Canadian Environmental Philosophy 9780773557765

Citation preview

c a n a d i a n e n v i r o n m e n ta l p h i l o s o p h y

30761_DesRoches.indd 1

2019-05-03 12:52:00

30761_DesRoches.indd 2

2019-05-03 12:52:00

CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Ed i te d by c. tyler desroches, frank jankunis, and byron williston

McGill-­Q ueen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

30761_DesRoches.indd 3

2019-05-03 12:52:00

©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2019 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-0-7735-5666-9 (cloth) 978-0-7735-5667-6 (paper) 978-0-7735-5776-5 (eP DF ) 978-0-7735-5777-2 (eP UB)

Legal deposit second quarter 2019 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Canadian environmental philosophy / edited by C. Tyler DesRoches, Frank Jankunis, and Byron Williston. Names: DesRoches, C. Tyler, 1980– editor. | Jankunis, Frank, 1983– editor. | Williston, Byron, 1965– editor. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190058579 | Canadiana (eb o o k ) 20190059214 | IS BN 9780773556676 (softcover) | I SB N 9780773556669 (hardcover) | IS BN 9780773557765 (eP DF ) | I SB N 9780773557772 (eP U B ) Subjects: L CS H: Environmental sciences—Canada—Philosophy. | L C SH : Environmentalism—Canada. | L CS H: Environmental policy—Canada. Classification: L CC GE 40 .C36 2019 | DDC 363.7001—dc23

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5 / 13 Sabon.

30761_DesRoches.indd 4

2019-05-03 12:52:00

Contents

Figures vii Introduction: Situating Environmental Philosophy in Canada  3 C. Tyler DesRoches, Frank Jankunis, and Byron Williston



P art O n e   F o u n dat io n a l I s sues i n  E n v iro n m e n ta l P h il o s o phy

  1 The End of Mechanism: The Machine Model of Nature, Technologies of Information, and the Ecological Turn  19 Philip Rose   2 On the Possibility of a Planetary Entitlement  40 Allen Habib   3 Can Autopoiesis Ground a Response to the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism? 56 Antoine C. Dussault   4 Sentience, Life, Richness  83 Gregory M. Mikkelson



P art T wo   C a n a d ia n Id e nti ty an d t h e   E n v iro n m e n t

  5 Diverse Environments, Diverse People  99 Matthew J. Barker   6 The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl  123 Frank Jankunis

30761_DesRoches.indd 5

2019-05-03 12:52:00

vi Contents

  7 Going Outside  137 Nathan Kowalsky



P art T h r e e   A n t h ro p o c e n e Themes

  8 Ecological Nationalism: Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene 159 Byron Williston   9 Virtue in the Anthropocene  181 Kent A. Peacock 10 Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene: The Challenge of Hybridization 199 Jennifer Welchman



P art F o u r   E n v iro n m e n ta l Phi los ophy an d P o l icy in C a n a da

11 Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets  217 C. Tyler DesRoches 12 Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management  234 Eric Desjardins, Jamie Shaw, Gillian Barker, and Justin Bzovy 13 Being Objective: How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of Co-Management 265 Jennifer Jill Fellows References 285 Index 325

30761_DesRoches.indd 6

2019-05-03 12:52:00

Figures

  4.1 Variety and harmony of humanity with nature  95   5.1 Traditional kinds vs. cluster kinds vs. nominal kinds  112   5.2 Three ways to have an overall character of a flourishing human 114   6.1 Grey Owl feeding baby beaver on his shoulder at Lake Ajawaan, Saskatchewan (c. 1933–34).  127   7.1 The urban forest in an Edmonton, Alberta, neighbourhood. © 2016 Nathan Kowalsky  140   7.2 Trees on the IJzerenleen, Mechelen, Belgium. © 2015 Stephanie Kowalsky  141   7.3 Farmland in Bentheim County, Germany (bottom); Wyandot County, Ohio, US (centre); and Cypress County, Alberta, Canada (top). Image from Google Maps  143   7.4 Looking west from “the Bench,” Cypress County, Alberta. © 2005 Nathan Kowalsky  144   7.5 The bush south of Grande Prairie, Alberta, seen from an ­oilfield access road. © 2010 Nathan Kowalsky  148 12.1 Graphical representation of the logistic growth model  240 12.2 Graphical representation of how the catch rate (a) and total catch value (b) change as a function of fishing effort (number of vessels). Adapted from Fisheries Science: How and Why It Works for Marine Fisheries, reproduced in Gough (2007, 304) 241 12.3 Precautionary approach framework  248

30761_DesRoches.indd 7

2019-05-03 12:52:00

30761_DesRoches.indd 8

2019-05-03 12:52:00

c a n a d i a n e n v i r o n m e n ta l p h i l o s o p h y

30761_DesRoches.indd 1

2019-05-03 12:52:00

30761_DesRoches.indd 2

2019-05-03 12:52:00

introduction

Situating Environmental Philosophy in Canada C. Tyler DesRoches, Frank Jankunis, and Byron Williston

In her seminal study of Canadian literature, Survival, Margaret Atwood says the following: Canada is an unknown territory for the people who live in it, and I’m not talking about the fact that you may not have taken a trip to the Arctic or to Newfoundland, you may not have explored – as the travel folders have it – This Great Land of Ours. I’m talking about Canada as a state of mind, as the space you inhabit not just with your body but with your head. It’s that kind of space in which we find ourselves lost. What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else … We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not ­survive. (Atwood 1972, 26) Although Canada has changed immensely since she wrote that passage over 40 years ago, Atwood’s remarks remain strikingly relevant. Arguably, we Canadians are still in desperate need of a mental map of our country, even if the reasons for this need have shifted over time. To take just one obvious example of this shift, Canada is now a major global petro-power, to an extent that few of us even thought possible in the 1970s. This has brought economic temptations and

30761_DesRoches.indd 3

2019-05-03 12:52:00

4

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

opportunities to us that have challenged our capacity or willingness to live sustainably on this land. Canada has, of course, always had a resource-based economy, but it was, we might say, comparatively easy to be an environmentalist at a time when so much of the nation’s wealth did not derive from economic activities that directly threaten the environmental commons to the extent that crude bitumen extraction does. Being an environmentalist now is much more challenging than it was in the 1970s. But we should not overstate the shift between then and now. Atwood’s book appeared in 1972, the same year the now-famous report of the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, was published. As many will recall, this book argues that five key indicators – population, agricultural expansion, nonrenewable resource depletion, pollution, and industrial output – show that the Earth system is in overshoot and, as a result, we have good reasons to rethink our culture’s preoccupation with the goal of endless material growth. Much of Atwood’s focus in Survival is on how Canadians have imagined the natural environment in our literature, and she asked this question at the dawn of modern environmentalism, as the world was slowly waking up to the environmental effects of unconstrained industrial expansion. Atwood was not writing about the environmental crisis per se in Survival, but an awareness of a potential environmental calamity was certainly in the air when the book came out (the first Earth Day was celebrated in April 1970). More important, it is significant that Atwood saw fit to ask questions of national identity – emphasizing the connection between making mental maps and flourishing or surviving as a nationally defined group – at precisely that cultural moment. An analysis of The Limits to Growth is, if anything, even more relevant to the world today than it was in 1972. With anthropogenic phenomena like dangerous climate change and massive biodiversity loss, evidence is mounting that environmental degradation has reached a crisis point. Recent studies have shown that we are now breaching a number of key ecological boundaries that, jointly, make the Earth a viable environment for us and other species (Steffen et al. 2015; Rockström 2009). If such studies are correct, then we are fast approaching full-scale overshoot, and yet we clearly have not adjusted our political and economic institutions and values in a way that allows us to address such matters prudently or ethically. But while it is worthwhile to ask where we as an entire species are going, it is

30761_DesRoches.indd 4

2019-05-03 12:52:01

Introduction 5

equally important to ask Atwood’s original question: how are we to understand the task of “survival” from the perspective of this place? Despite the vast and varied work being done in the burgeoning discipline of environmental philosophy today, for the past two decades Canadian Issues in Environmental Ethics by Alex Wellington, Allan Greenbaum, and Wesley Cragg, has been one of the only resources to take up the Canadian perspective in environmental philosophy. However, as these authors acknowledge, theirs is not “a rigorous and comprehensive treatment of the theoretical issues.” They add that although “[s]uch a book, with a Canadian focus, would be well worth producing … it would be another book, a different book, and awaits someone to undertake it” (ix). This volume attempts to carry on the efforts of Wellington, Greenbaum, and Cragg, specifically to provide the more theoretical treatment of environmental issues they flag as missing in their volume. We offer a snapshot of environmental philosophy as it is being practised by Canadian philosophers today. We acknowledge, of course, that today’s directions in Canadian environmental philosophy may differ from those of tomorrow, and we welcome and encourage future explorations of these topics as Canadian environmental philosophy continues to evolve and refine its identity. Nevertheless, it might be helpful to say something about why a book like ours is so important at the moment. There are at least two reasons. First, regardless of how theoretical or abstract the approach, it is difficult to do environmental philosophy without examples and case studies. But it is still the case that the lion’s share of philosophical literature in this area draws on examples and case studies from the American scene (with the occasional nod to the world outside the US). Canadians tend to downplay, or miss altogether, the extent to which environmental issues are relevant to Canada. All too often, they do not fully recognize the extent to which environmental issues are playing out in their own backyard. This can encourage a kind of apathy, which is unfortunate, given the fact that these issues are of central importance to how we should view ourselves as citizens of this country. Moreover, a vast amount of research has been done in the science of ecology from a Canadian perspective over the last few years. Students in university environmental studies programs are reading superb texts like Living in the Environment: First Canadian Edition by G. Tyler Miller and Dave Hackett. We strongly believe that Canadian environmental philosophers need to catch up to the ecologists on the issue of situating our study of the environment.

30761_DesRoches.indd 5

2019-05-03 12:52:01

6

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

The second reason – already hinted at in our remarks about Atwood, above – is that this is a watershed moment in the history of Canadian environmentalism and environmental thought more generally. In Canada, we have just emerged from a period in which our federal government sought to overturn many key aspects of environmental regulation. No matter one’s political stripes, the policies of recent governments, both provincial and federal, have done profound damage to our reputation as good environmental stewards. For example, in its 2013 survey, the Washington-based Center for Global Development ranked Canada 13th out of 27 of the world’s wealthiest countries on the “commitment to development index (C D I ).” The C D I includes diverse criteria of assessment such as development of new technology, openness to trade, and so on. But on the single issue of environmental protection, Canada placed dead last on the list. According to the report, Canada has the dubious honor of being the only CD I country with an environment score which has gone down since we first calculated the C DI [in 2003]. This reflects rising fossil fuel production and its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only treaty governing the emissions of heat-trapping gases. Canada has dropped below the U.S. into bottom place on the environment component. (Quoted in Williston 2015, xiii–xiv) We suspect this assessment might come as a surprise to many Canadians. It certainly indicates that we have a lot of work to do here, both to raise awareness of critical environmental issues and, of course, to bring pressure on our governments to address them robustly. However, there is a good deal of hope in the air today. The new Canadian federal government appears to be prepared to take our environmental responsibilities much more seriously than the previous one did. Arguably, its progressive stance on emissions reductions at the COP 21 meetings in Paris in December 2015 is one example of this. Even so, we should not be blind to the recent actions of this government, which, for reasons of political expediency, has approved two new Canadian pipelines – Trans Mountain and Line 3 – that together will increase tar sands export capacity by one million barrels a day. It has also welcomed the Trump administration’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport our oil to Gulf refineries.

30761_DesRoches.indd 6

2019-05-03 12:52:01

Introduction 7

It seems to us, therefore, that at a general cultural level, Canada is now emerging into a state of increased awareness of its environmental responsibilities and challenges, and that a key aspect of this awareness is the ecological dangers posed by our resource-based economy. We are beginning to realize that we cannot take the environment for granted, as we have for much of our history, and that we need to remain vigilant in the face of political attempts to undermine the progress we have made in environmental protection. It is thus an ideal time for enhanced philosophical reflection on the meaning and significance of the environment to Canadians. As Atwood implies, it is no exaggeration to say that the very question of what it means to inhabit this country responsibly cannot any longer be separated from the way we relate to our environment as well as the way the latter shapes us as a geographically distinct (if culturally diverse) group of people. So how, specifically, can environmental philosophy help us come to terms with all this complexity? In a recent report on the status of environmental ethics for the International Society for Environmental Ethics, we find the following characterization of the field in this country: A recent sampling among Canadian environmental philosophers shows that even if there is no unique “Canadian” approach to environmental ethics or philosophy, three themes seem to be of particular concern as a result of Canada’s specific geographic and socio-political situation: ethical responsibilities for our contribution to climate change, environmental issues relating to First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, and the iconic role of “the wild” or “the northern wilderness” for Canadian identity. Further exploration of Canadian perspectives on environmental ethics and philosophy is presently under way. (I S E E 2016) While these three themes do indeed appear repeatedly in the chapters of this volume, present scholarship in this area in Canada is much richer and more diverse than the characterization suggests, and our book reflects this fact. The volume includes topics from political philosophy and normative ethics on the one hand to the philosophy of science and the philosophical underpinnings of water management policy on the other. It contains reflections on ecological nationalism, the legacy of Grey Owl,

30761_DesRoches.indd 7

2019-05-03 12:52:01

8

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

the meaning of “outside” to Canadians, the paradigm shift from mechanism to ecology in our understanding of nature, the meaning of the concept of the Anthropocene, the importance of humans’ selfidentifying as “earthlings,” the challenges of biodiversity protection and the status of cross-bred species in the age of climate change, how to ground the moral considerability of ecosystems, the collapse of the Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery, and much more. It covers metaphysics, ontology, ethics, political philosophy, critical history, and environmental policy. The range of topics and frames is as diverse and challenging as the land itself. There is a tension here. On the one hand we have endeavoured to present readers with an accurate representation of the themes being explored by Canadian environmental philosophers. On the other hand, because some of this work is not directly or essentially about Canada, it might be difficult to see how the volume as a whole can be accurately construed as a representation of Canadian environmental philosophy. But this presentation is unavoidable just insofar as we have tried to provide the more theoretical approach to the issues called for by Wellington, Greenbaum, and Cragg. Indeed, we consider it a mark of intellectual maturity among our philosophers, taken as a group, that some of them are advancing the field with relatively abstract work, on, for example, the metaphysics of ecology, the nature of our relations to future people, the general permissibility of selling water in bulk, and so on. In other words, our volume aims to show that Canadian philosophers are doing exceptional work on many issues of contemporary significance in the discipline as a whole. We want to demonstrate the breadth of concerns Canadian philosophers have been addressing in their work, in answer to the ecological self-awareness of philosophers and society (both Canadian and otherwise) more generally. The more abstract work is an essential part of this totality, and we find it encouraging that some Canadian philosophers have trained their talents on it. Environmental philosophy is a unique discipline in that it tackles issues on a wide spectrum from the abstract and metaphysical to the particular and policy-relevant. So the tension we have just mentioned is a key feature of the field itself. In this volume readers will thus discover both a representation of the discipline of environmental philosophy as a whole and a wealth of more particular analyses of Canadian environmental issues. For some this breadth of focus will

30761_DesRoches.indd 8

2019-05-03 12:52:01

Introduction 9

no doubt disappoint inasmuch as it dilutes the purely Canadian content, but we believe it is important for readers to get a grasp of the entire discipline. Put otherwise, we have sought to avoid both a parochial focus on exclusively Canadian issues and cases, and a rootless focus on the purely abstract. Neither focus would provide an accurate picture of the contributions of Canadian environmental philosophy to ecological self-understanding. The tension is thus really a balance, one that, we hope, enhances our readers’ understanding of Canadian environmental philosophy. The balance can also serve as a concrete example of our more general dual relation to the environment. On the one hand, we now live in the age of ecology, the age of Gaia or the Earth system. For the first time in its history, humanity is coming to realize that everything really is interconnected and, in many cases, also interdependent. We know that large-scale interference in the environment can have profound, largely unforeseen, and often adverse knock-on effects elsewhere in the biosphere as well as down the generations. This means that environmental philosophers as such must think about the whole, that a certain kind of environmentally sensitive metaphysics is inescapable. On the other hand, our attachments to the environment are usually much more local than this. We are essentially embodied beings and our bodies are always situated and emplaced in particular bioregions. The bio-geophysical spaces carved out by our cultures, and often encoded in territorial designations, are also places that shape our identities. We have seemingly unavoidable and complexly affective connections to this or that piece of the Earth. As inhabitants of this country, we are, in short, both Earthlings and Canadians – citizens, if you like, of both the bio-cosmos and the polis – and it has never been more important for us to come to terms critically with this dual nature. It is our sincere hope that this volume will help with this task. The volume is structured around the following four broad areas of inquiry: questions about the fundamentals or foundations of environmental philosophy; Anthropocene themes; investigations of Canadian identity as it relates to the environment; and, finally, issues about environmental policy in Canada. What follows in the remainder of this Introduction is a brief explanation of the chapters exploring these themes. In chapter 1, “The End of Mechanism: The Machine Model of Nature, Technologies, and the Ecological Turn,” Philip Rose analyzes

30761_DesRoches.indd 9

2019-05-03 12:52:01

10

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

the mechanistic concept of nature that arose in tandem with modern science. He uncovers the technological underpinnings of the modern, mechanistic conception of nature as grounded in the model of the machine and argues that while this metaphor has proved useful for scientific purposes, it remains a highly limiting and potentially distorting one. Rose argues that many of the mechanistic presuppositions inherited from the modernist machine-model need to be revised and, in some cases, replaced. Drawing on the work of philosophers such as Charles S. Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, Rose outlines an alternative way of framing the concept of nature, one that assigns a greater place to a plurality of conditions, including a power of selfconstitution as well as a real relation to the possible, but in a manner that preserves a sense of mechanism that is compatible with the way scientists fruitfully use the term. In chapter 2, Allen Habib’s “On the Possibility of a Planetary Entitlement” responds to what is perhaps the most fundamental question on the topic of intergenerational justice: how is it that any generation comes to have a right or entitlement to the Earth? Scholars have generally assumed that each and every generation has such an entitlement by appealing to a Lockean divine bequest view, but contemporary theorists have offered no suitable replacement for this antiquated position. In this chapter, Habib presents a new way of grounding intergenerational planetary entitlement, by appealing to our mutual co-construction with the Earth as environment, along the lines originally suggested by the American evolutionary biologist, Richard Lewontin. Some environmental ethicists have argued that, unlike individual organisms, such as bald eagles and blue whales, ecological wholes, such as species, ecological communities, or ecosystems, cannot have a good of their own because ecosystems are not units of natural selection. While there may be a naturalistic and teleological story that explains the good of an eagle and the good of a whale, it is argued that there is no such story for an ecosystem. In chapter 3, “Can Autopoiesis Ground a Response to the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism?,” Antoine Dussault discusses whether a specific notion of biological teleology – autopoiesis – combined with the recent application of the organizational theory of function to ecosystems is a promising way to construe ecosystems as having a good of their own. He identifies an important challenge faced by an autopoiesis-based

30761_DesRoches.indd 10

2019-05-03 12:52:01

Introduction 11

account of the good of ecosystems: the role of ecological disturbances within many ecosystems. Finally, in the last chapter of this foundational section entitled “Sentience, Life, Richness,” Gregory Mikkelson rehabilitates the work of a long neglected Canadian environmental philosopher, Peter Miller. Mikkelson elaborates, refines, and defends Miller’s richness theory against J. Baird Callicott’s original critique of it. Mikkelson maintains that richness theory is uniquely equipped to support a range of human, animal, organismal, and ecosystemic values and, as a consequence, this neglected objective theory of value can actually serve as an improvement over competing theories of value. The second section of this book examines the nature and grounding of Canadian environmental philosophy by considering Canadian places, people, and identity within a wider disciplinary context. It asks what it might mean to designate some environmental philosophy “Canadian.” The chapters address this question by considering the flourishing life from a Canadian perspective, the environmental philosophy of a historically significant figure in Canadian environmentalism (Grey Owl), and the Canadian experience of the built environment, rural areas, and the bush. In chapter 5, “Diverse Environments, Diverse People,” Matthew Barker takes up issues in environmental virtue ethics against the context of his experiences as an environmental and cultural heritage educator in provincial and national parks in Canada. After showing how authors have claimed that character traits must be necessary components of the good life to count as virtues, he argues that environment-regarding traits, e.g., compassion for the environment and humility toward it, cannot meet this traditional standard to the chagrin of interpersonal extensionists, and other environmentalists, who have presumed otherwise. But, in their defence, Barker next argues that we needn’t accept the traditional standard. Drawing on his experiences of environmental and human diversity in Canadian parks, he shows that the most promising paths to some of the goods essential for human flourishing depend on diversity in character traits among the individuals in a society. Barker shows that environment-regarding traits, in particular, may be virtuous for some people partly because they help ensure that others can flourish without them. The argument advances our understanding of both environmental virtue ethics and normative ethics simpliciter.

30761_DesRoches.indd 11

2019-05-03 12:52:01

12

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

In our next chapter, “The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl,” Frank Jankunis takes up the work of the now-infamous 1930s animal and environmental advocate Grey Owl. Grey Owl is now best known for having portrayed himself as partly Indigenous in his life and work when in fact he had no such ancestry, which has cast a long and, Jankunis argues, philosophically problematic shadow on his work. Instead of focusing on the issues of racial imposture and cultural appropriation, Jankunis presents an account of Grey Owl’s work for the environmental philosophy it presents, focusing on the animal and environmental ethics underlying Grey Owl’s advocacy. He concludes that, since the Canadian economy remains resource-based, Grey Owl’s work will continue to be significant to Canadian environmental philosophy. In the last chapter in this section, “Going Outside,” Nathan Kowalsky takes up the notion of what it means to experience nature in this country. Kowalsky employs both objective and phenomenological data in investigating the issue, considering, in turn, constructed environments – both buildings and the spaces around them – rural areas, and the bush. These three areas are arranged as concentric circles – from the built environment to the bush – of possible experience and, importantly, Kowalsky characterizes the boundaries among the three as “porous.” Kowalsky concludes his essay with a reflection on how this perspective may evolve in the Anthropocene, leading us into a series of chapters that focus directly on the philosophical implications of this new epoch in the history of life on Earth. The third section of the book is about our new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. It is now generally understood that human activity on Earth has reached the point at which no place on Earth is unaltered by the human enterprise. It has been argued that the changes are so sweeping that we have now transitioned to a new geological epoch: from the Holocene to the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002; Chakrabarty 2009, 2015). The advent of the Anthropocene raises significant scientific, political, and ethical issues. Our third set of chapters touches on each kind of issue, demonstrating that Canadian environmental philosophy has much to add to our understanding of this dangerous and morally ambiguous new epoch in Earth history. To begin, confronting the global and species-level challenges of the Anthropocene raises the potential for a progress in the political communities that define our understandings of what we owe one another

30761_DesRoches.indd 12

2019-05-03 12:52:01

Introduction 13

as fellow members or citizens. In chapter 8, “Ecological Nationalism: Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene,” Byron Williston argues for what he calls “ecological nationalism,” which, as a form of “rooted cosmopolitanism,” charts a middle course between nationalism and cosmopolitanism simpliciter. Ecological nationalism ties the belief that “the first business of national politics is to maintain the beauty, integrity and stability of the biosphere down the generations” to the specific ecological and political self-understandings of the “imagined community” to which Canadians belong. Among other things, this involves grappling more critically with the “myth of superabundance” that has defined so much of our history with “natural resources.” Williston then applied these thoughts to the case of Canada’s energy and climate policy, post-Paris 2015. In chapter 9, “Virtue in the Anthropocene,” Kent Peacock identifies ingenuity and the capacity for heresy as forms of human excellence key to the survival of our species in the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene. Ingenuity, he argues, is exemplified by game-changing innovations that have been decisive to flourishing at earlier points in human evolutionary history. The related disposition to heresy enables innovation to take hold where it might otherwise be suppressed by orthodoxy or dissipated on minor variations within existing paradigms. “Going against the grain,” Peacock argues, creates opportunity for effective and elegant revolutionary innovation, and are our best hope for flourishing in the Anthropocene. In chapter 10, “Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene: The Challenge of Hybridization,” Jennifer Welchman considers an emerging issue for wildlife conservation in the Anthropocene: extinction by hybridization. A typically neglected form of extinction, extinction by hybridization raises a number of theoretical and practical issues. One important issue is how conservation management should respond to it. Should conservation managers promote the preservation of wild types over hybrid types? As Welchman notes, hybrids are typically considered to be negative developments or ignored altogether. This suggests that hybrids should be culled or managed in some other way, so that wild types are not at risk of extinction. Yet, in the Anthropocene, where the evolutionary history of life on Earth is everywhere affected by human activity, Welchman argues against unreflectively protecting wild types over hybrid types, and insists instead on the importance of carefully reflecting on what values conservation managers seek to realize in managing hybrids.

30761_DesRoches.indd 13

2019-05-03 12:52:01

14

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

The final section of the book consists of three chapters that focus on policy-related decisions that affect some part of the environment. In chapter 11, “Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets,” C. Tyler DesRoches argues that the human right to water entails specific moral limits to commodifying water. While free-market economists have generally recognized no such limits, the famous Canadian environmental thinker Maude Barlow has claimed that the human right to water means not permitting any water markets. Using a Lockean conception of the human right to water, DesRoches shows that both of these views are mistaken. DesRoches argues that if markets prevent people from obtaining some minimal and proportional share of water by charging a prohibitively high price, or by some other means, they put the human right to water in jeopardy and, therefore, should be blocked. Next, in “Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management,” Eric Desjardins, Jamie Shaw, Gillian Barker, and Justin Bzovy tackle the vexed history of the case of the Atlantic cod fishery. They argue that a pluralistic approach to research and policy decisions can significantly improve our understanding of the uncertainties of predicting complex social-ecological systems. This conclusion is illuminating, not least for traditional philosophers of science who have objected to pluralism on the grounds that it opens the door to views that are not deemed to be genuinely “scientific.” Through their case studies, Desjardins et al. show that by embracing a less constrained variety of pluralism, and by considering Earth systems as complex and functionally integrated, there is a philosophical and practical necessity to adopt what they describe as the geofunctions perspective. This should have far-reaching implications for policy decisions on important environmental issues. Finally, in chapter 13, “Being Objective: How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of Co-management,” Jennifer Jill Fellows considers the peculiar problems that arise when managing the environment with diverse stakeholders. Fellows’s focus is the current co-management projects in the Canadian Arctic, where Indigenous knowledge is frequently questioned or dismissed as unscientific or lacking objectivity. Fellows argues that this treatment of Indigenous knowledge undermines the trust necessary to effectively co-manage the Arctic. While we ought to reject the specific concept of objectivity understood as knowledge gathered from a “view from nowhere,” we should embrace a concept of objectivity from a particular perspective.

30761_DesRoches.indd 14

2019-05-03 12:52:01

Introduction 15

Fellows argues that ultimately we need to rethink our concept of objectivity to facilitate effective co-management of the Arctic between Inuit communities and other stakeholders in the Arctic. The idea for this volume emerged from the initial meeting of the newly founded Canadian Society for Environmental Philosophy/ Société Canadienne de philosophie environnementale (CS E P /S CP E ). That was a meeting of discovery. As mentioned just above, until this point Canadian environmental philosophers had been working in relative isolation from one another. Now we have established a society with annual meetings and have become a network of researchers. It is a very heady time for Canadian environmental philosophy. We believe that the work currently being done by our philosophers is as good as anything being produced anywhere in the world. Moreover, we think that because interest in environmental issues now extends across such a broad cultural swath, our book can illuminate new pathways of critical and creative investigation for just about anyone to follow. So the final word of this introduction is an invitation. We invite not just philosophers, but also artists, poets, novelists, filmmakers, sociologists, anthropologists (and others) to join the conversation about the many meanings this beautiful land has for us and the challenges we all face in protecting its unparalleled environmental riches.

30761_DesRoches.indd 15

2019-05-03 12:52:01

30761_DesRoches.indd 16

2019-05-03 12:52:01

P art O n e Foundational Issues in Environmental Philosophy

30761_DesRoches.indd 17

2019-05-03 12:52:01

30761_DesRoches.indd 18

2019-05-03 12:52:01

1

The End of Mechanism: The Machine Model of Nature, Technologies of Information, and the Ecological Turn Philip Rose

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

Declaring “The End of Mechanism” is both provocative and ambiguous, and deliberately so. It is provocative insofar as it makes a bold claim that demands further justification, and it is ambiguous in that the term “End” is being used in two distinct senses, each of which signals something potentially important and noteworthy: 1) It signals a “best before” date that is either rapidly approaching or has already passed, and 2) It signals a moment or stage in the development of some process that may disclose something important or interesting about the process in question. I would like to suggest that mechanism in its broad metaphysical sense, as the idea or model of nature as machine, has passed its “best before” date as a satisfactory way of framing the natural world and our place within it. Put bluntly, the idea of nature as machine has become a “dead metaphor,” not only in that it has become so entrenched in our thoughts and practices as to be uncritically accepted as an unquestioned, world-framing “fact” (Nicholson 2011, 156), but it has also become “dead” in the sense of having lost its original vigour and richness as a historically important and culturally powerful vision of nature. If mechanism in this metaphysical sense is indeed dead, then it is time to seek out new ways of framing the world that are more faithful to the complex of conditions that are disclosed in experience in its broadest, most comprehensive sense.

30761_DesRoches.indd 19

2019-05-03 12:52:01

20

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Taking up the second sense of “End,” I would like to suggest that the historical experiment of exploring and working through the idea of nature as machine has actually given rise to a sense of mechanism that is worth protecting and preserving, namely, mechanism in the sense of a “causal trigger” for certain kinds of changes or alterations in a system or condition. As Nicholson has argued, this more epistemic sense of mechanism, as a causal or triggering relation of special significance, appears to have arisen, not as a framing condition of scientific practice, but as a discovery or outcome of concrete, scientific practices (2011, 160). While this epistemic sense of mechanism does seem to be tied to the modern “desire to understand, predict, and control” the machinery of nature in the first, metaphysical sense of the term (Nicholson 2011, 157), it should nevertheless be regarded as a fortuitous outcome of the modern machine model of nature that is worth preserving. I would like to suggest that proposals for replacing the machine model should remain compatible with this second epistemic sense of mechanism. 2 n  at u r e a s m a c h i n e

One of the more common ways of conceptualizing nature in its broad metaphysical sense is to frame it in artefactual, e.g., technological terms. In the classical tradition, for example, natural processes might be framed in terms of familiar technologies, such as the bow and the lyre (e.g., conditions of tension and release), whereas today natural processes are commonly framed in terms of such familiar technologies as computers, or information technologies in general (e.g., brains as central processing systems, memories as hard drives, and so on) (Rothenberg 1995, 111–15, 152–60). It follows that how the world is framed will often depend upon the kinds of technologies that happen to be prominent within the lived environment of a given place or period. This is important because the way in which the world is framed will help determine both how the world is present to us, i.e., how we conceive, perceive and understand the world, and how we are present in the world, i.e., how we act or conduct ourselves in that world (Verbeek 2009, 227–8). The tendency to frame the world in technological terms is a function of two key pragmatic conditions: 1) The more familiar and prevalent a given form of technology becomes, the easier it will be to generalize and extend key features of that technology to other

30761_DesRoches.indd 20

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

21

areas of the world (e.g., Nature as “machine,” mind as “computer”), and 2) The more reliable and effective a given form of technology is in practice, the greater our confidence that its form expresses something “right” or “truthful” about the world (Rothenberg 1995, 2–4, 110–11). The pragmatic role that technologies play in framing our general conception of the world suggests that practice and theory are deeply entangled with one another in a complex co-developmental relation (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986, 376–9; Moss 2011, 166–7). Put simply, the more prevalent a form of technology becomes in our lived environment, the more powerful a role it is likely to play in structuring and organizing our general conception of the world and our place within it. As Kiran and Verbeek put it, “Using technologies means that we are in our surroundings in specific ways, relating ourselves to the aspects of the world that technologies help to accentuate and stand out. Technologies co-shape the appearance of the world; we do not just see a world, the world appears to us in certain ways; technologies structure and organize the world” (Kiran and Verbeek 2010, 417). Technologies also play a significant role in conditioning our actions as well, highlighting and inviting certain possibilities for acting while at the same time inhibiting others (Kiran and Verbeek 2010, 419). The technological condition that has been most prominent in framing the modern conception of nature is the idea of machine, an idea that is perhaps best exemplified in the mechanical clock (Mumford 1962, 9–17; Ihde 1990, 59–62). The basic idea here is that of the clockwork universe where the lawful principles and mechanistic relations of the motions of a clock (or, in more complex examples, the figures that “come to life” at its chiming) are held to be explain the motions, processes, and so on found within the order of nature in general. It is the conditions associated with the mechanical clock that best exemplify what I am calling the modern metaphysical conception of nature as machine. A central feature of the modern view of nature as machine is the important idea that the natural universe is “a closed, semi-autarkic, balanced system of motions and/or forces; a system that sustains itself, at least for a while” (Funkenstein 1986, 320). Viewed as the simple mechanical interplay of “motions and/or forces,” any change in the state of a system or some part of a system is said to be explained by the serialized relations between the proximate motions or forces of some other parts of the system. Thus, if the second hand moves in a

30761_DesRoches.indd 21

2019-05-03 12:52:01

22

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

clock, it is because the wheel to which it is attached has moved, and that wheel itself moves because the wheel to which it is attached has moved, and so on. Thus, all the operations of the clock as a whole can be reduced to the serial, proximate, efficient relations between its parts, a view of causation that Dorothy Emmet, drawing upon the work of W.E. Johnson, refers to as “transeunt causation” (Johnson 1992, 56). In fact, a strong case can be made that it is in the very idea of the mechanical clock that the modern emphasis on efficient causation as the defining condition of causation in general has its ground, for it “creates the idea of ‘moment to moment’” (Postman 2005, 11), an idea that is a central feature of the idea of efficient or transeunt causation. Accompanying the idea of transeunt causation is the equally important idea that such relations must be governed by entailing physical laws (Kaufmann 2016, 20–2), for it is only through the ordering role of physical law that the modern reduction of causation to transeunt relations becomes epistemically plausible. Historically, the modern reduction of all conditions of determination to lawfully governed transeunt relations stands in stark contrast to the classical, organic model of nature that it displaced. Before the modern period, efficient or transeunt causation was typically regarded as but one of a multiplicity of determining principles at work within the world, and a relatively minor one at that. More important than efficient causation were such principles as self-motion (a kind of selfanimating, self-induced “aim” or “striving” toward some condition or end) and the meronomic relation between a whole and its parts (in which the characteristics or motions of an organism’s parts are seen as regulated in a special manner by the unifying influence or work of the individual as a whole) (Collingwood 1960, 82–5; Merchant 1983, 103–05). The modern shift from the organic to the mechanical or machine model implies that all natural phenomena can be reduced to “simpler” principles of efficient causes lawfully governed. While there are likely many reasons behind that shift (e.g., greater theoretical simplicity, increased predictive possibilities, novel practical possibilities, etc.) the increasing place of mechanical technologies within the lived environment of that period also likely played a key role. Mechanical technologies employed in the milling of grains and other goods, for example, had become a common feature of modern social, cultural, and geographical landscapes, transforming the power of wind, water, or other sources of energy into forms of productive, labour-enhancing work. Mechanical systems were also employed in

30761_DesRoches.indd 22

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

23

the drawing of water, using cranks and other devices; the building of structures (using cranes of various sorts); the design and function of military weapons; and other features of the Late Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern periods. While the increasing presence of mechanical devices did not happen on the same scale as we find in the later Industrial Revolution, nevertheless the increase in the number and variety of mills throughout much of Europe “between the thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries,” for example, is notable (Lucas 2005, 25). The increasing presence of such mechanical technologies within the lived environment would likely have enhanced their imaginative, intuitive appeal as a viable alternative to the more traditional, organic model of nature. Now it should be noted here that mechanical systems like the clock are not strictly modern inventions for they have a long history in the Western tradition that extends well into the classical period. Unlike the modern period, however, where mechanistic systems like the mechanical clock became increasingly ensconced into the fabric of everyday life, in the classical tradition mechanical technologies tended to be viewed more as curiosities or spectacles rather than ingredients of a more general world view (Sambursky 1956, 222–44). Whereas classical thinkers often referred to mechanical systems like the clock as a metaphor for natural processes, nevertheless their artificial character was usually regarded as importantly different from the natural motions they represented. (Funkenstein 1986, 319). Put simply, artefactual realities like mechanical systems were generally regarded as “degenerate” expressions of natural realities in that they lack some of the key elements or features required to qualify as natural in its fullest, most complete, sense. We see this view expressed most explicitly and systematically in Aristotle’s distinction between phusis, or “nature,” and techne, or what we might generally call the artefactual. On Aristotle’s account, phusis refers to processes found within the general order of nature whose principles of motion, change, development, and so on are taken to reside entirely within the entity undergoing the motions or changes in question, as a process of autonomous, immanent causation (Physics 192b 1–15). The class of autonomous, immanent conditions associated with phusis is exemplified in living organisms viewed as autonomously self-developing, self-organizing, self-moving entities that do what they do “naturally” or “by nature” for their own sake (Schadewalt 1979, 26). Hence, for example, it is the “nature” of acorns to develop of their own accord into oak trees

30761_DesRoches.indd 23

2019-05-03 12:52:01

24

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

(and not maple trees or raspberry bushes or human beds). Natural conditions characterized by phusis were regarded as importantly different from artefactual ones because they were held to more completely and perfectly embody the fundamental principles of being operative within the general order of Nature, which Aristotle calls the four causes: 1) the material cause or “stuff” of which natural entities are made, 2) the efficient cause or “power” that determine natural entities to be where and when they are, 3) the formal cause or “organizing” principle through which natural entities are what they are as both this and this kind of thing, and 4) the final cause or “end” for the sake of which the various motions, processes, and so on that are essential to an natural entity occur (Metaphysics 994a– b30). The term phusis refers to the general class of beings that most fully and completely express these four principles or causes, as immanently constitutive conditions of their being. The term techne, on the other hand, refers to the general class of things in which the four causes are not operative immediately and immanently as “natural” constitutive conditions of the entities in question, but where at least some of the causes are operative indirectly or artefactually through the mediating work of human production (Schadewalt 1979, 29–30). Artificial conditions or products may closely resemble natural conditions in many respects, but they fall short of them in at least one vital sense, namely, that whereas phusis, or natural realities, have the principles of change or motion within themselves as ends for themselves, the principles underlying artefactual realities only exist as they do as ends for another, that is, as means to ends outside of themselves: their users, designers, or producers (Nicomachean Ethics 1094a5–4a10). Put simply, artefactual entities characterized by techne are lower down the ontotheological ladder of being than natural entities characterized by phusis. As a result, while artificial beings may closely resemble natural beings, they nevertheless fail to exemplify or embody the ontotheological principles of being as fully and completely as natural entities do, standing instead as more “degenerate” expressions of the principles of being in their fullest, most complete sense. The metaphysical distinction between natural and artefactual realities meant that the artefactual character of such things as mechanical systems would not have been regarded as faithful representations of the natural world, because they would have been seen as lacking in the key features associated with phusis. Even Plato, whose account of the origins of nature in the Timaeus comes closest to characterizing

30761_DesRoches.indd 24

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

25

the natural world in artefactual terms, still viewed nature on the model of organism. It was not until the modern period that the traditional distinction between natural and artificial systems was cast aside, with all of nature being reframed in artificial terms as a mechanical system or machine. Another key element in the increasing prevalence of mechanical technologies in the late medieval period and early Renaissance was the theological idea of nature as artefact that was inherited from the medieval period. The medieval idea of nature as God’s creation would have made it easier to think of nature as akin to a human artefact like a mechanical system. For, in keeping with the theological idea that humans were created in God’s image, the human power to create artefacts such as mechanical devices would have been seen as mirroring the creative power of God (Rose 2002, 127–31). This would likely have been further enhanced by the deductive character of the mechanical model, since the epistemic promise inherent in such a system would have served as an attractive counterpoint to the sense of radical contingency that accompanied the medieval idea of creation. The deductive promise inherent in the machine model of nature would have helped restore a level of epistemic trust between knower and world that was compatible both with the medieval idea of creation and the classical ideals of deductive knowledge. 3 p  ossible worlds and the radical contingency o f   n at u r e

As noted, the metaphysical idea of nature as artefact goes back at least as far as the Timaeus, where Plato proposes the quasi-mythical story about nature being designed by an eternal artificer who transformed it from an original chaotic state into the ordered intelligible world of our everyday experience. This Platonic image of nature as designed was viewed critically by many thinkers and schools within the classical period, including Aristotle, the Atomists, and the Stoics, each of whom tended to see nature as eternal rather than designed or created. With the advent of the medieval period, however, and the spread of the idea of God as creator, the idea of nature as creation or artefact gained greater purchase within the Western tradition. With this came the important idea that the created world must be but one of many possible worlds that God could have created or ordained (Funkenstein 1986, 129–32), an idea that had been soundly rejected by the Peripatetic tradition inherited from Aristotle (Duhem 1985, 431–9).

