I'll try to respond briefly to Aaron's concerns and comments as best I can
for now.

Aaron wrote:
>i would like to see a positive characterization of 'interests' or 'needs,'
>such that it can truthfully be maintained that insentient, non-subjective
>entities possess them. what is an interest or need if not a feeling,
>sense of value, or mattered difference?

Certainly an "interest" is something that is of value to something else.
I'm not so sure about it strictly being a "feeling," but I might be
entering into semantics here, and I really don't feel too comfortable doing
that. Instead, if a better term can be put forward to describe what an
autopoietic entity requires of its environment in order to be what it is,
then I'll accept it.

we can speak of 'needs'
>metaphorically, in a functional sense, such as a plant 'needs' water or
>sunlight, or an automobile 'needs' oil, but this is only to say something
>like 'requires in order to,' where the end is something that is normally
>tended towards, but which is wholly unimportant to the entity.

I take your important that there is no "conscious" tending towards some end
point. It can be argued, however, that just as this may be true for
non-sentient vegetation, communities and systems, it is also true for many
animal taxa; including - to a certain extent - humans and other sentients.
Unlike a plant, a car is not autopoietic. Now, I don't want to give the
impression that autopoiesis is everything, but is certainly what
characterises life at all levels of organisation (apart from virus, but
please, let's not go there!).

Do only sentient life forms possess "interests?" I'm not so sure.

what is
>merely one-dimensional physical manifestation, whether self-organized or
>not, cannot be ascribed 'needs' or 'interests' in any empathizable or
>morally interesting sense.

Perhaps not interesting to you, but (and I'll admit this is me ascribing a
trait to another entity, but then again, I have little problem with that
by-and-large) I certainly perceive qualities of communities which I may
empathise with and which are of moral concern.

  this common perception of insentient
>lifeforms as possessing 'interests' or 'needs,' especially present in
>environmental ethics, is really to grossly misuse, and subsequently
>mislead, the common and morally significant sense of those emotive terms.


Perhaps a large part of the problem here might be that we're constrained by
the language?

>ecocentrists are running up the wrong track in attempting to defend the
>existence of interests in insentient entities.
>

I'm not so sure I am a firm ecocentrist; I'm a firmer biocentrist, and
still firmer anthropocentrist...and firmer still self-centrist.
(egocentrist?!:) I'm a pluralist, but my pluralism has its centre somewhere
along the biocentric/enlightened anthropocentric part of the spectrum.

See Bryan G. Norton's and Christopher Stone's writings on moral pluralism
for an expanded argument.

>a further comment on the point made by corey re. callicott and
>'environmental fascism': the given quote only shows that callicott
>attempts (and i stress 'attempts') to evade a 'fascist' ethic within human
>communities. regan's charge of individual denial still applies full force
>with respect to nonhuman animal individuals.

That's not completely true, although Callicott does admit there are still
problems reconciling individualism with communitarianism...as do I.

Conversely, Regan (IMHO) goes way off the deep end with his assertion of
non-interference in non-human sentients' affairs and that their are simply
a collection of individuals (shades of Baronness Thatcher!).

To my mind Singer takes a more sensible approach when he talks about a
differentiation of needs and interests (um?) according to what level of
sentience and what kind of animal is being considered. (Of course, he would
probably deny that systems have any interests...I don't know what he says
about communities).

  i've always found it
>interesting how many ecocentric philosophers exhibit a blatant streak of
>anthropocentrism and human chauvinism in their limiting and privileging of
>human beings to an individualistic moral respect.

I certainly trust I don't do that. Indeed, I don't believe I ever have.

>callicott and rolston attempt to justify this differential treatment with
>their constructed distinctions about the different 'types' of communities
>that exist in human culture and in nonhuman nature. i am positive that
>such distictions ultimately are fallacious and do not work, at least with
>regards to justifying the differential holistic vs. individualistic
>treatment.

Are there only two choices though?

 in particular, callicott brings up the notorious platonic
>human community ethic in order to show that community-based ethics are
>nothing new in philosophy. however, he fails to recognize that this
>'fascist,' non-individualistic ethic is the logical implication of his
>monistic grounding of ethics in 'the good of the community.' yet still
>humans are privileged, why? if the community is the true, single locus of
>moral concern, then why not advocate a truly holistic ethic in the human
>realm? (is anyone familiar with 'the borg' on star trek: the next
>generation?) to say that the human community, or human culture, is, by
>its 'nature,' individualistic, is only to beg the question. it's only
>individualistic because we want it to be.
>-aaron
>

The "Borg" aren't a community, they are a collective and - at least in my
mind - there is a difference. I understand the term "community" to allow
more scope for acknowledging the rights and responibilities of individuals,
which implies shared interests. Not necessarily a monistic attitude nor
that the whole is always of greater value than an the individual. So, it
follows that the community is not the only locus of value, but community
relationships (both direct and indirect), as well as the dynamic whole that
these interactions forms are of concern. My moral concern can't operate at
these different levels without difficulties, and the jury is still out for
me as regards some aspects, but the actions that arise from this position
are still preferable to the monistic extremes of ecocentricism and
individualism.
---------------------------------------------------------
Corey Watts
PGDipSc Student
Centre for Conservation Biology
University of Queensland
St Lucia, Qld, AUSTRALIA 4068

e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Telephone: +61 7 3365 2475
Facsimile: +61 7 3365 1655

"Wings and feathers on the crying, mysterious Ages...
...all that is right, all that is good."
D.H. Lawrence, "The Wild Common."







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