Creatures as creative: Callicott and Whitehead on creaturely value

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 37-56

  Benzoni, Francisco ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33644685330     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200628138     Document Type: Review

References (118)

1. Such dualism holds that there are two fundamentally different kinds of entities, entities that differ in the metaphysical characteristics they exemplify (e.g., mind/matter, immaterial/material, subject/object).
2. In her article, "What Process Philosophy Can Contribute to the Land Ethic and Deep Ecology," The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 8 (1991): 32, Susan Armstrong-Buck affirms, in summary fashion, a similar account of the difference between Whitehead and Callicott. A number of other ecological ethicists have been influenced by Whitehead's thought.
3. See, e.g., Charles Birch and John Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life (Denton, Tex.: Environmental Ethics Books, 1990),
4. or Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994);
5. Susan Armstrong-Buck, "Whitehead's Metaphysical System as a Foundation for Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 8 (1986): 241-259;
6. Andrew Kerr, "Ethical Status of Ecosystems in Whitehead's Philosophy," Process Studies 24 (1995): 76-89;
7. John Cobb, Jr., "Deep Ecology and Process Thought," Process Studies 30 (2001): 112-31;
8. Charles Birch, "Environmental Ethics in Process Thought," alfred.north.whitehead.com/AJPT/ajpt_papers/vol02/02_birch.htm.
9. To be sure, this claim requires further elaboration (e.g., the metaphysics in question must underwrite a robust conception of intrinsic value) and qualification (e.g., the precise locus of intrinsic value needs to be clarified, as does the basis for a value hierarchy, assuming one is supported).
10. See, e.g., J. Baird Callicott, "On Norton and the Failure of Monistic Inherentism," Environmental Ethics 18(1996): 219;
11. or J. Baird Callicott, "Rolston on Intrinsic Value: A Deconstruction," Environmental Ethics 14(1992): 129-43; p. 138.
12. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, corrected ed. (New York: Free Press, 1978), p. 21.
13. Nothing in this explication of terms should be taken to entail a metaphysical separation between subject and object or valuer and non-valuer.
14. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 18 (emphasis added).
15. See also Process and Reality, ibid., p. 110.
16. Process and Reality, Ibid., p. 18.
17. Note that here I am using the term creature to denote the series of actual entities that inherit their dominant characteristics from the preceding actual entity. This inheritance accounts for the relative stability of that creature's characteristics over time.
18. Ibid., p. 21. Since creativity is the telos of the universe, the metaphysical good to be pursued, for rational creatures (i.e., human beings) seeking to maximize the conditions for the exercise of creativity (or richness of experience) as such is the moral law. Since all creatures are subjects of experience and creative to some extent, all creatures fall under the ambit of the moral law and have some degree of moral worth.
19. Ibid., p. 166.
20. See, for example, Armstrong-Buck, "Whitehead's Metaphysical System as a Foundation for Environmental Ethics," p. 245;
21. Armstrong-Buck, "What Process Philosophy Can Contribute to the Land Ethic and Deep Ecology."
22. See Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 204.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., p. 98.
26. Ibid., p. 177.
27. Whitehead holds, "Any doctrine which refuses to place human experience outside nature, must find in descriptions of human experience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less specialized natural occurrences." Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 184.
28. See Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Free Press, 1968);
29. Adventures of Ideas; Process and Reality.
30. See also Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (LaSalle, 111.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1970).
31. David Ray Griffin, "Panexperientialist Physicalism and the Mind-Body Problem," Journal of Consciousness Studies 4 (1997): 248-68; p. 264.
32. See also Charles Hartshorne, "The Compound Individual," in Philosophical Essays for Alfred North Whitehead (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936), pp. 193-220. It might be added that true individuals do not retain their properties when they are "put asunder" or taken apart.
33. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 115.
34. Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, p. 143.
35. Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, Ibid., p. 252.
36. Jay McDaniel offers an extended argument that this metaphysical scheme offers the most plausible interpretation of the findings of quantum physics. Jay McDaniel, "Physical Matter as Creative and Sentient," Environmental Ethics 5 (1983): 291-317.
37. Cobb, "Deep Ecology and Process Thought," p. 119.
38. Andrew Kerr has further developed the thesis that ecosystems have moral importance in Whitehead's metaphysical scheme. See Kerr, "Ethical Status of Ecosystems in Whitehead's Philosophy," pp. 76-89.
39. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 136.
40. See, e.g., Leemon B. McHenry, "Whitehead's Panpsyschism as the Subjectivity of Prehension," Process Studies 24 (1995): 1-14. See esp. pp. 6-8.
41. See Whitehead, Modes of Thought, p. 109.
42. In my book, Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul (University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming), I offer an extended critique of Callicott's "modern" axiology.
43. J. Baird Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics 7 (1985): 357-75.
44. Reprinted in J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989): 157-74; p. 160. Page references are to the reprinted version.
45. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy Ibid., p. 161.
46. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy Ibid., pp. 161-62.
47. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy Ibid., p. 162.
48. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy Ibid., p. 164.
49. See, for example, Y. S. Lo, "A Humean Argument for the Land Ethic?" Environmental Values 10 (2001): 523-39;
50. Y. S. Lo, "Non-Humean Holism, Un-Humean Holism," Environmental Values 10 (2001): 113-23;
51. Kristin Shrader-Frechette, "Individualism, Holism, and Environ Ethics" Ethics and the Environment 1 (1996): 55-69;
52. Tom Regan, The Case of Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 61.
53. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 165.
54. "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," Ibid., p. 166.
55. J. Baird Callicott, "Introduction: Compass Points in Environmental Philosophy," in Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999): 1-24; p. 17.
56. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 166 (emphasis added).
57. See, e.g., "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," ibid., pp. 160-62 and 169.
58. See "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," ibid., pp. 258-60.
59. Callicott, "On Norton and the Failure of Monistic Inherentism, p. 219.
60. Callicott goes on, "Something has value, in other words, if and only if it is valued" (ibid.).
61. Ibid.
62. See, e.g.,Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 169;
63. Callicott, "Rolston on Intrinsic Value," p. 138.
64. Callicott, "Rolston on Intrinsic Value," p. 139.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., p. 140.
70. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 169 (emphasis added).
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., p. 170.
74. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (Boulder: Shambala Publications, 1975), pp. 68-69.
75. Quoted in Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 171.
76. Ibid.
77. See Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," pp. 171-72.
78. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," Environmental Ethics 9 (1986): 300-15.
79. Reprinted in J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989): 101-14;p. 112. Page references are to the reprinted version.
80. Paul Shepard, "Ecology and Man: A Viewpoint," in Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley, eds., The Subversive Science: Essays toward an Ecology of Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1967), p. 2.
81. Quoted in "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 112.
82. See Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 112.
83. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 172.
84. Ibid.
85. Kenneth Goodpaster, "From Egoism to Environmentalism," in Ethics and Problems of the Twenty-First Century, ed. K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1979).
86. See Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," pp. 172-73;
87. or Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 112.
88. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 114.
89. Callicott, "Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics," p. 175.
90. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 114.
91. "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," Ibid., p. 112.
92. For a critical, yet appreciative, appraisal, see Michael Zimmerman, "Quantum Theory, Intrinsic Value, and Panentheism," Environmental Ethics 10 (1988): 3-30.
93. Callicott, "Rolston on Intrinsic Value," p. 138.
94. Perhaps they are part of the "physical plenum."
95. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 29.
96. Callicott, "Rolston on Intrinsic Value," p. 138.
97. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 113.
98. Callicott, "Rolston on Intrinsic Value," p. 138.
99. Thomas Aquinas is another thinker who depends on bifurcation for articulating the moral worth of the self.
100. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 109.
101. Drawing on the work of Paul Shepard, Callicott reinforces this point: "...an object-ontology is inappropriate to an ecological description of the natural environment. Living natural objects should be regarded as ontologically subordinate to 'events,' to 'flow patterns' or 'field patterns'"
102. (ibid., p. 108).
103. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 309.
104. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," pp. 109-110.
105. "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," Ibid., p. 110.
106. In other words, an entity cannot become a constituent element in another entity that is in process until it completes its becoming because before then there is nothing determinate to integrate. See, e.g., Griffin, "Panexperientialist Physicalism and the Mind-Body Problem," p. 263.
107. See also McDaniel, "Physical Matter as Creative and Sentient," p. 309, for an argument with the same conclusion based on relativity theory.
108. See, e.g., Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 166-67.
109. See Process and Reality, ibid., p. 22.
110. Process and Reality, Ibid., p. 28.
111. Process and Reality, Ibid., p. 50.
112. Ibid.
113. Hartshorne puts the point as follows: "Causal explanation is incurably pluralistic: on the basis of many past events, it has to explain a single present event or experience. It is, then, simple logic that something is missed by the causal account. . . . From a, b, c, d, . . . one is to derive the experience of a, b, c, d . . . , and not just an experience of them, but precisely this experience of them. There can be no logic for such a derivation. The step is not logical but a free creation." Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, p. 2.
114. Ibid. The entities in question are, of course, metaphysically fundamental entities.
115. Callicott, "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," p. 109.
116. "The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology," Ibid., p. 110.
117. Objects might also be understood to be inadequately apprehended aggregates of actual entities, such as rocks, that do not themselves enjoy subjective experience.
118. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 167.