30761_DesRoches.indd 25

2019-05-03 12:52:01

26

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

With the idea of nature as one of many possible worlds comes a sense of radical contingency and epistemic uncertainty that calls into question traditional presuppositions about the relation between mind and world, for not only do we have no way of knowing (deductively or a priori) which of the many possible worlds this one might be, but we also can no longer be certain that the order of mind or thought conforms to the order of nature or being in general (for God could have created things otherwise than classical thinkers had presupposed them to be) (Rose and Noonan 2009). Addressing these uncertainties becomes a defining feature of modern philosophy, giving rise to novel attempts to set philosophy and the search for knowledge on a new, more secure footing. On the one hand, we see a turn away from the deductivist ideals of the classical period and the proposing of new, inductivist methods of inquiry (as illustrated in the work of Francis Bacon), and on the other, we see an attempt to reground the deductivist ideals of the classical tradition upon both a new foundation of epistemic certainty and the idea of nature as machine, a strategy that is exemplified in the philosophy of Descartes. To better understand these developments we first need to outline key changes in the ideal of knowledge that began to take place during the medieval period, changes that rest upon the distinction between the classical ideal of contemplative knowledge and what Amos Funkenstein has identified as an ergetic ideal of knowledge, a more pragmatic idea of knowledge-through-construction. 4 e  r g e t i c v s . c o n t e m p l at i v e i d e a l s o f k n ow l e d g e

To understand the ideal of ergetic knowledge or knowledge-throughconstruction it will help if we contrast it with the ideal of contemplative knowledge developed during the classical period. Perhaps the best illustration of the classical ideal of contemplative knowledge can be found in the work of Plato (though it is also evident in the work of Aristotle and others). In the Platonist tradition the conditions of being and knowing are taken to be completely predetermined in the sense that the order or structure of things is both eternally complete and metaphysically prior to any inquiry or investigation. As a result, to seek the truth merely required that one disclose or bring to light the eternally pre-given, pre-determining conditions of the world, as something recollected or found (Collingwood 1960, 56–7). As a result,

30761_DesRoches.indd 26

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

27

the conditions of both must lie outside of time, with time or the temporal order of things standing as a privation or falling away from those eternally given conditions. Thus, to know or have knowledge is to stand in a contemplative relation to the eternally predetermined order or ordering conditions of being, as a kind of intellectual perception or epistemic gaze (Timaeus 38b–c, 48e–9b, 51e–2d). As Collingwood rightly points out, since time or temporal existence – which classical thinkers typically equated with the natural order of things – represents a falling away from the eternal order of being associated with contemplative knowledge, then natural, material realities never fully instantiate the conditions of being (but always fall short of fully embodying or expressing those eternal conditions) (1960, 62–3, 67–8). As Funkenstein puts it, “Plato did not claim that the universe is numbers, figures, or ideas, but rather that it reifies them as best it can. It is as if a picture were translated into an alien medium; nature is, in the original sense of the poetic term, only a metaphor for reality, a “carrying over” of meaning from one medium to an imperfect one through the mediation of mathematics. The perfect medium is the immutable world of ideas; the imperfect medium is matter (chaos), the realm of change and becoming ( ), which must be “persuaded” by the demiurge to assume a rational, mathematical structure contrary to its nature, contrary to “necessity.” Nature resists a thoroughgoing mathematization” (1986, 33). It follows, of course, that while the truth of being in its fullest, complete sense may be attained through nature (where knowledge of natural conditions can serve as a kind of stepping stone or ladder to knowledge of the eternal conditions of being as such, an idea espoused by Aristotle, Aquinas, and others), it can never be fully realized in nature. Where the model of contemplative knowledge takes the conditions of being and knowing to be eternally predetermined and pre-given, an ergetic model of knowledge places greater importance on the path or process of coming to know as a constitutive condition of knowing or knowledge as such. The condition of knowing or possessing knowledge is thus seen to be intimately bound up with the processes of demonstration, proof, discovery, and so on, as constitutive conditions of such knowledge in a strong pragmatic sense (Funkenstein 1986, 178, 297–9). Since evidence, proof, demonstration, and so on, can admit of degrees, then it would seem to follow that knowledgethrough-construction should also admit of degrees, so that one can know more or less depending on the context (with absolute knowledge

30761_DesRoches.indd 27

2019-05-03 12:52:01

28

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

marking the upper limit and absolute ignorance the lower). Where the ideal of contemplative knowledge admits the possibility of direct or immediate knowledge without any demonstration or proof (e.g., recollection, intuition, or revelation), an ergetic model of knowledge takes knowing to be inseparable from the work involved in grounding, acquiring and demonstrating that knowledge. While it is true that the distinction between the contemplative and ergetic accounts of knowledge may not be as clear cut as presented here (for we also find, for example, constructivist elements in Plato’s accounts of knowledge as well, e.g., Philebus 16c–18c), nevertheless the distinction is helpful as a way of trying to articulate key differences between classical ideals of knowledge and later, more pragmatic accounts. Where the ideal of contemplative knowledge is a passive, reflective, or introspective knowledge about conditions that are as they are eternally and hence necessarily (so that they could not have been otherwise), knowledgethrough-construction is an active, practical knowledge of conditions that are inherently contingent (Funkenstein 1986, 292–3). It is here that we find a key to understanding at least part of the appeal of the machine model of nature. For by the end of the medieval period the epistemic and other implications associated with the idea of nature as a radically contingent creation were becoming recognized and developed in an increasingly explicit manner (Duhem 1985, 441–510). Not the least of these was the recognition that if this is indeed one of many possible worlds, then how can we determine which possible world this one happens to be? It is then perhaps not surprising to find an increasing number of thinkers during the later medieval period, such as Roger Bacon and others, placing more attention on observation and experimentation to studying nature, for this would seem to be the best way of trying to answer that question. The problem with this empirical approach, at least for those versed within the classical and Peripatetic tradition, is that it relies heavily upon the method of induction, which Aristotle had defined as the form of argument that moves from particular to universal (Posterior Analytics 99b15–100b15). Inductive conclusions generally are less secure logically or epistemically than deductive conclusions (which follow necessarily from their premises). Inductive conclusions have more of a probabilistic character that falls short of the absolutist ideals of the contemplative tradition. Since such ideals are better satisfied by deductive rather than inductive forms of argument, induction was relegated to a lesser status in the classical and medieval ranking of argument forms or methods.

30761_DesRoches.indd 28

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

29

The early modern period saw many attempts to address the problem of nature’s radical contingency. One was Francis Bacon’s great instauration, a systematic, revolutionary program aimed at defending and revitalizing the method of induction, elevating it from its secondary status within the Peripatetic tradition to the principal means and method for the advancement of learning in the modern age. Bacon’s work as advocate for the method of induction went a long way toward justifying and securing the value and place of observation and experimentation within the cultural imagination of the period. On the second, and for our current purposes, more important path, lies Descartes’ effort to reground the contemplative ideal of knowledge within a framework that was compatible with the medieval idea of creation (and the radical contingency of nature). Descartes’ proposal to ground knowledge in intuition, combined with his efforts toward the mathematization of nature, helped lay the groundwork for the mechanical model of nature. For not only was the model in keeping with the idea of nature as creation, it also contained the promise of a knowledge of nature that was consistent with the classical ideals of knowledge. Although Descartes is widely recognized as a central figure in the rise of the modern mechanical view of nature, the reasons underlying his importance and revolutionary influence are not always made clear. It is certainly true that he made many statements and claims about the mechanical character of nature, but it is not the mere fact that he made such claims that marks his importance and influence, it is the manner in which those claims resonated within the cultural atmosphere of the time. At least part of the reason for his importance lies in the manner in which Descartes’ work addressed many of the important problems, uncertainties, and doubts that were prevalent during that period (Toulmin 1990, 45–62). Descartes’ proposal for a new method of inquiry, for example, begins from the standpoint of uncertainty or doubt, a condition that would have been motivated at least in part by the radical contingency of creation. From this initial standpoint, Descartes then restores the traditional ideal of contemplative knowledge through the self-certainty of his own existence as a thinking being, a certainty that, while still contingent on its status as God’s creation, may nevertheless be regarded as absolute in an epistemic sense (for it is necessarily true as long as one is thinking) (1998, 161–3). The genius of Descartes’ cogito lies in its dual character as a kind of contingent certainty or contingent “necessity,” for, while it acknowledges its metaphysical or ontological status as

30761_DesRoches.indd 29

2019-05-03 12:52:01

30

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

radically contingent creation, it also manages to find in itself a ground of indubitable certainty that is compatible with the classical ideal of contemplative knowledge. Key here is the intuitive character of Descartes’ original certainty, for the certainty of the cogito is not discursive in character but a kind of knowing all-at-once, a form of knowing that mirrors the intellectual perception associated with the Platonic ideal of knowledge (Descartes 1998, 3). From the intuitive, contingent certainty of the cogito, Descartes counters the epistemic problems associated with the idea of creation by reconceiving nature in mechanical terms as a deterministic system whose workings can be deduced from its initial conditions. Descartes’ mechanical model of nature was further reinforced by his revolutionary work in analytic geometry. In the Peripatetic tradition, sciences were distinguished by their subject matter, with different subject matter requiring distinct methods that were especially suited to the entities or realities being studied. In the Aristotelian tradition, for example, the world was divided into distinct, heterogeneous domains, with each domain having a distinct method that was best suited to the study of the entities or subject matter characteristic of that domain. The science of mathematics was regarded as importantly distinct from physics, for example, for where physics involved the study of things that were mutable (involving motion or change as part of their very “nature”), mathematics was the study of things that were unchanging but not substantial (with metaphysics being the science of that which was both substantial and unchanging) (Metaphysics, 1064a30–b10). To try and apply the methods of mathematics to the study of nature would have been seen as a kind of category mistake, for the immutable character of mathematical conditions was taken to be incompatible with the changing character of natural things (and hence would have little explanatory value when applied to natural realities). Even mathematics itself was distinguished into what were taken to be distinct domains, for mathematics was regarded as the science or study of “mathematical entities and their absolute properties.” The mathematical realities associated with “continuous magnitudes” were the proper subject matter of geometry and the mathematical realities associated with “numbers” were the proper subject matter of algebra. Because geometry and algebra were seen as dealing with different kinds of realities, using the methods of algebra to study “continuous magnitudes,” or the methods of geometry to study “numbers” would have been regarded as a waste of time and

30761_DesRoches.indd 30

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

31

effort (Funkenstein 1986, 36–7). Descartes’ work in analytic geometry showed that algebra and geometry were not distinct sciences in the Peripatetic sense, but each could be translated or converted into the other. This brought about a revolution in mathematics, transforming the classical conception of mathematics as the science of “entities and their absolute properties” into “a new perception of mathematics as a science of relations and structures.” Descartes’ transformation of mathematics into the science of “relations and structures” thus helped pave the way for the mechanical conception of nature because once “mathematics turned into a formal language of relations, not only could numbers be represented by figures and vice versa, but also nonmathematical relations – motions, forces, intensities – could be expressed in mathematical language” (Funkenstein 1986, 296–304, 315). The process of mathematizing nature was then completed, I suggest, by Leibniz and Newton, whose invention (or discovery) of the calculus showed that motion too could be expressed in mathematical terms. It is likely the combination of all these conditions, including the increasing prevalence of mechanical technologies within the lived environment (and imaginative lifeworld) of the time, that made the idea of nature as machine appear so plausible and exciting to early modern thinkers. The excitement lay in the new possibilities opened up by the mechanical model, both theoretically and practically, for not only did it open the door to a new and potentially powerful way of framing the world theoretically (one that was in keeping with classical ideals of contemplative knowledge), it also licensed a new way of relating to nature in general on a practical level, one that reduced the natural order of things to a lifeless domain of mechanical relations that had no value in or for itself beyond the value it has for human interests (Whitehead 1968, 127–47; Merchant 1983, 216–35). 5 t h e e n d o f m e c h a n i s m : t h e e c o l o g i c a l t u r n

Critical reaction against the modern mechanical or machine model of nature is as old as the model itself and extends across multiple traditions and schools, from the Peripatetic and Thomist traditions against which the machine model was developed, to the many and various forms of idealism, vitalism, and other analogous philosophical work. Such critics include a wide range of thinkers, from Schelling and Peirce, Whitehead and Husserl, to Plumwood and Merchant.

30761_DesRoches.indd 31

2019-05-03 12:52:01

32

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

While the history of such critiques is both extensive and persistent, nevertheless the machine model has continued to remain the dominant way of framing our modern understanding of nature at a metaphysical level. Helen Steward offers a succinct summation of the prevailing metaphysical attitude in her critique of the so-called “standard account” of human action, noting that “the widespread conviction that (whatever may be the case in the realms of microphysics) at any rate metaphysical determinism must be true, is an outdated hangover from Newtonian visions of the universe that we philosophers mostly still remain entranced by, because we have not properly escaped the world view encouraged by our school-level math and physics lessons (2015, 386). The reasons underlying the stubborn adherence to this deterministic metaphysical model are likely many and complex. Among them is the theoretical and practical promise inherent within the model itself, possibilities that extend not only to theoretical concerns, but to practical ones as well. As we have seen, the exploration and development of the promise and possibilities opened up by the mechanical model has taken considerable time, and this, combined with the absence of any pragmatically grounded, intuitively appealing alternatives to that model, likely contributed to its endurance. For while it is no doubt true that later technologies like the steam engine, cybernetic systems, electrical systems, and so on may appear to differ from the wheels, gears, and so on, of the mechanical clock so greatly as to call into question the legitimacy of the mechanical model of nature, such technologies and the sciences associated with them are still largely seen as exemplifying the same deep, deterministic principles underlying the mechanical model, namely, the reduction of all efficaciousness to the principle of transeunt or efficient causation (under universal laws). For it is not the presence of the gears or wheels of the mechanical clock that defines the mechanical model of nature, but the reduction of all efficaciousness to the principle of transeunt or efficient causation, where all motion, alternation, or any other form of change is held to be reducible to serial relations of a direct, proximate, dyadic character. It is this reduction that most defines the mechanical view of nature, a somewhat ironic reduction given the fact that the very idea of machine or techne implies forms of efficaciousness beyond those of efficient causation as such (the most obvious of which is final causation). The advent of the Darwinian model of evolution also helped buttress the mechanical model of nature, for it promised that even such

30761_DesRoches.indd 32

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

33

design-like phenomena as the adaptive fit between organisms and their environment could be explained in purely mechanical terms as the outcome of a mechanical process of selection through serialized relations between proximately related parts. That we still refer to this Darwinian-styled process of mechanistic or mechanical selection as the principle of “natural” selection is a testament to the extent to which the remnants of the mechanical model are still alive today. There are likely many other conditions besides these that have contributed to the long-term hold that the mechanical model has had upon the modern period, including the rise of capitalism – which seems to have been especially well served by the view of nature as a lifeless, valueless machine – but a detailed outline of such conditions lies well beyond the scope of this chapter. Despite the various historical pressures and forces that have contributed to the mechanical model of nature, I want to suggest that we are in the midst of a real, paradigmatic turn away from that outdated world view. Central to this shift, I want to suggest, are two important developments. First is the recent proliferation of information technologies, which have become deeply and intimately embedded within the fabric of contemporary life. Such technologies have become so ubiquitous that we now tend to see information in everything and everything as information. This has encouraged a general rethinking of the modernist reduction to transeunt or efficient causation and an increasing openness to the possibility of other kinds of efficaciousness at work within the world. For the very nature of information technologies implies or at least suggests that there may be ordering principles and forms of efficaciousness at work within those technologies that is not reducible to purely efficient relations. Thus, for example, while efficient relations may be necessary conditions for conveying information, there nevertheless appear to be important, non-reducible differences between information and the series of efficient relations through which it happens to be conveyed. Now this is not a new idea, but one that has a long history with many variations, from the classical, organic idea of the relation between a whole and its parts to the more recent semiotic idea that the content or object represented by a sign is significantly different from the sign itself. While this basic idea has a long history, I would suggest that what makes it seem more plausible and intuitively current is the increasing proliferation of information technologies within the fabric of day-to-day life. Just as the increasing presence of and familiarity with mechanical

30761_DesRoches.indd 33

2019-05-03 12:52:01

34

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

technologies likely helped make the idea of nature as machine more intuitively plausible and appealing to people of the early modern period, so too the proliferation of information technologies today has helped encourage an openness to the possibility that there may be more going on in the natural world than the idea of mechanical reduction to efficient causes would have us believe. The second important development underlying the paradigmatic shift away from the mechanical view of nature is what we might loosely refer to as the ecological turn, that is, the increasing tendency to frame the world and everything in it as a system, network, or web of interconnected, interdependent relations. Central to this ecological turn is the still vague notion that changes in one part of a web, network, or “ecosystem” can often have dramatic, unexpected, and perhaps even unpredictable effects, elsewhere in the system. We see this ecosystem model being applied not only to natural ecosystems, where relatively small changes in one aspect of the system can have cascading effects throughout the system as a whole, but to an increasingly wide variety of other systems or phenomena as well, from the internal environment or “ecosystem” of a living organism to the various social, cultural, corporate, and other humanly constructed environments within which we live and work (many of which are now commonly referred to as “ecosystems”). While it is still early days, relatively speaking, the possibilities and promise inherent within the ecosystem model seem to be as alluring today as the machine model must have been in the early modern period. One area where the ecological model seems particularly promising, as a framework for helping us to better understand our world, is in the study of technology itself, for the influence that new technologies have on social, cultural, or political environments appears to be strikingly similar to the kinds of effects that the introduction or removal of species has within an ecosystem (Postman 1993, 18). Again, there are likely many reasons underlying the increasing tendency to see things in ecological or ecosystemic terms. Certainly the modern science of ecology has been immensely influential in opening our eyes to surprising complexities and interdependencies within the natural world that seem oddly unexpected from a mechanical world view. This has been reinforced by concrete examples of environmental change whose reality touches us and speaks to us at a fundamental pragmatic level that is both persuasive and difficult to ignore, prompting us to rethink our traditional understanding of the

30761_DesRoches.indd 34

2019-05-03 12:52:01



The End of Mechanism

35

world and our place within it. Whatever the reasons, the current paradigmatic shift away from the mechanical view of nature requires that we rethink the world and our place within it at a deep philosophical and, dare I say, metaphysical level. I will close with a few suggestions gesturing in that direction. 6 b  eing-through-construction

What we need is a way of framing the world that is compatible with the ideas of information and ecology that adequately captures and advances the promise and possibilities inherent in both. Central features of ecology and information include the following: 1) The members of systems seem to stand in a strong relation of interdependence and interconnection with one another, and 2) Some conditions within the natural world appear to be emergent in the sense that they are not reducible to the base conditions from which they arise, but stand as novel additions to the actual in some strong ontological sense. There are other important characteristics of ecology and information besides these, of course, but we can say at the very least that any framework we might adopt should provide a satisfactory account of the dual conditions of interdependence and novelty within nature, not merely in an epistemic sense, but in an ontological sense as well. Of course, such an account must also be able to make sense of such things as order, regularity, predictability, and so on as well, but these need not be incompatible notions. To the question of ontological interdependence, the most obvious answer might be some form of holism, but it must be a form of holism that is capable of accounting for novelty in an ontological sense. This is the challenge: to develop a holistic framework that is able to account for the interdependence of its members while at the same time preserving an essential openness to possibilities that are not already contained within, predetermined by, or reducible to any actual or antecedent state of affairs. To address this problem, I want to suggest that we rethink one of the basic presuppositions and fundamental principles of the Western philosophical tradition, namely the deepseated metaphysical principle that being must always be grounded in the actual. I believe that it is this principle, more than anything else, that has hindered efforts to give a satisfactory account of novelty in its fullest, richest sense. There are many variations on the metaphysics of the actual within the Western tradition, perhaps the most prominent

30761_DesRoches.indd 35

2019-05-03 12:52:02

36

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

being the idea that something cannot come from nothing or that something greater cannot come from something lesser, and so on, so rethinking it will not be easy, but I want to suggest that it is both possible and reasonable to do so. Rethinking this basic metaphysical, ontological principle involves a number of radical moves. On the one hand, it involves abandoning the traditional metaphysics of substance, in the sense of something existing in and of itself independent of its relations to anything else. Not only is this kind of ontology in direct tension with the ecological model of interdependence, but it is not necessary either, for all we need is a framework that can account for continuity and subsistence, not independent existence in the traditional, substantial sense. A clear alternative to the metaphysics of substance can be found in Bruno Latour’s account of being-as-other, where to be necessarily involves being in relation to something other than oneself as a condition of the possibility of one’s subsistence (Latour 2013, 162–3, 454). Latour’s proposal is part of an overall project to ecologize our understanding of the world and our place within it and stands as a powerful and promising example of the kind of thinking needed to go beyond the traditional machine model of nature. A second radical move in this direction involves, not abandoning the metaphysical idea of ground, as Latour might suggest, but rethinking what should count as ground. To this end I propose that the true ground of being is not the actual but the possible, a condition of extreme indeterminacy that is so “pure,” so radical, as to be essentially indistinguishable from “nothing,” or at least as near to nothing as we can think. As the ground of being in this radical sense, the possible stands as logically, ontologically, and metaphysically prior to the actual in the general order of being, so that for something is to be actual it must first be possible in all these senses. Understood in this sense, the actual – as something determinate whose reality involves the exclusion of other possibilities – would be seen as having emerged or arisen from the possible, as a subset of the possible (Rose 2011). It follows that the possible can never be exhausted by or fully instantiated within the actual, but the actual will instead always be marked by an intrinsic openness to the possible. It is this essential openness to the possible that would account for the emergence of genuine novelty within the world, including everything from chance occurrences at the subatomic or quantum level to the various kinds or degrees of freedom that we find in complex organisms such as ourselves. Put simply, once the

30761_DesRoches.indd 36

2019-05-03 12:52:02



The End of Mechanism

37

possible is taken to be ontologically and metaphysically basic, then the actual will always stand in a real relation to the possible, as a constitutive condition of actuality per se. Taking the possible as the ground of being in this radical sense is, I would suggest, the best way of answering Stuart Kaufmann’s recent call for “ontologically real possibles,” which he characterizes as a kind of “res potentia” (2016, 6–8). Central to Kaufmann’s account is the idea that nature is so open-ended that the range of possibilities cannot be predicted from any set of antecedent conditions, so that not only can we not know what will happen in some situations, but that we “cannot know what can happen” either. The implications of this are so important, Kaufmann claims, that they call for a radical rethinking of the world and our place within it, including our traditional understanding of the role of reason in human life (2016, 62). Taking possibility as ontologically or metaphysically basic in the sense suggested here is a plausible, reasonable way of accounting for the ecologically oriented, emergentist world view that Kaufmann and others are struggling to characterize and reframe. Of course, if we are to make sense of the kinds of regularity, order, predictability, and so on within the world, we need other principles alongside the possible to help account for such phenomena. Thus, in addition to the possible we would also need a principle of limitation that would place determinate limits upon the possible, for in the actual world we don’t simply encounter mere possibility as such but real, determinate possibilities, possibilities that have been set against one another as real alternatives or real choices to which we are open to varying extents. Such a principle would need to account, not only for the demarcation of certain possibilities as determinately real within some given situation, but also for the exclusion of some possibilities as well, for this seems to be a central feature of actual experience. We would also need a principle capable of generating regularities, patterns, generalities, continuities, endurance, subsistence, and so on, a principle that would help account not only for the existence of various degrees and levels of order, organization, and so on, but for the development and growth of such conditions. Fortunately, a great deal of work has already been undertaken in that direction by other philosophers, such as C.S. Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, among others. Peirce’s attempt to articulate and develop a radically new metaphysics of emergent evolution, a metaphysics grounded in his infamously vague yet potentially fertile work

30761_DesRoches.indd 37

2019-05-03 12:52:02

38

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

on the Categories – Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness – still stands as one of the most potentially important yet underappreciated veins of philosophical thought on these kinds of issues (Rose 2016). In Peirce’s account of Firstness, for example, we have the basis for the idea of possibility as such, a condition of indeterminacy, spontaneity, openness, non-relationality, and so on that serves as the ground of being per se. In Secondness we have the idea of limitation or limit, as a principle of negation, otherness, difference, and so on; and in Thirdness we have the idea of generalization as a principle of mediation, growth, orderliness, subsistence, endurance, and so on (Rose 2012, 8–9). Building upon this kind of work may move us a long way toward rethinking the world beyond the limited perspective afforded by the mechanical model of nature. It is important to remind ourselves here that the main deficiency of the mechanical model of nature is not its appeal to the principle of efficient causation, but the reduction to that principle. Thus, its greatest limit lies not in not what it includes, but what it excludes as alternative conditions of determination and efficaciousness. How to best characterize these other forms of determination and efficaciousness is one of the great tasks of speculative thought. The most I can hope to do here is to gesture in that direction by drawing and building upon the work of others who have also been struggling with these questions. It seems fair to say that such a framework should include some account of efficient or transeunt causation, for this does seem to be an integral part of the being of things. Returning to our discussion at the beginning of this chapter, it is not the end of mechanism per se that is at issue here, but the reduction of all powers of determination to transeunt, mechanistic relations, for the principle of efficient causation and the idea of mechanism in its explanatory or epistemic sense should be preserved in the alternative accounts being proposed and considered. It is mechanism in its metaphysical sense, or mechanicism to coin a phrase from Nicholson (2011, 153), that is most problematic here, for it truly does seem to have reached its due date. 7 c  onclusion

I will close with a few words about how the world under this new framework might be viewed. I believe that the most promising thread for reframing our view of nature lies in the idea of construction, as

30761_DesRoches.indd 38

2019-05-03 12:52:02



The End of Mechanism

39

characterized in Funkenstein’s account of knowledge-through-­ construction. Just as the ergetic ideal of knowledge includes the activity and processes of demonstration, argumentation, proof, and so on, as constitutive conditions of knowledge or knowing per se, so too an ergetic account of being would include the activity and processes of constructing, maintaining, sustaining, developing, and so on, as constitutive conditions of existence and actuality per se. Put simply, being, in the sense of existing or being actual, necessarily involves doing, but with this important proviso, namely, that doing itself is not to be taken as the ground of being per se, as a kind of eternally subsisting condition that requires no effort or risk. Instead, the ground of being here is not actuality or existence, but the possible, in its most radical, indeterminate sense (as a condition that is logically, metaphysically, and ontologically prior to existence or actuality in any determinate sense). The possible itself only exists in a determinate sense through the mediating condition of the actual, with the actual standing in an ecstatic relation to the possible as a kind of rupture or leap from that original, indeterminate, and non-determining ground. Under the framework of being-through-construction, if the doing or beingthrough-construction of the actual were ever to cease, the actual itself would cease to be, falling back once again into the nothingness of pure possibility from which it emerged and against which it should inevitably be set.

30761_DesRoches.indd 39

2019-05-03 12:52:02

2

On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement Allen Habib

1 s  u s ta i n a b i l i t y a s j u s t i c e b e t w e e n g e n e r at i o n s

“What is (environmental) sustainability?” This definitional question often prefaces work on the issue. Sometimes, commenters have no time for it, brushing it aside as a rhetorical feint. Other times they offer a boilerplate definition, like the slogan in the Brundtland Report on sustainable development: [Sustainable development is] development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future ­generations to meet their own needs. (W CE D 1987) And then say no more about it. Sometimes writers offer their own idiosyncratic definition. Over the course of the half-century or so that sustainability has been a topic, a literature has grown up on this phenomenon of the multiple definitions of the term, and its “essentially contested” nature (Pezzey 1989, 1992; Jacobs 1999). Some commenters, in particular those in the more empirical fields – because sustainability is a concept that straddles the divide between science and philosophy – find this definitional debate troubling. They worry that the lack of convergence can be construed as evidence (potentially) of the emptiness of the concept, or of its merely rhetorical purpose. Philosophers on the whole are less worried about this disaccord. If I may speak for the group, this is the situation we typically find

30761_DesRoches.indd 40

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

41

ourselves in: working on the foundations of a completed structure. We live in societies that have, for example, ministries of justice and repositories of knowledge, despite our (philosophers) continued disagreement on the basic nature of justice, or the necessary conditions of knowledge. However, philosophers appreciate convergence as much as the next theorists. I want to offer support here for a particular conception of sustainability, one that enjoys some popularity among philosophers as well as scientists and economists, which is sustainability as a matter of justice between the generations of people of the Earth. On this view, we imagine the generations of the Earth as claimants to a common estate, and we articulate what a “fair” distribution would be among them. The demands of sustainability on development, extraction, or disposal of natural resources are then grounded in the demands of future generations for their “fair share” of the Earth and its bounty. The view is informed by a tradition, reaching back to Rawls (1973) in the middle of the last century, of understanding justice between contemporaries as one of the fair distributions of the “benefits and burdens” of society. Distributive justice, as it is called, has an impressive corpus of work, filled with theoretical apparatus and other resources.1 But it also boasts a set of powerful and relatively common intuitions regarding “fairness.” This intuitive grip allows theorists to make claims about “what justice demands” with some intuitive plausibility. The move to the intergenerational case requires some tinkering with the basic model, but much of the apparatus and intuitive grip transfers quite easily. One principle that seems parallel in the two domains is the idea that temporal distance or location, i.e., the amount of time that separates two generations, or a generation’s place in the temporal succession, is irrelevant to the issue of the fair distribution, in the same way that spatial distance or location is irrelevant to fair distribution between contemporaries. In other words, whatever a fair distribution is, we should be able to apportion it “blindly,” ignoring when a generation comes into being, in the same way that we would ignore where a contemporary group happened to live in distributing benefits and burdens (cf. Dobson 1999). As to the actual contents of these distributive theories, perhaps one of the most influential construals was offered by Brian Barry (1978, 1983, 1997). Barry argues that equal shares are the only fair distribution between generations, and on that basis he argues for a principle

30761_DesRoches.indd 41

2019-05-03 12:52:02

42

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

of intergenerational justice (i.e., a principle of “sustainability”) that stipulates that generations must leave at least as much of “the Earth” or “natural resources,” however those are understood, to successor generations as they inherited from their ancestors. This stricture is meant to guarantee compliance with the equitable distribution of resources between generations, as a minimum (Barry 1983). Barry argues for this egalitarian principle in the following way: The basic argument for an equal claim on natural resources is that none of the usual justifications for an unequal claim – special relationships arising in virtue of past service, promises, etc., applies here. From an atemporal perspective, no one generation has a better or worse claim than any other to enjoy the Earth’s resources. In the absence of any powerful argument to the contrary, there would seem to be a strong presumption in favour of arranging things so that, as far as possible, each generation faces the same range of opportunities with respect to natural resources. I must confess that I can see no further positive argument to be made at this point. All I can do is counter what may be arguments on the other side. Is there any way in which the present generation can claim that they are entitled to a larger share of the goods supplied by nature than its successors? If not, then equal shares is the only solution compatible with justice. (Barry 1983) As I said, I am partial to this view, and I think that Barry’s formulation is a very promising method to begin to fill out the actual demands of sustainability. But the view does have a particular weakness, one that has not yet been addressed, as far as I can tell, and I hope to begin to address it here. 2 t h e p r o b l e m o f t h e p l a n e ta r y e n t i t l e m e n t

The problem is this: if sustainability is a matter of the fair distribution of the Earth between the generations, then each of the generations must have a claim to the Earth. It is these competing claims that distributive justice is meant to adjudicate between. But we don’t have any good reason to believe that there is such a planet-wide entitlement to the Earth, by us or any generation. This is where I hope to offer some help: I want to try and adduce a ground for a planetary entitlement, a right to the Earth.

30761_DesRoches.indd 42

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

43

But before I turn to that, let me first try and motivate my claim that a planetary entitlement is actually necessary for the view. We should begin by returning to Barry’s argument for the equality principle I quoted above. In schematic form, the argument is something like this: P1. In the absence of a special claim, all generations have an equal claim to the Earth. P2. No generation has any special or different claim to the Earth. C 1. All generations have an equal claim to the Earth. The logical difficulty here is that C 1 doesn’t actually establish any claim at all on the part of any generation, since the argument and conclusion are compatible with the further claim that no generation has any claim to the Earth. Similarly, P 1–C1 are compatible with any sort of limited right or entitlement to the Earth, either in scope, or in inclusiveness of people in the subject term, or both. As long as the stipulated right is equal between generations, the argument is satisfied. But this won’t do if, like Barry, we want to argue for substantive restrictions on present actions on grounds of sustainability. If we have to forego our pursuit of resources and opportunities so that future generations may have their share, they must first be entitled to their share. It is not enough to say that future generations have the same right to the Earth as us, we must go further and make the existential claim that they (and we, by P1) actually have such a claim. Moreover, when we see this, we also see the intuitive scope and breadth of the entitlement claim that Barry is tacitly assuming here. If we are to support the standard of equality of opportunities across the board for all resources, we must then suppose a claim to all such resources. And since we are considering “generations,” i.e., time stages of entire earths, the most natural criterion for inclusion is something like “person,” or perhaps, “Earthling” alive at the proper time. In other words, the intergenerational model of distributive justice supposes something like a total right to the entire Earth (and indeed, on reflection, the near-Earth orbital zone), on the part of the entire population of the Earth, relative to some span of time. Another way of seeing the need for a planetary entitlement is by seeing it challenged from afar. Suppose that aliens were to descend on us, and say to us: “We like this planet here, the Earth. We want you to leave it so that we can have it for ourselves.” I think our obvious response would be to say something like: “No, you can’t have it

30761_DesRoches.indd 43

2019-05-03 12:52:02

44

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

– it’s ours.” This, it seems to me, is just the holding up of planetary entitlement. The “it” in that phrase refers to the Earth; the “our” refers to humanity (at least) and the possessive case references the entitlement – it would be wrong of them to take it from us, because it is right that we should have it.2 And again, I am in complete agreement with this view – it is ours, they can’t have it. The problem is – why? In other words, what, if anything, grounds the planetary entitlement? 3 t h e g r o u n d s o f p l a n e ta r y e n t i t l e m e n t , t h e n a n d n ow

What’s interesting about the planetary entitlement I’ve described here is that it’s a near perfect match for what we might call the traditional (Western) view of our entitlement to the Earth, by which I mean the natural law view. On this view, the people of the Earth, all of them, now and in the future, share a common entitlement to all of the Earth. This entitlement is the result of a direct bequest from the divine. God explicitly gives “us” (humanity) the Earth, in Genesis: God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food. And it was so. (NK J V 1:28–30) The natural lawyers took this as a framing assumption, and they saw their project largely as one of trying to explain and justify private property, as opposed to common property, since the bequest seems to have been directed at all of us in common. Locke’s seminal work on property in the Two Treatises of Government (Locke [1706] 1995) is, in essence, a novel explanation of the right of people to appropriate from the common stock. And it begins with a sustained critique of an alternative theory, from Robert Filmer, that the Earth was

30761_DesRoches.indd 44

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

45

bequeathed directly to Adam to dispose of as he saw fit, and that contemporary private property is merely a direct historical descendant of this ancient, private, title. Of course, philosophers moved away from divine origins and justifications over the course of the modern period. And in many domains, notably ethics and meta-ethics, political philosophy, and jurisprudence, the search for an adequate replacement was a central task. In property theory there has been a similar rejection of the deistic story, but contemporary writers haven’t moved to replace it. Rather, they are divided between rejecting the planetary entitlement outright, and accepting it as a fundamental fact without further justification. The majority of philosophical work on this issue recently has been done by libertarian thinkers. Libertarians, particularly those who see themselves in the Lockean tradition, want to illuminate justice and the state in terms of property and associated concepts. In particular, like the natural lawyers, they want to detail and justify private property rights. Further, the sorts of theories they favour, like Locke’s, make this a historical project, one where the theory of right ownership traces a line backwards in time, through successive private owners, to some point of original acquisition, a taking from nature itself. It is this original acquisition that the planetary entitlement is meant to ground. The Lockean story, if we can use it as an exemplar, sees a two-stage development of private property. First, people acquire raw material directly from nature, in original acquisition. In this they are in their right because of the divine bequest, God’s grant of the world, so that they might live on it. After this original acquisition, as long as they satisfy certain other conditions, e.g., that they work on it, improve it, leave enough for others, and other things, then they can come to own it privately, to have a right to it against all other people: Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as King David says, Psal. cxv. 16, “has given the earth to the children of men,” given it to mankind in common. But this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty how any one should ever come to

30761_DesRoches.indd 45

2019-05-03 12:52:02

46

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

have a property in any thing: I will not content myself to answer, that if it be difficult to make out property, upon a supposition, that God gave the world to Adam, and his posterity in common; it is impossible that any man, but one universal monarch, should have any property upon a supposition, that God gave the world to Adam, and his heirs in succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity. But I shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners. (Two Treatises, bk. II, 5:25) And contemporary libertarian property theory generally uses the same two-stage framework – there is original acquisition from nature, and then there is acquisition from other people who have prior title. So what do libertarians say about the removal of the traditional justification for original acquisition? As I said, they are split. Right-libertarians, to use Peter Vallentyne’s (2000) terms, deny that any such justification is needed. They claim instead that nature, prior to private property, is unowned, i.e., no one has a legitimate property right to it. Original acquisition is then justified just in case it doesn’t violate an established property right (inter alia), and so acquisition of the unowned is justified. This is the view of theorists such as Nozick (1976) and Rothbard (1982). Left-libertarians, by contrast, claim that nature, prior to acquisition, is owned in common, in some fashion. In other words, they affirm some flavour of planetary entitlement. This is Vallentyne’s view, but he takes it that it is also the traditional natural law view, ascribing it to Grotious, Pufendorf, Locke, and others. Of course, right-libertarians don’t require a replacement for the planetary entitlement, as they deny the need for one at all. But leftlibertarians don’t move to “replace” the deistic foundation either. Rather, they just make the planetary entitlement a basic assumption. Typically this is done by making original acquisition of natural resources a component of another basic right, like the right to liberty or self-ownership. Here, for example, is Vallentyne discussing the desiderata for a theory of original acquisition: A plausible conception of the ownership of natural resources must be compatible with reasonably secure (not easily lost) self-ownership. At a minimum it should allow unappropriated

30761_DesRoches.indd 46

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

47

resources to be used by agents without the permission of others and without any loss of the rights of self-ownership. […] Without some such condition of permissible use of natural resources, selfownership has no real force, since it could be lost through the unavoidable use of natural resources. In addition, a plausible conception of the ownership of natural resources, many will argue, should be unilateralist in the sense of allowing agents to appropriate unappropriated natural resources without the consent of others – and with no loss of self-ownership – as long as they make an appropriate payment. (Vallentyne and Steiner 2000; italics in original) In other words, the right of original acquisition is necessary to give any force at all to the right of self-ownership, and thus original acquisition must be justified, at least if we want to assume that self-­ ownership is both justified and realized. So both left- and right-libertarians agree that the planetary entitlement needs no special justification. For the former, this is because it is false, or at least unnecessary. For the latter, this is because it shares in the justification of the fundamental rights, such as liberty and self-ownership. I don’t have space here to consider these two approaches in any detail, but I do want to note what I think are serious deficiencies with them about the sorts of cases I described in the first section. In brief, I think neither of these two explanations of the ground of the planetary entitlement can serve to explain both the claims of future people, and our response to the alien invaders. To begin with the negative case, if we deny, as the right-libertarians do, that the planet is owned at all prior to original acquisition, then our response to the aliens will be essentially an invocation of our priority: “You can’t have it – it’s ours, because we were here first.” This might seem a bit thin if the aliens decide to take up camp at the bottom of the sea, or in the Antarctic deserts, but at least it has some prima facie plausibility. But priority flies in the face of the principle of intergenerational equality that Barry (and, indeed, most commenters) favour. If we have a right the aliens lack because “we were here first,” then surely the same is true of future generations. But then, it just isn’t true that all generations have the same sort of entitlement to the Earth, regardless of their order of appearance. Rather, it seems you have a right to what

30761_DesRoches.indd 47

2019-05-03 12:52:02

48

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

you “reach first,” so that earlier generations have the right to do as they like to the Earth, unconstrained by the demands of the future, since they (the present) are “there first.” And on the positive side, if we affirm a planetary entitlement, but ground it in the necessity of original acquisition for the realization of self-ownership, we are able to answer the call for future generations, since we assume that they, like we, will need the Earth to live. But this assumption is made plain, and exposed as a contingent fact, when we turn to the alien case. If the aliens are capable of travelling between stars, and if they could indeed take over and colonize our entire planet, then it’s not a stretch to imagine that they have the means to shuttle us into alternative arrangements. Perhaps they might have large cruise-ship-like vessels in which to house us, or perhaps another planet entirely. Regardless, if our response to the aliens is: “You can’t have it, it’s ours because we need it to have self-ownership,” they might well be able to respond with: “Don’t worry, we can take care of that, just come with us and we’ll set you up with some other resources.” Again, I don’t mean to claim that these quick remarks are definitive arguments against these approaches. Rather, I only want to motivate a search for an alternative ground of the planetary entitlement. I hope that these prima facie problems with the traditional views (natural law, left- and right-libertarianism) are sufficient for this, and I turn to that task now. 4 t owa r d a n e w g r o u n d

Let’s begin with a diagnosis of why the earlier views failed to satisfy the two demands. At first glance, it seems that the demands are contradictory. In the alien case, we want to claim that our priority gives us the superior title to the Earth, but in the future-people case, we want to deny this. What story could satisfy both demands? If the scenarios are not flawed, the answer must lie in some crucial difference between the cases. But what difference? The obvious candidate here is that in the future-people cases, the claimants are people. But by “people” here we can’t mean rational beings, or any sort of psychological properties or abilities, since we can simply assume that the aliens are similarly endowed. So what sort of property can we be alluding to when we say that the claimants are people? What distinguishes our descendants from the aliens? I submit that it is because

30761_DesRoches.indd 48

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

49

they are “Earthlings,” as I said earlier. I think the ground of the entitlement must lie in our relationship to the Earth. But what, exactly, in this terrestrial relationship might ground a claim to title, on our part? To understand the significance of a terrestrial relationship to Earth, let me turn to an idea introduced and defended by biologist and social theorist Richard Lewontin over the last few decades of the twentieth century and the first of the twenty-first. Lewontin, along with his frequent co-author Richard Levins, has been arguing against what he sees as mistakes in scientific (and philosophical) approaches to evolutionary and developmental biology. For instance, he is, along with Stephen Gould, noted for arguing against what he calls the “adaptationist programme” (Gould and Lewontin 1979). This is the tendency to suppose that every phenotypic trait we observe in organisms was in fact selected for some adaptive advantage, as opposed to, say, arising as a result of genetic drift, or development caused or constrained by unrelated changes elsewhere in the organism being the source of the trait. But perhaps Lewontin’s most radical critique of contemporary evolutionary theory is of Darwinian models of the relation between organism and environment in evolution by natural selection. He sometimes calls this the “lock and key” model of evolutionary theory – where environments are “locks,” or problems to be solved, and animals are “keys,” or attempted solutions, that are tried until one “fits” and turns the lock (Lewontin 1982, 1983). This understanding of the nature and process of evolution, says Lewontin, is “both incomplete and inaccurate,” (Lewontin 1982, 157) “a barrier to further progress,” (Lewontin and Levins 1997, 95) and “increasingly in contradiction with the known facts of developmental and population biology” (Lewontin 2001, 60). It’s wrong because it mistakes the nature of the relationship between organism and environment as one of subject and object. This leads to misunderstandings about the evolutionary and developmental dynamics of both organisms and environments. The problem, argues Lewontin, isn’t (just) that animals affect their environments, and alter them in various ways, both helpful and harmful, and thus the model of the static environment as a puzzle to be solved is mistaken. Rather, the problem is that we think that we can speak reasonably of these entities in isolation from each other. We think that they are ontologically, epistemically, and causally distinct, so that each exists, may be known, and can be given a complete causal

30761_DesRoches.indd 49

2019-05-03 12:52:02

50

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

account in the absence of the other. And we conceive of natural selection (and the genetic variation and mutation that are its raw materials) as one of nature trying out different “organisms” in the “environment” to see which one works, or works well enough. But, says Lewontin, all of these impressions are wrong. For the purposes of evolutionary biology and similar empirical fields, the correct ontology, epistemology, and causal stories of organisms and their environments are inextricably interwoven. As Lewontin puts it, “There is no organism without an environment, but there is no environment without an organism” (1983, 160). This is because the question of what an organism is, ontologically speaking, is a matter of what bits of its genetic matter are expressed, and how that expression affects eventual phenotypic traits. But what bits of code are expressed, and how those expressions affect development, is a function (in part) of the environment the organism is in. So what a thing is is in part a function of where it is, or more accurately, where it developed. The picture Lewontin suggests is one of dynamic and mutual interdependence between organism and environment. Organisms develop in environments, altered and shaped by them at the most basic level of genetic expression. And then in turn those organisms, by their biological processes, by their behaviours, perhaps even by their thoughts and arguments, shape their environments. The result is a process of mutual co-construction, animals and environments making and remaking each other through time. I think that perhaps this is the sort of thing that might plausibly ground a planetary entitlement of the sort we seek. How might such a revisionary ontology serve to ground the planetary entitlement? In roughly the following way – we have title to the Earth because we are of it, it is of us. To remove it from us would be to change us radically, indeed to destroy us as the creatures we are now. So to the aliens, we say: “No, you can’t have it, it’s a part of us, and we of it. We can’t be justifiably separated, any more than you could justifiably take the tail off an animal because the two can be physically separated.” And as to the future Earthlings, we can see that they share (or will share) the same property of ontological interdependence with the Earth. Thus, our title is no better than theirs, grounded as it is in the same facts. But this is what we want. Again, these remarks are very sketchy and quick, but I hope to at least point out a path for this sort of ground for the planetary

30761_DesRoches.indd 50

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

51

entitlement. In the last section, I want to consider what I called above the “scope” and “breadth” of such an ontologically grounded entitlement, i.e., how much of the Earth it covers, and whom it includes as subjects. 5 w  h o s e p l a n e t i s i t a n y way ?

