Ecological morality and nonmoral sentiments

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 149-161

  Partridge, Ernest ^a,b  

^a NORTHLAND COLLEGE   (United States)

^b Dept Humaninities Environ Ethics ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0346706812     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics199618229     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. E. O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 114.
2. J. Baird Callicott, "Can a Theory of Moral Sentiments Support a Genuinely Normative Environmental Ethic?" Inquiry 35 (1992): 183-198.
3. Ibid., 184.
4. J. Baird Callicott, "The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic," In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), p. 83.
5. David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), p. 5.
6. Ibid., p. 107.
7. Clearly, it will not do simply to argue that "X is immoral, because it violates a moral rule Y, which is immoral." Eventually, an account of "morality/immorality" must be given which does not repeat the definiendum in the definiens.
8. In fact. Hume had no inclination to apply moral sentiments to abstractions and collectives, such as "the human community." In A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Doubleday-Dophin, 1961), pp. 433-34, bk. 3, pt. 2, sec. 1, he wrote: "In general, it may be affirmed that there is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself."
9. Hume continues, "A young tree which overtops and destroys its parent stands in all the same relations with Nero when he murdered Agrippina, and if morality consisted merely in relations would, no doubt, be equally criminal." Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 111.
10. These bold pronouncements have the tincture of dogmatism. Yet a meticulous demonstration of it would lead us hopelessly astray from the primary theme of this essay. Fortunately, I have elsewhere defended the connection between moral agency, language, and community and am willing to allow these other works to stand in support of this paragraph. See, in particular, my "Posthumous Interest and Posthumous Respect," Ethics 91, no. 2 (1981): 243-64; "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 4 (1982): 175-190; "Three Wrong Leads in a Search for an Environmental Ethic," Ethics and Animals 3 (September 1984): 61-74; and "Why Care About the Future?" in Ernest Partridge, ed., Responsibilities to Future Generations (Prometheus Books, 1981).
11. These bold pronouncements have the tincture of dogmatism. Yet a meticulous demonstration of it would lead us hopelessly astray from the primary theme of this essay. Fortunately, I have elsewhere defended the connection between moral agency, language, and community and am willing to allow these other works to stand in support of this paragraph. See, in particular, my "Posthumous Interest and Posthumous Respect," Ethics 91, no. 2 (1981): 243-64; "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 4 (1982): 175-190; "Three Wrong Leads in a Search for an Environmental Ethic," Ethics and Animals 3 (September 1984): 61-74; and "Why Care About the Future?" in Ernest Partridge, ed., Responsibilities to Future Generations (Prometheus Books, 1981).
12. These bold pronouncements have the tincture of dogmatism. Yet a meticulous demonstration of it would lead us hopelessly astray from the primary theme of this essay. Fortunately, I have elsewhere defended the connection between moral agency, language, and community and am willing to allow these other works to stand in support of this paragraph. See, in particular, my "Posthumous Interest and Posthumous Respect," Ethics 91, no. 2 (1981): 243-64; "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 4 (1982): 175-190; "Three Wrong Leads in a Search for an Environmental Ethic," Ethics and Animals 3 (September 1984): 61-74; and "Why Care About the Future?" in Ernest Partridge, ed., Responsibilities to Future Generations (Prometheus Books, 1981).
13. These bold pronouncements have the tincture of dogmatism. Yet a meticulous demonstration of it would lead us hopelessly astray from the primary theme of this essay. Fortunately, I have elsewhere defended the connection between moral agency, language, and community and am willing to allow these other works to stand in support of this paragraph. See, in particular, my "Posthumous Interest and Posthumous Respect," Ethics 91, no. 2 (1981): 243-64; "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 4 (1982): 175-190; "Three Wrong Leads in a Search for an Environmental Ethic," Ethics and Animals 3 (September 1984): 61-74; and "Why Care About the Future?" in Ernest Partridge, ed., Responsibilities to Future Generations (Prometheus Books, 1981).
