Universal consideration: An epistemological map of the terrain

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 265-277

  Cheney, Jim ^a,b  

^a Milwaukee College of General Studies Waukesha Campus   (United States)

^b LAKEHEAD UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009624952     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics199820318     Document Type: Review

References (38)

1. Thomas H. Birch, "Moral Considerability and Universal Consideration," Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 314, 329-30.
2. "Earth others" is Val Plumwood's term. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993).
3. My map lights up different dimensions of the terrain than does Birch's. It is good to have lots of maps - not so that we do not get lost, but so that we may better explore the multifaceted character of the terrain.
4. Eugene C, Hargrove, "The Role of Rules in Ethical Decision Making," Inquiry 28 (1985): 3-42.
5. Adapting Kuhn's terms to present purposes, we must not temporally separate out a "crisis-state ethics" from "normal ethics" as we do with their analogues in science. That is, we must not practice universal consideration only at times when "normal ethics" reaches a crisis state; rather, "normal ethics" must itself embody a continuing deep underlying practice of universal consideration.
6. Anthony Weston, "Self-Validating Reduction: Toward a Theory of Environmental Devaluation," Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 115-32.
7. David Abram introduced the term more-than-human world in his The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996). See Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Andrew Brennan, Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Jim Cheney, "The Dusty World: Wildness and Higher Laws in Thoreau's Walden," Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996): 75-90; and Shagbark Hickory, "Environmental Etiquette/Environmental Practice: American Indian Challenges to Environmental Ethics," in Max Oelschlaeger, ed., The Company of Others: Essays in Celebration of Paul Shepard (Durango, Colo.: Kivakí Press, 1995): 109-26.
8. David Abram introduced the term more-than-human world in his The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996). See Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Andrew Brennan, Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Jim Cheney, "The Dusty World: Wildness and Higher Laws in Thoreau's Walden," Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996): 75-90; and Shagbark Hickory, "Environmental Etiquette/Environmental Practice: American Indian Challenges to Environmental Ethics," in Max Oelschlaeger, ed., The Company of Others: Essays in Celebration of Paul Shepard (Durango, Colo.: Kivakí Press, 1995): 109-26.
9. David Abram introduced the term more-than-human world in his The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996). See Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Andrew Brennan, Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Jim Cheney, "The Dusty World: Wildness and Higher Laws in Thoreau's Walden," Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996): 75-90; and Shagbark Hickory, "Environmental Etiquette/Environmental Practice: American Indian Challenges to Environmental Ethics," in Max Oelschlaeger, ed., The Company of Others: Essays in Celebration of Paul Shepard (Durango, Colo.: Kivakí Press, 1995): 109-26.
10. David Abram introduced the term more-than-human world in his The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996). See Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Andrew Brennan, Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Jim Cheney, "The Dusty World: Wildness and Higher Laws in Thoreau's Walden," Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996): 75-90; and Shagbark Hickory, "Environmental Etiquette/Environmental Practice: American Indian Challenges to Environmental Ethics," in Max Oelschlaeger, ed., The Company of Others: Essays in Celebration of Paul Shepard (Durango, Colo.: Kivakí Press, 1995): 109-26.
11. David Abram introduced the term more-than-human world in his The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996). See Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Andrew Brennan, Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Jim Cheney, "The Dusty World: Wildness and Higher Laws in Thoreau's Walden," Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996): 75-90; and Shagbark Hickory, "Environmental Etiquette/Environmental Practice: American Indian Challenges to Environmental Ethics," in Max Oelschlaeger, ed., The Company of Others: Essays in Celebration of Paul Shepard (Durango, Colo.: Kivakí Press, 1995): 109-26.
12. For classics on the topic, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575-99.
13. For classics on the topic, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575-99.
14. For classics on the topic, see Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575-99.
15. Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977), p. 71.
16. Jack Turner, "Wildness and the Defense of Nature," in Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp. 114-15. On the Wildlands Project, see ibid., p. 110, where Turner says of it: "I think of it as North America designed by Foreman, Noss, and Associates." See also Thomas H. Birch, "The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
17. Jack Turner, "Wildness and the Defense of Nature," in Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp. 114-15. On the Wildlands Project, see ibid., p. 110, where Turner says of it: "I think of it as North America designed by Foreman, Noss, and Associates." See also Thomas H. Birch, "The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
18. Jack Turner, "Wildness and the Defense of Nature," in Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp. 114-15. On the Wildlands Project, see ibid., p. 110, where Turner says of it: "I think of it as North America designed by Foreman, Noss, and Associates." See also Thomas H. Birch, "The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons," Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3-26.
19. This is not the place to argue the merits of this view. For a strong argument in its favor, see Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, pp. 120-40. She argues there that "mindlike properties are found in both the category of the intentional and the category of the intentional" (p. 131) and that on these criteria "mindlike qualities are spread throughout nature, and are necessary to its understanding" (p. 134). By adopting what she calls the "intentional stance" toward nature "we open ourselves to possibilities and exchanges which are not just of our own devising. We can encounter the earth other as a potential intentional subject, as one who can alter us as well as we it, and thus can begin to conceive a potential for a mutual and sustaining interchange with nature . . . and recognize in [its] limitless heterogeneity beings who always outrun what we may know and want" (pp. 137-38).
20. Henry S. Sharp, The Transformation of Bigfoot: Maleness, Power, and Belief among the Chipewyan (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), pp. 144-45.
21. Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," in Walden, para. 17.
22. Knowing with is Irene Klaver's term. See "The Implicit Practice of Environmental Philosophy," in Lester Embree and Don Marietta, eds., Environmental Philosophy and Environmental Activism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), pp. 67-79.
23. The idea that gave rise to the reflections in this paragraph - that consideration is not something I give, but is something embedded in a practice - is Irene Klaver's. Epistemological reciprocity can be partially expressed in terms of the ecology of cybernetics. As Gregory Bateson describes it, a system displays mental characteristics if it is responsive to difference (i.e., if it compares items), if it processes information, and if it is self-corrective. Such systems include events and objects that are outside the human body. The mental characteristics of such systems are inherent or immanent in the events and objects that comprise these systems and their causal circuits and energy relations. No part of such systems has unilateral control over the rest. That is, no part of the system is the mind. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1972).
24. The idea that gave rise to the reflections in this paragraph - that consideration is not something I give, but is something embedded in a practice - is Irene Klaver's. Epistemological reciprocity can be partially expressed in terms of the ecology of cybernetics. As Gregory Bateson describes it, a system displays mental characteristics if it is responsive to difference (i.e., if it compares items), if it processes information, and if it is self-corrective. Such systems include events and objects that are outside the human body. The mental characteristics of such systems are inherent or immanent in the events and objects that comprise these systems and their causal circuits and energy relations. No part of such systems has unilateral control over the rest. That is, no part of the system is the mind. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1972).
25. Barry Lopez, "Landscape and Narrative," in Lopez, Crossing Open Ground (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 66.
26. Elaine Jahner, "The Spiritual Landscape," in D. M. Dooling and Paul Jordan-Smith, eds., I Become Part of It: Sacred Dimensions in Native American Life (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 193.
27. See James R. Walker, Lakota Myth, ed. Elaine Jahner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983) and Julian Rice, Before the Great Spirit: The Many Faces of Sioux Spirituality (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
28. See James R. Walker, Lakota Myth, ed. Elaine Jahner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983) and Julian Rice, Before the Great Spirit: The Many Faces of Sioux Spirituality (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
29. Leslie Marmon Silko, Wilderness University presentation, University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, 26 April 1984.
30. For a Euro-American example that came to my attention as this article was being prepared for press, see Joseph W. Meeker, The Comedy of Survival: Literary Ecology and a Play Ethic, 3rd ed. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), pp. 111-12.
31. Quoted in Gerald Vizenor, "Trickster Discourse: Comic & Tragic Themes in Native American Literature," in Mark Lindquist and Martin Zanger, eds., "Buried Roots and Indestructible Seeds": The Survival of American Indian Life in Story, History, and Spirit (Madison: Wisconsin Humanities Council, 1993), p. 39.
32. Lee Irwin, The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains, foreword by Vine Deloria, Jr. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), p. 224.
33. Rolston, Environmental Ethics, pp. 328, 349, and 342.
34. See Anthony Weston, "Before Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 14 (1992): 321-38.
35. Silko, Wilderness University presentation.
36. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, para. 114.
37. For a particularly interesting and insightful exposition, see Nelson Goodman and Catherine Z. Elgin, "A Reconception of Philosophy," in Goodman and Elgin, Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988). Rather than attempt to pry the concepts of truth, certainty, and knowledge away from their link with the Enlightenment project of knowledge of the world as it "really is," Goodman and Elgin shift their focus to the roles of tightness, adoption, and understanding (respectively). "Rightness is a matter of fitting and working . . . .[,] fitting into a context or discourse or standing complex of other symbols . . . . The fitting is tested by the working, by the forwarding of work in hand or in prospect" (p. 158). Goodman and Elgin are not offering a coherence or pragmatic theory of truth; they are recommending that we switch our focus from truth to rightness, "a concept with greater reach than truth" (p. 155). As a replacement for certainty Goodman and Elgin propose, not "alternatives such as probability, belief, and assent," but adoption. "Adoption is a matter of putting to work, of making or trying to make a fit . . . . Adoption does not imply any degree of confidence . . . . [T]he overall effort is toward achieving a relatively durable but flexible and productive network of adoptions" (pp. 159-60). "Finally, knowledge . . . gives way . . . to understanding . . . . 'Understanding' is a versatile term for a skill, a process, an accomplishment. First, the understanding is what might be called the cognitive 'faculty' in an inclusive sense: the collection of abilities to inquire and invent, discriminate and discover, connect and clarify, order and organize, adopt, test, reject. Second, understanding is the process of using such skills for the cognitive making and remaking of a world, worlds, or a world of worlds" (p. 161). These recommendations fit nicely with the alternative epistemology suggested in the present paper; they constitute, as it were, a manual for effective ethical as well as epistemological narrative.
38. For a nice illustration of this point, see Carol Geddes, panel discussion by Yukon First Nations people on the topic of "What is a good way to teach children and young adults to respect the land?" transcript in Bob Jickling, ed., Environment, Ethics, and Education: A Colloquium (Whitehorse: Yukon College, 1996), pp. 32-33. The indigenous ideas on which I draw in this paper are filtered - indeed, double-filtered in cases where I work from secondary sources - through the conceptual lens of the Western-defined problematics in environmental ethics that I address. I do not claim to understand indigenous thought as that thought lives in indigenous worlds. The only real authorities on indigenous thought are indigenous peoples themselves. I only claim that this thought as I understand it sheds light on current problems in environmental ethics. Were we in the West able to truly understand i'ndigenous thought - were it alive in our thought and practice - the problems we face would, I suspect, have already simply dissolved.