To begin with, let’s ask how much of the Earth might be covered by such a title. It would seem that the real limiting factor would be our effect on the putative environment. There seems to be lots of the natural world that affect us that we can’t plausibly claim to affect in the same way. Take the moon, as just one example. Surely we would be different creatures, if we existed at all, had the moon never existed. But our arc through the universe hasn’t (so far, anyhow) altered the moon in any way. So the moon doesn’t seem to be a part of the “us” that we refer to in our answer to the aliens. The moon isn’t part of our “environment” for these purposes. What this shows us is that the view seems to commit us to the notion that the moon could come to be ours, in the way the Earth is, were we to live on it for long enough. But I think that this is intuitively plausible. If we did “move into” the moon, and we grew up there, as we did here; if we developed and shaped the moon, and it us, over millennia, then in the end I think it’s reasonable to say that we would have a claim to it.3 But what of other areas, what of the bottom of the sea or Antarctica, as I warned of in response to the priority defence? Here I think we might have to accept this sort of conclusion, at least for elements of the environment that are in fact very distant and isolated from the organism. So, I don’t think that this sort of ground would grant automatic, planet-wide entitlement. Rather, it would be restricted to those parts of the planet that truly were “the environment” (perhaps “habitat” might be a better term) of a given organism. Ironically, in this case our propensity to alter our environments willy-nilly for our short-sighted local needs might serve to help us here, at least in making out a broad title. Perhaps, because we have radically altered the climate of the Earth (or are in the process of doing so), which in turn will inevitably bring about changes in us, as organisms, the whole planet really is our environment. Perhaps the advent of the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000), whatever else it tokens, is a harbinger of our full planetary entitlement.

30761_DesRoches.indd 51

2019-05-03 12:52:02

52

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

But as interesting as that might be, I think what the view tells about the breadth of the subject category is even more fascinating. When we consider who would be included in the subject category, of the entitlement, that is, who gets to have title to the Earth this way, the obvious category is “organism.” But of course, there are many more organisms than there are people. Yet it would seem that, at least on the theory so far, any and all “Earthling” plant or animal (or microbe or prion, for that matter) has exactly the same claim to (at least a part of) the Earth as we do. That’s because the features of our history that the theory picks out as salient, the developmental and evolutionary histories, are characteristics of Earth-life, not of “humans” or any other subset of Earth-life in particular. The real question, then, is, do we think we need to add some extratheoretical apparatus to block this result, i.e., some requirement that a claim be “pressed” or some similar psychological requirement, to restrict the title to people. Or do we think that the result is largely right as it is, and that animals (and indeed, all Earth-life) are on par with us as regards their right to the planet. As for myself, I think the latter course is the correct one. What the view tells us is that we share the ground of our right to the planet with all life. At this point, there are two issues that suggest themselves as problems for this view.4 Let me turn to them now: the first is a problem shared by all theories that invoke future people, namely that such non-extant beings might be unfit (in some metaphysical sense) to serve as moral patients. Some argue that future people can’t be said to have rights, since they don’t have the grounds of such rights (i.e., interests, aims, etc.). See, e.g., Macklin (1981) and Beckerman and Pasek (2001). Herstein (2008) offers a multi-part argument against the possibility of future people having rights: either future people are taken as groups (generations), individuals, or types. Taken as groups, they lack rights because the group consisting of “all the people alive at (over) some time” lacks moral value. This is so because, unlike some groups – “members of a family,” for example – the generational group has no effect on the well-being of its members. It is merely a collection, not a group with moral salience, and thus can’t be the bearer of rights. But, as individuals, future people simply fail to exist. There are no future people (now), so there are no rights of future people. Furthermore, types of people might fail to have rights due to their inability to be harmed, as a result of what Parfit calls the “non-identity

30761_DesRoches.indd 52

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

53

problem.” To sum the problem up quickly, the (standard) counterfactual notion of harm, which makes out harming to be a matter of making another “worse off than they would have been otherwise,” makes it impossible to harm individuals whose lives in the future depend on our particular actions now. If the people who will live in the future would not have come into existence had we acted significantly differently than we did, then we couldn’t make them “worse off than they would otherwise have been” by our actions, since they wouldn’t have existed at all had we acted otherwise. I raise this issue largely to point at it – I can’t engage it with it too deeply here. But I will note that the sorts of rights I outline – generational rights to the planet – look very much like the sorts of group rights Herstein denies at the outset. If there is one sort of thing that the loose collection of “all people alive at some time” might seem to have a right to, it’s the planet they inhabit together. At the beginning I spoke metaphorically of individual claimants to a common estate. If generations are the claimants, and the Earth the estate, then I think there’s a prima facie case for the group to be the bearer of the right. The second issue is a little closer to the centre of the view I offer: As I noted, the sort of ground that the Lewontinian mutual co-­construction story provides for that entitlement extends naturally to all Earthlings. The process of DNA expression and suppression in development is common across the spectrum of life, and the Earth plays the same role in shaping arthropods as it does in shaping hominids. But the sort of theory of justice in use here – distributive justice – is typically a contractualist theory, and contractualism doesn’t handle non-human contractors very well. Often such theories explicitly exclude non-humans from the circle of justice, on the grounds of their inability to enter agreements (cf. Hume, Locke). And at best it would seem that contractualist theories can only offer a patronizing accommodation to non-bargainers, either by acting as their proxies in the bargaining situation, or by artificially restricting the scope of bargaining based on assumptions about universal interests on the part of the patients. So it would seem that there is a natural tension between contractual ethics and Lewontinian ontology. My response here is, first, to acknowledge the tension itself: Yes, there is some antipathy between contractualism and the sort of grounding I propose here; and yes, this is principally because of the bargaining mechanism central to contractualist theories of distributive justice.

30761_DesRoches.indd 53

2019-05-03 12:52:02

54

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

This is a problem of contractualism more generally, and it makes the theories sit uncomfortably with many other ethical demands. The power and intuitive grip of the bargaining mechanism is purchased at the price of exclusivity and its attendant pathologies. This has not prevented these theories from becoming widely adopted, but they are difficulties nonetheless. So it is open to the Lewontinian sustainability theorist to simply accept these difficulties, with a gesture toward others, similarly placed. But I have a proposal for a (to use the jargon of the law) negative defence in addition to this affirmative one. What is essential to the analysis of intergenerational justice I consider is that the generations of the Earth have rights to it, and that those rights need to be addressed via a fair distribution of some common good between the generations. In other words, the bones of a theory of distributive justice are the claims that justice consists of fair distribution. How the precise parameters of the notion of fairness used in this theory are to be arrived at is a secondary question. The contractual mechanism is an answer to that question, but it is not the only answer possible. We might think that what counts as the equitable sharing of a common good is to be discovered in other ways: by consulting a testament, for example, or by assessing priority of need and triage, or by some other method. In other words, theories of distributive justice are conceptually independent of contractual theories. I don’t know whether the converse is completely true, but this seems obvious to me. So what we might envision is a theory of sustainability that rests on a theory of intergenerational distributive justice, where that theory in turn was not contractualist. Such a theory might well still exclude or fail to consider the interests of non-humans, but it wouldn’t do so on grounds of excluding them from bargaining, since there is no bargaining. As an example of such an approach, consider again Brian Barry’s argument for a strictly egalitarian intergenerational distribution of “natural resources,” which we saw at the beginning of this chapter: “The basic argument for an equal claim on natural resources is that none of the usual justifications for an unequal claim – special relationships arising in virtue of past service, promises, etc., applies here. From an atemporal perspective, no one generation has a better or worse claim than any other to enjoy the earth’s resources.” This is, I think, a principled way of determining fair intergenerational division that does not require bargaining or contracting at all. The principle of distribution is strict equality, and the reason for this

30761_DesRoches.indd 54

2019-05-03 12:52:02



On the Possibility of a ­Planetary Entitlement

55

is entirely independent of considerations of mutual self-interest. I thus believe we can broaden it to account for both non-humans in the distribution pool and the entire planet as the common good, in roughly the following manner: The planet is a good is to be equally divided between the generations of earthlings, on grounds that no generation has a special entitlement to more of it than another. Of course, the devil here is in the details of what counts as equal, but this isn’t a conversation about contracts or bargains at all. It’s a conversation that can include the interests of all biotic matter without patronizing them. This, I believe, constitutes an alternative way of conceiving of distributive justice, one that might better fit with intergenerational concerns.

n otes

I read an earlier version of this chapter at the University of California Davis in April, and again at the University of Calgary in November 2016. I am indebted to those audiences for their helpful questions. I also want to acknowledge my debt to Frank Jankunis, whose work on Richard Lewontin introduced it to me and who helped to shape my eventual view.   1 Here some canonical early pieces are Rawls’s Theory of Justice (1973), David Miller’s Social Justice (1976), and Ronald Dworkin’s “Equality of Resources” and “Equality of Welfare” (1981). More recent important work is found in G.A. Cohen (1989, 1997, 2000), Thomas Pogge (2008), and others.   2 I’ve told this story with us as the victims and the aliens as the villains, but it should be obvious, given our terrestrial history, that the roles could well be reversed, were we to learn to sail the seas between ­planets first. In such a case, I think that my claims regarding the ­entitlement still hold: It’s theirs, not ours; it would be wrong of us to take it from them.   3 Or at least, the lunar folk would. I think it would be an open question whether we’d still be members of the same species.   4 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for mqup for bringing these two issues to my attention. My thinking along these lines was helpfully engaged by their comments and suggestions.

30761_DesRoches.indd 55

2019-05-03 12:52:02

3

Can Autopoiesis Ground a Response to the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism? Antoine C. Dussault

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

An important challenge faced by environmental ethicists who wish to defend the moral considerability of non-sentient biological entities (e.g., individual organisms, species, communities, ecosystems) is that of elaborating an account of the sense in which those entities can be benefited or harmed by the actions of moral agents (Goodpaster 1978). To this aim, many biocentrists – i.e., environmental ethicists who defend the view that all individual living organisms are morally considerable – argue that non-sentient organisms have a good of their own in virtue of being goal-directed or teleologically-oriented entities (e.g., Taylor 1983, 1986; Varner 1990, 1998; Agar 2001). The most influential versions of this argument (Cahen 1988; Varner 1990, 1998; Agar 2001) appeal to the etiological or selected effect theory of function and teleology developed in the philosophy of biology. This theory of function interprets the teleological dimension of living entities in terms of past natural selection (Wright 1973; Millikan 1989; Neander 1991; Godfrey-Smith 1994). This selectionist interpretation of biological teleology and the account of the good of biological entities derived from it, however, have had ill-fated implications for the theoretical project of ecocentrism. Advocates of ecocentrism subscribe to the view that ecological wholes, such as species, ecological communities, and ecosystems, should be regarded as more central objects of ethical concern than individual organisms (Leopold 1949; Callicott

30761_DesRoches.indd 56

2019-05-03 12:52:02



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

57

1989, 1999, 2013b). This leads many ecocentrists to defend the view that species, communities, and/or ecosystems are morally considerable.1 The selectionist interpretation of the good of biological entities lies in tension with this project, in that it entails that species, communities, and/or ecosystems could be candidates for moral considerability only to the extent that they constitute units of natural selection, that is, units that face natural selection as a whole. As many critics of ecocentrism have argued, however, contemporary biology considers the primary units of natural selection to be individual organisms, not ecological wholes (Cahen 1988; Varner 1990, 1998; Cooper 1998; Odenbaugh 2010, 2016). Thus, the selectionist account of the good of non-sentient biological entities seems to entail ecological wholes not having a good of their own, and consequently, not being conceivable candidates for moral considerability.2 The aim of this chapter is to determine whether an alternative account of the good of non-sentient biological entities based on the notion of autopoiesis (Varela, Maturana, and Uribe 1974; Maturana and Varela 1980) can ground a response to the above described selectionist critique of ecocentrism. Some environmental ethicists have argued (with or without explicit reference to “autopoiesis”) that an autopoietic understanding of biological teleology would legitimate the ascription of a good of their own to ecosystems as well as to individual organisms (Johnson 1991; Fox 1995). The autopoietic understanding of living entities, moreover, has recently undergone a revival in the work of philosophers of biology who advocate an organizational theory of function and teleology as an alternative to the selected effect theory (McLaughlin 2001; Christensen and Bickhard 2002; Mossio, Saborido, and Moreno 2009; Moreno and Mossio 2015). This work on function and teleology has recently been applied to ecosystems (Nunes-Neto, Moreno, and El-Hani 2014). These theoretical advances seem to reinforce the claim of environmental ethicists that an autopoietic understanding of living entities would ground the ascription of a good of their own to ecosystems as well as to organisms. This warrants a detailed discussion of the prospects for ecocentrism offered by the notion of autopoiesis and the associated organizational theory of function and teleology.3 My discussion will be organized as follows. Section 2 will introduce the concept of moral considerability as defined by Kenneth Goodpaster (1978), and emphasize its intimate link with the notion of beneficiary.

30761_DesRoches.indd 57

2019-05-03 12:52:02

58

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Section 3 will expose the selected effect account of the good of nonsentient entities as advocated by Harley Cahen (1988) and Gary Varner (1990, 1998), and the critique of ecocentrism that derives from it. Section 4 will discuss three important counter-examples to the selected effect account of the good of non-sentient entities: that of synthetic organisms, that of organisms whose environment has changed so rapidly that they would seem to benefit from assisted migration, and that of “holobionts,” ecological units composed of a host multicellular organism and its symbiotically associated micro-organisms. I will argue that those counter-examples cast doubt on the selected effect account even as an account of the good of non-sentient individual organisms. Section 5 will introduce the alternative “autopoiesis” account of the good of non-sentient entities envisaged by Lawrence Johnson (1991) and Warwick Fox (1995), and elaborate its theoretical foundation in connection with the organizational theory of function (Mossio, Saborido, and Moreno 2009; Moreno and Mossio 2015). Section 6 will consider whether the autopoiesis account of the good of non-sentient entities applies to paradigm ecosystems, and argues that it does not because of their characteristic openness (Pickett, Parker, and Fiedler 1992; Pickett and Ostfeld 1995). Section 7 will conclude with some remarks as to what the implications of this verdict are on the project of defending the moral considerability of ecosystems. 2 m  oral considerability, goodness-for, and teleology

Goodpaster’s (1978) concept of moral considerability aims to characterize the kind of status conferred to moral patients, that is, entities to which moral agents owe “the most basic forms of practical respect” (Goodpaster 1978, 309). He identifies as a necessary condition for an entity to be a conceivable candidate for moral considerability its ability to be a beneficiary, that is, to be benefited or harmed by the states of affairs that occur in the world. If nothing can conceivably make an entity better or worse off, Goodpaster emphasizes, the idea that moral agents may then owe something to that entity itself becomes unintelligible. Thus, a crucial requirement for the defence of any entity’s moral considerability consists in giving a plausible interpretation of the idea that it has a good of its own, from which an idea of what is good for or bad for it can be derived.4 An important issue that has divided animal and environmental ethicists is that of whether being sentient, that is, having some valenced

30761_DesRoches.indd 58

2019-05-03 12:52:02



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

59

mental states such as preferences and experiences of pleasure and pain, is necessary for having a good of one’s own. Animal ethicists (e.g., Singer 1993, 56–8, 279–80) typically argue that it is necessary, whereas many non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists argue that it is not. The most thorough defences of the non-sentientist view about moral considerability, developed mainly by biocentrists, define the good of non-sentient entities in relation to the notion of teleology (Taylor 1981, 1986; Cahen 1988; Varner 1990, 1998; Agar 2001). Because biological entities typically behave in goal-directed ways (e.g., a plant photosynthesizes in order to feed itself), the states of affairs that occur in the world can be good or bad for them insofar as they facilitate or impede the achievement of their biological goals. Such an understanding, biocentrists argue, explains ordinary language assertions, for instance, that being appropriately watered is good for a tree or that being poured some defoliant is bad for a weed.5 Thus, a teleologically-grounded understanding of the good of non-sentient entities seems to offer a promising basis for defending those entities’ moral considerability.6 As we shall see in the next section, however, the most well-developed versions of this understanding do not seem applicable to ecosystems and so have had ill-fated implications for ecocentrism. 3 n  at u r a l s e l e c t i o n , b i o l o g i c a l i n t e r e s t s , and ecocentrism

Cahen (1988), Varner (1990, 1998), and Nicholas Agar (2001) offer the most detailed discussions of the teleological understanding of the good of non-sentient entities. They analyze this good in terms of the etiological or selected effect theory of function developed in the philosophy of biology (Wright 1973; Millikan 1989; Neander 1991; Godfrey-Smith 1994). I will focus on Cahen and Varner’s discussions, which conceive this good as an extension of the paradigmatic ethical concept of interest (which Varner conveniently terms “biological interest”).7 Cahen and Varner’s appeal to the selected effect theory of function is motivated in part by a worry that unspecified references to the teleological character of biological entities are at risk of failing to single out real teleological phenomena from merely apparent ones (Cahen 1988, 204, 209; Varner 1998, 63–4). For instance, Cahen (1988, 209) argues that it is implausible to suppose that a river’s goal is to flow downwards, although some have used teleological

30761_DesRoches.indd 59

2019-05-03 12:52:02

60

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

language in reference to rivers (e.g., Rodman 1977, 115). According to Cahen and Varner, the selected effect theory provides a principled way of singling out teleological from non-teleological phenomena, through it restricting the ascription of functions to items that were shaped by past natural selection. From the perspective of the selected effect theory of function, specifying what a part or trait of a biological entity is for amounts to specifying which of its effects explains why it was preserved under past natural selection. For instance, pumping blood is what an organism’s heart is for insofar as pumping blood is the effect of hearts, which explains why hearts were preserved under past natural selection. More formally: F is a biological function of S (some organ or subsystem) in E (some biological entity) if and only if: (1) F is a consequence of E’s having S; and (2) E has S because achieving F was adaptive for E’s ancestors.8 The selected effect theory of function thus offers a naturalized account of biological teleology. To state the function of a biological entity’s part or subsystem is, according to the selected effect theory, to identify its natural purpose, the effect for the sake of which it is there. By interpreting the notion of natural purpose in selectionist terms, the selected effect theory thus dissociates teleological assertions from potential appeals to non-physical life-forces or to an intelligent designer. The grounding of teleology in past natural selection also yields a non-arbitrary way of singling out entities that are genuinely goal-directed from those that are not. According to the selected effect theory, an entity can genuinely be conceived as goal-directed only if it descends from a lineage of entities that have been subject to natural selection. Thus, for instance, insofar as there are no river lineages, a river’s tendency to flow downwards cannot genuinely be regarded as goal-directed. Varner (1998, 68) derives from this theory of function an account of the “biological interests” of living entities: A non-sentient entity E has a biological interest in X if and only if X fulfills some biological function F of S (a part or a ­subsystem of E), where F is a biological function of S in E if and only if: (1) F is a consequence of E’s having S; and (2) E has S because achieving F was adaptive for E’s ancestors.9

30761_DesRoches.indd 60

2019-05-03 12:52:02



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

61

According to Cahen (1988, 210–5) and Varner (1990, 268), this account of the good of non-sentient entities has straightforward implications for ecocentrism.10 As they note, although many early ecologists endorsed a view of communities or ecosystems as units of natural selection (e.g., Tansley 1935, 300; Allee et al. 1949, chap. 35; Dunbar 1960), this view has lost favour among ecologists, partly as a result of George Williams’s (1966) critique of group selection. Most contemporary ecologists (e.g., Whittaker 1975, chap. 8; Ricklefs 1976, 355–6; Levin 1998; 2005) now conceive the structure and properties of ecosystems as byproducts of the naturally selected traits of the individual organisms that compose them.11 Consequently, as Cahen (1988, 210–11) remarks, although many ecosystems appear to have a tendency to bounce back after disturbance, this tendency is not a naturally selected goal of those entities. It follows that ecosystems cannot have interests according to the selected effect account of biological interests. Hence, contrary to what many Leopold-inspired ecocentrists would assume, it cannot be conceived as good for ecosystems themselves to maintain their integrity and stability.12 This implication brings implicit support to biocentrism, by entailing that individual organisms, but not ecosystems, meet Goodpaster’s necessary condition for candidacy for moral considerability. 4 e  cocentric intuitions, synthetic organisms, and holobionts

Ecocentrists have largely ignored this critique of their view. Callicott, for instance, who has devoted considerable work to issues regarding the nature of ecosystems and the implications of those issues for ecocentric ethical views (e.g., Callicott 1995, 1996, 2003, 2011, 2013b, chap. 3), has offered no detailed discussion of it. He simply marks the divergence between Taylor’s (1981, 1986) biocentric individualism (to which Cahen and Varner’s critique indirectly brings support) and the more holist-leaning intuitions of environmentalists: Frankly, environmentalists do not much care about the welfare of each and every shrub, bug, and grub. We care, rather, about preserving species of organisms, populations within species, genes within populations – in a word we care about preserving biodiversity. We care about preserving communities of organisms and ecosystems. We also care about air and water quality, soil stability, and the integrity of Earth‘s stratospheric ozone

30761_DesRoches.indd 61

2019-05-03 12:52:02

62

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

membrane. None of these things appear to have interests, goods of their own, ends, purposes, or goals, and thus none has intrinsic value, on this account. (Callicott 2002b, 8)13 Although intuitions are a controversial basis for ethical theorizing, I think that the environmentalist intuitions rehearsed by Callicott should not be disregarded in the context of the present discussion. Insofar as those intuitions are an important motivation for the project of elaborating a non-sentientist environmental ethics, the fact that they are at odds with the implications of a biocentrist ethics suggests that such an ethics will remain unsatisfactory no matter how sophisticated a theory of it might be. In the event that ecocentrism proves theoretically indefensible, it is far from clear that (ecocentricallyinclined) environmentalists would not simply give up the idea of a non-anthropocentric environmental ethics altogether, rather than embracing a biocentrist replacement. However, I think that Callicott goes too far in the above passage when he entirely dissociates holistic environmental ethics from notions of an entity’s having a good of one’s own, ends, and purposes. As seen in section 2, the notion of moral considerability is conceptually tied to that of having a good of one’s own, in that being able to be benefited or harmed by the states of affairs that occur in the world is a necessary condition for being a candidate for moral considerability. It follows that, if Callicott and other ecocentrists wish to defend the moral considerability of ecosystems, they cannot fully dissociate their views from the notion of having a good of one’s own.14 They may well argue, as does Callicott, that it is psychologically possible for moral agents to develop attitudes of non-instrumental valuation toward ecosystems (see Callicott 1982, 1992b, 2013b, chap. 5). Those valuing attitudes, however, can amount to ascribing moral considerability to ecosystems only if they can lead the moral agents who develop them to desire to promote (or prevent) some states of affairs because they are good for (or bad for) ecosystems themselves. This requires ecosystems to have a good of their own. In fact, ecocentrists like Callicott seem to (at least implicitly) embrace some accounts of what is good for ecosystems. This is so, for instance, when they adopt Leopold’s maxim that “a thing is right” from an ecocentric standpoint “when it preserves the stability, integrity and beauty” of ecosystems, or when, like Callicott, they attempt to update this maxim in light of contemporary ecology (see Callicott 1996, 2002a, 2013b, chap. 3). What is missing, however,

30761_DesRoches.indd 62

2019-05-03 12:52:02



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

63

from the discussions of many ecocentrists, is an explanation of the sense in which it is good for ecosystems themselves to preserve their stability, integrity, and beauty, or any other attribute. Hence, although I think that Callicott is right to insist on the counterintuitive character of individualistic biocentrism, I think that his outright dismissal of the environmental ethical relevance of notions of goodness of one’s own, ends, and purposes is misguided. To the extent that they wish to defend the moral considerability of ecosystems, ecocentrists must provide an account of the good of their own of ecosystems. Fortunately for ecocentrists, the selected effect account of biological interest faces important counter-examples that cast serious doubts on its ability to appropriately capture even what is intuitively good for of individual organisms. Those counter-examples, I shall now argue, suggest that this account is ill-advised, and that an alternative one – one that may have better prospects for the project of defending the moral considerability of ecosystems – might also be more appropriate in the case of individual organisms. Sune Holm (2012) introduces a first counter-example to the selected effect account: that of “protocells,” synthetic organisms that are assembled “bottom up” from organic and inorganic components (see Holm 2012, 534–5). Unlike regular organisms, such synthetic organisms do not descend from evolutionary lineages, but are spontaneously generated in appropriate laboratory contexts.15 Those organisms seem to have a good of their own nonetheless. For instance, as Holm (2012, 535) illustrates, if a protocell’s membrane is “damaged” in such a way that it becomes unable to control inflows and outflows of matter as required for the protocell’s survival, this seems bad for the protocell, as much as a similar event would seem bad for a cell that results from standard evolutionary processes. This, however, cannot be so according to the selected effect account of biological interests. Insofar as the protocell has no natural selective history, controlling inflows and outflows of matter cannot be a selected effect function of its membrane, and therefore controlling inflows and outflows of matter cannot be good for the protocell (see Holm 2012, 535–6). This seems to be an implausible implication of the selected effect account of biological interests.16 A second counter-example, introduced by Katie McShane (2014), is that of organisms whose environment has changed so rapidly that the performance of their parts and subsystems’ selected effect functions is no longer adaptive for them. As McShane notes, such rapid

30761_DesRoches.indd 63

2019-05-03 12:52:03

64

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

changes are likely to become increasingly frequent with climate change, and this is why conservation biologists now envisage “assisted migration” – the moving of a species that is unable to survive in its native environment to a more suitable one – as an advisable conservation strategy (see e.g., McLaghlan, Hellmann, and Schwartz 2007; HoeghGuldberg et al. 2008). An illustration of this kind of mismatch between the interests of individual organisms and the performance of their parts and subsystems’ selected effect functions is that of organisms from species whose phenology (the timing of their life cycle relative to seasonal variations in climate and habitat factors) concords with that of the species they feed upon (see Visser, Both, and Lambrechts 2004). Such a concordance benefits offspring from the former species, through coordinating their nutritional needs with the time of peak abundance of their food. In many cases, this coordination is achieved through the parents’ naturally selected ability to adjust their breeding time according to abiotic environmental cues, such as weather patterns. Anthropogenic climate change, however, may disrupt this coordination. Insofar as organisms from different species are likely to adjust their breeding times according to different environmental cues, anthropogenic climate change may alter the breeding times of a predator species and the species it preys upon in different ways. This may lead organisms from the predator species to give birth at seasonal times when the food that their offspring normally consume is scarce. This seems intuitively bad for those offspring, and it would seem better for organisms from those species to no longer use the environmental cues that they were selected to use as bases for adjusting their breeding time. As McShane argues, cases such as this one expose the implausibility of the selected effect account of biological interests: [T]he individualist argument above only looked plausible as an account of interests against a background in which a thing’s ­continuing to do what it evolved to do, what is “natural” for it to do, continues to be what is good for it. In an environment where most things are pretty well adapted to their current circumstances, their “natural” behaviours and the behaviours that are good for them will tend to coincide. But crucially, the background has changed and will continue to do so. Increasingly, we face a world where maladaptation is the rule rather than the exception – where an organism’s natural behaviours might well doom it in its current context. The coincidence assumed by

30761_DesRoches.indd 64

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

65

individualism between “natural” behaviours and advantageous behaviours is disappearing. (McShane 2014, 138) Thus, the connection between an organism’s achievement of its selected effect functions and its interests seems to be at best contingent. Such an observation, however, runs counter to Cahen and Varner’s selected effect account of biological interests, in that their account implies that it is by definition (and therefore necessarily) beneficial to an organism that its parts and subsystems achieve their selected effect functions. This is so regardless of whether doing so allows it to fare well in its present environment. As in the one regarding protocells, this implication of the selected effect account of biological interests seems implausible. A third counter-example to the selected effect account of biological interests, introduced by Callicott (2013a) and McShane (2014), arises from recent advances in microbiology, which reveal the importance of symbiotic micro-organisms (e.g., bacteria, viruses) for the metabolism, development, immune system, and even the moods of multicellular organisms.17 As Callicott and McShane note, the human body, for instance, hosts a rich diversity of symbiotic bacteria, which are present in many of its parts, such as our gut, our skin, our eyebrows, and our eyelashes. According to current estimates, those symbiotic bacteria are present in the human body at a ratio of one bacterial cell for each human cell.18 The functional importance of symbiotic microorganisms in the body of multicellular organisms has led some biologists to introduce the term “holobiont” (Margulis 1991; Rosenberg et al. 2007; Gilbert, Sapp, and Tauber 2012). This importance also leads many medical researchers to think that they could significantly improve their understanding of how human bodies function by studying human organisms as ecosystems rather than as individual organisms (somewhat turning on its head the historical controversy over whether ecosystems should be conceived of as organisms) (Costello et al. 2012; Hagen 2014, 189–90). The functional importance of symbiotic micro-organisms within holobionts, moreover, leads many researchers to ascribe them functions within holobionts, and even, for instance, to portray the gut flora of multicellular organisms as a “virtual organ within an organ” (Guarner and Malagelada 2003; O’Hara and Shanahan 2006). Intestinal symbiotic bacteria contribute, among other things, to their host’s absorption of lipids, carbohydrates, and ions, to their synthesis

30761_DesRoches.indd 65

2019-05-03 12:52:03

66

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

of vitamins, and improved resistance to pathogens. This entails that those capacities are more properly viewed as capacities of the holobiont as a whole than of the host or the symbiotic micro-organisms taken individually. Thus, from a functional perspective, holobionts seem to constitute unified biological entities, of which micro-organismic components are as much parts as their “regular” organs. This suggests that a holobiont as a whole, and not only the host and its symbiotic micro-organisms taken separately, have a good of their own. This holobiont perspective, however, is not easily accommodated by the selected effect theory of functions and the account of biological interests derived from it. Many multicellular organisms involved in the formation of holobionts acquire their symbiotic bacteria horizontally from their environment, rather than vertically from their parents (Dupré and O’Malley 2009; Booth 2014). This form of horizontal acquisition implies that the functions fulfilled by many symbiotic micro-organisms involved in holobionts are associated with traits that may have evolved prior to their association with the host. Insofar as those traits are not ones that are the result of natural selection operating on ancestors of the holobiont, they cannot be ascribed functions according to the selected effect theory. The selected effect theory therefore cannot acknowledge as functionally unified biological entities holobionts formed through the horizontal acquisition of micro-organisms by a multicellular organism. This, in turn, entails that those holobionts cannot be ascribed biological interests according to Cahen and Varner’s selected effect account of biological interests. This, again, seems to be an implausible implication of the selected effect account of biological interests. To the extent that holobionts, even when formed through horizontal acquisition of symbionts, exhibit capacities that result from the synergetic activity of their multicellular and micro-organismic parts, it would seem wrong to ascribe biological interests only to those parts taken separately and not to the holobionts as a whole. What those three counter-examples highlight, I think, is that, contrary to Cahen and Varner’s assumption, there is no necessary connection between the good of a non-sentient biological entity and the results of natural selection operating on its ancestors. This connection, as we have seen, is at best contingent. This pleads in favour of envisaging an alternative account of the good of non-sentient entities; and, relevant to our purpose, this alternative account may offer better prospects for ecocentrism. The next section will turn to an alternative account of biological interests grounded in the notion of autopoiesis.

30761_DesRoches.indd 66

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

67

5 a  n a lt e r n at i v e a c c o u n t : a u t o p o i e s i s

The lineaments of an alternative account of biological interests can be found in Johnson’s (1991) and Fox’s (1995, chap. 6) discussion of what confers interests to non-sentient living entities.19 Building on Goodpaster’s (1978, 323) take on this issue, Johnson adopts as his starting point Kenneth Sayre’s characterization of living entities: “The typifying mark of a living system … appears to be its persistent state of low entropy, sustained by metabolic processes for accumulating energy, and maintained in equilibrium with its environment by homeostatic feedback processes” (Sayre 1976, 91; quoted by Johnson 1991, 204). In contrast to the evolutionary characterization of living entities adopted by Cahen and Varner, Sayre and Johnson’s characterization is grounded in thermodynamics and cybernetics. Given the foundational importance of those disciplines for ecosystem ecology (see Hagen 1992, chaps. 4–7), this characterization seems prima facie better suited for ascribing biological interests to ecosystems.20 Johnson (1991, 205–8) argues, however, that Sayre’s characterization must be further elaborated to appropriately distinguish real living entities from mere collections (e.g., committees and zoos) and artefacts (e.g., refrigerators and toasters). In Johnson’s view, many collections and artefacts meet Sayre’s characterization, but do not have interests in their own rights. Thus, in addition to being entropy-resisting and homeostatically-maintained systems, living entities, Johnson argues, are characterized by a form of organic unity and of self-identity. He explains those two notions as follows: “By saying that a living system has organic unity, I mean that its character is an integrated expression of the character of its subsidiary systems. By saying that a living system has self-identity, I mean that what it is and what serves to maintain it is determined by its own nature” (Johnson 1991, 205; italics added). Those explanations, indeed, remain elusive, but I take it that they point to some intuitive characteristics of living entities. And, relevant to our purpose, Johnson (1991, 216–7) argues that this characterization allows for ecosystems to be included as bearers of interests. Johnson’s discussion thus identifies four characteristics of living entities, which confer on them a good of their own: resistance to entropy, homeostatic self-regulation, organic unity, and self-identity. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s work on autopoiesis (see e.g., Varela, Maturana, and Uribe 1974; Maturana and Varela 1980), which Fox (1995, 169–76) recommends as a promising resource

30761_DesRoches.indd 67

2019-05-03 12:52:03

68

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

for grounding the idea that living entities have interests (see also Nolt 2009), seems to offer a promising way to elaborate Johnson’s third and fourth characteristics. Their work can be regarded as a more technical and detailed elaboration of Immanuel Kant’s (1987, §§64–5) notion that living organisms are “natural purposes,” which are “both causes and effects of themselves.” Recently, this notion has inspired the development of the organizational theory of function and teleology, which many philosophers of biology advocate as an alternative to the selected effect theory (McLaughlin 2001; Christensen and Bickhard 2002; Delancey 2006; Mossio, Saborido, and Moreno 2009; Moreno and Mossio 2015).21 The organizational theory of function is centred on the idea that living entities constitute a special kind of entropy-resisting and self-regulated system (Johnson’s first and second characteristics) typified by what Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio call an organizational closure (an idea inspired from Piaget 1967 and Varela 1979). By this, Moreno and Mossio mean that a living entity is constituted by a set of mutually dependent and differentiated parts that act as constraints on flows of material and energy, and collectively realize self-maintenance (see Moreno and Mossio 2015, chap. 1). According to the organizational theory, those constraints exerted by the parts constitute their functions within a living entity. More formally, the organizational theory states that: F is a biological function of S (some organ or subsystem) in E (some biological entity) if and only if: (1) F exerts a constraint that contributes to the maintenance of E’s organization; (2) F is maintained under some constraint in E; and, (3) E realizes closure (i.e., E is constituted by a set of mutually dependent and differentiated parts that act as constraints and collectively realize self-maintenance).22 For instance, as Moreno and Mossio (2015, 73) illustrate, pumping blood is the function of the heart in an organism insofar as (a) pumping blood exerts a constraint that contributes to the maintenance of the organism’s organization, (b) the heart and its ability to pump blood are maintained by various constraints exerted by that organism as a whole, and (c) the organism is constituted of a set of mutually dependent and differentiated parts that collectively realize self-maintenance.

30761_DesRoches.indd 68

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

69

According to Matteo Mossio, Cristian Saborido, and Alvaro Moreno (2009, 12–13), the organizational theory elucidates the teleological character of living entities. Given that a living entity exists only insofar as its parts perform their functions, and given that those parts remain able to perform their function only insofar as the entity exists, those parts can properly be said to perform their functions because they contribute to the entity’s maintenance. Those functions are, in a sense, performed for the sake of that entity as a whole, in such a way that this entity itself can properly be said to be the end toward which its overall activity is oriented. In this very respect, the functions of living entities are “autopioetic” as opposed to “exopoietic” (Nolt 2009, 149). This elucidation of biological teleology offers a way to further elaborate the idea that living entities have a kind of self-identity that artefacts do not have, or, in Johnson’s parlance, that living entities are “determined by [their] own nature” (Johnson’s fourth characteristic). In contrast to artefacts, which are oriented toward external ends, the ends pursued by living entities, according to the organizational theory, are internal to them: those entities are their own purposes. This self-directed teleological character of living entities implies, according to Fox (1995, 171–2) that, in a sense, they “matter to themselves” in a way that artefacts do not.23 The organizational theory also offers an interpretation of the idea that living entities are organic unities, which contrast with mere collections in that, as Johnson puts it, their “character is an integrated expression of the character of [their] subsidiary systems” (Johnson’s third characteristic). This interpretation derives from Moreno and Mossio’s condition (b) above, which states that the functions of the parts of living entities must be maintained by some constraints exerted by the entity as a whole. This condition draws a contrast between genuine functions bearers within a system (e.g., an organism’s heart), and items that, according to organizational theorists, merely have beneficial effects on that system (e.g., oxygen and food for an organism). The former are maintained by the system’s overall activity, whereas the latter are not (see Mossio, Saborido, and Moreno 2009, 20).24 Thus, according to this interpretation of the notion of organic unity, what qualifies living entities (and not collections like zoos and committees) as organic unities is the fact that their parts, besides contributing to the maintenance of the entity as a whole (as the parts of collections also do), are also maintained by the overall activity of the entity as a whole. Such maintenance of the parts by the whole (i.e., collective self-maintenance of the whole’s interacting parts) is what

30761_DesRoches.indd 69

2019-05-03 12:52:03

70

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

constitutes living entities as unified self-maintaining entities. In line with Johnson and Fox’s observations, this form of unified self-maintenance seems to confer living entities a good of their own, which artefacts and collections do not have (see McLaughlin 2001, 183). On related grounds, Holm (2012, 538) argues that an account of biological interests derived from the organizational theory of function may yield a more adequate interpretation of the interests of nonsentient living entities than the selected effect account.25 Such an account, which I will call the autopoiesis account of biological interests, would have the following form: A non-sentient entity E has a biological interest in X if and only if: (1) E realizes closure, that is, E is constituted by a set of mutually dependent and differentiated parts that act as constraints and collectively realize self-maintenance; and, (2) X contributes to E’s self-maintenance.26 As Holm (2012, 538) remarks, this account has more plausible implications than Cahen and Varner’s selected effect account for synthetic organisms. Unlike the selected effect account, the autopoiesis account readily ascribes interests to synthetic organisms. Synthetic organisms presumably realize closure as much as organisms that result from natural selection do, and so also have biological interests, according to the autopoiesis account. The autopoiesis account also has more plausible implications for interests of organisms whose environment has changed so rapidly that achieving their selected effect functions is no longer adaptive for them. Insofar as achieving their selected effect functions is prejudicial to their self-maintenance, achieving those functions goes against their interests according to the autopoiesis account. Moreover, the autopoiesis account seems able to ascribe biological interests to holobionts on the basis of the functions performed by their horizontally acquired symbiotic micro-organisms. Insofar as the ability of a holobiont’s horizontally acquired micro-organisms to contribute to the holobiont’s self-maintenance depends upon the beneficial environment provided to them by the holobiont as a whole, those micro-organisms can be regarded as maintained by the holobiont as a whole. Those micro-organisms must thus be regarded as functionbearing parts of the holobiont, just like the holobiont’s inherited parts (such as the host’s organs and its vertically acquired symbionts). It

30761_DesRoches.indd 70

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

71

follows that the performance of the functions of a holobiont’s horizontally acquired parts is as much constitutive of the holobiont’s good of its own as the performance of the functions of its other parts. Thus, from the perspective of the autopoiesis account of biological interests, the holobiont as a whole, and not only the host and its symbionts taken separately, has biological interests.27 Hence, the autopoiesis account of biological interests has more intuitive implications than its selected effect counterpart for synthetic organisms, organisms whose environment has changed so rapidly that achieving their selected effect functions is no longer adaptive for them, and holobionts. 6 a  re ecosystems autopoietic?

