Philosophical and Anthropological Thoughts on Ecological Values - Essay Example

Environmental Values Paper It is obvious that there is an anxiety between some theoretical and anthropological moves towards environmental values, especially between philosophical aspirations for a thin, international ethical language that rises above local traditions, and anthropological objectives to reveal a thick standard expression that is local to specific cultures. Philosophical and anthropological thoughts on ecological values can frequently looks like an uncomfortable relation with each other. The difficulty rests in meticulously misunderstood notion of that philosophical venture and certain fake hypothesis about the nature and likelihood of dialogue across the thick ethical expressions. Principles frequently make claim to aspirations to be part of general indication on human morals and dilemma that exceed meticulous times and places.Such claims are often addressed with skepticism from other disciplines in the social sciences, a skepticism that has specific effect in the more general existing climate of uncertainty about some indication that can exceed particular time and places (O’Neill, 2005). Environmental ethics is the discipline that teaches the moral connections of human beings to, and as well the value and moral standing of, the environment and its nonhuman species. This comprises the challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., regarding human beings as the central elements of the universe); the relationship of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics; the application of traditional ethical theories, to support modern environmental affairs; and the center of environmental literature on wilderness (Brennan, 2008). Sheila Collins (1974), dispute that male-dominated civilization or patriarchy is sustained by four linking features: sexism, racial discrimination, class abuse, and environmental obliteration. Highlighting the significance of feminism to the ecological movement and a range of other freedom movements, a number of writers, such as Ynestra King (1989a and 1989b), dispute that the control of women by men is the unique form of supremacy in human society and from which all other hierarchies of position, category, and political control originate. For example, human supremacy of environment is a sign and addition of the tyranny of women, which is the consequence of relating nature with the female that already internalized and exploited by the male-supremacy of human culture. However within a multitude of feminist position, few writers, such as Plumwood (1993), know the tyranny of women as one of the lots of similar forms of oppressions sharing and maintained by a universal structure, whereby one party uses a number of theoretical and rhetorical strategy to benefit its wellbeing over that of the other party. The central objectives of feminist study are those models of ‘dualism’ that is profound in patriarchal consideration. Examples are polar opposites, such as male/female, human/nonhuman, culture/nature, mind/body, cause/emotion, and autonomy/necessity. Feminism signifies a fundamental challenge for ecological thoughts, politics, and customary social ethical outlooks. Feminism assures to relate ecological questions with wider social troubles pertaining to a variety of unfairness and exploitation, and basic researches of human psychology. Nevertheless, whether there are theoretical or just reliant relations among the diverse forms of tyranny and liberation remains a challenged subject (Green, 1994). The term ‘ecofeminism’ is now commonly applied to any view that combines ecological promotion with feminist study. Yet, since the diversities of, and disagreement amid, feminist theories, the label perhaps may be too broad to be enlightening. A few feminist writers on ecological matters are cautious of calling themselves ‘ecofeminists’ According to Næss (1973) the ‘low ecology movement’, is the struggle against pollution and resource exhaustion, the crucial aim of which is the health and prosperity of people in the developed countries. The ‘deep ecosystem movement’, supports biospheric social fairness, the vision that all living things are similar in having importance in their own right, self-directed of their value to human purposes. The deep ecologist compliments this inherent value. In addition, deep ecology as well supports the relational, total-field image, accepting organisms as ‘knots’ in the biospherical net, the uniqueness of which are explained in terms of their ecological relationships to each other. Næss emphasizes that the ‘deep’ contentment that people receive from close corporation with other forms of life in nature adds appreciably to the life excellence. Biospheric egalitarianism was modified in the 1980s to the claim that the affluent of both human and non-human life has importance in them. Deep ecology came to an end to be a specific principle, although it became a ‘stage’, of eight points, on which Næss expected all ecologist could be in agreement. The podium was visualized as launching a middle ground, among fundamental philosophical orientations, whether Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, process philosophy, or whatsoever, and the sensible values deciding action in specific circumstances. Consequently the deep