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EMPIRICAL_MORALITY


                                             September 13, 2007

I've often heard Gary Snyder's
name associated with "deep        DEEP_ECOLOGY
ecology" -- he didn't invent
the term, though he may have
invented the ideas.               As an undergrad, Snyder was
                                  saying things like "I want
                                  to create wilderness out of
                                  empire."


   "... the Ainu suggest to us with great
    clarity that this life-support system is
    not just a mutual food factory, it is
    mysteriously beautiful.  It is what we
    are.  We now see the Ainu not as a fading
    remnant, but as elders and teachers whose
    playful sense of their own bioregion points
    a way to see and live on our planet as a
    whole."

              Gary Snyder
              "Amazing Grace"
              "A Place in Space" (1995)
              p. 98


   My temptation is to say
   that "deep ecology" is
   completely wrong --

       a confusion of logical          But really, it's probably not
        categories                     the sort of issue that can
                                       be right or wrong.
       a conflation of different
       kinds of "life"                 Our difference is on the level
                                       of "values", perhaps a
                                       "religious issue":

                                       I take the human "as the
                                       measure of all things"
                                       (by what other yardstick
                                       would you expect a human
                                       to measure?)

                                           For someone like me, the
                                           notion that human concerns
                                           should be sacrificed or
                                           compromised for the good
                                           of the non-human is to be
                                           "a traitor to your own kind" --

                                                         In unguarded moments,
                        Though my take on                at least, some
                        "humanity" is that it            deep ecologists
                        includes all of the              have said things
                        intelligent, thinking,           that make this
      At present,       feeling, communicating           abundantly clear.
      this means        entities out there...
      essentially                                          E.g. a stray
      just "homo        All who are capable of             remark from Dave
      sapiens",         creative imagination,              Foreman (since
      but it could      and are not solely ruled           retracted) about
      change...         by "instinct".                     the African AIDS
      either via                                           epidemic being a
      contact with         The liberal humanist            restoring force
      ETIs, or             looks at the history of         of nature.
      scientific           overcoming parochial
      data to back         chauvinism to achieve           RADICAL_FREEZE
      the notion           respect for others,
      that whales,         notes that there have
      chimps, etc          been changes in our
      deserve this         thinking about what we
      status.              are and about what we       The process by which
                           are not, and tries to       The Other has become
   (My understanding       extrapolate that line to    just another.
   is that whales          future changes.
   at least come
   close, but              And that's where I
   chimps, not             think they get confused:
   really.)
                           In the past we
                           considered some
                           "non-human" that
                           we now recognize
                           as truly human.

                           It does not follow
                           from this that we
                           will someday
                           embrace everything
                           as human.

                              VEGE




  Still, let's say my first
  impulse was correct to
  call the Deep Ecology
  worldview "erroneous"...
  there's still a difficulty:

  This "erroneous worldview"
  often leads to the right
  answer.


      My own "correct worldview" has at
      least historically -- and
      probably even now -- a tendency
      toward being too clever about
      manipulating the non-human world.

      We are justified -- in our eyes --
      in sacrificing part of the natural
      world to our own interests, but we
      have a tendency to assume we know
      precisely what those interests are
      and how to act on them, and often
      we don't quite.

      The world is a very complex
      system -- and indeed, we
      are a very complex system
      (and Snyder would say this       WILD_MIND
      is because we and the world
      are all the same system),
      and it's very easy to make
      errors in calculation.



The deep respect for the natural
embodied in deep ecology results in
an inherent conservatism in dealing
with the environment, a reluctance
to gamble, a risk-adverseness, and
this may very well be more sensible
in the long run given either of
our points of view.

Now, it is not all that difficult for
someone with my human-centered point of
view to make a case for being cautious
in dealing with the natural world --         This reminds me of the convoluted
since after all, all our lives depend on     mental gyrations that Ayn Rand's
it -- but it's necessarily a more            characters go through to get to
indirect argument: I repeatedly need to      conventional moral behavior
establish points that "deep ecology"         without admitting to believing in
takes as axiomatic.                          anything but self-interest...

                                                           Why not just grant
                                                           that "altruism" is
   In what sense then, can                                 okay sometimes?
   I claim that the "deep
   ecology" worldview is                                   Or admit that you're
   "wrong"?                                                using an expansive
                                                           definition of "self"
                                                           when you say
                                                           "self-interest".

   If we were discussing a scientific model
   and not a moral one, wouldn't we judge
   the model solely by whether it produced
   the right answers?

   And in the event of competing models
   that generate the same answers, the
   model that gets there most directly
   would be taken as "true" (or at least
   as preferable over a more complex
   equivalent).



    But: I don't think both
    mental models produce the
    identical results.

    My expectation is that there
    are cases where someone like
    myself will see an acceptable
    rational calculation of a
    tradeoff in environmental
    damage for the sake of human
    gain, where a Deep Ecologist
    would instead insist on the        E.g. the knee
    need for humans to sacrifice       jerk tendency
    their own ends for some            of the deep          Don't we have
    Greater Good that I just           ecologist to         too many people?
    don't think is there.              take the side
                                       of plague germs.     If you really
                                                            think that's
                                                            true, don't we
                                                            have to get rid
                                                            of some of them?

                                                            Who exactly?

                                                            Would you be
                                                            willing to help?


                         From "Defending the Earth" (1991)
                         A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin & Dave Foreman
                         p. 125:

          RADICAL_FREEZE
                                 Murray Bookchin:

                                 "... Dave Foreman has clearly pulled
                                 back from the precipice of oppressive
                                 extremes that have been articulated
                                 from within the deep ecology
                                 movement.  Yet if the deep ecology
                                 principle of 'biocentrism' teaches
                                 that human beings are no different
                                 from lemmings in terms of their
                                 'intrinsic worth' and the moral
                                 consideration we owe them, and if
                                 human beings are viewed as being
                                 subject to 'natural laws' in just the
                                 same way as any other species, then
                                 these 'extreme' statements are really
                                 the _logical_ conclusions of deep
                                 ecology philosophy."

                                 "Some deep ecologists such as Warwick
                                 Fox have used harsh words in
                                 condemning Dave's old views on famine
                                 in Ethiopia.  Yet if one is
                                 consistently 'biocentric,' one can
                                 easily come to believe that Ethiopian
                                 children should be left to starve
                                 just as any animal species that uses
                                 up its food supply will starve. And
                                 one can also easily come to believe
                                 that AIDS is 'nature's revenge' for
                                 'excessive' population growth,
                                 ecological damage, and the like."



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