Can the autopoiesis account of biological interests ground a response to the selectionist critique of ecocentrism? Some ecocentrists have alluded to views of ecosystems as autopoietic. For instance, Fox (1995, 169–76) argues that the concept of autopoiesis provides the best possible support for the claim that non-sentient living entities have interests, and contends that this concept also confers interests to ecosystems. Along related lines, Callicott (1992, 342–3) proposes that the concept of autopoiesis provides a plausible interpretation of Leopold’s notion of “land health” understood as a land’s “capacity for self-renewal.” Some support for those contentions seems to be afforded by Nei Nunes-Neto, Alvaro Moreno, and Charbel El-Hani’s (2014) recent application of the organizational theory of functions to ecosystems. Nunes-Neto et al. argue that ecosystems, like typical organisms, realize a closure of constraints. They remark that the material elements that flow within ecosystems (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, etc.) would not flow in the specific ways they do if their flows were not constrained by the activities of the biological entities that they are composed of. Those flows, therefore, should not be conceived as mere physicochemical phenomena but as “metabolically or ecologically generated flows” (Nunes-Neto, Moreno, and El-Hani 2014, 131). As they note, a similar picture of how the biological entities that compose ecosystems constrain the flows of energy within them could also be given. Nunes-Neto et al. (2014, 133–6) illustrate how the biological entities that ecosystems are composed of collectively realize a closure of constraints with the example of “bromeliad ­ecosystems.” Those ecosystems form in reservoirs of rainwater accumulated between the leaves of a plant called bromeliad (Quesnelia

30761_DesRoches.indd 71

2019-05-03 12:52:03

72

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

arvensis), and are mainly composed of a spider (A. castaneus), which plays the role of the top predator, some micro-organisms, and mosquito larvae and adults (of the family Culicidae). In bromeliad ecosystems, according to Nunes-Neto et al. (2014, 136): Each constraint itself is produced by the complex set of interactions in which it is embedded. Take again the example of the ­spider. Nitrogen flows through the spider’s predation of the Culicidae, which means that it incorporates the biomass of these insects into its own biomass. At least in part, the spider is produced by the cascade of effects of its own action on the predation of the Culicidae. That is to say, when it predates the larvae and adults of the Culicidae, the spider contributes to the maintenance of the internal conditions of operation of the ecosystem as a whole, avoiding, for instance, a cascade of events that could destabilize the system (low predation of the Culicidae might cause, for instance, a decrease in the production of guanine-rich feces by the spider and, consequently, a decrease in nutrient uptake by the bromeliad, which might eventually be unable to keep its leaves, which are an important support for the spider web). In sum, at least in part, the whole organization of the ­ecosystem ensures the existence of the spider itself. Thus, in accordance with the organizational theory of function, ­bromeliad ecosystems realize closure. They are constituted of a set of mutually dependent and differentiated parts that act as constraints and collectively realize self-maintenance. According to Nunes-Neto et al.’s description of those ecosystems, bromeliad ecosystems, therefore, qualify as autopoietic entities. Let us concede that Nunes-Neto et al.’s picture of bromeliad ecosystems is correct. The question now is whether this picture corresponds to all or most of the ecosystems to which ecocentrists would intuitively wish to ascribe moral considerability. Some important aspects of what ecologists and environmental philosophers often depict as a paradigm shift in ecology suggest that it does not (see e.g., Sagoff 1985, 1997; Shrader-Frechette 1989; Worster 1990; Botkin 1990; Pickett, Parker, and Fiedler 1992; Pickett and Ostfeld 1995; Callicott 1996, 2002a, 2003; Throop and Hettinger 1999; White 2006). This alleged paradigm shift is often portrayed as one from a

30761_DesRoches.indd 72

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

73

view of the ecological world focused on order, balance, and constancy to one focused on chaos, disequilibrium, and disturbances. While I agree with commentators who contend that this portrait is somewhat overstated (e.g., Norton 1996; Partridge 2000, 2005; Odenbaugh 2001; Eliot 2007, 2011), I nevertheless think that a central aspect emphasized by advocates of the “new paradigm” implies that ecosystems are not paradigmatically autopoietic. This aspect consists of the characteristic openness of ecosystems. As Pickett and Ostfeld (1995, 262, 267) note, while “[h]istorically, ecological systems were considered to be primarily closed, self-­ regulating, and subject to a single stable equilibrium,” according to the new paradigm “[e]cological systems are never closed, but rather experience inputs such as light, water, nutrients, pollution, migrating genotypes, and migrating species. Note that the novel emphasis of the modern paradigm is not that ecological systems are self-regulating, but rather experience important limits from external sources.” And as Pickett and Ostfeld (1995, 262) emphasize, the kind of ecosystem openness they have in mind here is not merely thermodynamic energetic openness – a kind of openness acknowledged from the outset by autopoiesis theorists in their representation of living entities as entropy-resisting (see section 5 above) – but one involving constraints exerted by biotic and abiotic items that are not maintained or controlled by the ecosystem itself. The importance of those external constraints for the maintenance of many ecosystems, I submit, casts doubt on the idea that those ecosystems paradigmatically are autopoietic and exhibit the particular kind of organic unity Johnson (1991) alludes to. Many ecosystems, as we shall see, do not meet the closure criterion adopted by organizational theorists. The characteristic openness of ecosystems can be illustrated by considering two important ecological phenomena: ecological disturbances and source-sink dynamics. The research on the effects of ecological disturbances, e.g., hurricanes, fires, floods, droughts, avalanches, volcanic eruptions, etc. on ecosystem structure (Pickett and White 1985; White et al. 1999; Pickett, Wu, and Cadenasso 1999) has led ecologists to highlight how those disturbances contribute to the maintenance of many ecosystems. A salient example is that of rocky intertidal ecosystems, in which wave disturbances are known to be a key structuring factor (Dayton 1971; Sousa 1985, 2001).28 In those ecosystems, sea palms (Postelsia palmaeformis) compete for space with mussels (Mytilus californianus), and sea palms are only able to

30761_DesRoches.indd 73

2019-05-03 12:52:03

74

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

establish when large wave disturbances open clear spaces in the beds of mussels (Paine 1979, 1988; Blanchette 1996). In technical terms, those disturbances prevent the competitive exclusion of sea palms by mussels (Hutchinson 1957; Hardin 1960). As a result, sea palms in those ecosystems are more prominently maintained by wave disturbances than by the collective activity of the other components of their ecosystem (as required by the autopoiesis view). Hence, from the perspective of the organizational theory, sea palms would have to be considered similarly to oxygen and food for individual organisms. They would have to be considered as items that have beneficial effects on intertidal ecosystems, but that are not function-bearing parts of those ecosystems. This seems counterintuitive, however, insofar as sea palms significantly affect the ecosystems they contribute to maintaining, and do so perhaps more than other populations that are maintained by that ecosystem. It would seem more appropriate to consider sea palms as function-bearing parts of wavedisturbed intertidal ecosystems while admitting that those ecosystems are not organizationally closed. That ecological disturbances are an important structuring factor in many ecosystems is indicated by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, an important generalization in the field of disturbance ecology, which states that the occurrence of disturbances of moderate intensity at moderate frequency often favours biodiversity within ecosystems (Connell 1978; Dial and Roughgarden 1998; Biswas and Mallik 2010). Such a diversity-enhancing effect implies that many populations within ecosystems are, like populations of sea palms in rocky intertidal ecosystems, maintained to a significant degree by constraints exerted by ecological disturbances that are not included in the ecosystem’s closure. This suggests that, just like wave-disturbed intertidal ecosystems, many ecosystems are maintained by disturbance regimes and so exhibit organizational openness rather than closure. In contrast to ecological disturbances, which involve abiotic factors, source-sink dynamics illustrate the openness of ecosystems to biotic factors (Pulliam 1988; Dias 1996; Mouquet and Loreau 2003). Those dynamics occur when a subpopulation located in a poor habitat – a sink population – is unable to maintain itself by reproduction alone, and persists as a result of immigration from another subpopulation whose reproduction exceeds its mortality – a source population. Such a dynamic can be observed, for instance, in the dispersal pattern of the American sea rocket (Cakile edentula), an annual plant that grows

30761_DesRoches.indd 74

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

75

on the sand dunes of Nova Scotia, between seaward and landward habitats (Keddy 1982). Sea rockets in seaward habitats have a high reproductive output and are dispersed during the winter by wind and water to landward habitats, where their death rate exceeds their birth rate. The sea rockets in landward habitats, in this case, form sink populations that persist only as a result of being dispersed from source populations located in seaward habitats. They are more prominently maintained by immigration than by the collective activity of the other populations occupying landwards habitat (as required by the autopoiesis view). From the perspective of the organizational theory, sea rockets in landward habitats – just like sea palms in wave-disturbed intertidal ecosystems – would have to be considered as external items that have beneficial effects on landward sand dune ecosystems, but that are not part of those ecosystems. This, again, seems counterintuitive, insofar as, just like sea palms in intertidal ecosystems, sea rockets significantly affect the ecosystems they contribute to maintaining. As in the sea palm case, therefore, it would seem more appropriate to consider sea rockets as function-bearing parts of landward sand dune ecosystems while admitting that those ecosystems are not organizationally closed. The importance of source-sink dynamics as a structuring factor in ecosystems is suggested by studies that show that immigration from an external source can frequently promote the coexistence of populations that use similar resources and that would tend to competitively exclude each other if their local communities were closed to immigration (Loreau and Mouquet 1999; Mouquet and Loreau 2003; Amarasekare and Nisbet 2001). The coexistence-promoting effect of source-sink dynamics is thus very similar to that of ecological disturbances. Source-sink dynamics therefore imply that many populations within ecosystems may be maintained to a significant degree by constraints exerted by external source populations, which are not included in the ecosystem’s closure. This suggests that, just like landward sand dune ecosystems, many ecosystems are maintained by source-sink dynamics and exhibit organizational openness rather than closure. A conceivable way to accommodate the phenomenon of source-sink dynamics under the autopoiesis account would be to relativize the ecological functions of source populations to a “metaecosystem” encompassing the more local “subecosystems” between which sourcesink dynamics occur.29 This would acknowledge sink populations as ecological function bearers, although their functions would be borne

30761_DesRoches.indd 75

2019-05-03 12:52:03

76

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

in relation to the metaecosystem (presumed to be organizationally closed) rather than within their local subecosystem. This “go big” strategy (Millstein 2018) would, however, I think, offer limited prospects for ecocentrism. It would imply that many local ecosystems that are foci of ecological conservation and to which ecocentrists would presumably wish to ascribe moral considerability, do not have interests in their own right. To determine whether a particular ecosystem can be a candidate for moral considerability, ecocentrists would, under this strategy, first have to determine whether this ecosystem is organizationally closed or whether it is to a significant degree maintained through source-sink dynamics. In the latter case, they would then have to turn their attention to a more encompassing ecosystem, and given that this ecosystem may itself also be open, they would have to repeat the same procedure, and so on until they reach an ecosystem that is sufficiently closed. The “go big” strategy, I suspect, is likely to identify only a few largescale, perhaps continent-wide or even larger, ecosystems (one might think for instance of migrant birds that move between temperate and tropical ecosystems) as candidates for moral considerability (see Currie 2011, 24). The importance of ecological disturbances and source-sink dynamics for the maintenance of many ecosystems thus indicates that many ecosystems to which ecocentrists would presumably wish to ascribe moral considerability are, to a significant degree, maintained by external biotic and abiotic factors. Although some ecosystems, like the bromeliad ecosystems discussed by Nunes-Neto et al., presumably are autopoietic, many ecosystems, like disturbance-driven ecosystems and sink ecosystems, are not. Thus, ecosystems do not paradigmatically exhibit organic unity as interpreted under the autopoiesis view (Johnson’s third characteristic of living entities). The character of many ecosystems – such as disturbance-driven and sink ecosystems – is only partly an “expression of the character of [their] subsidiary systems,” and is also significantly shaped by external constraints. 7 c  onclusion: where should ecocentrists go from here?

Above, I first presented the selectionist critique of ecocentrism, which argues that ecosystems are not teleologically-oriented entities and therefore do not have a good of their own because they are not

30761_DesRoches.indd 76

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

77

typically units of selection. I then considered whether an alternative understanding of the good of non-sentient entities grounded in the notion of autopoiesis offers better prospects for ecocentrism. I argued that it does not in the final analysis because of the characteristic openness of ecosystems. This characteristic openness, illustrated, among other things, by the importance of ecological disturbances and sourcesink dynamics for the maintenance of many ecosystems, conflicts with the closure criterion central to the autopoiesis account. What should we conclude about the prospect of defending ecocentrism against the selectionist critique? Although I think that it would be hasty, at this point, to conclude that no sound defence of the moral considerability of ecosystems can be elaborated, I nevertheless think that the above discussion motivates an important observation as to how to orient future attempts at elaborating such a defence. Despite its different take on the notions of biological function and teleology, the autopoiesis approach to ecosystem-level biological interests and ecosystem moral considerability shares an important aspect with the selected effect approach. This aspect is the presupposition that an appropriate defence of ecocentrism should somewhat consist in a holistic extension of individualistic biocentrism. The presupposition is, in other words, that an appropriate defence of the moral considerability of ecosystems should take as its starting point the biocentrist view that individual organisms are paradigmatic bearers of a good of their own, (and therefore paradigmatic candidates for moral considerability), and from there argue that ecosystems are sufficiently similar to organisms to be bearers of the same kind of good of their own and, for this reason, to also be candidates for moral considerability. In essence, what the above discussion shows, I think, is that defences of the moral considerability of ecosystems that adopt this presupposition fail because they entail that ecosystems could be candidates for moral considerability only if they exhibited a degree of part-whole functional integration comparable to that found in individual organisms. The selected effect account interprets this partwhole functional integration in selectionist terms, acknowledging only entities that are units of selection as candidates for moral considerability, whereas the autopoiesis account interprets part-whole integration in terms of organizational closure. Both approaches, thus, remain somewhat biased in favour of biocentrism, by making candidacy for moral considerability hinge on the possession of appropriate

30761_DesRoches.indd 77

2019-05-03 12:52:03

78

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

similarity to individual organisms. They also set ecocentrism in critical tension with scientific ecology, by making its plausibility hinge on the validity of the now scientifically-discredited organismic view of ecosystems (for discussions, see McIntosh 1998; Trepl and Voigt 2011). The above discussion thus indicates that ecocentrists are unlikely to succeed in elaborating theoretical foundations for their ethical view if they confine themselves within the bounds of such a biocentrist-extensionist argumentative strategy. It also indicates that ecocentrists should not make their defence of the moral considerability of ecosystems hinge on the possibility of showing that ecosystems bear close similarity to individual organisms.30 What ecocentrists should instead strive to elaborate, I think, is an account of the good of their own of ecosystems that can qualify them as candidates for moral considerability qua ecosystems and not qua analogues of organisms. Can such an account be elaborated? I think that it can and that neglected resources for elaborating such an account can be found in the discussions of the concept of ecosystem health by environmental scientists and ethicists (Costanza 1992; Callicott 1995; McShane 2004). The full elaboration of such an account, however, lies beyond the scope of this chapter and will have to be deferred to a future occasion.

n otes

Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank John Basl, Victor Lefèvre, Gregory Mikkelson, Roberta Millstein, Jennifer Welchman, and the members of the Groupe de recherche en éthique environnementale et animale (G RÉEA) for valuable comments on previous versions of this chapter; as well as Sophia Rousseau-Mermans and Matteo Mossio for stimulating discussions. He is also thankful to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHR C ) for a post-doctoral grant and to the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture (F R Q S C ) for a doctoral grant.   1 It should be noted that not all ecocentrists pursue the project of defending the moral considerability of ecological wholes. Some ecocentrists instead focus their arguments on the concept of intrinsic value (conceived as non-­ instrumental value) (see O’Neill 1992). In contrast to the concept of moral considerability, which can only be applied to entities that have a good of their own, the concept of intrinsic value can be applied more broadly (see

30761_DesRoches.indd 78

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

79

Cahen 1988, 199–201). Ascribing intrinsic value to an entity or state of affair entails that it matters (i.e., must be promoted, cherished, preserved, etc.) for its own sake. Intrinsic value, therefore, can non-problematically be ascribed to entities that do not (presumably) have a good of their own, such as artworks and other objects of cultural value. This opens the possibility of elaborating an approach to ecocentrism focused on ascribing intrinsic value to ecological wholes in a way that involves no claim about their having a good of their own. Such an approach to ecocentrism is epitomized, for instance, by richness theorists, who argue that entities or states of affairs are intrinsically valuable to the extent that they exhibit the property of richness, defined as unified variety (Miller 1982; Kelly 2003, 2014; Mikkelson 2011, 2014; chapter 4 of this volume). Richness theory thus entails that ecological communities and ecosystems are intrinsically valuable to a high degree, in virtue of being constituted by a rich diversity of species that collectively form very complex interactive networks. I defer to a later occasion the discussion of the comparative merits of the richness theory approach to ecocentrism and the more classical approach focused on moral considerability.   2 It must be emphasized that what is at stake with this criticism is whether ecological wholes can be candidates for moral considerability. Insofar as it is conceptually possible to acknowledge that an entity has a good of its own while denying that this good has ethical relevance, establishing that ecological wholes are morally considerable would require additional premises (see O’Neill 2001, 169, for a discussion).   3 Although I will focus on ecosystems, I will assume an interpretation of the concepts of ecological community and ecosystem as conveying complementary perspectives on the same (multi-species) level of organization, rather than as referring to distinct levels of organization (see King 1993, 19–24; Callicott, Crowder, and Mumford 1999, 23–5). The community ecological perspective focuses on the interactions among populations occurring at this organizational level (competition, predation, etc.), whereas the ecosystem perspective focuses on the flows of matter and energy between those populations and their abiotic environment. This interpretation, I think, concurs with current ecological understanding (e.g., Allen and Hoekstra 1992; Jones and Lawton 1995; Pickett, Kolasa, and Jones 2007), and arguably also with Aldo Leopold’s own take on ecological wholes (see Millstein 2018). This interpretation of the relationship between the concepts of communities and ecosystems implies that ascribing moral considerability to ecosystems implicitly involves ascribing moral

30761_DesRoches.indd 79

2019-05-03 12:52:03

80

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

considerability to communities. I leave it open, however, as to whether the arguments discussed in this chapter also apply to other ecological wholes, such as species and the biosphere.   4 The expression “having a good of one’s own” is from Paul Taylor (1981, 1986), but it is helpful here to illuminate Goodpaster’s notion of beneficiary.   5 It should be noted that, although teleology is sometimes thought to have been expunged from the metaphysical outlook of modern science and to be therefore incompatible with a naturalistically-inclined philosophical stance, many contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology acknowledge the importance of teleology, properly understood, for the life sciences (e.g., Mayr 1961, 1988; Nagel 1961; Ayala 1970; Millikan 1989; Neander 1991).   6 In this chapter, I will assume (and not defend) the plausibility of the teleological understanding of the good of non-sentient entities. My discussion will be about whether this understanding can be extended to ecosystems.   7 Agar conceives this good as an extension of the notion of preference, and refers to the “biopreferences” of non-sentient organisms.   8 This is Varner’s (1998, 67) formulation of the selected effect theory, where I replace the reference to organisms by a reference to biological entities in general, to explicitly leave it open as to whether this theory may apply to other biological entities. Below, I make a similar modification to the account of biological interests that Varner derives from this theory.   9 It should be noted that Varner presents this account of biological interests as part of a disjunctive characterization of the overall interests of any living organism (sentient or non-sentient) which I do not fully reproduce here. In Varner’s view, sentient organisms also have interests that derive from their conscious desires. 10 Cahen does not provide a formal definition of the purported interests of non-sentient entities, but his criticism of ecocentrism is based on an account similar to Varner’s. 11 On the implications of the group selection controversy in ecology, see Joel Hagen (1992, chap. 8). 12 For similar critiques of ecocentric views, see Elliott Sober (1986, 185–6); Gregory Cooper (1998, 200–3); and Jay Odenbaugh (2010, 2016). 13 See Michael Nelson (2010) for similar observations. 14 Though it should be acknowledged that a defence of ecocentrism need not be centred on the concept of moral considerability (see note 1 above). 15 As Holm (2012, 533) notes, such synthetic organisms are the real-world counterpart of Boorse’s (1976, 74) instant organisms which he introduced as a counterexample to the selected effect theory of biological functions.

30761_DesRoches.indd 80

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Autopoiesis and the Selectionist Critique of Ecocentrism

81

16 See McShane (2014, 138–9) for similar remarks on synthetic organisms. 17 Callicott’s discussion, however, is not concerned with the biocentrism/­ ecocentrism debate, but with how those advances in microbiology provide support to Arne Naess’s (1979) view that there is no discontinuity between any “self” and its environment. 18 While former studies estimated human bacterial cells to outnumber host cells by a ratio of 10 to 1, more recent estimates put this ratio closer to 1:1 (see Sender, Fuchs, and Milo 2016). 19 See also Johnson (1992). 20 Those observations resonate with Stanley and Barbara Salthe’s (1989) rejoinder that Cahen’s critique of ecocentrism is partial to the evolutionary perspective of community ecology, and ignores important theoretical resources offered by the ecosystem perspective in ecology. 21 On the development of the autopoiesis view of living entities and its relationship to Kant and the later organizational theory of function and teleology, see Mossio and Leonardo Bich (2014). 22 Here, I adapt Moreno and Mossio’s (2015, 73) formulation to make it more easily comparable to the selected effect theory discussed in section 3. The present formulation also partly derives from Mossio, Saborido, and Moreno (2009, 16). 23 See Peter McLaughlin (2001, chap. 9; 2002) for a more detailed discussion of how the organizational theory casts the organism/artifact distinction. 24 See also McLaughlin (2001, 164–73). 25 Delancey (2004) formulates a similar argument. 26 This formulation diverges from Holm’s, which leaves out the requirement represented by (1) in the above formulation. I think that such a requirement must be included in an account of biological interests derived from the organizational theory of function, since, as I observed, this requirement is what grounds the contrast between living entities and mere collections under this theory. 27 Catherine Rioux (2014) argues that the organizational theory of function cannot ascribe functions to an organism’s symbiotic microorganisms. Her argument, however, relies on an earlier formulation of the theory (Mossio, Saborido, and Moreno 2009, 16), which requires that bearers’ functions within a functionally organized entity be not only maintained but also produced by that entity. Moreno and Mossio’s (2015, 73) formulation drops this requirement. 28 Johnson (1991, 216–21) discusses the similar case of fire disturbances in some forest ecosystems. This case may be more easily reconciled with the closure criterion, insofar as many fire-dependent tree species have traits

30761_DesRoches.indd 81

2019-05-03 12:52:03

82

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

that promote flammability (Mutch 1970; Schwilk and Ackerly 2001), such that at least some forest fire regimes may be conceived as maintained by the ecosystems that they affect. This may not be the case of all fire regimes however. 29 I am thankful to Roberta Millstein for pointing out this possibility. 30 For a criticism of the extensionist argumentative strategy in relation to non-sentientist ethical views in general – including both biocentrism and ecocentrism – see Dussault (2018).

30761_DesRoches.indd 82

2019-05-03 12:52:03

4

Sentience, Life, Richness Gregory M. Mikkelson Environmental ethics begins the moment we reject the view that only humans can be moral patients. Byron Williston, Environmental Ethics for Canadians, 2nd ed.

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

Most people recognize that nature has value independently of what she does for humans (Leiserowitz et al. 2005). However, environmental ethicists still disagree about the nature and extent of that value (Palmer 2014). More than three decades ago, Canadian environmental ethicist Peter Miller began articulating a theory of “value as richness”: an objective, often mind-independent property that occurs to different degrees throughout nature. His richness theory (RT ) received some critical attention at the time – notably, from the now far more widely known, subjectivist, American environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott. However, Callicott ended up dismissing Miller’s project, on quite insufficient grounds. In this chapter I briefly review the evolution of Miller’s RT , defend it against Callicott’s critique, and describe how other thinkers have subsequently applied and refined R T . I then show how RT surpasses theories that reduce all value to the well-being of individual organisms. RT better explains not only the values of biodiversity and other higher-level properties of ecological wholes, but even the values of health, preference-satisfaction, and other organismal properties emphasized by individualists. Furthermore, RT escapes the following dilemma: according to individualism, and depending on the correct

30761_DesRoches.indd 83

2019-05-03 12:52:03

84

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

answers to certain empirical questions about the distribution of individual well-being, the best state of the world would either contain no humans at all, or have us drive an appallingly vast number of fellow species extinct. I conclude by illustrating my own refinement of RT in the context of Aldo Leopold’s thoughts about diminishing returns to “progress” and the value of harmony in and with nature. I thus propose a return to a somewhat “old,” but neglected, perspective in Canadian environmental philosophy. However, as Miller often acknowledged, this perspective had – and still has – great room for elaboration and improvement. By offering a novel interpretation of his richness theory, as well as novel applications and defences of it, I hope to help rejuvenate it into a better-known and partly “new” perspective. 2 m  iller’s richness theory

Miller introduced the richness concept as a way to understand organismal health. He noted that health improves or declines as an organism’s “capacities to function … [are] multiplied and magnified or diminished, and further integrated or disintegrated” (Miller 1981, 202). Multiplication, magnification, and integration of functions are, in turn, aspects of organismal richness. More generally, “[a]n organism may be richer or poorer in resources, in development and accomplishment, in diversity and inclusiveness, in harmony and integrity, and in utility and generativity” (1981, 202). Miller further elaborated and defended this concept of richness, and broadened its application far beyond individual organisms. “The idea of richness,” he argued, “is a generalized normative concept derived from particular normative judgments about good and bad, better and worse conditions of plants, animals, people, and ecosystems” (Miller 1982, 107). This generality means that “[t]he riches of conscious life – of affect, desire, imagination, and intellect – are parts and special cases of the more widespread riches of nature.” (1982, 110). Finally, the “larger context of values … includes the value potentials and realities of all living things alone and in interaction with one another and with ourselves, and indeed of all matter and energy in which any richness of form and function is discernable” (1982, 111). Miller clarified that of the five dimensions in the above definition of richness, only three count as aspects of intrinsic value: (1) “development and accomplishment,” (2) “diversity and inclusiveness,” and

30761_DesRoches.indd 84

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Sentience, Life, Richness

85

(3) “harmony and integrity” (1983, 11). The other two dimensions – resources and utility/generativity – are aspects of extrinsic value. However, a property that confers extrinsic value at a given level of organization can imbue intrinsic value at a higher level. For example, “plants and animals have extrinsic utilitarian values as resources for one another, but the circle of such utilitarian relations may constitute an ecosystem containing the intrinsic values of a symbiotic harmony of diverse functions” (1983, 12–13). With the following example, Miller supported the idea that accomplishment is a primitive determinant of intrinsic value: The athlete striving to clear the bar in a high jump is not just ­trying to undergo a particular experience but rather to achieve a physical accomplishment that is the product of his own effective volition. Robert Nozick’s “experience machine” cranked up to give the sensations and feelings and states of mind which accompany the successful high jump provides no substitute for the accomplishment itself. The aim was not to have a particular kind of conscious experience but to do something bodily having some of the marks of richness: a concentrated, integrated effort to achieve as much of a delimited athletic potential as possible. (Miller 1983, 14) Miller’s reference to integration in the last sentence above hints that accomplishment may be analyzable in terms of the harmony/ integration dimension of richness. But it remains an open question whether such an analysis would succeed, and thus whether richness as intrinsic value has three fundamental dimensions or just two. The later richness theorists discussed below have opted for the twofold, rather than threefold, analysis. Miller took as a “potentially … serious problem” for richness theory (R T ) the fact that although we often think of pain as an “intrinsic evil,” R T seems to posit only degrees of intrinsic good (Miller 1983, 14). He explained away some of this apparent reflective disequilibrium by noting that “ordinarily pain is tied instrumentally as both effect and cause to impoverished conditions of the suffering organism” (Miller 1983, 14). In other words, even if there is no such thing as negative richness, pain often indicates or leads to reductions in (positive) richness. This strong causal association does partly explain the widespread intuition that pain has negative intrinsic value, i.e.,

30761_DesRoches.indd 85

2019-05-03 12:52:03

86

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

intrinsic disvalue. In addition, I submit that R T actually does have the conceptual resources to admit negative intrinsic value in cases where a given entity manifests enough internal disharmony or discord to make its overall richness go negative (see also Nozick 1981). 3 c  allicott’s critique

J. Baird Callicott greeted Miller’s richness theory (RT ) with a bit of praise, before ascribing several problems to it, and then rejecting it in favour of his own subjectivistic version of ecocentrism. R T , he granted, “clearly avoids the fundamental theoretical inadequacy for a non-anthropocentric environmental ethic of the hedonic and conative extensions of normal ethics, namely an intractable atomistic or individualistic bias” (Callicott 1984, 303). However, he contended that “Indeed, it has the opposite drawback, a detached indifference to individual welfare” (Callicott 1984, 303). This charge clearly misses the mark, given that Miller (1981) first introduced the richness concept as a way to understand individuals’ health. Unfortunately, Callicott did not discuss this first application, and in fact cited only Miller (1982), which went beyond but certainly did not repudiate Miller’s earlier paper. Callicott also accused RT of committing “G.E. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy” because of its identification of the good with a natural property (1985, 258). This is ironic, since Callicott had previously defended Leopold’s land ethic against the same kind of accusation (1980, 321). More to the point, recent scholarship has established that the socalled naturalistic fallacy begs the question: “[I]t cannot be assumed at the outset that what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy really is a mistake of any kind … The naturalist proposes a certain kind of definition of some moral term and the non-naturalist then simply asserts that anyone who thinks such definitions are possible is mistaken” (Ridge 2014). More substantively, Callicott charged R T with contradicting the “deeply felt and widely shared intuition” that massive anthropogenic biodiversity loss is a great evil (1984, 304). He predicted that “[n]on-­ human life will go on even under the worst possible anthropogenic destructive scenario presently conceivable … and in time speciation will occur, novel species will radiate anew, and novel ecosystems will mature. The new Age (of Insects, perhaps) will eventually be just as diverse, orderly, harmonious, and stable, and thus no less good than

30761_DesRoches.indd 86

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Sentience, Life, Richness

87

our current ecosystem with its present complement of species” (Callicott 1984, 304). Since the objective properties of biological diversity and ecological integrity will recover, Callicott concluded, a richness theorist “could not regret the massive die-off” (Callicott 1984, 304). A subjectivist could, however, because subjectivistic ethics embrace partiality (e.g., toward “extant non-human species and the biosphere in its current state”) to a greater extent than objectivistic ethics do (Callicott 1984, 304; italics in original). In response to this challenge, let us first note that the “abrupt, massive reduction of biotic diversity” Callicott spoke of (1984, 303) is already happening, as humans continue to collapse wild species’ populations (WWF 2016) and explode our own and our livestock’s (Thornton 2010). Callicott’s charge – that RT cannot condemn this cancerous behaviour – fails for several reasons. First, rigorous analysis of the fossil record indicates that recovery from mass extinction is not guaranteed. For example, Alroy et al.’s (2008) graph of biodiversity over the past 550 million years shows that in many cases global diversity failed to regain its former level before the next mass extinction struck. Thus, anthropogenic depopulation and extinction certainly destroy what nature is uncertain to re-create. Second, even if we knew for sure that the biosphere would regain its former glory, the intervening period of several million years between mass extinction and recovery would still be supremely “regrettable.” For just about any value theory – based on rationality, life, or whatever else our moral sentiments and ethical judgments might recommend to us – what matters is value summed or integrated over time. Gifford Pinchot famously expressed a version of this idea, when he called for conservation to promote “the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time” (Pinchot [1947] 1988, 505). Mass extinction reduces the “time” during which the world has the greatest “number,” of species at least, and probably of individuals too. Finally, collapsing populations usually go along with crashing levels of average wellbeing (i.e., individual-level “goodness”) among the organisms comprising those populations. Finally, there is something objectively special about “the biosphere in its current state.” For one thing, it contains and sustains some of the most sentient beings ever to inhabit Earth or perhaps anywhere else, such as apes and whales. For another, biodiversity reached its highest point in the history of life by the time humans came on the scene (Jablonski et al. 2003), and we have not managed to reduce it

30761_DesRoches.indd 87

2019-05-03 12:52:03

88

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

yet to Mesozoic levels, at least in terms of species numbers. These facts should make us even less sanguine about further decimating our fellow life forms. 4 r  e f i n e m e n t s a n d a p p l i c at i o n s

A few thinkers have taken up richness theory (RT) since Miller wrote his seminal papers on the topic. After reviewing and rejecting several other attempts to explain the value of endangered species (e.g., Rolston 1988), Ben Bradley (2001) settled on RT as the right basis. He also defended it against Callicott’s mass-extinction objection, in a way similar but complementary to my defence above. Finally, he distinguished a third kind of value from the standard “intrinsic” vs. “instrumental.” “Contributory value” is the value contributed by a part to a whole, above and beyond the intrinsic value of the part. According to many individualistic theories, such as utilitarianism, the “contribution” made by an “individual” to the value of a larger whole is exactly equal to her intrinsic value. This leaves no room for any additional contributory value. Holistic theories like RT, on the other hand, imply contributory value as a third axiological category. Christopher Kelly (2003) offered the fullest articulation and defence of R T to date (see also Kelly 2014). Chapters 2 and 4 stand out as the strongest. In chapter 2, “The Apparent Plurality of Value,” Kelly used R T to explain the intrinsic value that different writers have ascribed to beauty, knowledge, biodiversity, and many other specific properties of artefacts, organisms, and ecosystems. Below I draw upon this chapter in my own inference-to-the-best-explanation argument. Kelly’s chapter 4, “The Intrinsic Value of Pleasure and Pain” explains away hedonistic intuitions, and is similar to but more expansive than Miller’s discussion of pain cited above. Curiously, Kelly does not cite Miller, but draws from many of the same historical sources in formulating his own version of R T . Finally, I have: i offered up a particular mathematical model of RT (Mikkelson 2011b); ii used that model to show how R T reconciles certain basic intuitions about environmental value that seem otherwise incompatible with each other (ibid.);

30761_DesRoches.indd 88

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Sentience, Life, Richness

89

iii posed a precursor to the individualist dilemma presented below (Mikkelson and Chapman 2014); and iv demonstrated how richness-based consequentialism can endorse a certain degree of partiality in moral agents (Mikkelson 2014). Below I describe and further develop these ideas. 5 e  x p l a i n i n g o r g a n i s m a l i n t r i n s i c va l u e

In this section and the two that follow it, I offer an argument for richness theory (R T ) in the form of an inference to the best explanation. I infer that richness theory gets closest to the truth, because it explains widespread intuitions about intrinsic value at the organismal and ecosystemic levels better than do either sentientism or biocentrism, its main competitors. R T actually explains individual-level intrinsic value better than individualistic theories do. In particular, R T explains the intrinsic values of sentience and life better than “sentientism” and (individualistic) “biocentrism” do, respectively. Let us note first that although sentientists tend to emphasize pleasure and pain, and even define sentience in terms of those sensations alone, common parlance imparts more to the word. “Sentience” implies awareness of the outside world (Varner 2001). Besides feeling pleasure and pain, sentient animals also have their preferences satisfied or frustrated, believe truly or falsely, interact lovingly or hatefully, experience beauty or ugliness, and partake of the good on more or less equal footing with fellow species members. Most of these attributes appear in at least some “objective-welfare” catalogues of intrinsically valuable properties (Nolt 2015). They also all instantiate the more general property of richness/poverty. Let us begin with satisfaction, knowledge, and love. Each involves a relation between a subject and an object. These relations usually involve some degree of variety, because the preferring/knowing/loving subject typically differs from the preferred/known/loved object. But they also involve certain kinds of harmony between subject and object. Satisfying a preference entails adapting the object to the subject in a certain way, attaining knowledge requires adapting the subject to the object, and (mutual) love is a type of co-adaptation of each to the other.

30761_DesRoches.indd 89

2019-05-03 12:52:03

90

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Furthermore, the intrinsic values of satisfaction, knowledge, and love vary according to the richness of their objects (Kelly 2003). For example, we typically measure the value of knowledge according to its breadth and depth. In turn, these axes correspond to variety and harmony – the two dimensions of richness. Broad knowledge covers a large number of seemingly disparate facts, whereas deep knowledge plumbs the underlying relationships that unify (harmonize) such facts. Another way to think about the intrinsic value of knowledge is that it integrates two different richnesses. One richness is that of the object – say, the history of life on Earth. The other richness abides in the subject – e.g., her (at least somewhat) complex but (at least somewhat) unified mental representation of that rich history. The better the representation corresponds to the reality, the richer and thus more valuable the knowledge. Kelly also reviewed the long tradition of analyzing aesthetic value in terms of “organic unity,” a synonym of richness. He showed how RT can explain many aspects of aesthetics, including the intrinsic values of a beautiful artwork or natural object, of experiencing such objects, and of artistic originality. Finally, although at least one richness theorist held anti-egalitarian political views (Nozick 1974), I contend that RT actually affirms the intrinsic value of political, economic, and other types of equality. To see this, consider by way of analogy the standard definition of species diversity. Ecologists define it as a function of both the number of species within a given ecosystem, and the evenness with which individual organisms, biomass, or productivity (i.e., individuals or biomass grown per unit time) are distributed across those species. For example, a forest with 100 trees in each of 10 species counts as much more species-diverse than a forest with 991 trees in one of those species, and one tree in each of the remaining nine. This standard ecological definition suggests that equality is an aspect of diversity more generally. For example, a society in which each person had roughly equal say about public policy (an ideal democracy) would count as much more diverse, and thus “rich” (in a moral rather than economic sense, of course), than the US or Canada where capitalists dominate (our actual plutocracies; see Gilens and Page 2014; Mikkelson 2017). For the above reasons – and others like it, such as Kelly’s (2003) discussions of preference-satisfaction and love – RT provides a deeper and more unified account than sentientism itself does of why various aspects of sentient life have intrinsic value. But what about non-sentient

30761_DesRoches.indd 90

2019-05-03 12:52:03



Sentience, Life, Richness

91

life? Can RT likewise explain its intrinsic value better than (individualistic) biocentrism can? The fact that living organisms are the very archetype of organic unity – the paradigm to which richness theorists have compared works of art since at least Plato and Aristotle – suggests that it can. Living cells involve harmonious interactions between various organelles, mediated by various biomolecules. Multicellular organisms add more layers of unity in diversity to this cell-level richness, with various organs and cell types interacting harmoniously to benefit each other and the whole organism. Finally, the organism as a whole exhibits a diversity of behavioural responses to its environment, more or less unified by a coherent set of overall purposes. Closely tied to the concept of life is that of health. In an important recent book, biocentrist John Nolt reviewed the work of the most prominent versions of biocentrism to date, before identifying health as the only intrinsically valuable property tenable by all living beings (Nolt 2015). While humans can enjoy “culturally created forms of welfare” and sentients can attain “hedonic welfare,” all life forms have the potential for “biotic welfare” (Nolt 2015, 182), which Nolt equated to health. However, Nolt left the health concept mostly unanalyzed. In contrast, as we have seen, Miller analyzed it as a form of richness. For example, in the following passage, Miller illustrated the importance of harmonious interaction for health, by noting what happens when it fails: Wounded organisms experience a break in their protective exterior or tissue connections. Tumorous organisms suffer growth of some of their own cells that is not coordinated to and often injurious of, the needs of the rest of body [sic]. Infected organisms suffer the same sort of intrusion from alien organisms. Awkward and uncoordinated organisms have not integrated sufficiently the activities of their several parts to achieve a high degree of success at a molar activity requiring their combination. Those organisms that are not wounded, tumorous, infected, or awkward are richer in bodily integrity and harmony than those that are. Analogous points could be made about psychological and psychosomatic forms of integrity and harmony. (Miller 1981, 203) We may thus conclude that R T explains the intrinsic values of life and health better than do the biocentric theories focused on those

30761_DesRoches.indd 91

2019-05-03 12:52:04

92

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

values. Furthermore, R T also explains what life and health have in common with preference-satisfaction and other sentientist goods, which imbues them all with intrinsic value. 6 e  x p l a i n i n g e c o s y s t e m i c i n t r i n s i c va l u e

The central importance of biological diversity and ecological integrity to science and policy makes the ecosystem level a natural domain for the application of richness theory.1 Here too, we can compare RT to individualistic theories, in terms of their coherence with deeply-held moral intuitions. Let us focus on one intuition that is presumably very widespread and quite firm: it would be better for humans to exist in a biodiverse world than for Homo sapiens to either go extinct or drive vast numbers of other species extinct. I submit that while RT clearly affirms this intuition, individualism may deny it, facing a dilemma between misanthropy and “totalitarian humanism” (cf. Mikkelson 2011b). Individualistic value theories typically aggregate well-being by either summing or averaging it across individual organisms (Broome 2012). For example, Peter Singer (1979) espoused utilitarianism, which values a state of affairs according to the sum of sentient animals’ well-being. In contrast, Paul Taylor’s biocentrism defines the good of a population or community in terms of its constituent organisms’ average wellbeing (1981, 199). How would summing vs. averaging affect our judgment of which world would be best: human-free, harmonious between humans and the rest of nature, or human-dominated? For utilitarianism and other “total” versions of individualism, the answer depends on how much well-being each world would afford, summed across all organisms or at least all sentient animals, and including both wild and domestic species. One horn of the individualist dilemma stems from the fact that per capita, human beings consume vastly more resources than any other kind of organism (Catton 2009). This means that many more organisms would exist in a world without, than in a world with, Homo sapiens.2 If this much larger number of individuals in a human-free world would have greater total well-being than the sum of that enjoyed by the much smaller number of individuals in a human-occupied world, then total-individualism entails the misanthropic conclusion that Earth would be a better place without humanity. On the other hand, one might think humans’ capacity for individual well-being exceeds other organisms’ by so much that it outweighs the

30761_DesRoches.indd 92

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Sentience, Life, Richness

93

effect of lowering those others’ populations. The problem for totalindividualism is that this line of reasoning can lead easily to the other, totalitarian-humanist, horn of the dilemma. For example, if individual well-being varies proportionally to different organisms’ “encephalization quotients” (a measure of relative brain size), then the total human well-being gained from unprecedented increases in population size and per-capita consumption over the past half-century outweighs the total non-human well-being lost through the catastrophic depopulation of wild vertebrates that happened at the same time (cf. Roth and Dicke 2005; van Dongen 1998; WWF 2016; Mikkelson and Chapman 2014; contact the author for details of this calculation). This implies that further human expansion cum wildlife contraction and extinction would result in an even better world. Averaging individual well-being leads even more ineluctably to this totalitarian-humanist conclusion. Humans have greater capacity for well-being than most other organisms (most of which are insects), and even than most other animals typically acknowledged as sentient (mostly vertebrates, most of which are fish or amphibians). Thus, continuing to replace non-humans with humans would clearly tend to increase average well-being. R T neither sums nor averages individual well-being. Instead, R T “splits the difference” between the two. RT first aggregates well-being within each species, according to the principle of diminishing returns to population size. RT thus valorizes increasing population, in contrast to the average method. But R T also differs from the total method, which entails a linear increase of total value with population size (holding average well-being constant). RT ascribes less and less additional contributory value (though not intrinsic value) to each additional member of a given species (again, holding average well-being constant). This entails a less-than-linear increase of overall value with increases in population size. (See Hurka 1983 for graphs of this diminishing returns pattern.) This method already deviates from individualism, since it requires knowing not only individuals’ levels of well-being, but also their species membership (Mikkelson and Chapman 2014). RT then aggregates value over all species, and also explicitly incorporates higher-level properties like ecological integrity, to compute the overall intrinsic value of an ecosystem (Mikkelson 2011a). This in-between, holistic method of aggregation yields a value judgment in between the two horns of the dilemma faced by individualism. Across a wide range of

30761_DesRoches.indd 93

2019-05-03 12:52:04

94

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

assumptions – from complete equality of well-being among all organisms to massively greater human than non-human well-being – R T ascribes much greater value to a biodiverse, human-inhabited Earth than to either extinction of, or domination by, humans. (Again, contact the author for analytical details.) 7 v  a r i e t y , h a r m o n y , a n d “ p r o g r e s s ”: g i v i n g g r o u n d f o r t h e g r e at e r g o o d We hereby decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature. Constitution of Ecuador, as translated by Borràs 2016

Richness theory posits diminishing returns at more levels of organization than just population size. For example, at the lower level of individual organisms, R T acknowledges that well-being tends to increase less with each additional unit of resources that an individual consumes (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Mikkelson 2011b). At a much higher level, we can use the approach to RT that I have developed to spell out Aldo Leopold’s key points about diminishing returns to “progress,” and harmony between humans and nature. In the preface to A Sand County Almanac, Leopold wrote: “Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher standard of living is worth the cost in things natural, wild, and free … The whole conflict … boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not” ([1949] 1966, xvii). In this prefatory passage, Leopold implied that at a certain point the artificial values created through further “progress” start to be outweighed by the natural values destroyed in the process. To maximize overall value, “progress” must stop at that very point. The solid curve in figure 4.1 depicts Leopold’s “law of diminishing returns in progress” as a positive but downward-curving relationship between the amount of resources allocated to the domesticated sphere (the horizontal axis) and the intrinsic value attained thereby and therein (the vertical). The dotted curve portrays the increasing “cost” of “progress” in “things natural, wild, and free.” Diminishing returns of value to the amount of wilderness entail that the more we have already taken from nature, the more harm we do by taking even more.

