Jim quotes: 
> A sane and effective
>politics for realists is fundamentally a matter of repairs and adjustments.
>Good policy is, to borrow Karl Popper's phrase, 'piecemeal social
>engineering,' with a strong emphasis on the adjective. 

The term 'social engineering' has an interesting history. It goes back to
(J?) Rockefeller. After which the US Military did some research into it. The
basic tenets allude to 'economic control' and rely on a credible theory
similar to electro-magnetic theory where you have the 'capacitors', the
'conductors' and the 'inducers'. 

The capacitors are the corporations and government. The inducers are the
services and services sectors, and the conductors are the 'goods' that are
being transported. The system as a whole is subject to 'test shocks'
similarily to 'strikes' by labour (inducers). The whole game plan is
economic control. 

There is some very interesting research out there on 'social engineering'
and it is avalaible on the web. But as far as environmental ethics is
concerned, I am not sure of the connection. Maybe someone else is?

>Contrast Callicott's foundationalist position with Minteer's call  in
>section IV of his paper for more ecumenical and pragmatic approaches.  "It
>is easier and more philosophically neat to construct a set of ethical first
>principles than it is to look within the richly textured moral traditions
>of real communities when it comes time to justify ethical arguments about
>the natural world," he observes.  "But the currency and social
>meaningfulness of this invented morality is weak at best, especially when
>it is compared with the thickness of moral life as part of a cultural
>system." 

Philosophy as a science is according to Aristotle concerned with 'first
principles' and therefore to argue exclusively for a philosophy relegating
the polis, actions of moral agents in the polis to a 'departmental' science
is not only not in question, it is 'preliminary' at best. The Greeks used
the term 'phronesis' to describe matters of practical interest. The overlap
with 'first principles' is compelling in one respect; because the
'departmental sciences' are said to exist only by virtue of the 'first
principles', that is, the science of being;  they still depende entirely on
'valuation' and 'feeling' which are topics or themes of the soul.  The topic
of human contentment and fullfillment  is not complicated in any way or
shape since the idea that philosophy may consist of an investigation of
first principles is premised on the idea that wisdom is not experience, but
is the knowledge of 'principles and causes'. Experience is not wisdom, but
philosophy is wisdom. Therefore the concept of 'real communities' as such
remains undefined, and an arguement that has fundamental terms and premises
undefined is not valid, but a rhetorical opinion dressed up as science. 

The idea that language could be used to 'invent' reality (eg. real
community, real women) is what is being espoused here, that thinking can be
eschewed in service of preliminary concerns which have the stamp of realism,
or some idea of the 'pragmatic' really are faulty to start with since the
supposition that they can be real drivers in the polis is based on a
'negative dialectics' which eschews 'first principles'. These preliminary
cocerns are never ever elaborated fully, and there is sufficient reason to
believe that they may never be. Since only an 'ultimate concern' is
reflective of a inference based on a 'first principle', the idea of
diversion enters into play: the diverting stare is 'power' of an elite. 

Anyway the term 'biocentric' means literally 'life in the center' and bios
means life, just as zoe means life, but bios means more likely that which
has the look of life. Therefore the term 'bios theoretikos' is really the
subject matter of all that 'life looks like'. A big topic to say the least. 

"You never know where fish will go." 



> Instead of inventing morality out of whole cloth, Minteer feels
>that "environmental ethicists need to roll up their sleeves and dig into
>the layered and fertile soil of moral life, to abandon the ethical quest
>for certainty and the fixed moral maxims of foundationalist philosophy that
>have shut out the particular and contingent in favour of the general and
>absolute."

All the great thinkers have done exactly this. Spinoza, Aristotle, and
Plato. In fact the term 'contigency' reminds me of 'preliminary' concerns
(Tillich, Systematic Theology). 
>
>Finally he adds, "When we start to look at the shape of existing human
>environmental obligations and duties from a variety of methodological
>perspectives across scholarly disciplines, we begin to thicken and deepen
>our understanding of the role of context in framing moral claims, both
>environmental and otherwise."

I am not sure what is meant by this. Is it not obvious that the history and
destiny of being (qua being) have within it's domain some relevance to
situation, condition, etc?

(Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. SK) 

>
>Well, this email is probably long enough at this point.  I'm enjoying the
>ongoing discussion of Minteer's paper and hope that others will contribute
>their thoughts as well.
>
>Jim T.
>Hi everyone,
>Jim T. 



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