ecological movement became unambiguously pluralist (Light, 1996). Even as Næsss observes human Self-realization as an answer to the ecological crises resultant of human self-centeredness and misuse of nature, a number of of the American and Australian supporters of the deep ecology platform explains further that the extension of the human self to comprise nonhuman nature is supported by the Copenhagen understanding of quantum theory that dissolved the borders between the observer and the observed (Fox 1984, and Callicott, 1985). But, these developments of deep ecology were condemned by some feminist theorists and argued that the theory of the extended self is in fact a masked form of human selfishness, incapable to provide environment its due respect as a real ‘other’ free of human attention and well-being (Plumwood 1993, and Warren 1999). The pragmatists addressed the evils and promise the world faced close to the start of the twentieth century. John Dewey was not capable completely to foresee the ecological crises of the twenty-first century. The typical American pragmatists offer with an influential set of basic philosophical thoughts. The applications of these insights to modern issue of the environment, while, to increasing the facts of genuine ecological philosophy, go into the most recent region. There is a need for broad effort to understand and rebuild the perceptive of a few major subjects in the present ecological philosophy, by viewing the way they emerge in the light of pragmatism. The labor of building thorough arguments for these positions and reviewing their virtues for environmental philosophy lies ahead, in the constant assessment of basic concepts, problems, and approaches in the field. These issues are: the notion of environment, the place of ecological ethics in philosophical inquest and the social and political scope of ecological ethics. Another issue is the pragmatic assistance to the discussion over ethical pluralism, anthropocentrism and the inherent value of nature. There are the debates over moral pluralism, anthropocentrism and the inherent value of the natural world. The proposals of pragmatism concerning all of these questions are possibly controversial. It is expected that the argument may advocate some option to think about these crucial matters Ethical pluralism can be explained as the vision that no single moral code of what is right, can be correctly applied in all morally difficult situations. Pragmatism make out that there are real differences among moral conditions, as there are many types of entities and probable relations between them. The discussion over anthropocentrism is particularly tendentious. Anthropocentrism preserve that value of human beings. Whereas biocentrism maintains that all forms of life and consider all are valuable. Ecocentrism highlights the value of environmental systems as a whole, comprising natural processes, interactions and non-living fraction of the environment. The aspect of the discussion concerns whether significance adds to individual entities or value must be perceived holistically. The most important issue in environmental ethics is creating the intrinsic value of the non-human world. The major concern is that as long as the non-human world is considered as a reserve of resources having merely instrumental worth, there can be no real ecological ethic. The non-human world must be more than useful and it must be precious in its own right. Therefore its worth can be accepted by humans, and its ethical consideration can be recognized and appreciated. The message here is that all are linked at all points to the environments, and vice versa, is the Alpha and the Omega of pragmatic notion regarding the environment (Parker, ND). References Brennan, (2008) Environmental Ethics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved April 03, 2008, from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/ Callicott (1985). Intrinsic Value Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics, reprinted in Callicott 1989, pp. 157-74 Collins, S. (1974). A Different Heaven and Earth, Valley Forge: Judson Press Fox, W. (1984). Deep Ecology: A New Philosophy of Our Time?’ The Ecologist 14: 194-200 Green, K. (1994). Freud, Wollstonecraft and Ecofeminism, Environmental Ethics 16: 117-34. King, Y. (1989a). ‘The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology’, in J. Plant (ed.), Healing the Wounds, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers: 18-28. King, Y. (1989b). Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and Nature/Culture Dualism’, in A. M. Jaggar and S. R. Bordo (eds.) Light, A. (1996). ‘Callicott and Naess on Pluralism’, Inquiry 39: 273-294 Næss, A. (1973). The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement, Inquiry 16, reprinted in Sessions 1995, pp. 151-5. O’Neill, (2005) Environmental Values through Thick and Thin Retrieved April 03, 2008, from: http://www.conservationandsociety.org/cs_3_2_479.pdf Parker, K.A. (ND) Pragmatism and Environmental Thought Retrieved April 03, 2008, from: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jwcwolf/Papers/Parker.pdf Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London: Routledge Warren, K.J., (1999). Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology, in Witoszek and Brennan (eds.) 1999, pp. 255-69 Read More