30761_DesRoches.indd 94

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Sentience, Life, Richness

95

Intrinsic value of domesticated realm Intrinsic value of remaining wilderness Sum of wild and domestic value

Total richness

Resources diverted from ecosystem to economy

4.1  Variety and harmony of humanity with nature

Hence the increasing steepness of the dotted curve as we proceed from left to right across the horizontal axis. The less wilderness remaining, the more valuable each unit of it is. Together, the solid and dotted curves entail that the sum of wild and domestic value peaks at an intermediate point (in this simplified diagram, exactly halfway across the horizontal axis; see the short-dashed curve in figure 4.1). These two curves implicitly valorize variety, which in this case means a balance between the human economy and the (very different) remainder of the global ecosystem (Mikkelson 2011b; Mikkelson and Chapman 2014). But Leopold urged more than just balance between humanity and nature. He also envisioned mutually beneficial interaction, so that, for example, “farmland and marshland, wild and tame” attain not just “mutual toleration” but also “harmony” with each other (Leopold [1949] 1966, 172). More generally, “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land” (Leopold [1949] 1966, 243). The longdashed curve in figure 4.1 illustrates this possibility as an added “value bonus” of achieving an optimal balance between economy and ecosystem. Toward either end of the horizontal axis – the “misanthropic” and “totalitarian-humanist” ends discussed in the previous section

30761_DesRoches.indd 95

2019-05-03 12:52:04

96

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

– total richness (the long-dashed curve) comes very close to the sum of the intrinsic values of the domestic and wild domains (the shortdashed curve). But in the middle, total intrinsic value (i.e., richness) far exceeds this sum. This gives one mathematical expression to Kent Peacock’s (2011) call for a mutualistic symbiosis between humanity and nature (see also Mikkelson 2011a), and supports E.O. Wilson’s (2016) appeal to give back half the Earth to wild species. 8 c  onclusion

In this chapter, I have reviewed Peter Miller’s objectivistic, holistic, non-anthropocentric value theory, and defended that richness theory against several criticisms by the subjectivistic, holistic, nonanthropocentric value theorist J. Baird Callicott. I have then sketched how others have refined and applied RT . Finally, I have submitted a three-part, inference-to-the-best-explanation argument in favour of R T. First, I showed how R T explains the values of sentience and life better than the individualistic theories focused on those properties, i.e., sentientism and biocentrism, respectively. Second, I described why those individualistic theories fall prone to a dilemma that RT handily avoids – between misanthropy vs. totalitarian humanism. And third, I argued that R T nicely captures several core messages from the founder of environmental ethics, Aldo Leopold: his “law of diminishing returns in progress,” celebration of harmony in nature, and passionate cry for harmony with nature.

n otes   1 For example, the Canadian and US national parks agencies both explicitly mandate protection of ecological integrity (Vucetich et al. 2012; see also Miller 1995).   2 The fact that humans have substantially reduced the total amount of photosynthesis occurring on land – largely by replacing higher-­productivity wild ecosystems with lower-productivity domesticated ones – further supports this prediction (Haberl et al. 2007). Less photosynthesis means fewer individual plants, and fewer individual animals, fungi, and microorganisms that depend on those plants.

30761_DesRoches.indd 96

2019-05-03 12:52:04

P art T wo Canadian Identity and the Environment

30761_DesRoches.indd 97

2019-05-03 12:52:04

30761_DesRoches.indd 98

2019-05-03 12:52:04

5

Diverse Environments, Diverse People Matthew J. Barker

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

I was fortunate to work in provincial and national parks in Canada as an environmental and cultural heritage educator. The vast majority of the time this was a tremendously rewarding pleasure, not just because of the wondrous park surroundings but also because of the visitors and fellow colleagues. Indeed, the surroundings often seemed to bring out the best in people. But sometimes people would differ markedly from each other in the character traits and attitudes they expressed when discussing environmental issues, keeping me on my toes as an educator. This sparked my interest in the different roles that different academic approaches to environmental ethics envision for human character traits. I was especially interested in the approach called environmental virtue ethics (E V E ), because in some ways it gives the most ethical significance to character traits.1 After working in many parks, and interacting with many people in them, and being fortunate enough to visit parks and other protected environments in many other countries too, I was struck by a more specific and bird’s-eye observation about diversities: diverse environments seemed to benefit from the character diversity found within human groups. For our diverse environments, many human character differences are complementary differences. This observation about diversities has broad relevance for environmental ethics, but I prefer to exemplify this at a level of detail that a chapter can usually achieve only if it restricts its focus to one view or

30761_DesRoches.indd 99

2019-05-03 12:52:04

100

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

issue. Here I zoom in on what has been called the “most common” EVE view (Sandler 2005, 4). The diversities observation led me to see that a question facing this view is more challenging than has been appreciated. This chapter clarifies that question and why it is challenging, then begins developing an answer inspired by Canada’s diverse places and people, as well as some Canadian philosophy of science. The novel focus on character diversity should also be fruitful for those working outside the E V E view investigated here. I call the popular E V E view I focus on interpersonal extensionism because it attempts to extend the normative range of traditionally recognized other-regarding or interpersonal virtues, such as compassion and generosity, from our interactions with other humans to our interactions with our non-human environments as well. 2 The challenging question for this view is then philosophical rather than psychological. As a matter of psychology, I will simply assume that some people have interpersonal character traits that include environment-­regarding aspects. Happily, for example, many people I know seem to have compassion that is directed at both our fellow humans and also at our environments and non-human beings within them. But the philosophical question facing interpersonal extensionism is this: do any such environment-regarding aspects of interpersonal character traits help constitute human flourishing? This is the Constitution Question. The next section of the chapter clarifies why interpersonal extensionism needs to justify a “yes” answer to that question. We will then see that this is challenging because the bar for “yes” answers to questions of this kind has traditionally been set much higher than interpersonal extensionists typically recognize. The relevant traditional virtue theories have implied that we should believe an aspect of a character trait helps constitute human flourishing only if we can show it is necessary for human flourishing. I will argue that interpersonal extensionism cannot meet this necessity demand. For example, as laudatory as I find an environmentregarding aspect of compassion to be, reflection has forced me to concede that neither this nor any other environment-regarding aspect of a virtuous interpersonal character trait is strictly necessary for human flourishing. But I then defuse this result to help interpersonal extensionism. I argue there are reasons to believe some environment-regarding aspects of interpersonal character traits help constitute human flourishing

30761_DesRoches.indd 100

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

101

even though they are not necessary for such flourishing. So a “yes” answer to The Constitution Question could be justified without meeting the necessity demand. Surprisingly, it turns out that character diversity is both the reason the necessity demand cannot be met as well as the reason to embrace different demands. But first let me introduce interpersonal extensionism in more detail. 2 i n t e r p e r s o n a l e x t e n s i o n i s m

Interpersonal extensionism offers principles, norms, and judgments about human interactions with the environment and its features.3 An example of one judgment is that there is a strong moral reason to think it was wrong for decision-makers in the Montreal borough of Verdun to choose a verdant park alongside the St Lawrence River as the location to dump over 1,500 tonnes of toxic waste from a road construction project (Leclair 2014). Interpersonal extensionism tries to ground the principles, norms, and judgments it offers by appealing to some further and more foundational principles about interpersonal virtues. Suppose details about the Verdun case reveal that decision-makers considered the environment too carelessly during their deliberations, showing a lack of humility. If humility is an interpersonal virtue, then a principle about humility could be used to ground the critical judgment of the decision-makers. A virtue, or any other character disposition, is interpersonal exactly when it is an other-regarding trait that pertains, among other things, to some of our relationships with other persons. Such a trait disposes its bearer to think and feel and act in a complexly integrated set of ways, and, in some sense or other, have this be directly fixed on or for the sake of the others in question. Being honest, compassionate, just, and generous are obvious examples. One isn’t generous just because one gives large sums of money to charity; one may do so only to save on one’s own taxes. Humility is a less obvious example. Having humility is being disposed toward reasonably accurate and unabsorbed self-assessments of one’s own strengths and weaknesses in relation to others, and tending to selflessly look at matters from the perspectives of others, with their interests and taking into account relevant facts about them (Barker and Friend Lettner 2017; Samuelson et al. 2015; Davis, Worthington, Jr., and Hook 2010). Humility is thus interpersonal because of how it is other-regarding.

30761_DesRoches.indd 101

2019-05-03 12:52:04

102

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Clearly, interpersonal extensionism needs to explicitly or tacitly use criteria for an interpersonal character disposition’s counting as an interpersonal virtue. Such criteria come from that view’s theoretical foundations. In my way of distinguishing EVE views from each other, any instance of interpersonal extensionism has a neo-Aristotelian foundation (even though some of these instances are sometimes parts of larger, more pluralistic and inclusive views).4 Accordingly, interpersonal extensionism’s virtue criteria are drawn from the neo-­ Aristotelian concept eudaimonia, or, as I will say, human flourishing. This is not mere subjective happiness, even though such happiness may often be one among other parts of it. Instead, the type of flourishing in question (there may well be others) is the excellence that is characteristic of humans who are indisputably good – exemplary – not just at their jobs, or as parents, or as friends, etc., but as human beings. According to neo-Aristotelianism, this flourishing is a fundamental human good, and interpersonal extensionism says an interpersonal character disposition is a virtue if and only if possessing and acting from it is part of what constitutes human flourishing. The virtues are not the only things that help constitute human flourishing. Certain ends do too, ends that are fundamentally good partly because of how the human species is – as a matter of empirical fact – mortal, sentient, conscious, and social. The constitutive ends include survival, enjoyment, and freedom from pain, continuance of the human species, and the good functioning of social groups (Hursthouse 1999; Sandler 2007). The status of interpersonal virtues as helping constitute flourishing stems from their relation to the ends. Each virtue is a character disposition that is crucial over the course of human life for helping achieve some or all of the fundamentally good ends (being inimical to none), even though such dispositions now and then (Hursthouse 1999) or perhaps more frequently (Swanton 2003) diminish or fail to enhance a person’s subjective happiness. What does interpersonal extensionism try to extend? Answer: the normative range of interpersonal dispositions that some people traditionally have, or would upon reflection, recognize as virtues within a neo-Aristotelian framework. For the sake of simplicity, this is just what I will mean when referring to traditional interpersonal virtues. For any such virtue, there is putatively a corresponding set of virtue principles. Those principles ground some further moral judgments, principles, or norms that concern or are about human thoughts,

30761_DesRoches.indd 102

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

103

feelings, and actions. It is the set of such thoughts, feelings, and actions that constitute the normative range of the corresponding virtue. An interpersonal virtue whose normative range includes human thoughts, feelings, and actions that are directly fixed on or for the sake of other humans, but also those directly fixed on or for the sake of the environment and its non-human features, is an extended interpersonal virtue. In short, an extended interpersonal virtue is an otherregarding disposition with both human-regarding aspects and environment-regarding aspects. Thus, interpersonal extensionism says or implies that some traditional interpersonal virtues are also extended interpersonal virtues with both human-regarding and environment-regarding aspects. If compassion is such a virtue, then not only does compassion in some people have, as a matter of fact, both a human-regarding and an environment-regarding aspect, but the normative range of the virtue also includes principles pertaining to its environment-regarding aspect. Principles about compassion could then ground further principles, norms, and judgments about how we ought to think and feel and act toward suffering non-human beings. Finally, we can more accurately tease out interpersonal extensionism’s non-anthropocentric and anthropocentric elements. Because extended interpersonal virtues are partly environment-regarding, they have a non-anthropocentric element. And because their environmentregarding aspects involve inclinations to think and feel and act in complexly integrated ways, their associated non-anthropocentric element is significantly about the psychology that motivates people. So call this element motivational non-anthropocentrism. At the same time, if we turn and ask how – as a philosophical rather than a psychological matter – interpersonal extensionism justifies the call for non-anthropocentric thoughts, feelings, and actions, its answer is anthropocentric: the environment-regarding aspects of some extended virtues help constitute human flourishing. There is no logical contradiction in trying to use this justificational anthropocentrism to support a motivational element that is instead non-anthropocentric. Interpersonal extensionists can simply say that flourishing as a human involves sometimes having something other than humans move you, even if it is the nature of human flourishing that ensures this. To connect this back to The Constitution Question, which asked whether the environment-regarding aspects of some extended interpersonal virtues really do help constitute human flourishing, it is now

30761_DesRoches.indd 103

2019-05-03 12:52:04

104

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

clear that interpersonal extensionism answers “yes.” But there must exist sufficient reason to believe this answer, if interpersonal extensionism is to succeed. 3 t h e n e c e s s i t y d e m a n d a n d i t s n e c e s s i t y c l a i m

To determine whether there is sufficient reason for the “yes” answer, we need to determine how any disposition helps constitute human flourishing. I have said this is for the disposition in question to be crucial for helping achieve some or all of the fundamentally good ends (being inimical to none). But what more does this involve? In a word: necessity. Or at least this is so according to relevant virtue theories. As noted in the introduction to this chapter, such theories have implied that we should believe an aspect of a character trait helps constitute human flourishing only if we can show it is necessary for human flourishing. This necessity demand stems from an ontological claim routinely made by virtue theorists in normative ethics: The necessity claim: If a character disposition or aspect of one helps constitute human flourishing, then it is necessary for human flourishing – one cannot achieve such flourishing without it. The implication is not that a person’s life is bad if she lacks one of the character dispositions that helps constitute flourishing. She may still have all other virtues and be good to quite an impressive degree. It is just that she will not surpass the lofty neo-Aristotelian threshold that lands her squarely in human flourishing.5 Rosalind Hursthouse (1999), for example, articulates a neo-­ Aristotelianism on which “a virtue is a character trait a human being needs for eudaimonia, to flourish or live well” (1999, 29). Hursthouse implies that without virtues being required to achieve the good, virtue principles lose their obligatory bite and some of their ability to imply which persons we should model and measure our acts by. In a different argument, Philippa Foot (2001) cites famous Germans who stood on trial for resisting Nazi causes. Letters they wrote to family from prison indicated they were by and large the sorts of people who seemed well positioned to live deeply good and fulfilling lives when among family. But most of us will claim that had they lacked

30761_DesRoches.indd 104

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

105

the justice that led them to resist, which would have resulted in compliance that they hoped would have them released to their families, then they would still have fallen short of flourishing. Foot thinks this claim is true, and that the best or only explanation for this is that the virtues are necessary for flourishing, going so far as to say this is a conceptual necessity, so that we would know a priori that a person fails to flourish if we know she lacks a character disposition that helps constitute flourishing (2001, 91–7). Aside from those arguments, widely accepted metaphysical considerations appear to support the necessity claim. We typically understand a property P to be at least partly constitutive of membership in a kind K exactly if P is part of what makes for Khood. But it seems that a thing cannot be a K if it does not have a property that is part of what makes for Khood. For example, gold atoms need the property of having 79 protons. That property is constitutive of being a gold atom, and a thing cannot be a gold atom without it (Ellis 2002; see also Kripke 1980; Putnam 1975). If the necessity claim is true, as these considerations suggest, then, to justify a “yes” answer to The Constitution Question, interpersonal extensionism faces the associated necessity demand. It must show that at least one or more of the environment-regarding aspects of interpersonal virtues – not just the human-regarding aspects of those virtues – is necessary for flourishing. 4 n  o b o dy h a s o r c o u l d m e e t the necessity demand

There is a strong inductive case for believing that no interpersonal extensionists have explicitly attempted to meet the necessity demand. This is clear upon noting, as Sandler does (2005, 4), that most arguments for interpersonal extensionism share a common strategy, and then seeing that this strategy fails to address the necessity demand (perhaps because the demand is not detected). It fails at this by ­bottoming out in the claim that the normative range of this or that traditional interpersonal virtue extends to human-environment interactions because there is no relevant moral difference between those interactions and the human–human interactions covered by the virtue. No further clarifications about what could or would make for a relevant moral difference between such cases are offered. Most arguments for interpersonal extensionism thereby beg the question against

30761_DesRoches.indd 105

2019-05-03 12:52:04

106

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

anybody pressing the necessity demand: these arguments simply presuppose that environment-regarding aspects of some traditional interpersonal virtues are necessary for flourishing.6 Other authors, devoted to other ethical frameworks, such as Singer’s preference-satisfaction consequentialism, have tried to spell out what “no relevant moral difference” means within their frameworks. But I have not found this done for interpersonal extensionism. We could attempt to rectify this lack in a way that meets the necessity demand, but I think that must fail. Not only has nobody met the demand; nobody could. To see this, keep in mind that virtues of any type are not mere ­tendencies to produce certain actions, but rather are deeply seated dispositions to reliably act, when appropriate, in certain ways (e.g., compassionately), for certain reasons, in certain manners (e.g., eagerly), and with the relevant emotions or affects (e.g., sorrow) (Hursthouse 1999, 11–13). A person does not have the virtue of compassion, for example, simply because she routinely appears to act compassionately when appropriate. Being compassionate minimally involves, as Nancy Snow puts it, “a ‘suffering with’ another that includes an altruistic concern for the other’s good” (1991, 196–7). This is elaborated through either belief-based or imagination-based analyses of what it is for one to identify with a misfortunate being. For instance, for Maki to have compassion for Toni is for Maki to identify with Toni, which is to perceive suffering in Toni and believe or imagine that Toni’s plight stems from or is associated with vulnerabilities that are similar to Maki’s own, or to those of Maki’s loved ones, thereby allowing Maki to more directly understand Toni’s plight. This alerts Maki to the gravity of Toni’s plight and facilitates Maki’s quickly having benevolent desires for Toni’s good (Blum 1987; Snow 1991; Nussbaum 2003). That complexity of compassion is typical of interpersonal virtues. They involve a range of human emotions and reasoning, attributing these things to others as well, and relating one’s self to them in various ways because of those complex attributions. These are among the many psychological abilities that are typical (not universal) in human beings and are said to help distinguish – without making any better or worse – the human species from others (Carruthers 2006, 150–7). This makes it unsurprising that the dispositions are often primarily just human-regarding rather than also environment-­regarding. More important, a neo-Aristotelian shouldn’t say that somebody necessarily fails to flourish if it is not through such complex dispositions that she

30761_DesRoches.indd 106

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

107

interacts with the environment and its features. This is clear through reflective equilibrium that tests that belief, and then compares the test result with the relevant neo-Aristotelian theories. For the test, consider Flourishing Valley, where inhabitants appear to have hit upon the good life. They uphold rich traditions of family, social, intellectual, and political activity, and everyone has mastered an uncanny practical wisdom. They apparently balance the expression of all traditional virtues with the mastery typical of only the greatest leaders of nations. They are especially committed to environmental conservation. Everyone lives in straw bale houses, favours renewable energy, donates to species-at-risk programs, etc. A favourite autumn pastime is hunting for ducks, pheasants, deer, and rabbit, which they eat. This causes some animals to suffer – when wounded animals escape and are not killed, but even sometimes when animals are killed relatively quickly. Generations of Valley inhabitants have fostered hunting conventions to reduce these forms of suffering; the conventions have become formalized in policies, but that is hardly needed because inhabitants already widely follow them. This is out of senses of duty and longembraced habit. Most inhabitants do not imaginatively or rationally identify with the animals – that may not even be possible given the immense cognitive and emotional differences between the hunters and the hunted. But this does not mean the hunters relish animal suffering. They never hunt maliciously. (It would be quite astonishing if they did, given the enviable degree to which they exemplify traditional virtues.) Indeed, they routinely go out of their way to curb animal suffering, often because they just think it is the right thing to do, without identifying with the animals and their vulnerabilities. They also minimize suffering for the sake of their friends and family, and for greater goods, e.g., they disrupt animal habitats and behaviours minimally so that Valley ecosystems remain stable for future human generations. These altruistic acts are no aberration. The compassion that the hunters and all human Valley inhabitants have for each other and for fellow humans outside the Valley is astounding to us mere onlookers. Without fail, they urgently desire and eagerly act for the good of people whose vulnerabilities (whether everyday human vulnerabilities or exceptional ones) they perceive to have led those people into misfortune. A particularly seasoned hunter, Tim, is especially renowned

30761_DesRoches.indd 107

2019-05-03 12:52:04

108

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

for his compassion toward family, friends, and strangers – and indeed for the degree to which he exemplifies all the traditional virtues that are common among inhabitants in Flourishing Valley. Those of us outside the Valley may find it hard to distinguish between the remarkable characters of each of the Valley inhabitants. But the inhabitants themselves notice that Tim is outstanding, a model to behold.7 Now ask yourself, would Tim count as an excellent, flourishing human? When running this thought experiment test in a methodologically sound way, I believe the result will be a “yes” answer: outstanding Tim would count as an excellent, flourishing human. It is a struggle to deny this, even though Tim’s impressive efforts to preclude and diminish animal suffering and environmental harms have motivational sources other than the particular psychological complexities of his compassion being extended toward and sometimes directly fixed on the environment and its non-humans. Although his behaviours are environment-regarding in some impressive senses, there is no doubt that his compassion, in particular, lacks an environment-regarding aspect. That was simply stipulated in the thought experiment. Appreciating this part of the experimental design helps show that one way a person might deny the “yes” result would signal a methodological error. If a person answers the experimental test question by saying “no, I believe Tim falls short of full compassion,” then they don’t really address the test question at all.8 The question posed is about flourishing, not compassion. We already know the extent of Tim’s compassion – that it lacks an environment-regarding aspect. To express an answer about compassion is to methodologically confuse two variables that need to be kept separate. To see this, compare it to an experiment that tests whether you can achieve a high degree of health with only limited rather than regular exercise. If designed well, this test will include a group of participants exhibiting only limited rather than regular exercise, and will then check (during and after suitably long periods) whether any of those people achieve high degrees of health. And it will do this by directly focusing on signs of health, not on signs of regular exercise. Assuming people in the limited exercise group conformed to the experimental design, we already know they did not exercise regularly. Analogously, in light of all the details provided about outstanding Tim and Flourishing Valley, we need to ask ourselves directly whether Tim seems to be an excellent flourishing human, not whether his

30761_DesRoches.indd 108

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

109

compassion has an environment-regarding aspect. When instead our focus drifts to his compassion and we underscore that it is “not full,” we do so either descriptively or normatively. If we do so merely descriptively – e.g., we just state the extent of Tim’s compassion, without suggesting this is good or bad – then we merely state what we already know by experimental design. If instead we do so normatively – e.g., we reveal that we are critical of Tim’s compassion failing to extend to the environment – then we risk clinging unreflectively to a pre-test conviction of ours about environment-regarding compassion, rather than undertaking the new reflection that the test encourages. When variables are not conflated and we run the test in a methodologically sound way, we give the test a chance to teach us something, even a chance to surprise us, just as a sound test of health and exercise might. This isn’t to say that pre-test convictions or relevant theories count for nothing. We need to, and momentarily will, factor them in. But first we need to generate unbiased test results to compare those theories against. Our test result that Tim would count as an excellent, flourishing human is thus strong but not yet conclusive evidence that, upon reflection, we do not believe that an environment-regarding aspect of compassion is strictly necessary for human flourishing. The content of that belief implies that interpersonal extensionists cannot meet the necessity demand via the virtue of compassion. Moreover, the Flourishing Valley example could be suitably modified for any of the traditional interpersonal virtues, giving the same result and implication. For each of these, we can imagine cases in which people lack an environment-regarding aspect of that virtue, and yet have its human-regarding aspect and all other virtues to astonishing degrees while living in favourable conditions. And we will, I think, insist or concede that these people flourish, thus implying that interpersonal extensionists cannot meet the necessity demand via any interpersonal virtue. The relevant theories for interpersonal extensionists to now compare the experimentally elicited beliefs to are the neo-Aristotelian theories, introduced above, about the nature of flourishing and the relations of the virtues to it. I suggested these theories will agree with and corroborate the elicited beliefs. But why? How do the theories suggest that environment-regarding aspects of traditional interpersonal dispositions are not, like the human-regarding aspects, crucial for achieving fundamentally good human ends, such as survival, enjoyment,

30761_DesRoches.indd 109

2019-05-03 12:52:04

110

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

and freedom from pain, species continuance, and the good functioning of social groups? Empirical facts about human biology, psychology, sociality, and rationality help to ensure that lacking or feigning traditional interpersonal virtues with other humans, rather than being genuinely virtuous in these respects, will very probably land you in social quandaries that work against you and others, impeding the social relationships that help mark excellent human lives. If these lacks become widespread, risks to the continuance of our species will very likely arise. But there seems to be no analogy that involves environment-­ regarding aspects of these virtues. It is certainly important to protect clean environments and biodiversity, but it seems this can be done other than for the sake of the environment and its features, and other than by directly fixing on the environment independently of humans, without thereby leading to social quandaries and hampering the achievement of social relationships and other fundamentally good human ends that mark excellent human lives. Some of the relevant facts behind this pertain to expectation and reciprocation, the nature and evolution of which are now extremely well-studied in connection with social norms (e.g., Bicchieri 2006; Sterelny 2014; Smead and Forber 2016). Through complex skills such as mental state attribution, other humans typically expect us to develop an array of interpersonal dispositions and are capable to a large degree of reciprocating the sentiments, tendencies, attitudes, and emotions in which those dispositions partially consist, and which we in turn expect of them. Human expectations and abilities of reciprocation create a tendency for human life to go poorly when we do not develop and express the traditionally recognized interpersonal virtues. Such facts largely do not hold for our relations with the environment and its features, for a variety of well-established biological, psychological, and social reasons (Carruthers 2006, 150–7). With the possible exception of our nearest mammalian relatives, the environment and its non-human beings – herons, mountains, ecosystems, bacterial colonies – typically do not expect us to develop and act from certain character traits to anywhere near the degree that humans typically do. Nor are they usually similarly able to develop and act from these complex dispositions themselves.9 We certainly require good relations with our environments, but developing and expressing complex dispositions to think, feel, and act for the sake of the

30761_DesRoches.indd 110

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

111

environment and its features do not seem crucial to that. This provides neo-Aristotelian corroboration of beliefs summoned by Flourishing Valley cases. 5 c  luster kinds and flourishing

My arguments entail that if interpersonal extensionism faces the necessity demand, then we should reject interpersonal extensionism because it both has not met and cannot meet that demand. But on behalf of interpersonal extensionists, we can accept and try to defuse this conditional conclusion by arguing that the antecedent within it is not satisfied. We can try arguing that interpersonal extensionism does not face the necessity demand by targeting the ontological necessity claim that fuels it. That strategy will seem unpromising at first, given existing considerations in favour of the necessity claim that were summarized above. So after developing the strategy I will return to and address those considerations. Human flourishing is a potentially long-standing state that one can be in. Typically it is neither quickly achieved nor quickly lost; in that sense it is like the states of being happily married, chronically stressed, or wealthy with old money. Neo-Aristotelians have presumed this type of state is a kind to which instances of flourishing, in this or that person, belong. Moreover, they presume it is what I call a traditional kind, one demarcated from other things by an essence in terms of which we should define our word for it. Such an essence is a set of conditions that are singly necessary and (in favourable circumstances) jointly sufficient for instantiating the kind, while also explaining many elements that are typical of kind members. In the case of flourishing, the singly necessary and explanatory essential conditions are thought to be the ends and virtues constitutive of flourishing. But traditional kinds are not the only ones. Figure 5.1a depicts the structure of a traditional kind, K. Each of the conditions, (a) through (e), is an essential condition for K instantiation. That means each condition both helps constitute and is necessary for K instantiation. And together the conditions are, ceteris paribus, sufficient for K instantiation. In contrast, figure 5.1b depicts the structure of a cluster kind, K*. Some of the definitive conditions, (a) through (e), may be necessary for K* instantiation, but unlike with traditional kinds, this needn’t be so. It may be that none, or only some, of those conditions are

30761_DesRoches.indd 111

2019-05-03 12:52:04

112

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

a. Kind K, with traditional kind structure Combination = sufficient

(a) = necessary (b) = necessary (c) = necessary (d) = necessary (e) = necessary

b. Kind K*, with cluster kind structure

{(a),(b),(c),(d),(e)} = sufficient {(a),(b),(c),(d), } = sufficient {(a),(b),(c), (e)} = sufficient {(a),(b), (d),(e)} = sufficient {(a), (c),(d),(e)} = sufficient { (b),(c),(d),(e)} = sufficient

c. Kind K°, with nominal kind structure

{(a),(b),(c), } = sufficient { (d),(e)} = sufficient It is necessary to have at least one of those two subsets

It is necessary to have at least one of those six subsets

5.1  Traditional kinds vs. cluster kinds vs. nominal kinds

necessary. So each condition can help constitute K* without being necessary for K* (cf. Sandler 2007, 31). Nonetheless, different subsets of the conditions are each, ceteris paribus, sufficient for K* instantiation. In this particular example, the sufficient subsets are: {(a),(b),(c),(d),(e)} and {(a),(b),(c),(d)} and {(a),(b),(c),(e)} and {(a),(b),(d),(e)} and {(a),(c),(d),(e)} and {(b),(c),(d),(e)}. If instead the only sufficient subsets were {(a),(b),(c)} and {(d),(e)}, as in figure 5.1c, then we’d suspect we are dealing with a merely nominal kind, call it K°; this would be a kind united only by our giving it a name, perhaps distracting us from two separate traditional kinds, one with the essence {(a),(b),(c)} and the other with the essence {(d),(e)}. This makes K° quite different from K*. As the depicted list of sufficient subsets for K* shows, the conditions for belonging to it tend to co-occur. Between the six sufficient subsets there is striking, even though not perfect, overlap in the conditions. Furthermore, necessity is not lost altogether. For a thing to have or belong to K*, no one of the conditions is necessary, but having at least one of the six subsets is. Finally, that the conditions tend to cooccur is not happenstance. In some cluster kinds, various underlying causal mechanisms are responsible for the homeostatic (reliable but not perfect) co-occurrence of the conditions; hence the now widely used name “homeostatic property cluster kinds” (Boyd 1988, 1991, 1999). In other cluster kinds, the typical co-occurrence has different explanations (Slater 2014). Increasingly, a variety of kinds studied in biological, psychological, and sociological sciences – including the human species (Wilson,

30761_DesRoches.indd 112

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

113

Barker, and Brigandt 2007), human nature (Samuels 2012), and wellbeing (Bishop 2015) – are revealing themselves to be cluster kinds. A basic reason is that variation is the main fuel for evolution by natural selection (Sober 1980). Since many groups of organisms have evolved by selection, it is not surprising that they are characterized by variation – that they are deeply heterogeneous and rich in cluster kind divisions, rather than neat and tidy traditional kind divisions (Wilson, Barker, and Brigandt 2007). Because human flourishing is, according to neo-Aristotelians, a fundamentally good state that is also to a significant degree biological, psychological, and social, it would be astonishing if it were a traditional kind rather than a cluster kind. In plain terms, there are very probably many (partially overlapping) ways to achieve exemplary human excellence (even of the specific eudaimonistic sort), rather than just one way that involves a traditional sort of essence. This provides a framework for arguing that some environmentregarding aspects of traditional interpersonal virtues help constitute human flourishing, even though they are not, as Flourishing Valley and theoretical investigation taught, necessary for that flourishing. Restricted for visual simplicity to just the virtues (not also the ends) that are constitutive of human flourishing, figure 5.2 depicts what this might look like. The figure outlines three different subsets of character dispositions that we can suppose for illustrative purposes are each sufficient for the character contributions to human flourishing (ceteris paribus). In 5.2a you see one subset, in 5.2b a similar but not perfectly similar subset, and likewise in 5.2c. (There could be several other subsets not shown.) Perhaps 5.2a represents Tim from Flourishing Valley. Only in the 5.2b subset do we see the proposal that an environment-regarding aspect of a traditional interpersonal virtue is a constitutive yet not necessary condition of human flourishing. Next I will argue that this is plausibly the case in actuality, in part because of how a person represented by 5.2b would relate to still other people, such as those represented by 5.2c. 6 c  haracter diversity and environment

Nowadays you often hear slogans of the “diversity is good!” sort. These are vague and ambiguous. Let us help by getting more specific, focusing on character diversity in particular and starting on a very small scale.10

30761_DesRoches.indd 113

2019-05-03 12:52:04

114

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

a. One way to flourish

b. Another way to flourish

c. Yet another way to flourish

Courage Benevolence Temperance Generosity Magnanimity Humility Patience Honesty Compassion

Courage Benevolence Temperance Generosity Magnanimity Humility Patience Honesty Compassion Compassion* Friendliness

Courage Benevolence Temperance Generosity

Friendliness Harmony Just

Just

Humility Patience Honesty Compassion Friendliness Harmony Just

5.2  Three ways to have an overall character of a flourishing human. The asterisk (*) signals that it is the environment-regarding aspects of the named ­disposition that are referenced.

Jackie was one of my colleagues at Parks Canada. In one park, she worked partly on wilderness policies and messaging.11 Long an ardent environmentalist, she cared deeply about the resident flora, fauna, ecosystems, lakes, rivers, peaks and valleys, and claimed this was for their sakes. She believed there was value in them independent of human values, and feared that human influences tainted this value. Her contributions to policies and messaging constantly reflected this. She certainly seemed to have an environment-regarding aspect to her compassion. In the same park, Henry was in front-line communications, delivering nature programs and cultural programs in campground theatres and at highway rest stops. This was his first dabble in Parks employment, having spent years running restaurants and plying his skills as a musician. He was a nature lover, but also thoroughly a people person, and this shone through in the programs he designed and delivered for park visitors. For the most part, those programs focused on the park’s human history – narratives about memorable people and cultural trends that cumulatively helped shape the park, all of which he wrote into songs that he hoped would move visitors to feel the integration of people and place. Henry may have agreed that some parts of the park should remain relatively free of humans, but he urged people to come to many parts of the park, to learn about and

30761_DesRoches.indd 114

2019-05-03 12:52:04



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

115

join the entwining of humanity and non-human nature that he sang about. Henry did not have the complex disposition we would call an environment-regarding aspect of compassion. But he had a disposition I will call harmony – he was inclined to believe people were connected with non-human nature in various harmonious ways that he felt were important. Some of the character differences between Jackie and Henry complemented each other in the joint production of effects. Jackie created a pamphlet that taught how to leave a smaller backcountry footprint, introduced a new policy allowing campers to remove certain invasive species, and explained how to donate to various causes in the park.12 Henry wrote a song about an isolated valley where nineteenth-century skiers once ventured, and played it often at a rest stop along the Trans-Canada Highway. Suppose three brothers, each with quite different values and means despite the blood ties, catch the song one day. While parked beside the highway, Henry’s song inspires them to plan a backcountry trip in the park, to bond with nature and each other. They fill three spaces in a backcountry quota that other visitors would have taken if the brothers hadn’t. They consider themselves to be pro-environment, but are rather naive; like many campers, they would leave bits of food waste at a campsite, thinking it would biodegrade without any environmental risks. But before venturing out they learn from Jackie’s pamphlet that food waste can help habituate grizzlies to humans, which in turn increases the chance that the grizzlies will become fearless enough to frequent nearby town centres where their chances of being shot for public safety rises dramatically. They also learn of the new policy on invasive plants, and how to donate money to various park causes. Consequently, the brothers carry out their food waste, and waste left by others, and a few invasive plants. Upon returning home they donate money to both park interpretation programs and wilderness protection. Think of the drop in mass of food waste and number of invasive plants, and the increase in collected donations, as effects occurring in the park. Jackie and Henry helped (along with the brothers) to jointly produce those effects. It is not just that Jackie’s creating the pamphlet was one of the causes, and that Henry’s writing the song was also a cause. Jackie’s action would not have been a cause without Henry’s, and vice versa. The actions causally complemented one another. Plausibly, the effects would not have happened were it not for the character differences between the two. We could easily specify

30761_DesRoches.indd 115

2019-05-03 12:52:04

116

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

the details of the case so that the relevant parts of Jackie’s pamphlet were born from her environment-regarding compassion, and Henry owed his inspiring song to his harmony disposition. It was how the manifestations of these different character dispositions came together in the experiences of the brothers that helped cause the stated effects. Cases like this are, I shall say, cases of causal character diversity. On reflection, these are routine in many parks, and everyday life more generally. This will most help interpersonal extensionism when considering the neo-Aristotelian ends of species continuance, and good functioning of one’s social groups, because each involves group-level states. The state of being a socially good functioning group is, for instance, a property of a group, and one that no single individual can have. Producing such states often depends crucially on various relations between group members – how group members interact, how they are similar and how they are different, and so on. If you want to build a human body that functions excellently, for instance, then opting for certain relations between parts – the heart, brain, lymphatic system, and so on – that are each similar in some respects (some of their cellular properties) and quite different in others (do different things), is a far better bet than trying to relate, in some way, bodily parts that are all of a kind, e.g., all hearts. Achieving the ends of species continuance and socially good functioning groups is like building a human body that functions well.13 Crucial for achieving these ends is having certain relations between people who are similar in some ways but different in others, with causal character diversity among the differences. And, probably among the most effective types of causal character diversity is diversity in which some people have environment-regarding aspects of traditional interpersonal virtues, as with Jackie’s compassion, and others instead have complementary dispositions, such as Henry’s harmony. This is for a web of reasons. Our human environments are diverse in many ways. The human species is also incredibly diverse, not just in character traits between people but also in values, goals, abilities, projects, means, and so on. These two sorts of diversity, environmental and human, are interdependent. Both our species and its good social functioning would be at great risk were it not for the diversity of our environments. Alpine glacial plains, the temperate rain forests of British Columbia, and equatorial regions that are dense with both human populations and

30761_DesRoches.indd 116

2019-05-03 12:52:05



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

117

varied plant communities, are each very different from each other. For the foreseeable future it is only together that such very different yet delicately integrated environments provide the living conditions that our species continuance and good social functioning require. To sustain that environmental diversity we must take into account the human diversity. Not all people find diverse environments and their features beautiful, or valuable for their own sakes, or demanding of our compassion, etc. (e.g., Appleyard 1979; Franzen and Vogl 2013). But some do. This and other forms of human diversity – diverse values, goals, means, projects, histories – make it probable that to sustain environmental diversity, and so our species continuance and good social functioning, a varied array of people, acting from diverse character traits, will be important. The case of Jackie and Henry is just one small example. More generally, if healthy environmental diversity continues to diminish, as it is now (Cardinale et al. 2012; Costanza et al. 2014; Leadley 2010), then probably there will increasingly be important roles of this sort for people with environment-regarding aspects of traditional interpersonal virtues to play. Partly because not all people will express generosity that is directly fixed on environments and their features, having at least some people do so seems all the more crucial, as when the Nature Conservancy of Canada generously buys and sets aside land for protection from future human influence (e.g., Dedyna 2016; Nerman 2016). Likewise for having a proper humility toward the environment. Having some people concede that we poorly understand many environmental complexities will help to more wisely guide our land uses and technological developments in ways that sustain or enhance environmental diversity and social functioning. Certain environmental advocates are now exemplifying this in their reasons for lobbying for protections of honeybee environments (Kindemba 2009). It may even seem that environmental humility is one of the best candidates for a disposition that is necessary for flourishing. But even here, connections between work in formal epistemology, evolutionary biology, psychology, and social sciences suggest that diversity is the better bet; historically, cooperation in human groups seems to have often been sustained against degenerative forces by having a mix of people with epistemic humility and those without (e.g., Vallinder and Olsson 2013; Weisberg and Muldoon 2009; Matthew Kopec, pers. comm.). This is unsurprising. More and less humble people – e.g., ambitious researchers who

30761_DesRoches.indd 117

2019-05-03 12:52:05

118

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

believe they increasingly understand complex environmental interactions very well, and who thus push ahead ever feverishly with their valuable work – seem to complement each other in important ways, in the joint production of environmental protections that contribute to good social functioning and species continuance. Likely, it will prove increasingly valuable to have some people with a sense of justice for the environment. Granted, environmentalists who are instead motived primarily by addressing injustices they see fellow humans incurring also help the environmental diversity that our species depends upon, and it is certainly possible that such people flourish. But people whose environmentalism is additionally driven by the belief that we can, but should not, treat the environment itself unjustly will bring different perspectives, ideas, and strategies to environmentalism, some of which are likely to productively complement alternatives in important ways. Summing up, we have reasons to think that environment-regarding aspects of several traditional interpersonal virtues will help make up causal character diversity that is, and will foreseeably be, important for achieving group-level states involved in the ends that constitute human flourishing. That character diversity is not merely causal; it is crucial with respect to human flourishing. Given that, and the other clarifications made in this chapter, interpersonal extensionism should update its neo-Aristotelianism as I am suggesting, to claim that environment-regarding aspects of several traditional interpersonal virtues help constitute human flourishing as a cluster kind, without being necessary for flourishing. It is an excellent thing that some people have the environment-regarding characters in question. 7 s  o m e i m p l i c at i o n s a n d d i r e c t i o n for future work

I started this chapter by clarifying that interpersonal extensionism must justify a “yes” answer to The Constitution Question, the question of whether any environment-regarding aspects of interpersonal character traits help constitute human flourishing. Because the character diversity strategy I have recommended for doing this rejects the ontological necessity claim, the strategy is in tension with the support we saw earlier for that claim. The metaphysical considerations turned on the idea that a thing could not belong to kind K if it did not have a property that is part

30761_DesRoches.indd 118

2019-05-03 12:52:05



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

119

of what makes for Khood. But the sort of cluster kinds I discussed prompt a broadening of the making relation, so that the necessity of single properties is not implied when they help make for (cluster) kind membership. Recall that necessity is not abandoned though. Members of cluster kinds must have at least one of the subsets of constitutive properties that is sufficient for kind membership. So it is having a subset that makes for kind membership, and each of the constitutive properties in a subset helps make for kind membership. Foot’s argument instead turned mainly on a pair of premises. First, some counterfactuals of the following sort are true: if the German resisters had complied with Nazi demands partly because they lacked a type or degree of justice, then they would have fallen short of flourishing. Second, Foot implies that the best or only explanation of that counterfactual’s truth is that each of the virtues, including being just, is necessary for flourishing – that, as she puts it, flourishing is “conceptually inseparable from virtue” (2001, 94). We now see that this second premise goes too far. To explain the truth of the counterfactual, we should not imply that all virtues are necessary for flourishing, but only some. My conception of flourishing as a cluster kind allows that justice is necessary for flourishing; what it denies is that every virtue is necessary. Hursthouse’s argument implied that virtue principles ground claims of moral obligation partly because each virtue is necessary for human flourishing; without the necessity, obligations are lost. My view may not make much practical difference for this claim of Hursthouse’s, e.g., if it turns out that even though not all virtues are necessary for flourishing, the ones that Hursthouse has in mind when discussing obligations are necessary. But on a more interesting theoretical note, principles about a virtue that is not necessary in general for flourishing will still be able to ground obligations for a particular individual, if she needs that virtue for the combination of it and her other virtues to instantiate one of the subsets for flourishing. For instance, if Jackie had one of the sufficient subsets, but one of the virtues in it was her environment-regarding compassion, and her subset would be incomplete without that compassion, then principles about that compassion could ground obligations for her. Now, if greeted by a different sort of case, where a person has such compassion, but even without it his other virtues would still suffice for an overall character of a flourishing human, then Hursthouse would probably say that principles about environment-regarding

30761_DesRoches.indd 119

2019-05-03 12:52:05

120

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

compassion could not ground any obligations for him. But I think that result is sensible. Tim is an astonishing human being. On reflection, he flourished even without environment-regarding compassion, given his other remarkable dispositions and his context. It wouldn’t have been bad if he also had such compassion, but no directly related obligations were binding on him. In hunting conscientiously as I described, he did not necessarily violate any moral principles. This implies that different people sometimes face different moral obligations. But that already seems obvious enough. So my view has the resources to address the support on offer for the necessity claim it rejects. Nonetheless, the reasons I have provided for my view are not decisive. Rather they make it promising enough that researchers should try further developing and defending it. I would like to see this involve various E VE authors joining the types of more technical interdisciplinary research that I cited when discussing expectation and reciprocity, and epistemic humility. This is sorely lacking in virtue ethics more generally. Ultimately, ends such as species continuance and good social functioning need to be specified more often as more quantitatively measurable variables, and various actual and possible structures of character diversity within groups need to be dynamically evaluated for their relative contributions to changes in the specified variables; empirical results need to then inform probabilistic predictions that can be tested. We now have more reasons to aim for this.

n otes

I thank Ron Sandler, Jenny Welchman, and an anonymous referee for ­constructive comments that helped me improve this chapter. For helpful comments on an earlier essay that gave way to this one, I’m grateful to Jim Anderson, John Basl, Matt Ferkany, Russ Shafer-Landau, and Rob Streiffer.   1 For a sampling of EVE work, see all papers in the special issue on EV E in the Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, volume 23, issue 1–2 (2010), and Sandler 2013; Thompson 2012; York and Becker 2012; Bina and Vaz 2011; Sandler 2007; Hursthouse 2007; Sandler and Cafaro 2005; Hull 2005; Cafaro 2004; Sandler 2003; Newton 2002; Frasz 2001; Cafaro 2001; van Wensveen 2001; Welchman 1999; Erickson 1994; Frasz 1993.   2 For examples, see Erickson 1994; Frasz 1993; Hill Jr. 1983; Hursthouse 2007; O’Neill 1992; Shaw 1997.

