Good but I think philosophy is more [see my comments below]

> One of the reasons why Richard Watson (one of those "thoughtful"
> philosophers who think too  much) claims that even most professional
> environmental ethics is of "dubious" value philosophically.  In a little
> known (or often ignored) essay entitled "The Identity Crisis in
> Environmental Philosophy," Watson argues: "Environmental philosophy has
> dubious status as philosophy because numerous writers in the field ignore
> the major problems of philosophy."   What  are these problems? They
include
> "problems concerning other minds, representational ideas, the intrinsic
or
> extrinsic nature of values, the fact/value distinction, scientific
realism
> and objectivity, atomism versus holism, and dozens of other major issues
in
> philosophy." (at 203, full cite below)
> 
> For example (and this relates to some of the issues Lorin is working on),
> Watson takes intrinsic value enviroethicists to task for their repeated
> assertions that all entities in nature have some worth by virtue of their
> "intrinsic value."  He identifies John Rodman and Holmes Rolston as
> examples; and after discussing Rolston's work, concludes "all his
> [Rolston's] sections on value are extended tautologies." (204)  Watson
> explains: "In sum, the mere being or existence of something demonstrates
> nothing but its mere existence.  To go on to say that it has value is
> either to say that its being is its value, or to add something more than
> its mere existence to it.  Thus formally, to say that a thing's value
> follows from its being is either a tautology or to get something from
> nothing--value from mere existence."  In other words, most intrinsic
value
> theorizing in environmental ethics remains at a level that one might
> accurately describe as " arguments from wishful thinking."

I think the importance of any ethic originates from the level of care and
consideration that follows from the "directive" first principle of the
ethic. To say that a person believes in reducing the suffering of sentient
- or the integrity of insentient life - is a valid arguement. The ethical
nature of family planning and contraception is not focussed primarily on
reducing suffering of existing life, but preventing suffering of future
life. This is a rational belief that ensues from the proposition that
suffering is commensurable for all human life to some degree, all people
suffer physical and emotion pains, and therefore, any more humans added to
the earth will in effect increase the amount of suffering to some degree
for others and for additional future persons. 

It is also appropriate at the same time to *speculate* about the
consequences of eating meat, our ecological footprint, our impacts on
forests, the air, the biosphere, etc., even other cultures. To say that
everything we know is in someway analogical based on personal experience is
true, but that is not the point; we are also capable of self-consciousness,
consciousness, and reason [Hegel]. Philosophy is a system of reasoning
only. It does not build bridges or plant potatoes, but it can structure our
interactions with potatoes, deer, and influence building. 

Taylor in his "Respect for Nature* asserts that there are six types of
environmental "values". One of them he calls "inherent worth" and what he
pronounces here is the "unknown" worth of a thing, the residual value of a
thing, after all other values have been subtracted. Intrinsic value is
still instrumental value to humans if that value is ecological or
anthropomorphic or even sacred. This leaves out what humans know or can
percieve to be of value in a created thing [which is ultimately
instrumental], i.e. it is strictly inherent and commensurate with the
thing.  We can know the properties of an electron or beta particle through
some inferential methodology of observation, but we can never know what an
electron or beta particle is, even if it is minutely life, esp. within a
nerve cell. What is the basic unit of consciousness, is it an electron? All
our knowledge therefore is "metaphoric [Cassirer]". Heidegger - and modern
phenomenology - have elaborated the idea or concept of Being which is the
transcendent subject and this Being corresponds to the "noumena" of Kant,
or the thing behind the thing, which is a purely ontological substance, but
is an apodictic necessity for being. There are many things that we can
perceive with our senses and as such have by necessity apodictic certainty
that they exist, we do not know and cannot explain everything that is real,
nevertheless there are real things which we know nothing about intuitively.
 


A series of intuitions of the thing are not the thing but are presentations
of that thing [excluding symbolic intuitions]. The inherent worth of a
thing is that which gives it's ontic truth through disclosure or_alethiea_,
i.e. appearances.  These seem like mere technical issues of ontology, but
philosophy also wants to know "nothing about nothing". Only philosophy can
open up the possibility that knowledge can be obtained of "causes", science
is the search for causes resulting from one form or another analytic
[Aristotle]. 

The pre-socratics were clever enough to reason that a proposition about
being cannot be true if there is a possibility of it being also its not
being. This is to say that if light is the supreme symbol of being, then
darkness is the supreme symbol of non being; this is not to say that shade
or grey is not being, it simply means that shade and grey are simply other
than being, but most certainly are not non-being. To say therefore that all
human knowledge is tautalogical and reflects only what humans know, and is
categorically not animal or plant is completely false, because the
statement implies certainty or truth, absolute knowledge. To say that
animal suffering and the "wilting" of plants is in no way suffering,
because this an analogical proof, is false. It is correct to say that it is
*other than human suffering* and *wilting* is another type of pain, one
specific  to plants; and the animal *squeeling* certainly is some type of
suffering - what ever it is - but to say that an animal or plant feels
nothing is an absurd statement in philosophy even in the days of the
pre-socratics. 

jmf



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