14. J. Baird Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," In Defense of the Land Ethic, pp. 162-63.
15. Here I adopt and apply (as I have before), Joel Feinberg's "interest theory of rights," as defended in his influential essay, "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," in William T. Blackstone, ed., Philosophy and Environmental Crisis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974).
16. J. Baird Callicott, "Hume's Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold's Land Ethic," In Defense of the Land Ethic, p. 127.
17. Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 146-47.
18. Martin Krieger, "What's Wrong with Plastic Trees?" Science, 2 February 1973, p. 453.
19. Hugh Iltis, "To the Taxonomist and the Ecologist, Whose Fight is the Preservation of Nature," BioScience 16 (1967): 887. In numerous articles and lectures in the early seventies, Iltis was among the first, perhaps the first, to articulate and defend this theory. It is a great pity that his energy and devotion did not prompt an appropriate response among scientific researchers and environmental philosophers.
20. Wilson, Biophilia, p. 101.
21. For a sample, see The Biophilia Hypothesis, ed. Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993).
22. Wilson, Biophilia, p. 84.
23. Paul R. Ehrlich, "Shared Sensibilities," Natural History, November, 1984, p. 92.
24. Eric Lax, "Woody and Mia," New York Times Magazine, 24 February 1991.
25. Paul Shepard, "Ecology and Man," in The Subversive Science, ed. Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 4.
26. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics."
27. Shepard, "Ecology and Man," p. 4.
28. Iltis states the full force of the paradox: "Not until man places man second, or, to be more precise, not until man accepts his dependency on nature and puts himself in place as part of it, not until then does man put man first! This is the greatest paradox of human ecology." H. H. Iltis, "Man First, Man Last: The Paradox of Human Ecology," BioScience 20 (1970): 820. The issue of the status of values in nature, here reduced to the confines of a sentence, is treated with more care and elaboration in my "Values in Nature," Philosophical Inquiry 8, no. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 1986): 96-110.
29. Iltis states the full force of the paradox: "Not until man places man second, or, to be more precise, not until man accepts his dependency on nature and puts himself in place as part of it, not until then does man put man first! This is the greatest paradox of human ecology." H. H. Iltis, "Man First, Man Last: The Paradox of Human Ecology," BioScience 20 (1970): 820. The issue of the status of values in nature, here reduced to the confines of a sentence, is treated with more care and elaboration in my "Values in Nature," Philosophical Inquiry 8, no. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 1986): 96-110.
30. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Sierra Club/Ballantine, 1970), pp. xviii-xix.
31. Time permits only a statement of this paradox. The elaboration and justifications lie elsewhere. My own attempts along this line include "Why Care About the Future?" in Responsibilities to Future Generations, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), pp. 203-19; "Environmental Ethics: Obstacles and Opportunities," in Environmental Consciousness, ed. Robert C. Schultz and J. Donald Hughes (Washington: University Press of America, 1981), pp. 325-50; and "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 6 (1984): 101-30.
32. Time permits only a statement of this paradox. The elaboration and justifications lie elsewhere. My own attempts along this line include "Why Care About the Future?" in Responsibilities to Future Generations, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), pp. 203-19; "Environmental Ethics: Obstacles and Opportunities," in Environmental Consciousness, ed. Robert C. Schultz and J. Donald Hughes (Washington: University Press of America, 1981), pp. 325-50; and "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 6 (1984): 101-30.
33. Time permits only a statement of this paradox. The elaboration and justifications lie elsewhere. My own attempts along this line include "Why Care About the Future?" in Responsibilities to Future Generations, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), pp. 203-19; "Environmental Ethics: Obstacles and Opportunities," in Environmental Consciousness, ed. Robert C. Schultz and J. Donald Hughes (Washington: University Press of America, 1981), pp. 325-50; and "Nature as a Moral Resource," Environmental Ethics 6 (1984): 101-30.