30761_DesRoches.indd 120

2019-05-03 12:52:05



Diverse Environments, Diverse People

121

  3 By “environment” I will mean any non-human features of humans’ surroundings (including non-human animals, plants, bacteria, rivers, mountains, ecosystems, etc.) plus relations between these or between these and humans, as well as any properties to emerge from either type of relation.   4 If a type of extensionist view has a wholly alternate foundation, it is simply an extensionist view other than interpersonal extensionism. This does not render interpersonal extensionism too narrow a view to be of broad interest. Neo-Aristotelianism remains the dominant foundation within ­virtue ethics more generally, even though other promising foundations have been developed. And virtue ethics largely owes its revival in the ­twentieth century to neo-Aristotelianism’s appeal (Chappell 2013). These points motivate investigating the prospects for giving EV E views a neo-­ Aristotelian foundation, especially given that many EV E authors write applied papers that do not have the space to address foundational issues. Additionally, influential EVE authors already implicitly or explicitly adopt neo-Aristotelianism as part or all of their foundation. Sandler (2007), for example, explicitly makes a form of neo-Aristotelian extensionism one among several other parts of his overall pluralistic EV E view.   5 Others might say she wouldn’t achieve full flourishing. Either way, this needn’t make flourishing a mere idealized goal. Virtue theorists can plausibly argue that some actual people demonstrate flourishing’s requisites.   6 When authors appeal to the notion of “no relevant moral difference” in defence of extensionisms that are not neo-Aristotelian in the manner that interpersonal extensionism is, they may not beg the question in this way. But we are investigating interpersonal extensionism here.   7 Cases like this suggest that the lack of environment-regarding aspects of virtues need not preclude people from enjoying and appreciating and conserving nature, all while living affectively rich lives rather than moving through life as automatons of practical or instrumental reason. This ­weakens the connection, drawn by Haught (2010), between such instrumental reasoners (epitomized by Hume’s knave) and motivationally anthropocentric people.   8 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting that this needs to be addressed.   9 With these points, neo-Aristotelian virtue theory does not entail an ableism on which it is okay for one’s compassion or other interpersonal virtues to be directed at only typical humans rather than all humans. There are many grounds on which a neo-Aristotelian could consistently claim that human flourishing requires that such dispositions be directed at all human beings, or at all members of all species or groups in which some threshold

30761_DesRoches.indd 121

2019-05-03 12:52:05

122

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

degree of the relevant expectations and reciprocation are typical, and so on. However, as I will clarify in subsequent sections, I do think neo-­ Aristotelianism should embrace diversity and variation in ways it cannot when subscribing to the ontological necessity claim. 10 Ron Sandler (2007) also underscores the diversity of ways to be good to the environment by discussing sample cases. Further below, my discussion will motivate more specific claims of this sort. 11 I have changed people’s names in this example, to protect their privacy. 12 To help clarify the main philosophical ideas in this example, I will supplement my memory of Jackie’s and Henry’s work with added details. 13 This is not least of all because we now appreciate that each species is more like an internally varied yet cohesive entity than it is like a mere class to which organisms belong in virtue of some essential intrinsic similarities (Barker and Wilson 2010; Sober 1980).

30761_DesRoches.indd 122

2019-05-03 12:52:05

6

The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl Frank Jankunis

Grey Owl (1888–1938) was a prolific figure in Canadian environmental thought in the 1930s, widely known for his animal and environmental advocacy. He wrote, filmed, and lectured as a reformed trapper with partly Indigenous ancestry.1 Shortly after his death, however, his notoriety turned to infamy when it was revealed that he had no such ancestry; he had been born and raised in England as Archibald Stansfeld Belaney before moving to Canada as a teenager. Ever since, issues of racial authenticity and cultural appropriation have dominated discussion of his life and work. In this chapter I very briefly comment on this orthodoxy before departing from it to consider Grey Owl’s work as a contribution to environmental philosophy. I will focus in particular on the animal and environmental ethics underlying his advocacy. Although his environmental philosophy is multi-faceted I argue that the unsustainability of resource-based economic activities plays an important role. This grounds, I argue, the significance of Grey Owl’s work to contemporary Canada and Canadian environmental philosophy, for despite the vast differences between his Canada and ours the two resemble one another in their resource-based economic structure. There are now several works that give the true story of Grey Owl’s life (Billinghurst 1999; Smith 1990; Gordon 2004; Dickson 1999). For the purposes of this chapter, Grey Owl’s biography is a tale of two transformations (Braz 2007, 2015). The first is a turn from Archie Belaney to Grey Owl.2 The second is a turn from active participation in the fur trade to animal and environmental advocacy. Although the focus of this chapter is Grey Owl’s environmental philosophy, since

30761_DesRoches.indd 123

2019-05-03 12:52:05

124

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

his identity as Grey Owl figures prominently in his philosophical outlook it is necessary to briefly comment on it first. Of Grey Owl’s ethnocultural turn, Albert Braz writes, “Almost from the moment it was revealed that he was an Englishman he has been portrayed as basically an imposter” (Braz 2002, 171). The steps Grey Owl took to represent himself as partly Indigenous included efforts to learn Ojibwa, body modification, and inventing a tall tale about the circumstances of his birth and early life (Smith 1990). Scholars continue to explore the theme of racial imposture in Grey Owl’s work (e.g., Chapin 2000; Dawson 1998), with assessments of his imposture ranging from benign (e.g., Knight 1974, 349) to seriously problematic (e.g., Green 1988). Along with recent discussions of trans-identity in general, an alternative interpretation of Grey Owl’s partly Indigenous self-representation has recently been raised (Braz 2015). Perhaps Grey Owl’s case is best cast not as racial imposture but as an extended attempt to bring his ethnocultural identity in line with what was in some sense his true self. Unlike the allegation of racial imposture, this alternative makes sense of the various ways in which Grey Owl evidently sought to authenticate his image and identity. His apparent transformation was rooted in and facilitated by his experiences and relationships with people whose Indigenous ancestry is not similarly in question, including Indigenous mentors and romantic partners (Grey Owl 1999, 194; Braz 2002). It evidently appeared so authentic that his Mohawk wife, Anahareo, whom Grey Owl credits with encouraging him to write about animals and the environment, writes “[n]ever once did I suspect that Archie was anything but what he said he was” (Anahareo 2014, 176). Authentic racial transformation remains controversial in general (see, e.g., Brubaker 2016), though some recent accounts give a more thorough treatment of the idea of Grey Owl’s case as transformation than is within the scope of this chapter (e.g., Ruffo 1996; Braz 2002, 2015). More to the point, for present purposes, is that Grey Owl’s own enthnocultural identity and transformation is in an important sense philosophically irrelevant to his animal and environmental advocacy. The public revelation of his true ancestry seems to have had the effect of turning every interesting question about Grey Owl into a question of racial imposture. Braz identifies as “[o]ne of the more far-reaching consequences of the unrelenting focus on Grey Owl’s racial impersonation” that “it has overshadowed every single other aspect of his

30761_DesRoches.indd 124

2019-05-03 12:52:05



The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl

125

career, notably his achievement as a conservationist and nature writer” (Braz 2007, 206). Grey Owl’s alleged racial imposture appears to have foreclosed engagement with his environmental philosophy on its own terms. This outcome is philosophically problematic because he writes with the clear purpose of convincing his audiences that there is a serious environmental crisis in Canada that deserves recognition and warrants action. Over the intervening decades, his audience has overwhelmingly responded not by engaging with his work, but by engaging with him. The philosophical issue is that the argument is still being ignored to discuss the individual making the argument. To be clear, I am not saying any critical discussion of Grey Owl’s ethnocultural identity and transformation is philosophically problematic. There are, of course, interesting and important issues to be discussed here regarding ethnocultural identity, cultural authenticity, and cultural appropriation. Instead, I am objecting to the fact that a philosophical case for increased environmental awareness has been largely, if not completely forsaken on account of the ethnocultural identity claims of the person making it. Another reason to revisit what Grey Owl actually said as opposed to concentrating on issues of his character and ethnocultural identity has to do with the contribution his environmental philosophy could make to environmental self-understanding in Canada. As Canadian environmental philosophy continues to define its own identity, in this book and elsewhere, it must establish and grapple with its intellectual and cultural antecedents. At present, environmental philosophy as an academic discipline prominently focuses on intellectual and cultural antecedents with ties to American landscapes and cultures. I have in mind here the work of Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Henry Thoreau, and others.3 It is unclear what figures in the history of Canadian environmental thought might be well-suited to join the canon with the likes of these great environmentalists. But with Grey Owl, I suggest, we have a candidate for election whose ties to Canadian landscapes resemble those of Leopold to Wisconsin, Muir to the Sierras, and Thoreau to Walden Pond and the New England countryside. I therefore propose to strike out in a different direction than the existing literature on Grey Owl, to consider his work on its own terms as a work of environmental philosophy. I begin with Grey Owl’s animal ethics. As a reformed trapper, Grey Owl writes from the perspective of someone who has routinely killed

30761_DesRoches.indd 125

2019-05-03 12:52:05

126

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

a variety of animals for a living. Describing this period in his life, he notes the “urge of debts to be paid, money to spend, and prestige to be maintained” as lending “power to the axe handle and cunning to the hands that otherwise might have faltered on occasion” (Grey Owl 1999, 246). During his trapping career, Grey Owl’s ethical commitments to animals were limited to what Tom Regan calls an anti-cruelty position (Regan 1992). He refrained from killing “needlessly” and was “as merciful as possible under the circumstances,” but any further moral issues with the ruthless pursuit of beaver and other animals were suppressed on account of economic necessity and “remorseless striving to achievement” (Grey Owl 1999, 246). Grey Owl’s mature environmental philosophy extends beyond such an anti-cruelty position to embrace a concern for animal welfare. Regan describes an animal welfarist position as not just avoiding cruelty to animals, but also recognizing a duty to secure the good for them to the extent that this is possible (Regan 1992). In a memorable passage from his second book, Pilgrims of the Wild, Grey Owl details a moment of moral clarity in which he moves from an anti-cruelty position to an animal welfare position. He describes being pushed by a shortage in beaver on the land and money in his pocket to pursue the unprecedented (for him) step of trapping in the spring to “replenish the exchequer” (Grey Owl 1999, 248). This out of season trapping predictably leads to a situation in which he has evidently orphaned some beaver kittens. The kittens exposed and crying out for their mother, Grey Owl describes raising his rifle to dispatch them efficiently, but holding his shot. At Anahareo’s suggestion, and partly out of moral atonement, they “adopt” the kittens and hand-raise them. These and other beaver that enter and leave their lives take centre stage in his works and define his animal ethic. Securing the good for them individually, and for beaver more generally, is characteristic of Grey Owl’s environmental philosophy and a centrepiece of his advocacy. Grey Owl did not explicitly propose a philosophical theory of nonhuman moral standing to justify his turn to animal welfarism, but we can nevertheless get a sense of how the adopted beaver came to supply him with reasons to take their welfare into account in addition to his own, to the extent that this was possible. From a purely economic viewpoint, I had long been opposed to the wholesale slaughter [of beaver] now going forward, which was indeed almost at an end for want of victims. But this was

30761_DesRoches.indd 126

2019-05-03 12:52:05



The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl

127

6.1  Grey Owl feeding baby beaver on his shoulder at Lake Ajawaan, Saskatchewan (ca. 1933–34).

different. These beasts had feelings and could express them very well; they could talk, they had affection, they knew what it was to be happy, to be lonely – why, they were little people! And they must be all like that. All this tallied with the incredible stories I had heard in younger days, and perhaps accounted for the ­veneration that our people, when savage, had held them in, ­calling them “Beaver People,” “Little Indians” and “Talking Mothers.” … I had seen them myself cared for tenderly by those whose hands they had fallen into. And I would have left them to die with never a thought, an intention that seemed now to have been something nearly barbarous. (Grey Owl 1999, 258–9) In this passage we get a sense of the multi-faceted reasons Grey Owl offers in defence of the animal welfarist position regarding the

30761_DesRoches.indd 127

2019-05-03 12:52:05

128

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

beaver. On the one hand, he gestures to the fact that beaver have various intrinsic properties that make them proper candidates for moral status. They are intelligent, emotionally enlivened, have a welfare, and can communicate. On the other hand, he also appears to gesture to the relations between human and beaver persons as well. He seems swayed by the fact that beaver generally, have become interwoven with the lives of human persons, as their adoptive beaver have become interwoven with his and Anahareo’s lives. This sort of reason for ascribing moral status to the beaver focuses not so much on the sorts of things beaver are, but instead on the sorts of noneconomic relations beaver can and do bear to human persons. This includes the historical cultural significance of the beaver to Indigenous persons and ways of life. Grey Owl’s animal ethics thus involves an appeal to both the intrinsic as well as the extrinsic properties of Beaver People as grounds for ascribing moral status to them. This brings Grey Owl’s account of the moral status of the beaver in line with multicriterial accounts of non-human moral standing, such as Mary Anne Warren’s (Warren 2000), which accord moral significance to both intrinsic as well as extrinsic properties. A natural question that arises at this point is whether Grey Owl ascribes moral status only to the beaver or extends the same consideration to other animals as well. In his last book, Tales of an Empty Cabin, he writes of a desire to extend his advocacy “to include Wild Life in general” (Grey Owl 1975, ix). In the same volume, he writes of “responsibilities towards all things both great and small that within, without, and all about, dwell here under my protection” (Grey Owl 1975, 299). In earlier works he writes of a “feeling of kinship for all the wild” (Grey Owl 1999, 323). On the other hand, there are many points in his work at which his advocacy for the beaver appears to be based on his judgment of their singular moral significance. Following what he takes to be an Indigenous example, the various intrinsic and extrinsic properties Grey Owl marshals in defence of a welfarist stance toward the beaver set them apart from other animals in their candidacy for humanization (see, e.g., Grey Owl 1999, 131–7). Certainly, his work contains comparatively little in the way of discussing the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of animals besides the beaver, though he acknowledges, rightly, that the case he makes for the ethical consideration of beaver doesn’t rule out ethical consideration for other creatures or even things in Nature as well (Grey Owl 1999, 366).

30761_DesRoches.indd 128

2019-05-03 12:52:05



The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl

129

So whereas he does note that creatures besides beaver “were by no means the abysmal insensate creatures I had been wont to consider them” (ibid., 323), there is some question of precisely what his ethical orientation is toward them. When it comes to wild carnivores such as wolves, he at times shows considerably different attitudes (Grey Owl 1999, 37; 1975, 72–8). Precisely what Grey Owl’s position on the moral status of other animals is, and whether he has the philosophical resources to ascribe moral status to other animals, is therefore not altogether clear. The ambivalence with which he treats the moral status of nonhuman animals besides the beaver makes it clear that Grey Owl falls short of advocating what is now known as an animal liberation ethic (Singer 1990; Regan 2004). Animal liberationists contend that all animals meeting the conditions of moral status are our moral equals, and that this rules out on moral grounds any action that involves taking the interests or rights of any animals to be any less significant than we take our own interests or rights. Regarding domesticated animals, Grey Owl appears far ahead of his time in criticizing zoos, vivisection, and animal blood sports from a moral point of view (Grey Owl 1975, 323–35). Yet the reasons he furnishes for doing so do not seem to be rooted in an argument for the moral equality of human and animal interests or rights.4 There were then, as now, evidently a surplus of cultural practices to criticize from the anti-cruelty and welfarist positions to which he adheres. As for wild animals, he notes “a few clean kills for meat” is “the law of the Wild, and permissible” (Grey Owl 1999, 324). He also refuses to categorically condemn on moral grounds his former profession, though choosing not to continue to engage in it himself (Grey Owl 1999; Braz 2015, 27). Despite its critical stance on many prevailing cultural practices, then, his animal ethics, which seems to allow for avoidable killing of animals for human purposes, cannot be considered a liberation ethic. While Grey Owl falls short of arguing for a categorical end to avoidable killing of animals, he does advocate on moral grounds for what we might today recognize as sustainable hunting and trapping. Sustainability is, of course, now well-known as an ambiguous concept (see, e.g., Washington 2015). Nevertheless, the concept has some utility in describing Grey Owl’s position on trapping and, more generally, on animal ethics. Take, for example, the ethics of hunting for beaver in spring. This is morally objectionable to Grey Owl not only because

30761_DesRoches.indd 129

2019-05-03 12:52:05

130

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

of the suffering it creates, but also because it’s quintessentially unsustainable in a classical sense: it is a practice that destroys its own future possibility. “Apart from the barbarity of this method,” he writes, “it had done more in a decade to annihilate the beaver, than the Winter trapping of centuries” (Grey Owl 1999, 264). In contrast, for Grey Owl, morally permissible hunting and trapping minimally involves confining the hunt or trap to killing only what can reasonably be used (Lascelles and Grey Owl 1931). Grey Owl associated a commitment to sustainable trapping practices with the traditional practices of Indigenous Peoples of Canada and to settlers engaged in subsistence-level hunting and trapping of animals (Grey Owl 1999, 73), while he associates a commitment to unsustainable trapping practices with inexperienced non-Indigenous trappers entering the bush looking for a quick buck. For Grey Owl, the latter bear responsibility for the empty woods at the end of the fur trade, and he defended Indigenous people against allegations that their actions were responsible (e.g., Grey Owl 1931). Moreover, the connection between unsustainable hunting and trapping practices and injustice for the Indigenous Peoples of Canada is far from lost on him. The Indian and the settler killed, generally speaking, only enough for their needs. Then buffalo hides became of value, a dollar a piece or less. Immediately every man with the price of a camp outfit, a couple of wagons, a few horses, and a gun, took to the buffalo country and, under pretense of clearing the plains for agricultural purposes, these animals were slaughtered without mercy. Right-minded people arose and condemned the perpetration of such a heinous crime as the destruction of an entire ­species to satisfy the greed of a few men. The United States Government, however, took no steps to prevent it, one official even suggesting placing a bounty on the buffalo, as it was understood that their destruction would settle once and for all the ­vexing and ever-present Indian problem … The Indian problem was settled for all time. A whole species of useful and noble ­animal had been destroyed, and an entire race of intelligent and courageous people decimated and brought into subjection, in the space of a number of years that could be counted on the fingers of a man’s two hands. (Grey Owl 1999, 73–4)

30761_DesRoches.indd 130

2019-05-03 12:52:05



The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl

131

In his view, a similar situation with the buffalo on the Plains occurred at the end of the Canadian fur trade with the near-­ extirpation of beaver from large portions of its former range in Canada. He writes with moral condemnation of how former Indigenous and non-Indigenous trappers have been forced to relinquish their ways of life on account of the overharvest of fur-bearing animals (e.g., Grey Owl 1999, 207). This is seen as similarly problematic, not only because it involves avoidable suffering for animals, but for its injustice toward Indigenous culture and peoples. Grey Owl is thus an early stated opponent of what we now call “environmental racism,” defined as “racism practiced in and through the environment” (Westra 1997, 281). To summarize Grey Owl’s animal ethics, then, we find in Grey Owl a multi-faceted appeal for a shift in our ethical outlook toward the beaver and, perhaps, other animals as well. By way of a moral epiphany, Grey Owl moves beyond an anti-cruelty position to embrace animal welfarism. This turn is grounded in both the intrinsic as well as the extrinsic properties of the beaver. Although he falls short of adopting an animal liberation ethic, and so categorically condemning his former profession, he finds fault especially with unsustainable trapping methods, and calls for a (re)turn to the sustainable trapping practices he associates with Indigenous and some non-Indigenous Peoples. I turn now to consider Grey Owl’s ethics of the environment, which is routinely though misleadingly identified as conservationist. Conservationists are usually understood to advocate for the wise use of environmental resources so that future human persons will have a good supply of those resources. In contrast, preservationists are usually understood to advocate for preserving nature for reasons independent of resource supply. Grey Owl’s environmental ethics is actually a blend of conservationist and preservationist commitments (Smith 1990, 205). Consider, for example, his ethical regard for the forests of the Canadian wilderness. A major issue in Canadian forestry in the 1930s was the risk of forest fire arising from the actions of careless or intentionally destructive individuals. Grey Owl agrees with the conservationist point that such behaviour is wrong because it amplifies the risk of the destruction of “useful lives and valuable timber, running into untold sums” (Grey Owl 1999, 142). It also risks losing other benefits people accrue from the wilderness, including

30761_DesRoches.indd 131

2019-05-03 12:52:05

132

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

tourism, recreational opportunities, and “aesthetic release” (Grey Owl 1975, 148). These benefits are, in his view, at risk to both present as well as future generations. On that basis, they form the basis for a compelling anthropocentric case for conserving the forests of the Canadian wild. But he doesn’t rest simply with the idea that the forest is a repository of resources for present and future people. Instead, he points to what we would now call “ecosystem services” such as “maintaining the water supply for all the surrounding country” and providing “for the requirements of a rich variety of animal life” (Grey Owl 1975, 150) in making the case for the preservation of forests in their “original, unspoiled state” (Grey Owl 1975, 149). Thus there are ecocentric aspects to Grey Owl’s environmental ethics as well. As we saw above in his animal ethics, Grey Owl does not lay out a comprehensive philosophical grounding for his environmental ­ethics. However, we can discern from what he does say that his environmental ethics relies heavily on an axiological dualism between wilderness and civilization. For him, the dividing line between the two is the “Height of Land” that separates the waters that flow north to the Arctic Ocean from those that flow to the south (Grey Owl 1999, 27). North of the Height of Land is “the land of shadows,” the “last frontier” lying “side by side with the modern Canada” (Grey Owl 1999, 26). In contrast to the Canadian South, Grey Owl writes passionately in The Men of the Last Frontier of the Canadian North as “a land of Romance, gripping the imagination with its immensity, its boundless possibilities and its magic of untried adventure” (Grey Owl 1999, 27). Interestingly, though, the divide between the two is not quite that between nature and culture, for Grey Owl intentionally includes Indigenous Peoples living according to traditional ways of life as part of the celebrated landscape of the North. In the preface to Tales of an Empty Cabin Grey Owl expands on the theme of veneration for the wilderness: “Man should enter the woods, not with any conquistador obsession or mighty hunter complex, neither in a spirit of braggadocio, but rather with awe, and not a little of the veneration, of one who steps within the portals of some vast and ancient edifice of wondrous architecture. For many a man who considers himself the master of all he surveys would do well, when setting foot in the forest, to take off not only his hat but his shoes too and, in not a few cases, be glad he is allowed to retain an erect position” (Grey Owl 1975, vii–iii). Anticipating later environmental ethicists such as Aldo Leopold

30761_DesRoches.indd 132

2019-05-03 12:52:05



The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl

133

(Leopold 1986) and Lynn White Jr. (White 1967), at several points he traces the source of problematic attitudes toward wild Canada to the Judeo-Christian attitude toward nature (Lascelles and Grey Owl 1931; Grey Owl 1999). The proper attitude to hold toward wilderness is one of awe and respect, especially for its “vastness” and the fact that it is “ancient.” The value of the land of shadows is perhaps best expressed by Grey Owl in his oft-noted literary essay “The Tree” (Grey Owl 1975, 117– 42). The essay begins roughly 650 years prior with a squirrel caching a Jack-pine cone for which he forgets to come back. The intervening ecological and anthropological moments are told from the “perspective” of the tree, which outlasts all it “sees” until it is unceremoniously destroyed to make room for a road. Its own storied existence ends with a businessman committing an indignity on its stump, though the essay closes with another squirrel caching an acorn nearby. As relayed through the elegant storytelling of this essay, the main ethically significant threat Grey Owl perceives to the wilderness of the Canadian North is the threat of civilization pushing ever farther into the Canadian wilderness. As mentioned above, Grey Owl implicates the influx of unsustainable trapping methods by inexperienced white trappers – people from south of the Height of Land – in cruel and unsustainable trapping methods, and, more broadly, in the decline of the fur trade and the end of Indigenous ways of life. The last frontier is pushed ever northward in his view on account of the arrival of methods of mass transportation – railways and roadways – that supplant more traditional methods of transportation such as the canoe and the trail. These transportation methods enable the arrival of inexperienced, destructive, and economically-motivated individuals who would otherwise have lacked the facility to access the Canadian wilderness, and, once enabled, set about destroying the valuable landscape through unsustainable actions. Moreover, in Grey Owl’s view, mass transportation enables large-scale resource-based economic activities, with the potential, if not the guarantee, of a spiral of unsustainability that ends with the destruction of the wilderness and the human and nonhuman dwellers amongst the leaves. Here we have arrived at the heart, I think, of Grey Owl’s environmental philosophy. Standing at the end of the fur trade, having travelled through some of its more successful days, Grey Owl has a unique vantage point on this process, and on the things of value that were

30761_DesRoches.indd 133

2019-05-03 12:52:05

134

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

destroyed through the relentless pursuit of fur in Canada’s history. The worries he expresses about unenlightened economic reasoning and the underlying philosophical view of the environment as simply a repository of resources are worries because he has seen how it works out for animals, the wilderness, and people living in close relation to it (including Indigenous Peoples). His environmental ethics arrives at conservation and preservation out of an ethical rejection of the destructive and barbarous alternative. The toxic mixture of short-term economic thinking, a view of animals and ecosystems as simply resources rather than of moral standing, and the means with which to transport the raw materials culminates in a ruthless, unsustainable, and environmental racist set of processes. For Grey Owl, this is objectionable on all fronts. On the contrary, to him, our relation to nature should be informed by anti-cruelty, animal welfare, principles of sustainability, and the rejection of environmental racism. Both the critical and the positive aspects of Grey Owl’s environmental philosophy have continued relevance today. Although the resources of economic interest and environmental controversy in contemporary Canada now include fossil fuel energy rather than simply timber or fur, the Canadian economy continues to be based largely on the extraction of natural resources. According to Natural Resources Canada, natural resources directly and indirectly account for 1.74 million jobs in Canada and 16 per cent of Canada’s G D P (Natural Resources Canada 2017). And when the price of oil recently dropped below $30 per barrel, it took provincial and federal budgets with it, along with the value of the loonie, into the red. The fact that Grey Owl confronts a similarly extractivist economy in his work grounds the significance of his environmental thought to contemporary Canada and Canadian environmental philosophy. Although some aspects of his environmental philosophy may appear dated to the contemporary environmentalist-minded reader, his call to conserve and preserve wilderness in the face of economic pressure to develop it to satisfy the profit motive, and the connection he made between ruthless exploitation of natural resources and the morally significant harms and risks these activities create for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, animals, and wilderness alike, remains highly relevant. Of course, there are many aspects of life in contemporary Canada the likes of which Grey Owl could never have even dreamed. Both the ways in which we extract energy from the ground, such as hydraulic fracturing and large-scale offshore drilling, as well as the

30761_DesRoches.indd 134

2019-05-03 12:52:05



The Environmental Philosophy of Grey Owl

135

eventual results of that extraction, climate change, were of course beyond his understanding. But he did identify and object to the harmful, unsustainable, and ecologically destructive resource-based pursuit of profit on these lands that has delivered us to the climate crisis. In this respect, I see Grey Owl’s environmental philosophy as sharing an essential similarity with contemporary calls such as Naomi Klein’s for an end to free-market capitalism on account of climate change (Klein 2014). In particular, like Grey Owl, Klein calls for restrictions on the operation of economic enterprises based around natural resource-extraction. Though the specifics of the environmental stresses they consider, the specific mechanisms by which those stresses are created, and the scope of their effects all differ, the object of moral critique remains essentially similar, and is once again being called to account for its contribution to ecological crisis. My main goals in this chapter have been very modest in comparison with the depth and ambition of the material on which it is based. I have sought to outline the main aspects of Grey Owl’s environmental philosophy underlying his animal and environmental advocacy and argued that turning to the work of the old trapper is relevant today as we confront the ecological crisis of climate change that faces our own and future generations. With as theoretically rich a body of work as Grey Owl provided, there are many avenues for future research of Grey Owl as an environmental philosopher. At a time in our common history where the relentless extractivist pursuit of natural resources has, among other factors, landed us in the greatest environmental crisis Canada and the world have ever faced, it is long past time to take note of the unmistakably philosophical aspects of Grey Owl’s work, and to regard him as a pioneer of environmental thought and environmental philosophy in Canada, instead of primarily if not exclusively in terms of racial authenticity and cultural appropriation.

n otes

I would like to acknowledge the many individuals whose comments have improved this work. Any errors or omissions are, of course, mine alone.   1 Unless directly quoting, in this chapter I use “Indigenous” where Grey Owl would have used “Indian.”   2 Grey Owl also referred to himself as Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin, He-Who-Walks-byNight, and other variations of these as well, though, as Smith points out, the reasons for variation in translation are not always clear (Smith 1990, 91–2).

30761_DesRoches.indd 135

2019-05-03 12:52:05

136

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

  3 A similar point is made by others, including Allison Mitcham (Mitcham 1981) and Kenneth Brower (qtd. in Braz 2015, 142–3).   4 The language of rights does, however, factor into Grey Owl’s work at ­several points.

30761_DesRoches.indd 136

2019-05-03 12:52:05

7

Going Outside Nathan Kowalsky

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

I like going outside. That might be one reason why I’m an environmental philosopher. I’m also a Canadian, but I’ve never really had a good idea of what that meant. Margaret Atwood says that “Canada as a state of mind … is still unknown territory for the people who live in it” (Atwood 2004, 26). I wonder if going out-of-doors in “a rocky, watery northern country, cool in climate, large in geographical expanse, small but diverse in population, and with a huge aggressive neighbour to the south” might have an effect on the way someone thinks about nature (Atwood 2004, 7). In this chapter, I take a few initial steps towards finding out. Now if philosophy were perfectly rational, objective, neutral, and immune to particularities like place, time, culture, or perspective – say if philosophy were simply the mathematical addition of true thought particles – then there would be no chance of a characteristically Canadian environmental philosophy, any more than there could be a uniquely Canadian chemistry. But as Pope Francis has recently noted (along with many others before him), it would be quite simplistic to think that philosophical theories present themselves purely in the abstract, detached from any context (2015, §199). Even so, perhaps a distinctively Canadian approach to wilderness doesn’t matter anyway. Some environmental philosophers have criticized the assumption that the American (or North American, if we are to include Canada) experience of wilderness should be applied to other countries’ engagements with the natural world, especially when the so-called “cultural” landscapes of Europe are held up to the standard of North American

30761_DesRoches.indd 137

2019-05-03 12:52:05

138

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

wildernesses, which supposedly lack any human cultural presence.1 Moreover, other environmental theorists have argued that the very idea of “nature” as something distinct from human “culture” is a misunderstanding at best. There never was a time when humans didn’t leave cultural traces on the natural world, and in any case that time is certainly not now – not with the Anthropocene, the geological epoch where human pollution now forms part of the fossil record. Nature is dead (it always was), and so there can’t be a Canadian perspective on something that doesn’t exist. I will argue below that a Canadian perspective on nature can be applicable outside the Canadian context, not least in disputing the metaphysics that supposedly go along with the Anthropocene. But there is also a uniquely Canadian problem with talking about a Canadian perspective on nature: why should I get to say what the Canadian perspective is? Is there only one perspective? As already noted, Canada has a small but diverse population spread across a large geographical expanse. The best I can do is to be as inclusive as I can, working from broad geographical realities that can be seen from looking at a map, as well as what I think can or should be evident from taking “a first, naïve look around,” in Husserl’s phrase (1970, §45). This will involve speaking from my own limited experiences, but I hope they can be applicable – with modification, of course – to others. 2 b  uilding

If you’re reading this chapter in anything like the way in which I wrote it, you’re sitting down inside a building. Inside “the doors.” If the weather is nice, perhaps you’re sitting outside on a bench, hoping the mosquitoes won’t bite. This does not sound particularly Canadian (except, perhaps, for the mosquitoes). Eighty-one per cent of Canadians currently live in urban centres, the exact opposite of 1871 (Statistics Canada 2011a). Increasingly urban populations aren’t uniquely Canadian; that kind of movement has been going on in industrialized countries since the start of industrialization. But let us take another look around: we can see that outside the windows is a lot more than buildings. In Canada (and maybe also America or Australia; I can’t say), there might be a front yard, a back yard, a public playground surrounded by a grassy park, a boulevard in-between the sidewalk and the street, perhaps even a line of big deciduous trees lining that

30761_DesRoches.indd 138

2019-05-03 12:52:05



Going Outside

139

boulevard and the street. While the back yards are typically fenced off from each other, the front yards are comparatively open, allowing packs of children (or a stray dog or a jackrabbit) to roam rather widely across the lawns from one patch of shrubbery or front path to the next. It’s interesting that we call these areas “yards” instead of “gardens” (as the British do). The word itself suggests a rather larger expanse, even a storage function, rather than a small, sharply contained, and cultivated space (some folks might have a vegetable garden in their yard, which implies that the yard environs or contains the garden – even though both words have the same etymological root). Meanwhile, the trees on the boulevards in my city are so extensive, in fact, that we have an “urban forest” (which is really noticeable if you’re in a high-rise building looking out over the tree canopy) requiring the attention of an urban forest management plan (City of Edmonton 2012). Even in my underappreciated working-class neighbourhood, the sounds of wind in the branches, red squirrels chattering, and birdsong (including the ubiquitous sparrows, swallows, robins, magpies, crows, ravens, and gulls) mix with the inevitable drone of the freeway or the thrum of the rail yards. Sometimes you can even hear a woodpecker hammering away. If I leave my bedroom window open at night, birds chirping are likely to wake me up (to my annoyance) before my alarm clock does. All this might be a consequence of what is called “suburban” development, designed to give a feel of “country living” in the city and predicated on automobile transportation (Kunstler 1994). Of course, when you drive out of the neighbourhood to a newer shopping centre (as opposed to the corner grocery stores, which have almost all gone extinct), the urban forest recedes and one feels the embrace of a network of parking lots. Not all Canadian or American cities are suburban, either. Older cities and downtown cores are more densely packed, with fewer free-range front yards or treed boulevards. Still, the contrast with European cities can be striking. Having lived for four years in the Flemish part of Belgium (Europe’s second most densely populated country), I know that the walkable streetscapes of side-by-side townhouses with beautiful sixteenth- to nineteenth-century façades come at the cost of almost no front yards at all; front doors open directly onto the street, where having a tree out front (growing out of a hole in the charming cobblestones) is a rare luxury.

30761_DesRoches.indd 139

2019-05-03 12:52:05

140

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

7.1  The urban forest in an Edmonton, Alberta, neighbourhood

Back gardens or terraces are intensely private, cordoned off by brick walls often over 2.5 metres high. Belgian schoolyards are paved enclosures within the four sides of the multi-storied school building itself. Compared with cities like these, ours hardly count; the Greek sociologist Manussos Marangudakis once remarked to me that upon arriving in Calgary he kept wondering when he’d actually see the city. I am not writing this to suggest a moral judgment, as if urban forests are somehow better than pedestrian-scale medieval town structures that make automobile ownership almost entirely superfluous. I simply want to consider how such material conditions might encourage us to think differently about the natural world. In what directions do Canadian cities point us toward? When I, like my mother before me, tell my kids to “go play outside,” I am sending them to an out-ofdoors that, though artificially landscaped, is not a built structure itself but rather what the structures are built out of, on, and within: soil, grasses, leaves, worms, stones, sticks, slivers, cat shit, ants, puddles, sunshine etc. They are not really playing in “the street,” but playing “Mantracker”2 in and out of almost everybody’s yard on the block. For better or worse, the comparatively low density of Canadian

30761_DesRoches.indd 140

2019-05-03 12:52:06



Going Outside

141

7.2  Trees on the IJzerenleen, Mechelen, Belgium

cities allows for a unique interpenetration of buildings and something else other than buildings, an interpenetration that shows the built world to be secondary to and surrounded by, rather than surrounding, the primary world of organisms and inorganic matter out of which the built world is constructed. Outside these doors are not only more doors. In-between and all around the buildings is, for lack of a better term, urban nature. And this urban nature does not suggest that the human hand is omnipresent in nature, but rather the inverse, namely that the urban world is porous to the natural world which is out-side of it. That, at least, is something to start from. Some city-dwellers are fortunate to live on the edge, perhaps the edge of a ravine or a river valley, the edge of an undeveloped lot, or even the (temporary and ever expanding) edge of the city itself. The porosity of the Canadian city points beyond the edges of the urban. On the other side of these edges, there are fewer doors to be out of. So few that the other doors can rarely be glimpsed across the way. Many Canadians are not privileged to play at these edges. Often the edges are where you’ll find the mansions of the rich, or acreages, cabins, cottages, and other special “get-aways” from the city. On the

30761_DesRoches.indd 141

2019-05-03 12:52:07

142

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

other hand, you may also find the encampments of the homeless there, or a farm yet to be swallowed by “development.” But anyone who can access a map at the public library can see that beyond the edges of porous Canadian urban spaces is a whole other world. What is this world? Let’s take a look. 3 f i e l d

Outside Canadian cities are rural areas, and again this is, in itself, no different from American or European contexts or indeed any culture characterized by agricultural food production. In Canadian rural areas, there are the aforementioned acreages (usually hugging the outskirts of larger cities and often carved out of old ranches or farms), but also smaller towns (usually with their own urban forests and comparable low density urban planning) and singular farmsteads separated from each other by many hectares of land. Living in a rural area surely provides a different interface between humans and the land, but is there something potentially unique about Canadian rural contexts? On closer examination, one will note that Canadian farmland is less frequently intersected by roads, towns, and other farmsteads than elsewhere, indicative of Canada’s very low overall population density of 3.7 persons per square kilometre (Statistics Canada 2011b).3 In my limited experience, farm life in Germany can be quite cozy, with one’s neighbours only a few hundred metres away, and a large network of friends, acquaintances, and even towns within casual cycling distance. By contrast, in Canada my grandmother had to ride a cantankerous pony named Pete five miles to school, which could not even be seen if one looked west from “the bench” of land rising over her farmstead. (Today no human habitation is visible east of the bench, although it really is there in the folds of the land, and students would have to ride at least 30 kilometres – or more, if you take a school bus – to the nearest school). Her eldest brother, my great-uncle Herman, had to drive a horse-drawn wagon for an entire day to the nearest mine to get the winter’s supply of coal, and then another day’s driving to get back home again. Clearly, there is significant distance present in the Canadian rural landscape, but how might this affect Canadian perspectives on nature? The answer, I think, is that these spaces – like

30761_DesRoches.indd 142

2019-05-03 12:52:07

7.3  Farmland in Cypress County, Alberta, Canada (top); Wyandot County, Ohio, US (centre); and Bentheim County, Germany (bottom)

30761_DesRoches.indd 143

2019-05-03 12:52:08

144

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

7.4  Looking west from “the Bench,” Cypress County, Alberta

the porosities of the city – are openings that allow for an intimation of nature-outside-the-rural to show forth. But what sort of intimation? Atwood identifies the Canadian rural context with the settler motif, which involves an agrarian conception of order (usually geometric uniformity) being imported and imposed onto a landscape that is anything but geometrically uniform: settlers “go to one hitherto uncleared part of [the land] and attempt to change Nature’s order (which may look to man like chaos) into the shape of human civilization.” (Atwood 2004, 144). Again, in itself this isn’t unique to Canada; anthropologists have noted that agrarian societies generally view nature outside their direct control as chaotic and adversarial, a point that I think is underappreciated by environmental philosophers. My rancher relatives certainly exhibit the characteristic hard personalities and hard work ethic cast in the forge of a hard land. This hardness could be exacerbated by the relative isolation and climatic extremes of the Canadian context, but so what? Atwood suggests that in Canada the settler motif meets its end: our rural experiences are experiences of the limits of human control: “The poems Canadians tend to make out of ‘settler’ motifs are likely to end, not with a shot of the Los Angeles freeway or equivalent, but with the abandonment of the farm with its squares and angles and

30761_DesRoches.indd 144

2019-05-03 12:52:08



Going Outside

145

the takeover of Nature again” (Atwood 2004, 148). This doesn’t mean all Canadian farms end in failure, of course, although many have. For exemple, the entire farming village of Alderson in southeastern Alberta was dissolved in 1936, and all remaining residents moved away in the 1940s (Jones 1987).4 A similar fate affected Smoky Burn in North Central Saskatchewan, where my father spent the first five years of his life. What this suggests, I think, is that we now know how far agriculture can go in Canada, and it’s not very far: “Canada – despite its size – has by far the smallest proportion of total land that is agricultural at only 7.3%, mainly because of soil quality and the nature of the Canadian climate and terrain. Of the eight [other countries that have also taken an agricultural census in the last 10 years], the United Kingdom has the largest, with 68.6% of its land under agricultural use” (Statistics Canada 2014). Unlike the American “frontier,” which, in the “winning” of the West, was pushed into the Pacific Ocean, the Canadian “frontier” isn’t even called that, possibly because it isn’t being pushed back; rather, it pushes back. The grip of the Canadian farm on the land out of which it is carved is thinly spread, porous, and tenuous at best. So while I suggested that Canadian urban nature points to a larger environing natural context outside of the city, the fields of the rural environments outside the city also point to something beyond themselves, something that has not been, and is resistant to being, conquered. The out-of-doors in the Canadian countryside opens up to something without doors at all, without fences, perhaps without even boundaries of its own (extant boundaries being imposed upon it by an other, if ever; Kulchyski 1996, 194). There is no manifest Canadian destiny to overcome the looming reality of non-rural or wild nature (although some rhetoric in Canada’s oil industry now gestures in that direction, sounding rather unCanadian; Kowalsky and Haluza-DeLay 2015, 89). Such visions of conquest are at least in peril, if not abandoned, in Canada, because we can recognize them to be unhelpful intellectual baggage: “The necessity of the straight lines is not in Nature but in [the settler’s] own head; he might have had a happier time if he’d tried to fit himself into Nature, not the other way around” (Atwood 2004, 145). If we look around, we can see that “making … Canada into an imitation of Europe” is a losing proposition (Atwood 2004, 114). The edges of the rural landscape – and the porous gaps within the rural landscape – point to something even deeper and more

30761_DesRoches.indd 145

2019-05-03 12:52:08

146

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

chthonic than the rural landscape where, perhaps surprisingly, Canadians also dwell. 4 b  ush

Canadians (and Alaskans, apparently) have a word for what lies beyond the rural: the bush. I’ve hardly used the term before, but I remember my grandfather telling stories of flying over the bush in a tiny plane piloted by Bob “Bee-lack” (a phonetically hardscrabble name if ever there was one). It remains to be seen if the Canadian bush is the same as “the land” of Aldo Leopold, the “true countryside” of José Ortega y Gassett, the physis of the Greeks, or the “wilderness” of the 1964 Act of the US government. It “is that part of Canada that’s north of the hundred miles next to the imperial border where 95% of the population lives” (Kulchyski 2014).5 Kulchyski also designates the bush as “that vast part of the country that remains outside of the strip malls, covered for the most part in rock, swamp, and water, though some of it is tundra and some of it is mountain and some of it is prairie.” It’s important to remember, as I pointed out above, that Canadians live in the bush: “bush, unlike wilderness, allows us to think a lived relation to and in this landscape” (Kulchyski 1996, 192). Outside the grain fields and the cattle ranges and the back forties is the bush, and in the bush there are First Nations reserves, Métis settlements, logging roads, the oil patch, Crown lands, trap lines, hunting camps, national or provincial parks, etc. In Canada we have “our bush leagues, bush doctors, bush texts, bush bikes, bush pilots, bush whackers, bush radios, bush camps,” but we don’t yet have “a bush country” (Kulchyski 1996, 192). After all, in terms of numerical majority, most of Canadians’ experience is urban, and then rural, but I’ve been arguing that both these contexts point toward something more. The bush waits rather silently in the shadows cast by civilized (i.e., city-based) and agricultural nature, similar to the way the Canadian North hangs geographically over the thin strip hugging the American border where so many Canadians actually live. You could say that the bush is “everywhere,” at least in the sense that nothing else in Canada that we could experience surrounds or environs the bush.6 In the American context, one can readily say that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, for example, is “an island in many respects – an ecological island, surrounded by a sea of human impact.

