What it really comes down to, is redefining social position by contribution and responsible behaviour, not ephemeral symbols of status and conspicuous consumption. People need to learn to trigger the various neurochemical reward and pleasure centres with actions that are beneficial. Likewise, as already alluded to, fear reactions to encroachments into vulnerable ecosystems and careless misuse and overuse of the environment, (of which we are an inseparable part), needs to be thoroughly instilled in people.

And please remember people react most strongly to things that stimulate an instinctive response. Intellectual appeal and argument holds little weight without a corresponding hook into instinctive “programs”. To convince people in large numbers requires them to be more afraid of the affect of not changing behaviour and lobbying government, even at the risk of standard of living. Of course, such things as the increasingly high price of oil will help both to encourage the development of alternate forms of energy and to increase efficiencies.

The intellectual in me would love nothing better than to see a new philosophy of environmental ethics, but without the hooks to instinctive fear that overrides greed, and without a new way of competing for social position which is not harmful, (and hopefully is even beneficial), to the environment, I am skeptical of it being realised.

I’d be interested for pointers to “existential phenomenology” — the bits in your writing are intriguing but still very unclear to me.

There is much more in your response that I look forward to engaging. Here’s two bits for now:

First, I’m inclined to take egalitarianism as “more fundamental” than liberty, thinking along the lines of Rawls; similarly I think both “justice” and “fairness” can only be “cached out” (to use the jargon) reasonably in terms of an egalitarian commitment. But it may be that I’m simply creating a definition of egalitarianism that suits my own needs but doesn’t match up to what others consider it to mean.

Second, vis a vis principle to action vs. seeking to justify a desired goal, I don’t think it’s an either-or proposition. I don’t know if you’ve come across the concept “wide reflective equilibrium” in Rawls or subsequent authors, but essentially it involves reasoning that invokes both broad principles, specific judgments, and “background propositions”. At any time we have “sets” of all of them, and they have various elements of dissonance that cause us to question them. Such a process gives no particular privilege to which elements will be modified based on apparent contradiction, and assumes that any “equilibrium” may be (will be?) temporary, pending further encounters with reality…

happy to provide citations… don’t think you sent me your email address yet, though.

Best,

–Paul

On your primary remarks, is this philosophical problem not resolved (at least in some ways) by existential phenomenology? The ultimate answer (if we are indeed ontological beings) to the question why might be; ‘…since you ask…’
though a phenomenologist might be tempted to return the question, to establish a dialogue wherein the questioner questions his questioning. There are points to be dealt with, on the possibility of circularity and whether or not the phenomenological description of being can be posited as an a priori, but this is possibly for another time…

I’m always amenable to more reading, so I will email you for a list and any useful links you know of to good material; thank you. Meantime, if it’s okay with you, I’ll continue with your points:

1: I agree. The problem I am having is that, as things stand, the debate on the principles underlying an agreement about action on climate change is deeply embedded in instrumentalist (and anthropocentric) views of what is of value. My feeling is that, if genuine progress is to be made, on this or any other question of environment or human justice, such a foundation is inadequate to the purpose; in other words, it is unlikely to lead to what we might think of as the ‘desirable’ conclusions (excuse the logic jump). But rather than posit one or other of these positions, by making use of the existing definition of what it means to be human (both ontologically and psychologically) which is a starting point in Ex.Phen.; we are a ‘being-with-in-the-world’, we can bypass what turns out to be a false distinction. It turns out, if we are indeed as much a product of our place in the world as we are of our relationship to others and our sense of being ourselves, then what is of value to that world is also of value to us, and likewise, what benefits or harms our world also benefits and harms us.
By this means, we can claim that anthropocentric-nonanthropocentric, and instrumental-intrinsic, are false dichotomies, non-issues, since they are all a part of what we are as humans.

This takes us back to that fundamental notion of a division between that which is ‘of the human’ and that which ‘of nature’, which is itself a throwback to a different time/place, and dissolves the distinction, the sense that the physical Otherness of place (the world) is alien and hostile (in the same way that human Others are not to be understood as ‘hostile’); rather, as in the being-with we are made more complete through a letting-be which is possible through the non-appropriative gaze (the eye contact) between the self and other, so in the being-here, we are made more more complete through a letting-be which might grasp, to touch, but does not seek to take, to appropriate.

2. What is/are the ‘fundamentally important’ ethical value? Such a question can probably not be answered through argument to an a priori position. It seems likely that this is something which needs to be decided and, in human society, agreed upon, for an ethical principle to have a practical application. Along with egalitarianism (or, more widely, the range of value-concepts including this, justice and fairness), I would also place the liberty-nexus (self-determination, freedom) at the heart of an ethic. A part of me wants to place a third fundamental at the heart of an ethic, but I am not sure yet how it can be expressed, or where it might take us. Perhaps one contender is Truth.

3. I’ll have to do some background reading on community discourse before responding to your comments on this. Broadly, I agree that Ethics matters because it has real-world application and consequence. My tendency, though, is to look for the principle first and then draw a practical application from it to guide action, rather than to seek to justify a desired practical goal ‘in the other direction’.

As they are finished, I’ll post my essays on these ideas up here for criticism/discussion. Next semester will be a more thorough investigation into phenomenology and ethics, and, with luck, a clarification of some of the ideas I have outlined above. After that, we may be in a position to start presenting a ‘new’ way of understanding the problems arising from both environmental and climate change issues.

All the best,

Fergus.

I admire you for taking these problems on systematically. I imagine you will find that it is very hard to find a robust grounding for the propositions you find prima facie irrefutable. This is a longstanding philosophical problem that is not unrelated to the classic parent/child dialectic - every answer can be replied to with another “why?” until you’re frustrated and scream “Because I said so!” Nonetheless I believe progress can be made, or I would never have taken up the ethics problems within climate change.

I presume you already have the relevant reading list? If not I’ll be happy to help you put it together. If you email me at pbaer@ecoequity.org I’ll send you a couple of articles that are in press that you wouldn’t otherwise know about, as well as a manuscript that is published in an unreasonably expensive and inaccessible book.

My own answers, if you’ll forgive me for trying to summarize in a few bullets, look like this:
1) the “intrinsic vs instrumental” argument is a dead end. Value is a fundamentally human concept, and while we may ourselves value things that are of no “use” to us, it is ultimately impossible to argue that a universe that has (say) biodiversity is in any way better than one that doesn’t, except from a human perspective. And that human perspective is not merely “instrumental,” it is in a very deep sense aesthetic (James Risbey has a good article on the role of aesthetic values in climate policy.)

2) At the heart of our concern for climate change is basic egalitarianism - an equal concern for the suffering and life conditions of all persons, now and in the future. I contend that egalitarianism is at the heart of all progressive ethical and political philosophies, but that because it isn’t one of the recognized “categories” its common role goes largely undiscussed (but see Dworkin’s “Sovereign Virtue”.)

3) Ethics as a whole is best understood in the light of pragmatist approaches to philosophy. Community discourse provides the only validation of ethical premises but community consensus is not in itself a reliable justification for ethical principles of action. I haven’t read a great deal of the original pragmatist ethics but what I have read suggest that they (especially Dewey, and later in the differently labeled but similarly intended “discourse ethics” tradition, Habermas) had it close to right.

I could probably come up with a few more bullets but I’m supposed to finish some spreadsheets and figures before I go to bed! I’ll be interested in your thoughts both now and as they develop further.

best,

–Paul