrism (and reformist approaches) destroy nature

A transformation of consciousness is needed, replacing anthropocentrism with a broader sense of the self identity should be grounded nature

When we understand that we are part of nature, eco-defense, as self-defense, will follow


Holistic Approaches -- Key criticism:

Individuals get hurt when you ignore them in favor of wholes This is the key criticism of all ends-focused

theories In environmental ethics, the common

charge is of "eco-fascism"!


Ethics and Environmental Ethics

The Gradual Extension of Moral Concern


The ‘Earth Charter’(as global example)

www.earthcharter.org Sumber: www.clas.ufl.edu/users/bron/pp/ee2.ppt

http://www.earthcharter.org/

environmental ethics & important types of environmental ethics sumber:

Documents

view of nature

objectification of nature

antinature tendencies

progress sumber

thempaul shephard sumber

western philosophy

western religionssumber

god commands humans