30761_DesRoches.indd 146

2019-05-03 12:52:08



Going Outside

147

It’s isolated landscape. Ravens and eagles may come and go at will, but crossing from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to safe habitat elsewhere is far more problematic for the likes of grizzly bears, elk, and bison. When they step off the island, they generally die” (Quammen 2016, 134). Canadian national parks are also enclosures (that’s what the word “park” means, after all), but they are more often islands surrounded by the sea of bush. As noted earlier, this can be evident enough from looking at maps. Geographically speaking, the bush transcends urban and rural Canada. Those spaces are carved out of the bush, and they comprise only a small sliver along the southern edge of the overwhelming majority of the Canadian landmass. But geography is not usually the same as lived experience, and my own experience of the Canadian bush is quite limited. I don’t live in the bush, and accessing it by car is difficult because the roads in the bush are more amenable to 4x4 trucks, if that.7 Some roads are impassable after spring thaw, and some communities are accessible only by boat or aircraft. This is why people will say the bush is “the middle of nowhere,” as if “somewhere” is, by definition, urban (or maybe rural). By this definition, the bush is full of nothing; it’s empty, because “something” is assumed to be fields or buildings. This assessment is not only grossly unfair to the myriad of ways that Canadians dwell in the bush, it also misses the fact that the bush is replete with unbuilt and uncultivated somethings. The few times that I have had a taste of the Canadian bush expanse (here I am purposefully excluding my auto-camping excursions in national or provincial parks), it stood out to me as overwhelmingly full. There is the sound of wind in a thousand-million-billion branches of a thousand-million-billion trees, softly rattling a thousand-million-billion leaves or needles, a gentle soughing that becomes a stupefying roar in the mind because you cannot help but realize that it goes on and on and on without end, at least as far as you’re concerned. If your path takes you to a rise in the land, you can see before you that it stretches out beyond all sight, and if you go to that horizon you know that another infinite series of bush horizons will greet you. Even within the limits of vision, the range of hues appears to be limitless, with unclassifiable ranges of yellow and brown in the grasslands, or of grey and green in the forests. Seeing the forests from a high point in the road allows you to forget, then remember, that off the road and in the forest is darkness. The

30761_DesRoches.indd 147

2019-05-03 12:52:09

148

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

7.5  The bush south of Grande Prairie, Alberta, seen from an oilfield access road

road is a cut that shows just the surface and the edge of the bush’s depths, where the interior makes blacks out of greens, and back again making silvers and golds out of shadows as your eyes adjust. Once, with another of my uncles (also called Herman), we trucked along a logging road in the bush only to spot a few homes under the darkness of the canopy. It wasn’t a set of cabins or a campground; I was told it was a Métis settlement, but it isn’t marked on any map that I have been able to access. Off the road, off the map, in the geographical darkness of the bush, Canadians dwell. It can be a little unsettling. Canada doesn’t end where the sidewalks do. The bush’s stupefying roar in the mind keeps on going, and if you go in in there, you can keep on going too, phenomenologically without end. Atwood calls it “the enveloping, faintly threatening environment” (116). The “faintly” is important here. With the rural context, the land is said to be known firsthand by the farmers and ranchers, but they also know it as a harsh mistress, withholding rain when it is needed, sending rain when dry heat is needed, sending coyotes in calving season, and generally pushing back against the imposition of geometric order. But I don’t think this is how the bush looks from the

30761_DesRoches.indd 148

2019-05-03 12:52:09



Going Outside

149

perspective of bush culture. Kulchyski says people “go to the bush to heal, they go to the bush to read, but they don’t read the paper. They read the bush” (Kulchyski 2014). The environmental philosopher Martin Drenthen (2013) has argued that the traditional Dutch landscape, with its dykes and polders, is a palimpsest, a multi-layered landscape text that can be read historically and geologically to reveal a variety of truths about a place. But this is also true of the bush: “The bush is a space of qualitative difference, the feel of sitting on this rock overlooking this beaver dam, rather than that rock and that pond. a palimpsest space overwritten by glaciers, and beavers and berrypickers and winds and satelites and partridges and lightning-lit fires and nomadic hunters and dramatic storms and the shrieking of crows against high winds” (Kulchyski 1996, 196). Reading this text is not an adversarial relationship; this landscape is not a harsh mistress. Of course, all Canadians know that the bush can kill you, especially the cold. If you go outside in the wrong way in winter, you will die. This is as true in the cities as outside them, which is another reminder that the bush haunts the urban and the rural. But so what? Canadians like to complain about shovelling snow in –30° C, but they all know to put on their wool socks, felt-lined boots, mitts, parkas, and toques. The bush only tries to kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing, or if you don’t think you have to adapt yourself to the way it is (Kowalsky 2007). That’s why its threat is only faint, and if you go outside, it can heal you instead. That’s also why it can have a culture. It’s not hostile to human culture; it’s only hostile to certain forms of human culture. All you have to do is “get the mall out of your head,” or the settler motif (Kulchyski 1996, 196). I want to point out how unique this conception of bush is compared with the wilderness areas of Europe or America. Wild areas in Europe are usually descendants of aristocratic hunting preserves (like the Białowe a Forest in Poland and Belarus) or reclaimed and rewilded areas (like the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands). These spaces are carved out of urban and rural spaces, unlike the bush, which is what Canadian urban and rural spaces are carved out of. European wild spaces are conceptualized as areas free of human domination and control while being bounded by (urban and rural) areas of human domination and control. Further, people can visit them, but there is little thought of humans appropriately staying there – without domination and control – as a bush culture (although historically peasants

30761_DesRoches.indd 149

2019-05-03 12:52:09

150

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

in Białowe a Forest were freed by their overlords to become the foresters for those overlords). In America, wildernesses are those areas legally designated as such, that designation being the well-known 1964 wording “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (US Congress 1964). You may remain, by contrast, in the bush. And as in Europe, American wildernesses are surrounded by and swaddled in the sticky web of agricultural and urban populations, developments, and transportation or communication networks. Even where those are out of sight, there is still the mind-boggling legal net of the National Parks Service, the United States Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management – all of which manage federal wilderness areas. Of course Canada has a national parks division and policies for managing the various Crown lands, but it’s relatively inconspicuous by comparison. Outside the parks, you can pretty much drive off the road or walk over the ditch and disappear into the bush. 5 o  utside the anthropocene

Where does this leave us? To summarize, the Canadian urban or suburban experience is porous to nature and that porosity points beyond the urban or suburban experience of nature. Outside the city there is rural Canadian experience, which is even more porous to nature, so much so that in its porosity it encounters the limits to rural settlement. But that porosity also points beyond those limits to a sense of nature that envelops the other two: the bush, an untamed realm where people may still dwell (if they’re prepared). While there may be commonalities with, say, the Australian outback or the Virginia Piedmont or the Bosnian Dinaric Alps, the Canadian bush presents us with a special philosophical opportunity: casting a skeptical eye on the metaphysics of the Anthropocene. At the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned the idea that “nature” – as something distinct from human “culture” – is dead. The fact may be that modernity’s plastics and other synthetic chemical compounds not subject to natural decay processes are among the fossils “we” are currently leaving behind, and it may also be a fact that there never was a time when human beings didn’t leave evidence of their presence in the landscape. But even if those are the facts, that’s only what they are and not what they mean or why they matter. They’re just physics,

30761_DesRoches.indd 150

2019-05-03 12:52:09



Going Outside

151

not metaphysics. Without an interpretive schema within which to situate them, facts are meaningless and insignificant, merely data points without any import. And yet we are supposed to know why the Anthropocene is important without it being said. It is supposed to matter. The Anthropocene is clearly more than a fact, and yet this more, this metaphysics, this value system, arrives unannounced and undisputed like Bourdieu’s (1977) doxa, the taken-for-granted conditions of practical action. The metaphysics of the Anthropocene do not inspire the kind of caution or regret for the ways in which anthropogenic effects alter planetary geology that Paul Crutzen had in mind when he first proposed the term in 2000. Philosophically, the Anthropocene forces humanity “to take a self-critical stance on its place in nature” and especially ecology, something our species has (arguably) never been required to do before, because it is “the age in which nature and culture are no longer neatly separable forces or spheres,” but have rather collided and become hybridized or fused (Williston 2016, 159, 155). Thus, “one of the major temptations of the Anthropocene will be an attempt to bend nature more and more thoroughly to our collective will. This will affect what we encounter when we encounter ‘nature’ because on this hypothesis we will increasingly find nothing but ourselves” (Williston 2016, 163). The metaphysical distinction between nature and culture, and the human respect for the natural sphere’s ostensible intrinsic value, has been the defining debate of environmental philosophy as a subdiscipline. The Anthropocene, as a metaphysic, is an implicit resolution of that debate: “nature” is dead, long live those who killed it, and too late for all those who bemoan its passing. In this way, the Anthropocene as a concept carries with it “grandiose … aspirations” and an “enthusiasm” to adopt it as the official epoch of our present (Winner 2017, 283). In Langdon Winner’s critical assessment, The basic sensibility that emerges from the notion “Anthropocene” … is one that blends a familiar, threadbare, human-centred worldview, often with lavish infusions of techno-triumphalism, the latest version of a narrative tradition that includes “progress,” “development” and “innovation,” this time enhanced with austere rituals of hand-wringing. (2017, 291)

30761_DesRoches.indd 151

2019-05-03 12:52:09

152

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

The Anthropocene metaphysic is a way of responding to our late modern world by saying “this is just the way it is,” and drawing the ethical implication that “this is just what humans do.” What I will call, therefore, the inspirational Anthropocene paradigm can be found in all manner of boosters, from conservation scientists Peter Kareiva and Michelle Marvier (2012) to environmental journalist Emma Marris (2011), but I will treat the ecomodernist postenvironmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (2011) as emblematic of the metaphysics (and the implicit ethics) of the Anthropocene. According to them, the Anthropocene is supposed to mean that we humans should embrace the roles of Masters of the Universe (or at least the Earth, for now) and be optimistic about the new opportunities this epochal realization provides. Just as the medieval city of Venice was built in a swamp – a pretentious, costly, and environmentally harmful technological gamble – so is the entirety of human history. While Shellenberger and Nordhaus admit that current rates of ecological change are greater than have been seen for hundreds of millions of years, they assert that these changes are of “scope and scale, not kind.” They mention, in passing, Paul S. Martin’s highly controversial Pleistocene overkill hypothesis, and slash-and-burn agriculture, before skipping ahead to “300 years ago” where we find a world “profoundly shaped by human endeavor” (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2011, 10). This confirms for them “the project that has centrally occupied humanity for thousands of years – emancipating ourselves from nature, tribalism, peonage, and poverty” (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2011, 11). They do not see this as a historically political project contingent upon agrarian cosmology, civilized xenophobia toward barbarians, or the racism of the European Enlightenment, but as naturalized, unchangeable, and irresistible – as nature was once thought to be – while nature, on the other hand, is relativized into infinitely changeable material – as free human behaviour might otherwise be thought to be. Environmental problems are thus “an inevitable part of life on Earth” (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2011, 14). We have to accept things more or less as they are. Nature is in a constant state of change; therefore, harmonizing human cultures with it is impossible. Things have always been this bad, so really things aren’t that bad. Shellenberger and Nordhaus derive from the Anthropocene a metaphysics of the American frontier: wild nature is chaotic and empty of

30761_DesRoches.indd 152

2019-05-03 12:52:09



Going Outside

153

civilized human beings (but full of tribalism, apparently) and must be conquered so that it vanishes under a thorough carpet of the progressive version of what it means to be human. This is nature’s destiny. Their end result is equally European: all of nature is in some form or other cultivated by human beings; deep down, all of it is a built environment. It has been this way for thousands of years, after all, and as far as we’re concerned, it’s always been that way. After all, who remembers the Old Stone Age? It is also not the case that Canada is immune to these sorts of beliefs: “canada is at war with the bush,” Kulchyski says: “canada is the cutline, the clear cut, the strip mine, the tar sands, the hydroelectric projects [*spits*]. canada is the two lane, the four lane, the six lane, the eight lane highways, the superhighways, the concrete piled so high you forget there ever was bush anywhere, ever, around that place where all that concrete weighs us down … canada is at war with the bush. canada will have nothing to do with the bush except to destroy it as quickly as it possibly can” (2014). Canada may very well be at war with itself. But the Canada Kulchyski refers to here is what he calls elsewhere “mall culture” (1996, 194). It is, to varying extents, urban and rural culture, settler culture, and Euro-American or Western culture. This is true, but the Canadian context also cannot fail to remind us that there are different sorts of culture than those just listed, which means that different ways of being human are possible. Some cultures might distinguish between humanity and nature so sharply that the former has no place in the latter. Others, like Anthropocene culture, might see humanity as the majesterial overlay and rhizomatic penetration of nature such that everything is so within the orbit of the former that the latter ceases to exist as such. Still others, perhaps like Kulchyski’s bush culture, will draw a distinction between a dominated and an undominated landscape, and still conceptualize the possibility of human dwelling in the latter. Indeed, he suggests that “the official multicultural project thus hides the fact that some cultures differ qualitatively from others,” and that “there are some multiculturalisms that are capable of recognizing this” (Kulchyski 1996, 195–6). I think this is what the Canadian landscape context pushes us to recognize: that there are different ways to relate to nature, that the urban points beyond to the rural, and that such pointing points even further to the bush beyond, which is an order that transcends, possibilizes, and can be attacked by the other two.

30761_DesRoches.indd 153

2019-05-03 12:52:09

154

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Anthropocene metaphysics do not make much sense in the context of the bush. The inspirational Anthropocene posits a timeless human nature that contaminates and conquers a pure non-human nature that never really existed, but that is not what the bush text says. Even from within the mall culture of southern Canada, the end of the American movie How the West Was Won can be met with “a lot of boos and mocking cheers” because “a shot of the Los Angeles freeway, clogged with traffic” is anything but triumphant (Atwood 2004, 145). The Anthropocene is not a force of nature; it is a cultural project. That project stalls in Canada. Factually, of course, unprecedented rates of anthropogenic change affect the Canadian bush (including, for example, the effect of climate change on the wildfires that very nearly consumed Fort McMurray while I wrote this chapter) as much as anywhere else on Earth (if not more so, the further north one goes). Metaphysically, however, the bush stands in the face of the Anthropocene. It is not yet dead. It is the limit of conquistador culture. It pushes back, and yet it gives humans a place to live within it. The halt of the project is not the end of life, because there are other kinds of projects to live. In the figure of the bush, the Anthropocene is confronted with a pre-existing cosmos, not a Wild West. Atwood remarks (no small thanks to the Mounties, who always get their man) that Canada is founded “on a vision of order as inherent in the universe … law is there first because the universe is conceived as being already under its sway” (Atwood 2004, 146). This order is not the geometry of the settler’s project. I want to suggest, rather, that this order is the transcendent presence of the bush, which relativizes and even calls into question the rural, the urban, and the Anthropocene. Perhaps it is what Kulchyski means when he says that “the bush is an ethics, and a law” (2014). So I do think there is a philosophically relevant Canadian perspective on nature (I hope I have represented the variety of Canadian perspectives fairly), and I think it speaks forcefully to the Anthropocene metaphysic which would rather have us stop speaking about nature (or whatever we want to call it) altogether. But is it of any use outside of Canada? I think so, and here’s why: the spirit of the bush is everywhere. In America, it is the voice beyond the frontier that still echoes to haunt those who thought to eradicate it. In Europe, it is the Urwald whose memory speaks through the centuries and calls some toward rewilding. In both contexts the spirit of the bush survives or resurfaces

30761_DesRoches.indd 154

2019-05-03 12:52:09



Going Outside

155

in wilderness areas or other secret places that show up between the cracks, calling people to enter. And the cracks, being cracks, cannot but speak to the order that transcends the cracks, that which cracks them open, that makes them cracks in an edifice revealing the environing darkness beyond. Of the bush in Asia or in Africa or elsewhere I have neither the space nor the competence with which to speak, but I would expect that spirit to appear there too. the spirits remain in the bush. and the spirit of the country is its bush. this must not become some paved over cultural claim that allows concrete bush scenes to be sculpted into bay street buildings: it has to be a claim with a trajectory that rubs against the grain, that in the resistance it provokes reminds us of the civilized brutality of the power that seeks to harness and eradicate it. (Kulchyski 1996, 195) Wherever the bush appears to be gone, or where nature appears to be dead, in every case this will only be a fait accompli – just a fact. We must remember that a fait accompli is not a moral victory, any more than Vladimir Putin was entitled to annex Crimea. Let us not be deceived. There is always an out-of-doors. The Anthropocene may hate that truth, but its very hate dialectically shows its metaphysics to be incoherent (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972). The bush may not be invincible, but even as a corpse it will haunt its murderers for eternity. So let us not hitch our wagons to the project of killing it. Of course we don’t all live in the bush. I don’t. Maybe we all can’t right now. But we all live in its shadow, and sometimes – as in Canada – that shadow looks you in the face. This is not an encounter to dread, but one to prepare for, because “Nature is no longer a monster but a potential home” (Atwood 2004, 290). How then shall we live? Answering that question is the task of environmental philosophy, Canadian or not.

n otes   1 In this vein, it is telling that Canadians have thought that “history and culture were things that took place elsewhere” (Atwood 2004, 25–6), as if to be Canadian is to both lack a culture and to dwell, therefore, in an inhuman wasteland.

30761_DesRoches.indd 155

2019-05-03 12:52:09

156

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

  2 This is a mobile version of hide-and-seek, derived from the Canadian television program “Mantracker” (http://www.mantracker.ca/; accessed 25 May 2016).   3 In figure 7.3, there are by my count 42 farmsteads and 1 town in the satellite shot of Germany, 43 farmsteads but no town in the satellite shot of Ohio, and 5 farmsteads (and no town) in the satellite shot of Alberta (the map scale and area are equal in each satellite shot).   4 For some recent photographs of the site, see www.ghosttownpix.com/ alberta/alder.html.   5 Kulchyski does not use capitalization in his writing.   6 Remember: the bush includes the water and conceivably, therefore, the oceans.   7 Trails and cutlines are even more restrictive, requiring quads or ski-doos as far as modern machines are concerned. Otherwise one is relegated to horseback or various forms of self-propulsion.

30761_DesRoches.indd 156

2019-05-03 12:52:09

P art T hr e e Anthropocene Themes

30761_DesRoches.indd 157

2019-05-03 12:52:09

30761_DesRoches.indd 158

2019-05-03 12:52:09

8

Ecological Nationalism: Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene Byron Williston

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

The Anthropocene Working Group (A W G ) has now informed the International Commission on Stratigraphy that we have entered the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch of humans. Quite apart from the AWG’s official recommendation (which still awaits formal approval by the larger body), announcements about the end of the Holocene have become increasingly difficult to ignore (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002; Williston 2015a, 2016, 2017). There are numerous ways to interpret philosophically the complex notion that we have entered a new geological epoch, but in my view the most provocative of them is the idea that because our large-scale technological interventions into nature are now both decipherable and effectively irreversible, human history and Earth history have “converged” (Chakrabarty 2009, 2015; Williston 2016). Because of this event, we can no longer tell a story about nature entirely untouched by human purposes or pretend that human culture is something that functions independently of the non-human world. As Latour puts it, we have entered the age of the nature/culture hybrid (Latour 1993). But at least as we encounter it now – as the “endHolocene” or the long transition between the Holocene and the Anthropocene, rather than the Anthropocene proper (Davies 2016) – the new epoch is essentially a time of deep ecological crisis. We have only noticed that we have entered this epoch because of disasters like

30761_DesRoches.indd 159

2019-05-03 12:52:10

160

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

climate change and massive biodiversity loss, both anthropogenic phenomena in their current instantiations. One of the things we require now is a new conception of how to govern ourselves as the planetary force our species has become. And a large part of that problem is that most national governments are in thrall to the forces of international capital, forces that are accelerating the crisis, creating more and more destructive feedback loops between culture and nature. To counter this, I believe that the species-level thinking that is inescapable in the Anthropocene must be made to fit with the conception we also have of ourselves as members of the “imagined communities” that are nations (Anderson 2006). More particularly, I’m going to argue that there is a special place for the notion of ecological nationalism in the Anthropocene and that Canadians should embrace it. I begin (section 2) by showing that to be ethically acceptable such nationalism must be a form of “rooted cosmopolitanism.” Since this is a contested notion among political philosophers I spend some time describing the version of it I think we should adopt. Next (section 3), I show that if we are going to be more ecologically responsible in this country we need to abandon a key facet of the Canadian environmental imaginary: the notion that our land is literally inexhaustible in its ability to provide for us and contain our wastes. I put all these ideas to work in a discussion of climate change policy in Canada in the wake of C O P 21 in Paris (section 4), before underlining the connection between the need for ecological nationalism and the nation-specific ideological distortions that stand in the way of sustainable living in the Anthropocene (section 5). 2 r  o o t e d c o s m o p o l i ta n i s m a n d e c o l o g i c a l n at i o n a l i s m Why are we … here … together? Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

One of the more attractive features of cosmopolitanism as it is articulated in much recent political and moral theory is that it seems to capture our intuitions about the broad scope of our duties. To many, it is both arbitrary and dangerous to suppose that our duties are fully circumscribed by the more or less local affiliations and group loyalties that partially define who we are (Pogge 1992; Beitz 1999; Tan 2004).

30761_DesRoches.indd 160

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

161

The cosmopolitan claims that we are “citizens of the world,” and that we may have duties to people well beyond our borders as long as our actions and omissions are affecting their vital interests. So in both a figurative and a literal sense, borders become less significant ways of marking differences of moral considerability. If the actions of my state affect the vital interests of people beyond its borders, then, other things being equal, I may have duties to people outside these borders, duties that can override what I owe to my compatriots. But bare cosmopolitanism seems too austere to motivate real-world agents. Can such agents really be expected to always lay aside their particular attachment, affiliations, and loyalties to attend to the interests of “humanity”? Such a view seems to deprive the moral life of all the “thick” detail that both makes it important to us and can motivate us robustly to act in accordance with its ideals, purposes, or directives. What we evidently require is a way of reconciling the particular and the universal, a theory that grounds universal duties in particular attachments, or at least shows that one set of attachments does not simply erase the other when they come into conflict. Let’s focus on the problem of moral motivation. It does seem as though our most important affiliations are local: the family, the neighbourhood community, the nation, and so on. And one of the things it means to call them important is to notice that people are willing to make sacrifices on their behalf, to set aside self-interest for a time to promote the interests of the group. Now, it has always been difficult, though not impossible, to see how such sacrifice can happen on behalf of total strangers or abstract humanity. The key challenge therefore is to tap particularistic motivational roots while remembering that these roots can also circumscribe our duties in morally arbitrary ways and that our moral gaze must often look beyond them. The middle path required here describes the theoretical field of “rooted cosmopolitanism” (Appiah 2000; 2007, chap. 6). Some philosophers have seen in Canada “particularly fertile ground for exploring” the complexities of the doctrine of rooted cosmopolitanism (Kymlicka and Walker 2012, 1). The reason for this, we are informed, is that while we are by no means a postnationalist state, our identity “has always been permeable to more cosmopolitan concerns” (Kymlicka and Walker 2012, 12). For the purposes of this chapter, I will take this self-description at face value. But how should we understand it theoretically? There is more than

30761_DesRoches.indd 161

2019-05-03 12:52:10

162

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

one way to think about the relation between the particular and the universal in rooted cosmopolitanism. We might say that our rooted attachments are not inherently inconsistent with our cosmopolitan duties, or that they are functionally required to achieve cosmopolitan goals, or, more strongly, that they are the seeds or moral sources of our cosmopolitan duties (Kymlicka and Walker 2012, 4–5). In what remains of this section, and broadly following Pogge, Beitz, Tan, and many others, I am going to argue for the latter, strong interpretation applied specifically to our national attachments. Many cosmopolitan theorists have noticed that there is, in the language of Charles Jonas, an “expansionary momentum” in the project of liberal nationalism (Jones 1999, 160; Tan 2012, 39; Benhabib 2004). That is, liberal nationalism is the project of building affiliations among people on the basis of a commitment to fundamental political equality among all members of the nation, most of whom are strangers to one another. It thus has its impetus in the recognition that the circle of moral considerability need not include only those whom one actually knows or with whom one exists in relations of relative immediacy. But there is no non-arbitrary reason to halt the outward movement of our moral sympathies at our own national borders and every reason, given the relative success of the liberal nationalist ideal, to push it beyond them (Tan 2012, 39–40). After all, what is arguably behind the recognition of co-nationals as moral patients is that they are, among other things, bearers of rights. Whereas it is easy to notice and overemphasize the tension between universal rights claims and particularistic affiliations, Benhabib has argued that this tension is actually “constitutive of democratic legitimacy” (Benhabib 2004, 44, 47). She sees politics as the “iterated” effort to negotiate the tension, recognizing that there may never be a fully satisfying reconciliation of its constituent elements (Benhabib 2004, 87). As long as we are committed in principle, and practice, to the idea that our duties may extend beyond our own borders in this fashion, how the negotiations should go will depend on the details of the issues in which we are interested (immigration, foreign aid, peacekeeping, climate policy, etc.). I don’t want to gainsay the difficulty of inhabiting this middle ground but if we want to avoid both abstract cosmopolitanism and cramped communitarianism we must seek to do so.

30761_DesRoches.indd 162

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

163

Here, we are investigating what we Canadians might owe to the global poor and future generations in a time of deep ecological crisis. Pogge argues that we may be related to groups like these “as supporters of, and beneficiaries from a global institutional order that substantially contributes to their destitution” (Pogge 2002, 50). It is now beyond dispute that the North’s profligate greenhouse gas emissions are leading to potentially catastrophic climate change, the most devastating effects of which will be visited on the global poor and future generations (Gardiner 2011; Shue 2014; Jamieson 2014; Williston 2015a). In this case, the relevant democratic “iteration” must therefore recognize that even if we are inclined to evade our responsibility to the disadvantaged through the appeal to national self-interest, the universal claims are overriding. Addressing these issues, Tan, for example, is unequivocal: “There is no tension between the competing special claims of patriotism and universal claims of cosmopolitanism because the claims of cosmopolitanism take precedence” (Tan 2012, 42). But, again, this is rooted, rather than bare cosmopolitanism, because we are meant to appreciate that “just as … we can permit personal pursuits and commitments only within the terms of domestic justice, so too at the global level patriotic favouritism is permissible only within the terms of global justice.” (Tan 2012, 42, my emphases). Our already established commitment to objective criteria of domestic justice compels the move to endorse strong principles of global and intergenerational justice in this case. To deny this is to invite the charge of moral arbitrariness. One way to understand climate change is that in a world in which greenhouse gas emissions need to be highly constrained in the interests of justice, there are no more innocent emissions. Whatever emissions remain within a responsible carbon budget are zero-sum: the emissions of any single party reduce by precisely that amount what is available to all other parties, including people of the future. In fact, as Henry Shue has argued, since we need to bring down emissions over the next few decades – rather than simply having them plateau – we are effectively dealing with a “shrinking zero-sum” allotment of them (Shue 2014, 99–100, 137). This is why greenhouse gas emissions are now intrinsically political, a point to which I return in the next two sections. The point can be generalized beyond greenhouse gas emissions. We might say that there are now no innocent large-scale technological incursions into nature at all. This does not mean that

30761_DesRoches.indd 163

2019-05-03 12:52:10

164

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

we cannot make such incursions – they are, after all, inevitable in the Anthropocene – only that we cannot do so in a manner unconstrained by considerations of cosmopolitan justice. The notion of ecological nationalism allows us to bring together the problem of deep ecological crisis and the doctrine of rooted ­cosmopolitanism. Let’s begin with a definition of the ecological nationalist, a characterological hybrid of Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationalism and Aldo Leopold’s land ethic: An ecological nationalist is a member of an imagined political community who believes that the first business of national politics is to maintain the beauty, integrity and stability of the Earth system down the generations. Let me expand on this with three points. First, as Anderson points out, the community is imagined because its members are mostly strangers to one another (Anderson 2006, 6). Their community is thus built largely on the basis of a shared set of commitments to the pursuit of a genuinely sustainable eco-politics. As Anderson puts it, even if they never meet, “in the minds of each [member of the nation] lives the image of their communion” (ibid.). Second, there is nothing essentially illiberal about this ideal. This is important to say, since so many have thought of nationalism as a pathological political form. While it is tempting to focus on the ways in which national loyalties can cause people to hate or kill, it is just as important to note the ways in which they can cause people to make sacrifices out of love for or devotion to the ideals of the collective (Anderson 2006, 52). Nationalism comes in many varieties. There is no reason to believe that endorsing any one of them commits one logically to endorsing any of the others, so that if one is an ecological nationalist one must also, say, be some kind of ethnic nationalist. To the contrary, one can embrace a form of nationalism – such as ecological nationalism – that is intrinsically inclusive and “generative” (Gare 1995, 126) while being resolutely opposed to all chauvinistic or illiberal nationalisms. Above all – this is the third point – I want to stress the deeply political, and also territorial, nature of my version of ecological nationalism. Andrew Dobson has argued that we need a conception of ecological citizenship to guide our political encounters in an age

30761_DesRoches.indd 164

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

165

of ecological crisis. I could not agree more, but he also claims that this conception must be “post-territorial” (Dobson 2003, 9–32) and I can see little need for putting the case this way. Attachment to a particular physical territory is a psychologically powerful source of individual and collective self-understanding. Most of us grow up with deep feelings of attachment and loyalty to specific physical places at various geographical levels, including that of the country. We evidently care about this bit of land and will, if pushed, make sacrifices to defend it from various threats. We cannot afford to lose this motivational source. The emotions sustaining the attachment are an artefact of the way we come to understand ourselves in relation to specific collective narratives, of course, and so national and historical self-understanding are usually intertwined in complex ways. The connection to history, in turn, ties conceptions of national identity to politics. Thus the meaning and practice of ecological nationalism is inextricably bound up with ecological politics, and both have essentially to do with the ways in which a people has sought over the years to govern its relation to a politically bounded, if sometimes shifting, piece of the Earth. The scope and contours of these concerns change dramatically in the Anthropocene. In this epoch, national self-understandings, and the politics they both define and are defined by, must also be articulated against the backdrop of what is happening at our hands to the Earth system. But this too can be situated on rooted cosmopolitanism’s middle ground. One can, for example, think about the melting of Arctic sea ice as an issue of international and intergenerational concern, on the one hand, and of state sovereignty on the other. Refusing to allow oil drilling in the Arctic seabed would be one way for Canada, or any other circumpolar nation, to assert both commitments or concerns. Unfortunately, in Canada (and elsewhere) we are a long way from thinking like this. Indeed, state sovereignty with respect to the Arctic is for the most part currently invoked to claim entitlement to Arctic oil (among other hoped-for treasures), the extraction of which will worsen climate change. Having invoked the notion of a community’s historical self-understanding, we should therefore note that certain aspects of the latter can also be an impediment to the sort of politics we want or need in the new epoch. In the next section, I will argue that we can draw an illuminating contrast between Canada and the United States in this regard.

30761_DesRoches.indd 165

2019-05-03 12:52:10

166

Canadian Environmental Philosophy 3 p  r ov i d e n t i a l i s m a n d s u p e r a b u n d a n c e

These forests could not disappear. In New France they were vast and eternal. Annie Proulx, Barkskins

Jedediah Purdy has argued that four ideals shape the American environmental imaginary, all expressions of what he calls the “myth of providentialism.” They are the frontier vision of settlement, wildernessseeking Romanticism, utilitarian conservationism, and ecological environmentalism. He thinks that North Americans today live in the “legacy” of these four ideals, but that they are all pervaded by a certain “anti-politics” (Purdy 2015, 27). Let’s examine the four ideals to see what he means by this. Readers of Philip Meyer’s marvelous multi-generational novel, The Son, will appreciate the power of the frontier ideal to Americans in the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century. The novel is set in what is now Texas but was then the site of shifting settlements and violent encounters among the Comanche, the Mexicans, and the newly arriving white settlers. Eli McCullough, the novel’s eponymous son, is a violent and opportunistic “Texan.” As a teenager he is kidnapped by the Comanche, with whom he lives for three years, eventually making his way back to white society where in due course he becomes a successful cattle rancher and then a super-wealthy oil baron. Eli embodies the frontier ideal: all that matters to him is taking and holding parcels of land by whatever means necessary. The ability to do this – to be out in the “wild,” always on the lookout for something to take – is an expression of freedom that is fundamental to who he is. Because of this, he operates in a sphere that is beyond politics, if we understand the latter to involve justice-­ constrained negotiations among conflicting parties over scarce resources. It is telling that down the generations there is just one member of the family – Peter, Eli’s grandson – who thinks critically about the justice of the McCulloughs’ ruthless way of doing business, and everyone describes him as a disgrace to the family tradition. As Purdy sees it, this anti-politics is key to the frontier ideal in an America beginning to experience significant class conflict in its already settled zones of habitation to the East:

30761_DesRoches.indd 166

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

167

The frontier had eased the pressure of these problems, making expansion an alternative to political conflict, exit an alternative to exploitation. When (white) Americans felt trapped in poverty or exploitation, they could in principle leave for open land … This was an individualist safety valve to release social conflict, not a collective means of resolving it. (Purdy 2015, 34) Now it could be argued that America has never fully transcended this mode of thinking, even though the frontier officially closed in 1890. One way of understanding the nature of imperial power, after all, is that it is always involved in the process of finding new frontiers – new colonies, the resources of economic vassals, outer space, etc. – and that whereas this quest creates a quasi-epiphenomenal politics, it is never shaped by a truly democratic politics. So if frontiers prevent the development of a “genuinely political life” because people do not “turn and face one another” (Purdy 2015, 35) when turned instead toward a seemingly unclaimed space, then Americans have never really become a genuinely political people. An anti-political animus is also at work in utilitarian conservationism and Romanticism, though these ideals are subtler than the frontier ideal. The rise of conservationism in the era of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot had much to do with the perceived need to manage environmental resources, like forests, for the perceived common good. The tool to use in this endeavour was cost-benefit analysis, which, for Purdy, implies that the “social benefit of a policy was an uncontroversial quantity, not a target of competing values and interests” (Purdy 2015, 38). The managerial, welfare-maximizing approach to nature eschews conflicts over fundamental questions of value. Depending on who is defending it, the approach is characterized either as an uncontroversially legitimate super-value or as a value-neutral, and therefore objective, set of techniques for determining the common good in issues of resource use. Either way, it tends to dominate decision-making in policy formation while being fundamentally closed to genuinely democratic deliberation. The sort of nature Romanticism evident in the writings and political activities of John Muir and the Sierra Club arises largely as a reaction to managerialism. Although it is false to suggest that Muir in particular did not advance the cause of environmental politics, Purdy argues that, even so, he failed to understand the radical democratic potential

30761_DesRoches.indd 167

2019-05-03 12:52:10

168

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

of his own message. Instead, he and his ilk combined a “quasi-religious elitism on the one hand and touristic consumerism on the other,” which “produced no political agenda to open wide the human relation to nature as a democratic question” (Purdy 2015, 41). Finally, consider ecological environmentalism. Although it looks odd to say that this ideal is cut from the same anti-political cloth as the other three, Purdy argues that it has in effect been co-opted by economics. This is why we are so keen to couch environmental problems in terms of “cost externalization” and so on. The result is that we believe we can “put a price on nearly everything, from swamps to oceans to wild plants” (Purdy 2015, 43). The problem with this is by now familiar. It assumes that the workings of the market can establish the value of all environmental goods, whereas we know that “there is no way around politics” in the determination of environmental values and the policy prescriptions expressing them (Purdy 2015, 44). So the claim appears to be that ecological environmentalism is just an offshoot of conservationism. There is a good deal to be suspicious of in this analysis, not the least of which is the unconvincing treatment of ecological environmentalism. While it is true that there exists in this ideal a tendency to think of environmental problems in economistic terms, this approach is by no means dominant, at least within the field of environmental ethics. Indeed, for all their differences, biocentrism, ecocentrism, ecofeminism, environmental pragmatism, deep ecology, environmental aesthetics, and Gaia theory have all evolved in large measure as a way of thinking about the human/nature relation in ways that are broader than those offered by the economistic approach. But let’s set this point aside and focus instead on what Purdy gets right: the historically anti-political bent to the American way of seeing nature, and the concomitant claim that what is ethically required in the Anthropocene is the re-politicization of nature. As Purdy notes, early Americans thought of the new continent as “the place that had been waiting for them” (Purdy 2015, 87), set aside for them by God. The main claim appears to concern the method of justification in environmental policy. The providentialist can justify his actions by simply pointing to what he takes to be the divine fiat. This strategy can be opposed only by some competing “vision” of providence and is therefore materially unfalsifiable. That is, because it is an essentially normative claim that gets its binding force from the revealed will of

30761_DesRoches.indd 168

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

169

God, no set of facts, no purely material reality, can overturn it. This makes it especially difficult to dislodge. Now Purdy’s four ideals have played some role in shaping the Canadian experience with and attitudes toward nature (Forkey 2012), but in my view the differences between the two national experiments are as important as the similarities. In his seminal The Fur Trade in Canada, Harold Innis argues famously that frontierism as a practice – rather than an ideal – unfolds in spite of geography. Boundaries exist for it only to be broken through and redrawn. The contours of the land are shaped by the will of the individuals involved in pushing relentlessly forward, regardless of human or topographical “barriers” to expansion. However, Innis claims that “the present Dominion emerged not in spite of geography but because of it” (quoted in Dewar 2004, 349). The brute facticity of the land both slowed settlement patterns here relative to what was happening to the South and set up an east-west axis that acted as a counterforce to the comparatively unrestrained American continental push. Moreover, the economic prerogatives of the colonial powers were an important force of constraint in Canada. For example, early settlement proceeded at a deliberately slow pace because the British and French were underwhelmed by the value of Canadian raw materials compared with the gold and spices flowing in from elsewhere (Sefton MacDowell 2012, 15). When early Canadian settlers and explorers invoked God or the Bible at all it was often by way of complaint. Thus Cartier referred to Labrador as “the land God gave to Cain” (Sefton MacDowell 2012, 25). That sort of sentiment stands in stark contrast to the enthusiasm of the providentialist. However, Canadian history has been dominated by a different myth, one that has proven scarcely less detrimental to nature than American providentialism. This is what Sefton MacDowell calls the “myth of superabundance” (Sefton MacDowell 2012, 110), the notion that this land is inexhaustible in its ability to both supply us with raw materials and contain our wastes. To see how this has worked, let’s reflect on the development of the Canadian environmental imaginary over the last 200 years or so. Until now, there have been two broad phases in our environmental history. In the first – from pre-Confederation to the environmental turn between 1962 and 1972 – the degradation unfolded in plain view. Any catalogue of this is bound to be incomplete. In the East and

30761_DesRoches.indd 169

2019-05-03 12:52:10

170

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

on the Prairies, early settlers started forest fires to make way for agriculture. When the soil gave out, they simply moved on to the next forest. As Sefton MacDowell puts it, “the land was so abundant that early settlers could not imagine a shortage … Pioneers thought the forests were boundless, that waterways could absorb all damage, and that fish were abundant” (Sefton MacDowell 2012, 53, 65). In this first phase, the myth also enabled the large-scale pollution of the Great Lakes, which were typically viewed as vast waste sinks with “huge assimilative capacities” (191). Again, there is much more to say about the first phase, but I want to focus here on the second phase, which began in the last few decades of the twentieth century and is now coming to a close with our awareness that we are emerging into the Anthropocene (more on this below). Since we have become pervasively aware of large-scale industrial pollution, biodiversity loss, the threat of clear-cut logging to forest integrity, climate change, and more, it has been necessary for industry to, as it were, push its degradative activities underground. The myth of superabundance, still operative, has become ideologically sublimated on a scale and with a sophistication not seen in the first phase of degradation. In its essence the second phase is agonal. The myth of superabundance has effectively run up against its antithesis and it has responded by going underground. So environmentalism, as a critical political practice, has been forced to engage in a battle on two fronts: against both the degradation of nature – pushed ever further out of sight – and the debasement of language about what is going on in the environment by industry spin. This, I suggest, is the key feature of the second phase of our environmental history: the various ways in which industry seeks to hide what is really going on, and also the manner in which many of us abet the deception. Consider the Harper government’s insistence in 2011 that mining and exporting asbestos (chrysotile) is not problematic since its use is legal in the countries, like India and Thailand, to which we export it. In this case, a harm-causing economic activity is removed from view in three distinct ways: 1) by exporting the product to foreign countries whose politics we can ignore; 2) by the fact that most of the bodies that will become cancerous from exposure to the product are brown, making them easier for whites to write off; and 3) by describing the practice in the putatively morally neutral language of the law. This threefold displacement – geographical, racial, and

30761_DesRoches.indd 170

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

171

linguistic – functions to obfuscate the practice and thus foreclose a thorough ethical assessment of it. Since I’m going to be talking about climate policy in the next section I’ll close this one with a look at an even more complex example: tar sands mining. Many have seen the ghastly images of the open pit tar sands mines in Alberta’s Athabasca region. In normal people, these images induce feelings of profound revulsion at industrial overreach and hubris. However, industry defenders typically respond by saying that the image is a misleading way to think about what is really going on in that region. This is because much of the extraction now takes place with Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology (one form of so-called in-situ mining), which gets the oil out without disturbing the surface to the same degree as open pit mining. Oil industry executives, rightwing think tanks, and pocketed politicians all assure us that this is technological innovation in the service of “balancing” economic expansion and environmental protection. Their implicit claim is simple: since the degradation can’t be seen on the surface it does not really exist. Just look! But what shows up when we look closely is another matter. SAGD is employed in roughly 80 per cent of all bitumen extraction in the Athabasca region. But far from being the environmental boon its defenders present, this is cause for deep concern. This is mainly because, while open pit mining allows for the extraction of bitumen down to 75 metres, SA GD extends this range to 600 metres (Mech 2011, 11). On the assumption that the distribution of tar is more or less uniform all the way down, this means, obviously, that much more climate-damaging tar can be extracted and burned with these technologies (about 8 times more, in fact). Moreover, S AG D is no better than open pit mining when it comes to the impact of land fragmentation on the species that live in the boreal biome (Mech 2011, 6). And because it involves the subterranean injection of steam (to melt the bitumen), SA GD uses considerably more fresh water and natural gas (to heat the water) than open pit mining does (Williston 2015b, 335). Finally, new research conducted on sediment cores near Cold Lake, Alberta – adjacent to a SAGD mining site – has shown a 137 per cent increase in the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the soil since measurements were first taken in 1985. We simply don’t know what effects this carcinogenic byproduct of tar extraction is

30761_DesRoches.indd 171

2019-05-03 12:52:10

172

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

going to have on surrounding ecosystems (Korosi, Cook, et al. 2016). Through the application of new technologies, environmental damage is thus displaced: from the visually concentrated open pit to the atmosphere, the waterways, the soil, First Nations inhabitants, the region’s species, and, finally, to the language available to describe what is going on. In short, a large part of the environmental worry about S AG D is precisely what its boosters take to be its primary virtue: the multifaceted hiddenness of the practice. This is the myth of superabundance at work in Canada. What’s most important here is that the myth has resulted in an anti-politics every bit as tenacious as the American version. The harms these practices bring – many of which are examples of what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence” (Nixon 2011) – are for the most part politically unaccounted for. Those most affected – Indigenous Peoples, the poor, and people of the future – have very little voice in these industrial developments because they have very little power, or none at all. But there’s an important difference between the two national imaginaries. The anti-politics of providentialism, we have seen, is rooted in the belief that there is a moral justification for the practices it licenses: the divine fiat. By contrast, the myth of superabundance sees no need for such justification because it does not recognize the existence of natural limitations on our industrial activities. Environmental politics arises only insofar as we attempt to delineate the natural boundaries enclosing us and then distribute the relevant benefits and burdens defined by those boundaries in accordance with the demands of justice. In Canada we have not yet done this adequately. But the good news is that the myth of superabundance is less epistemically powerful than the myth of providentialism precisely because it makes no appeal to the will of God. In fact, it is not really normative at all since it consists in a claim about the way (a part of) the world allegedly is. Unlike the myth of providentialism, it is therefore falsifiable. For some time now we have been getting signs from the natural world that its resources are drying up or that exploiting them is having negative knock-on effects elsewhere in the biosphere. That is why we have gone to such lengths to hide our degradative activities from genuinely democratic scrutiny (as with S A G D ). People generally hide things only because they realize that discovery of them will alter their designs or affect their interests negatively. From the standpoint of providentialism, there’s no point to such subterfuge.

30761_DesRoches.indd 172

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

173

In living out the divine will by pushing into all that “empty” space, privatizing every scrap of the Commons, maximizing the welfare of the collective in accordance with “objective” managerial techniques, or losing oneself in spiritual-aesthetic contemplation of the divinein-nature, every obstacle or apparent defeat simply confirms the wisdom of the original dispensation. It might seem as though only large-scale environmental catastrophe could thwart this way of thinking, but even that can be interpreted as part of the divine plan. This is what makes American anti-environmentalism so intransigent, especially among Republicans. Canadians might wish they had this evidence-proof, transcendent escape hatch from their environmental responsibilities. But in spite of the fact that religious people, many of them zealots, colonized this country, there is precious little in the historical record to indicate that Canadians saw this land as something the Christian God set aside out of love for them. Converting the heathens may have been viewed as a divinely imposed task and settlers may often have seen the new land as accursed (“the land that God gave to Cain”), but rarely was it cast as a gift from God to be cultivated and admired as material evidence of His benevolence. After all, a people can think this way about itself only if it believes it is exceptional and Canadians have never thought of themselves this way. We are instead stuck (for now at least) with the myth of superabundance. But the discovery that we are in the Anthropocene is the most potent weapon environmentalists have ever had in their fight against this myth. In other words, I suggest that our awareness that we are entering the Anthropocene – or are in the end-Holocene – inaugurates a third phase in the history of the Canadian environmental imaginary. In the second phase, as we have seen, industry could defend itself by moving its operations – often covertly – to the next piece of “free nature,” but the chief feature of the new epoch is that there is now nowhere left to hide. The next section shows why this is so and explains the relevance of this finding for climate policy in Canada. 4 p  l a n e ta r y b o u n d a r i e s a n d c l i m at e c h a n g e p o l i c y i n c a n a d a I expect that one day your more perceptive grandchildren will say that you let the politicians lie to you. James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren

30761_DesRoches.indd 173

2019-05-03 12:52:10

174

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

There is perhaps no more subtle an instance of blindness to the waste products of industrialization – and so no better example of the myth of superabundance at work – than carbon pollution. Aided by the implicit belief that the atmosphere’s ability to assimilate the stuff is boundless we continue to tuck it away up there virtually without constraint. Clive Spash has claimed that responding intelligently to “climate change involves managing the carbon cycle not internalizing negative externalities” (cited in Jamieson 2014, 136). The idea of becoming managers of the Earth system is a good way to understand the central focus of politics in the Anthropocene, and I think it should be generalized beyond the carbon cycle. In my view, the most fruitful way to do this is to adopt and operationalize the notion of finding “safe operating spaces for humanity” within planetary boundaries (Rockström, Steffen, et al. 2009a, 2009b; Steffen, Richardson, et al. 2014; Rockström and Klum 2015). The main boundaries are certain biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), freshwater consumption, land-use change, biodiversity, climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and ocean acidification (Rockström and Klum 2015, 65). The concept of planetary boundaries is constructed in an effort to move us away from a piecemeal and localized approach to environmental protection. In particular it does away with policy focused on setting tolerable limits, optimal targets, or critical loads for pollution abatement generally. Instead, the planetary boundaries approach focuses “directly on biophysical processes – especially the role of thresholds in triggering abrupt and potentially catastrophic changes” (Rockström and Klum 2015, 64). In other words, in formulating national or subnational environmental policy we start at the global or bio-geophysical level and work our way back to the national level. This reverses the traditional way of making policy and also accords nicely with the structure of rooted cosmopolitanism. With respect to many of these boundaries – biodiversity, biogeochemical flows, land-use change, and climate change – we are already in a dangerous or at least uncertain zone. This means that the procedural reversal is critical in these areas, but it is needed in all of them since the way we get into trouble with any of them is by assuming we can formulate responsible policy entirely from the ground up. Two further points about planetary boundaries are in order. The first has to do with the role played in the new paradigm by the concept of “hyper-coherence.” Ecologists understand that the biosphere is a giant set of interlocking systems whose behaviours

30761_DesRoches.indd 174

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

175

are often governed by cascading effects, emergent properties, abrupt changes, positive and negative feedbacks, and so on. Changes in one part of a system can have profound effects in other, seemingly unconnected, parts of that system. For this reason, just a few weakened nodes in a system can undermine the system as a whole. This is why biologists, for example, insist that ecosystems need resiliency – in the form of maximal biodiversity – in order to withstand external perturbations (Wilson 2002, 108). And it is why biodiversity loss is so alarming. Now, it is crucial to note that the various planetary boundaries are also interconnected in the same sense: failing to regulate our carbon emissions threatens biodiversity and ocean acidification, for instance. Hyper-coherence, thus construed, is for this reason the death knell of the myth of superabundance. In the Anthropocene we must build resiliency in the whole biosphere (Rockström and Klum 2015, 78–9). In other words, we can no longer assume that there is any such thing as “boundless assimilative capacity” anywhere in the biosphere. To the extent that the Canadian relation to nature is dominated by the belief that there is, the insight can scarcely be more salient for us. The second point concerns justice, specifically global and intergenerational justice in a world defined by planetary boundaries. Because national and subnational environmental policies – greenhouse gas emissions targets, freshwater conservation measures, biodiversity protection, etc. – must be determined by considerations of global caps, issues of justice are unavoidable. This is the new political reality of the Anthropocene. In every boundary category, we are faced with Shue’s shrinking zero-sum. We must decide how to distribute the “space” remaining within the boundary in a way that is equitable to all the countries of the world as well as people of the future. For nations that have already benefited from industrialization, the only possibility is therefore to shrink economic throughput dramatically (Heinberg 2015, 145). But this can be done within those countries only in accordance with principles of equity. It is unjust to constrain access to energy, for example, if the people who would feel the pinch of this policy the most are the poor or other traditionally marginalized groups, such as Indigenous Peoples. Lovelock has argued that what we need now is “sustainable retreat,” a phrase that encapsulates nicely the two points I have just outlined (Lovelock 2006, 7). We require economic restraint shaped by the demands of global and intergenerational justice (Lovelock is not much

30761_DesRoches.indd 175

2019-05-03 12:52:10

176

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

interested in justice, so I’m taking some liberties interpreting his phrase). This is an extraordinarily difficult task. Explaining why would require a whole book, so let’s focus instead on the carbon budget and Canadian climate policy. In C O P 21 (Conference of the Parties) in Paris in December 2015, world leaders agreed to strive toward keeping global warming well below 2°C (relative to the pre-industrial baseline). It’s an ambitious goal, and there’s no reason to be optimistic that we will meet it. However, since we cannot avoid the issue of climate change mitigation altogether, we Canadians need to know what the target means for us. A recent paper in Nature made the argument that to meet its burden Canada must leave 24 per cent of its natural gas, 75 per cent of its oil, and 88 per cent of its coal in the ground (McGlade and Ekins 2015). This, it should be noted, is what is required to meet the 2°C target, not the one below that. The Canadian Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, led the charge in Paris for the lower target, but the stark truth is that if we cannot leave the appropriate amount of our fossil fuels alone, she had no business doing so (unless, of course, the rest of the Canadian economy does all the work in getting us to our reduction targets while the tar sands expand as planned, a patent absurdity). Alternatively, we could take the minister at her word, and ask exactly how we need to shape our energy future in order to live up to the commitment. Gordon Laxer has provided a policy roadmap to help us out here. A huge part of the problem in this country is that none of the fossil fuel resource is publicly owned. That is, it is not owned by Canada, though plenty of other countries have state oil companies operating here (Laxer 2015, 36). Laxer argues for an energy nationalism that would see all of what remains of our conventional oil diverted to building an energy system based on renewables. This means ceasing to be both an oil importer and an oil exporter. In the current situation, which aggravates our energy insecurity, we export two-thirds of our oil, while Quebec imports 90 per cent of its oil, Atlantic Canada imports 83 per cent, and Ontario imports 8 per cent (Laxer 2015, 77). Our total conventional oil output is 1.4 million barrels/day, enough to last decades and to provide the bridge to renewables with little help from the tar sands (Laxer 2015, 91). Laxer’s proposal is radical because it entails (a) shutting down the tar sands within fifteen years; (b) building no new oil pipelines; and (c) opting out of any free trade agreement containing the equivalent of N A F T A ’s “proportionality clause,” which commits us to continue

30761_DesRoches.indd 176

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

177

exporting oil to the other partners at or above established levels (this clause has been rescinded in the new Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement). Think of the problem in relation to a carbon tax. This is no panacea but getting a measure of our willingness to impose a meaningful tax might provide evidence of the strength of our commitment to avoid dangerous climate change. So how high should such a tax be if it is genuinely aimed at doing our part to keep the world below 2°C? The federal Liberals have announced a carbon tax that begins at $10/ tonne in 2018 and rises to $50/tonne by 2022. This sounds impressive but we should note three points about it. First, it is far from clear that the government will be able to stick with this target, or with any tax at all, in the face of stiff opposition from provinces like Saskatchewan and, with the ascension to power of the deeply anti-environmentalist Ford Conservatives, Ontario. Provincial opposition to the tax seems to be building ominously, with a concerted Supreme Court challenge likely in the offing. Second, Alberta has clearly tied its consent to the tax (which might in any case be rescinded as the political winds shift in that province) to the approval of new fossil fuel pipelines. This deal seems like sound political strategy on the part of the federal government (the pipeline bolsters the fortunes of the largely Liberal-friendly provincial N D P ), but it should be noted that it is also entirely contrary to the point of the tax, which is to help decarbonize the global economy as quickly as possible. Expanding our export capacity through pipeline construction while working to dampen domestic demand for oil with carbon pricing schemes will produce little or no net reduction in emissions, and this is what really matters. As is often said in this context the atmosphere doesn’t care where emissions come from, so the Trudeau government’s late-2016 approval of both the Trans Mountain and Line 3 pipelines (not to mention its loud cheer for Trump’s approval of Keystone XL ) looks like a retreat from the goals of Paris. Not including Keystone XL, these pipelines will increase tar sands output by 1 million barrels a day, and, like much fossil fuel infrastructure, lock in these production rates for thirty years or more. Third, and most important, the proposed price is in fact far below what is needed. To meet the “social cost of carbon,” some economists, stressing the uncertainties involved, put the ideal carbon price at $100/ tonne or higher (Wagner and Weitzman 2015, 58). Indeed, the authors

30761_DesRoches.indd 177

2019-05-03 12:52:10

178

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

of a recent policy report argue that to meet its Paris commitments, the Canadian government would need to impose a $30/tonne price right away and raise this to $200/tonne by 2030 (Jaccard, Hein, and Vass 2016). In short, with the proposed tax we will come nowhere near covering the full social cost of carbon. Clearly, despite us now exceeding 400 ppm of atmospheric carbon, we have still failed to grasp just how dangerous our situation is. When it comes to pricing carbon, our politicians are evidently selling us what Gardiner calls a “shadow solution” to the climate crisis (Gardiner 2011, chap. 4). The only way to justify the low price is to assume that future generations will be significantly richer than we are and that we should therefore apply a relatively high discount rate to any investments we make now that are designed to benefit them. In this case, so goes the argument, the adopted price effectively internalizes the externality of carbon pollution. But the fundamental assumption of ever-increasing wealth is untenable in view of the very real possibility of climatic disruption that will severely impair the global economy. I have argued elsewhere that we are currently on target for a roughly 5°C increase in average global temperatures by the end of the century, a level not seen in tens of millions of years. Adapting to such a quick temperature rise would not just impair but likely cripple the global economy (Williston 2015a, chap. 3). No proponent of high discount rates – i.e., the overwhelming majority of economists – has faced this reality squarely, in my view. Our tepid and mostly symbolic carbon prices evidently make us feel good but in adopting them we are not “balancing” the economy and the environment. To the contrary, invocations of “balance” by our politicians and media pundits simply provide rhetorical cover for unsustainable economic expansion, an approach to policy that is, precisely, helping to unbalance the Earth system. “Balance” is a term of mischief in democratic political life generally and environmental politics more specifically. It is crucial to point out that these targets are calibrated precisely to cause us no economic pain because such pain translates to lost votes for our politicians. This means that all the pain of adaptation is being back-loaded to people of the future (Gardiner 2011, chap. 5). But just and sustainable policy options are available to us in this area. All we need is the moral courage to enact them and the intelligence to see through the fog of ideological distortion in which we are currently mired.

30761_DesRoches.indd 178

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Canadian Politics in the Anthropocene

179

5 c  onclusion

Climate policy – and, more particularly, carbon pricing – is just one facet of the environmental challenges we face in this country, albeit the most urgent one at the moment. The larger burden of this chapter has been to show that our more general environmental task can be approached from the standpoint of ecological nationalism and that this approach is valuable because it shows how citizens and leaders of this country might find the motivation to make the hard choices we need. The promise (and peril) of nationalism generally is its ability to stir people to action in the name of the national ideal. Suitably constrained by cosmopolitan principles, a specifically Canadian ecological nationalism could be a powerful force of progressive environmental change. More emphatically, Canadian ecological nationalism is, I suggest, a necessity given the nation-specific ideological distortions under which we currently labour. Even if other nations share some version of it, the myth of superabundance is a quintessentially Canadian delusion powered by ideological forces that are ours to tame or reshape. It follows that what we need more than anything right now is a new way of thinking of the Canadian collective that allows us to address Anthropocene challenges in a way that transcends the extractivist default. Our current petro-politics is the latest expression of the notion that all we know how to do in this country, economically speaking, is pull “resources” from nature – fish, gold, copper, potash, bitumen, whatever – and peddle them to the highest international bidder, the environment be damned. A new ecologically inflected nationalism will help us see beyond this stance by tying our environmental behaviour firmly to our sense of who we most fundamentally are as a people. For instance, instead of worrying about preserving the standard of living of our richest citizens, we should be thinking about preserving coastal cities like Vancouver. New research has shown that many of these cities may be lost to sea-level rise within a century or so if we do not take decisive action now (Hansen, Sato, et al. 2016). In the end, this is all about regenerating our democracy by way of rejecting the quasi-epiphenomenal anti-politics that currently defines it, at least with respect to environmental policy. For this reason, John Breuilly is surely correct to argue that, “an effective nationalism develops

30761_DesRoches.indd 179

2019-05-03 12:52:10

180

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

where it makes political sense for an opposition to the government to claim to represent the nation against the present state” (quoted in Gare 1995, 121; emphasis added). In the Anthropocene, we must collectively stop believing in the myth of superabundance and get used to living within ecological limits and looking each other squarely in the eye as we do so, i.e., developing a genuinely inclusive environmental politics (in my view this starts with meaningful reconciliation between First Nations and settler peoples, but that’s a separate topic). Learning to see our response to these challenges as a matter of national pride – or, as the case may be, shame – is crucial to building a model of citizenship that can help us recover our sense of collective agency in this ambiguous and dangerous new epoch.

n ote Thanks to Tyler DesRoches, Simon Dalby, and two anonymous reviewers at MQ UP for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

30761_DesRoches.indd 180

2019-05-03 12:52:10

9

Virtue in the Anthropocene Kent A. Peacock

Our species is presently faced with a complex of ecological challenges of its own making that threaten all that we have so far accomplished and that will not wait indefinitely for an answer. The icecaps are melting now; fish, wildlife, and forests are vanishing now.1 The human impact on the Earth system is so massive that some geoscientists say that it defines a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). Philosophy can contribute to our response to these challenges in several ways. Here I will argue that it could be very helpful to revisit the ancient Greek conception of virtue, arête – although I’m going to do this in a way that Plato and Socrates themselves might not have found to be entirely congenial. The points to be made here are that the notion of arête, broadened in certain respects, is a powerful unifying concept that gives us an effective way of speaking about human excellence in general, and that certain forms of arête are especially relevant to the ecological challenges we face today. A number of authors have insightfully explored the possibility that there are specifically environmental virtues, such as benevolence, humility, or gratitude (Hill 2012; Frasz 2012). Here I will look at the notion of virtue from a broader perspective in which I will attempt to hark back to the ancient notion of arête and link it with a modern, evolutionary picture of the human species. In The Apology (38a), Socrates stated that the greatest good is to talk every day of virtue. If we interpret this claim using modern conceptions of virtue, then it seems that Socrates was obsessed with morality or the lamentable lack of it among his fellow Greeks. Socrates was a moralist, among other things, but given the ancient notion of arête (which he would not have thought necessary to explain to his audience in the Apology),

30761_DesRoches.indd 181

2019-05-03 12:52:10

182

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

he almost certainly had something much more comprehensive in mind as well. This chapter is not a project in Socratic exegesis, however, and classical scholars may be horrified at the way in which I shamelessly pick and choose pieces of ancient thought to serve my purposes. Rather, I want to see what can be made of the ancient Greek notion of virtue in its possible applications to our current ecological and evolutionary challenges. But we immediately run into a problem of translation: the modern term “virtue” (la vertu) has Latin and Judeo-Christian connotations that render it a very poor translation of the ancient Greek arête. Socrates, as a Greek of his time, could not have had in mind anything like the Calvinistic self-abnegation that Thomas Malthus spoke of when he said, “The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil” (Malthus 1992). Socrates, and most Greeks in the classical era, would have scoffed at such a blinkered and narrow notion of moral virtue. While the ancient Greeks disapproved of excess, obviously most (at least of the classical period) were not enamoured of self-denial, either.2 A drunkard was regarded with contempt, but so also (for different reasons) was a teetotaller.3 Aristotle’s advocacy of the “golden mean” was consistent with a long line of Greek thought on the value of balance, moderation, and good judgment. The best translation for arête in its most general sense is characteristic excellence, and in the following, when I use the modern word “virtue” I do so in a way that is intended to align it with this ancient sense of arête. A thing has arête when it satisfies its telos, its goal, aim, or purpose, in a way that is especially efficient, elegant, and appropriate to the nature and potentialities of that thing. Note that virtue so defined has an essentially aesthetic component; it is not merely efficiency in the attainment of a result, nor is it merely a disposition to act in ways that meet with moral approval. For the Greeks, beauty was both a byproduct of and a way of recognizing excellence – and possibly a cause of the latter as well. For instance, ethics understood in the Aristotelian way as habitual excellence of character is the beautiful in conduct. Thus the ancient Greeks would have regarded the modern separation of aesthetics and ethics as unnatural in the extreme. We’ll return to the importance of beauty; for now, the key thing to grasp is that what Socrates could really have been saying – or, at least, what we can make of what he said in the Apology – is that the most interesting and important thing to ask is, in what ways can human beings be excellent? What are we exceptionally good at? This could

30761_DesRoches.indd 182

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Virtue in the Anthropocene

183

include the practice of certain moral or social virtues but it could also include other forms of excellent behaviour or performance. Hence, in other dialogues, Socrates (or Plato speaking in Socrates’ voice) also explored the notion that virtue is identical with knowledge4 – which would of course include knowledge of the good but need not necessarily be limited to that important consideration. I am not going to attempt an exhaustive catalogue of human virtues, but rather point to certain virtues that are especially important from an evolutionary perspective, given the (largely self-induced) survival challenges that our species faces today. The concept of virtue itself has evolved in important ways. As H.D.F. Kitto explains (1956), the ancient Greek conception of virtue developed from the Homeric era to the days of Socrates and Plato. Homeric virtue was martial and included qualities such as courage, daring, loyalty, cleverness in survival or outwitting an opponent – and noble resignation in facing the inevitability of death and descent into Hades, where one could hope for nothing more than an eternity as a “flittering shade.” Life was short, death was final, and the point, if any, was to be as magnificent as possible in the passage from one to the other. The mighty Odysseus had “surpassing” virtue (as Kitto puts it) but he was not a nice or kindly person in the Christian sense. He would have gladly stolen the crown jewels from a rival king, but he would never have stolen candy from a baby – not because it would be wrong to do so, but because it would be unseemly, beneath him. It would have sullied his virtue to do such a cowardly thing. (One of my students once compared Odysseus to James Bond – not a bad comparison.) For the Socrates of the middle-period dialogues, virtue is above all civic; great leaders such as Pericles and Themistocles are held up as exemplars of virtue, and the Meno (perhaps ironically) asks whether such excellence is teachable or is an inexplicable gift of the gods. This concept of citizenly virtue is useful today, though on a larger scale than the city-state. Climate change challenges humanity to act on the basis of intelligent, creative foresight on a planetary scale. We have to think globally and act globally, and we don’t have a great deal of time to figure out how to do this. So virtue today could include one’s excellence as a planetary citizen.5 But because our species is faced today with nothing less than an existential challenge of its own making I want to explore notions of human excellence on an even larger scale: in the face of this challenge, what peculiarly human qualities, capacities, or excellences are most likely to conduce to our continued

30761_DesRoches.indd 183

2019-05-03 12:52:10

184

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

survival as the sorts of beings that we would like to be and could be? What set of excellences would give us the best chance of overcoming the challenges that we now face? These questions point to an evolutionary interpretation of the ways in which humans can be characteristically excellent. Arête in its classical sense has meaning only in relation to a telos, an end, goal, purpose, or intended function. Excellence is therefore relative to the telos; an excellent racehorse would be a poor draft horse. The telos of an artefact or a purposefully bred animal such as a race horse is pre-defined, but what does it mean to speak of the telos of a natural entity such as a human being? Even artefacts can be excellent in ways not intended by their creators; one of the things that makes the screwdriver, for example, so useful is its pluripotency. While the screwdriver was designed to perform a very specific task, it became a general-purpose tool. Thus, it is more useful to think of arête as defined in terms of an entity’s potentialities than some preconceived purpose. Although there are hints of such a notion in the thought of Aristotle, this idea of a dynamic, evolving telos goes well beyond what most ancient Greek thinkers were willing to consider. Empedocles (Kenny 2004, 20–4) seems to have had a glimmering of the possibility of evolution by natural selection, but most other ancient Greek thinkers (especially Plato) were too caught up in their efforts to define the way things should be to pay enough attention to the way things are – or could be. In the Republic (529–30), Plato has Socrates state that while the young philosopher-rulers should study celestial mechanics as an intellectual exercise and to better appreciate how things in the heavens should behave, the one thing they should not waste their time on is actually gazing at the movements of the planets and stars, which are bound to be imperfect. Eventually Darwin taught us that organisms, including humans, evolve by a recursive process called natural selection. The human telos and the multifold forms of excellence that it implies are not inbuilt but are recursively generated by a combination of cultural and biological evolution. The zeroth and other low-order terms in the recursion necessarily have a lot to do with virtues that conduce to survival because without survival there can be no higher terms – but beyond that the field is as wide open as the well-informed human imagination can allow. In a time of global crisis we would do well to understand the requirements of those particular human excellences that have gotten

30761_DesRoches.indd 184

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Virtue in the Anthropocene

185

us through survival challenges in the past. Cultural memory (facilitated by language, art, and literature) and our capacity, unusual among primates, for social cooperation (again, facilitated in part by language) were all crucial. A number of recent authors have drawn attention to the importance of cooperation (“hyperprosocial behaviour”), mediated by language and enabled by technological ingenuity, as a survival trait that has worked especially well for humans (Harari 2014; Marean 2015).6 However, here I want to point out the importance of two other closely related forms of human excellence that deserve much closer inspection than they usually get – ingenuity (or creativity; I’ll use these terms interchangeably with a qualification to be mentioned below), and our capacity for heresy. I’ll discuss ingenuity first. I refer not only to technological ingenuity, as crucial as that is. However, I’ll start by mentioning a particular technological example, the sewing needle, because it wonderfully illustrates the nature and impact of creativity. As paleoanthropologist Brian Fagan explains, the first sewing needles, at least in Europe, appear in the leavings of the Cro-Magnon peoples over 25,000 years ago (Fagan 2010). These early sewing needles were made of bone, with a hole somehow drilled in them to receive narrow strips of leather or perhaps gut, and carved from leg bones or antlers by means of the all-purpose stone burin, the utility knife of the time. One of the great puzzles of paleoanthropology is why the CroMagnons survived and flourished, while our Neanderthal cousins died out. It could have just been luck. But the artefacts speak of a “quantum leap” in the ingenuity of modern H. sapiens shortly after the massive Toba eruption of 74,000 years ago. What difference can better neurology make? Our attention tends to be drawn to charismatic weapons technology. Of course, the Cro-Magnons had far better weapons than the Neanderthals: they had throwing spears (Neanderthals apparently only used spears for thrusting; much less effective and more dangerous for the hunter) and they also devised the atlatl, the spear-thrower. But, as Fagan explains, “The humble needle ranks alongside the taming of fire as one of early humanity’s most significant innovations” (Fagan 2010, 167). Why? Because it allowed our ancestors to make tailored clothing, and this gave them a significant survival advantage over their frost-bitten Neanderthal cousins in the harsh subarctic climate of Europe at the time. I hardly mean to suggest that the Neanderthals disappeared merely because they did not have the sewing needle; it is not even clear that

30761_DesRoches.indd 185

2019-05-03 12:52:10

186

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

the Neanderthals were still extant by the time early humans created the needle and thread. Whether or not the sewing needle had anything to do with why modern humans superseded the Neanderthal, the sewing needle’s wider evolutionary significance is simply that it allowed its creators to explore, hunt, and live in colder climates that were not previously accessible to them. An innovation like the sewing needle is therefore like capturing more lives or weapons in a video game – especially when one can capture more powerful or more broadly useful weapons and thus play at higher and more challenging levels. It not only solves a specific problem but multiplies the possibilities for the solution of many, previously inaccessible, problems. Philosophically, the really interesting fact about creative innovations like the sewing needle is that they are new things in the world. Humans and their hominin ancestors have been around for millions of years, but before a certain point there was no such thing as the sewing needle – even though it had always been implicit in the properties of the materials available to early humans. When it appeared, it expanded the sheaf of survival options for its users in a period of time that was very short on the evolutionary scale. Ingenuity sometimes amounts only to efficient manipulation of the given; an example of this could be a winning chess combination, since any valid chess move is strictly within the context of the rules of the game. A chess combination can be spoken of as creative, even beautiful (in the way that chess moves can be beautiful), if it is novel or unexpected. However, the products of ingenuity can go beyond mere manipulation of the given. Inventor A.N. Goldsmith said, Creativeness … is the production and disclosure of a new fact, law, relationship, device or product, process or system based ­generally on available knowledge but not following directly, ­easily, simply, or even by usual logical processes from the guiding information at hand. (Quoted in Moore 1969, 46) A winning chess move can in principle be deduced from the rules of chess; Beethoven’s 9th symphony cannot be deduced from anything. It will sometimes be useful, therefore, to speak of creative ingenuity; this phrase might seem to be a pleonasm but it emphasizes the capacity of human ingenuity to produce the genuinely novel. How does creative ingenuity work, why do humans have more of this ability than other species, why do some individual humans exhibit

30761_DesRoches.indd 186

2019-05-03 12:52:10



Virtue in the Anthropocene

187

more of it than others, and how can creative ability be trained and encouraged? The neurological basis of creativity remains an important open problem in neuroscience. I think more attention should be paid to the ingenious suggestion of Edward de Bono, who proposed that creative problem-solving comes from the human mind’s ability to morph, as it were, impressions and memories: “The brain is a good computer simply because it is a bad memory” (1969, 10). Whatever motor drives creativity, if we are to speak of the characteristic ways in which humans can be excellent, especially insofar as they bear on our survival and flourishing, creative ingenuity must rank near the top of the list. The other philosophically interesting thing about the sewing needle is that it has a certain elegance: it works not by brute force but by its design, appropriate to its task. Note also the elegance of the burin, the utility knife of the Paleolithic (Fagan 2010, chap. 8). The burin was a tool for making tools, allowing multiplication of effort and open-ended pluripotency. Its elegance cannot be separated from its utility. I should not entirely sidestep the challenge of defining elegance, although that is a large question I can’t do justice to here. Elegance is a thing that can be recognized, sometimes immediately, sometimes only with training and experience. The sense of elegance or aptness seems to be, possibly among other things, an affect of the recognition of functional efficiency. By itself, this conjecture is obviously too narrow since it does not explain beauty more generally; the beauty of a sunset seems to have little to do with efficiency. However, the ability to grasp elegance is so basic to humans that it is reasonable to suppose that there is in part at least an adaptive explanation for it; we take pleasure in the effective, perhaps in important part because it conduces to survival. Ingenuity begets more ingenuity; with a good burin, a skilled Magdalenian artisan could make an indefinite number of types of useful artefacts – and with the magical power of language, she could pass her skills on to others so that a body of technique began to accumulate. As the ecologically-minded historian William McNeill explained, technological ingenuity combined with language allowed cultural memory to leapfrog the “age-old processes of biological evolution” (1976, 23), allowing one species of talking primate to expand rapidly into ecological niches that had previously been inaccessible to it. From the evolutionary point of view, therefore, an

30761_DesRoches.indd 187

2019-05-03 12:52:10

188

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

innovation like the sewing needle is like a mutation that confers an immediate survival advantage, only, unlike mutations as they are normally understood, it is not replicated genetically (at least to begin with) but culturally. Agriculture, public sanitation, medicine (especially antibiotics and vaccines), and most of all, fossil fuels, have enabled humanity’s present massive but precarious dominance of the Earth system. Energy is centrally important; a generous flow of energy is a necessary condition for forming and maintaining complex cultures, while, as Joseph Tainter has indicated (1988), failure of energy supplies (in one way or another) seems to be a cause if not the root cause of the collapse of most complex cultures in the past. This is understandable from general physical considerations: the possible complexity of a non-equilibrium system such as a human culture is a function of (among other factors) energy flow. Ingenuity needs fuel! But today our species still relies on a dwindling, one-time-only supply of fossil fuels for over 80 per cent of the energy we use to power our complex culture (BP 2016), while emissions from our combustion of these fuels threatens a geologically unprecedented7 destabilization of the world’s climate regime, cryosphere, and oceanic chemistry. With our dependence on fossil fuels we have fallen into what Ronald Wright (2004) calls a “progress trap” in which an ingenious means of exploiting our environment backfires, creating new survival challenges. But is our ingenuity failing us now? What characterizes our present carbon crisis, as it can be called, is the sense of being trapped, of not seeing any way either politically or technologically out of the present dilemma in which we are destroying ourselves with the very thing we depend upon to keep our global society going (Marshall 2014). This is why I think it is so important to revisit the nature and provenance of human ingenuity – for if anything is going to get us out of this trap, it must be in some way a new thing; our species needs to do something or a group of things that it has not done before, and only our creativity has a chance of pointing out what those things might be. Our most immediate need for innovation right now is in the production, distribution, and storage of energy; everything else depends upon this. And it must be solved soon: the scientific picture shows that a relatively undisruptive, incremental phase-out of fossil fuels by the end of this century is very likely not soon enough to allow much hope of saving the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the most vulnerable areas of Greenland (Hansen et al. 2016). As climatologist Kevin

30761_DesRoches.indd 188

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Virtue in the Anthropocene

189

Anderson puts it, to forestall the probable worst effects of global warming we need nothing less than “a revolutionary transition in how we use and produce energy” (2015, 898). The urgency of this problem implies that we cannot treat the care and feeding of human ingenuity as a leisurely, long-term study. Technological ingenuity is indispensable, but it is important to see that ingenuity is not merely technological – better photovoltaics and the like are not by themselves going to save the farm. Thomas HomerDixon (2001) points to what he calls social ingenuity, the capacity to design novel social institutions (such as political structures, laws, cooperative ventures, means of storing and sharing hard-won knowledge, and linguistic practices) that are effective and responsive to the novel challenges our environment throws at us. Technology requires a supporting social milieu to be applied effectively. Agriculture and medicine are important illustrations of this fact. In turn, technology enables new types of social interactions, new ways of transmitting and storing vital information, so there is a synergistic relation between these two types of ingenuity. Finding a way through the present survival bottleneck is going to require enormous technological and social ingenuity. Something must be said about imagination as a component of ingenuity. Consider, again, the sewing needle: the creation of this immensely useful device could not have been simply a question of extracting a design from given information about the properties of various materials. Very likely the first step toward the creation of the sewing needle was that it had to occur to someone to ask if there was a way to join the edges of hides together so that better-fitting clothing could be made. Before there was any reason to solve the technical problem, there had to be a conception of what such a device could be used for. Even in cases in science and technology where people more or less stumbled into an innovation (much of the early history of quantum mechanics could be characterized this way; Peacock 2008) someone with imagination and vision had to step back, as it were, and notice not only what had happened, but the possibilities flowing from it. Albert Einstein, no mean innovator himself, put it this way: Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. (Quoted in Moore 1969, 46)

30761_DesRoches.indd 189

2019-05-03 12:52:11

190

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Ingenuity is not merely the ability to cope with complexity. While the products of ingenuity are often complicated (e.g., the integrated circuit), their development is often sparked by the recognition of the obvious, the simple. General relativity, for all its complexity, had its origin in Einstein’s “happiest thought” of 1907 that a person in free fall would feel no gravitational force (Pais 1982). Ingenuity “lets the fly out of the fly-bottle” (to borrow and misuse a phrase from Wittgenstein). Note how obvious the sewing needle is – once you see the trick! Ingenuity poses a special (and so far largely unanswered) theoretical challenge for philosophers. Especially since Descartes, philosophers have been obsessed with the justification of knowledge. (How do I really know that I have a head?) I propose that philosophers should give more thought to a different problem: understanding the effectiveness of knowledge, where I mean not only knowledge that but knowledge how. We fashion our conceptual systems, these wondrous creatures of our imagination. Much of what those elaborate mythologies say about the world beyond the level of immediate perception is not quite right and too often totally wrong. But sometimes the products of our imagination get us through an Arctic night, and philosophers need to have a much better understanding of how that happens. Perhaps modern philosophers have not given this question (which I will call the problem of competence)8 enough thought precisely because we have been lulled into complacency by ecological abundance. That will soon change. Although ingenuity has its intriguing theoretical aspects, it is not a purely theoretical problem that can be studied at leisure; rather, finding ways to encourage, unleash, nourish, and permit the exercise of human ingenuity may well be the most immediately urgent priority in the world today. Like any evolved human capacity, if human ingenuity is given what it needs to operate, it will operate. (In this respect it could be compared to athleticism or musicality.) But there are powerful forces that militate against the exercise of ingenuity. Obviously, innovation is a threat to vested interests and power structures – corporate, political, academic, or religious. But there are deeper, less obvious, socio-political reasons why the exercise of human ingenuity may be threatening precisely at those times when a society needs it the most (Peacock 1999a). Great bursts of creativity are features of flourishing societies in their ascendancies or at their peaks. However, when a complex culture

30761_DesRoches.indd 190

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Virtue in the Anthropocene

191

becomes ecologically stressed, a baleful social dynamic is set in motion: it begins to seem too risky to innovate, even though nothing else but creative innovation could offer hope of escaping from the apparently hopeless predicaments faced by such cultures. Regimes become authoritarian on the excuse that dissent and innovation (unless strictly metered out in small doses) are too risky.9 When resources begin to run out it simply seems safer to double down and keep doing those things that used to work so well, even though at such points it is creative change that is needed more than ever – even if, at that point, there still are enough physical resources to permit experimentation. A further complicating factor is the parasitism of the elites, who become isolated from the economic and ecological stresses faced by the larger population and relentlessly draw more resources to themselves just when the society that supports them is less able to afford their depredations. One of the most striking facts about the tragic story of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is that its people built larger statues precisely when it must have been obvious to all that their forests and food sources were disappearing; when the collapse came, it was violent and sudden (Diamond 2005).10 Recent mathematical studies of population dynamics (Motesharrei, Rivas, and Kalnay 2014) show that under certain conditions the parasitism of elites may itself be sufficient to cause the collapse of a complex society, independently of resource depletion. Finally we reach the ecological end-game. In chess, one player may be forced to resign simply because he hasn’t got enough pieces left to keep playing. Similarly, in the end stages of the ecological collapse of complex cultures, a point may be reached where there simply are not enough resources or time left to allow for recovery. Sometimes collapse happens willy-nilly; sometimes there is evidence, as Joseph Tainter points out (1988), that collapse happens partially by, as it were, popular choice: it is simply too expensive to keep supporting complexity, especially when the complexity benefits only a privileged few, and the people simply down their tools and head for the hills. Or die. When we discuss the socio-political barriers to ingenuity, another important form of human excellence must be discussed: our capacity for heresy. Based on the Greek roots of this term, the heretic is one who chooses – one who sees things her own way, who relies on her own perceptions and judgment first and what everyone else says second, if ever. Heretics do not necessarily set out to challenge received

30761_DesRoches.indd 191

2019-05-03 12:52:11

192

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

views or established power structures, but they are all too often seen as subversive even if they do not mean to be. I’m talking about heresy in concert with innovation because the innovator is almost automatically a heretic. A society that wants innovative solutions to the existential challenges it faces must tolerate heresy, even with respect to its most sacred presumptions. Existential crises usually cannot be solved merely by incremental improvements – accepted means leading to expected ends in ways that do not threaten implicit assumptions and explicit power structures. (That process is otherwise known as “management.”) Socrates insisted in his Apology that one of the most important services a philosopher can render is to serve as a gadfly, an active agent of consciousness, as John Ralston Saul (2005) puts it, of her society. The Socratic gadfly is a species of heretic who feels a special duty or impetus to speak out, even at personal risk. Why do such people benefit their cultures? The downside of the human genius for social cooperation is our tendency to conformity and groupthink, which can lead to a Disney lemming march to catastrophe (Janis 1982). While social cooperation is one of the special traits that have enabled human flourishing, the capacity for heresy is also essential; individual, idiosyncratic perceptions can save the human tribe, if they are allowed to. The ever-present temptations of groupthink can only be resisted by perceptive, outspoken individuals like the child in the Hans Christian Anderson fable who saves the day by calling out that the emperor has no clothing. Thus, one can speak of the practice of philosophizing as having an ecological significance; far from being an idle indulgence in curiosity, it is an essential survival tool for a species like H. sapiens, which must depend, above all else, on intelligent foresight for its survival (Peacock 1999b).11 One of the things that characterizes those dazzling periods of history marked by great outpourings of artistic, technological, social, or scientific creativity is a curious synergy of the individual and the collective, so that the heretics are supported or at least not totally hindered in the pursuit of their visions by their societies. A nice illustration of this is the career of Albert Einstein. Despite his underwhelming performance as an undergraduate and his cheeky disrespect for authority, his talent was recognized almost as soon as he began to publish one groundbreaking paper after another (Hoffmann and Dukas 1972; Pais 1982). Before long he was vaulted to the highest ranks of the academic establishment and given all the resources he

30761_DesRoches.indd 192

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Virtue in the Anthropocene

193

needed to do the work that only he could do. In another time and place Einstein could have just as easily ended up in a gulag. There could have been no Sinfonia Concertante without Mozart, but no Mozart without Vienna. Just as good government requires a system of checks and balances, so too does good epistemic practice. The received view or conventional wisdom on almost any matter is often wrong and should always be open to criticism and correction by those willing and able to see things differently. In a time of global ecological crisis, those who see beyond the common view must be not only tolerated but empowered, fostered, and enabled. A particular problem today is the systematic suppression of women’s ingenuity in too many areas of the world. Just as there are missing women (Sen 1999), there is missing women’s ingenuity. In this time of crisis it would surely be a good idea to not prevent half of the population from participating in the solution of a global problematic that by its nature cannot be solved unless all human talents are brought to bear. But the problem is deeper than merely a shortage of intellectual labour. Even the generally misogynistic Plato has the Socrates of Republic state that the exclusion of women from government is “against nature” (456c). We now have a richer and more dynamic notion of what “nature” can mean than was available to Plato but this view applies with all the more relevance today. If we are to speak of human excellence, that must include women’s excellence. It could be asked why I do not think that we have sufficient technological ingenuity now; isn’t there an app for everything? It is possible to mistake rococo elaborations of an existing theme for genuine innovation, the framing of new themes. Think of the Rapa Nui or the Maya, building larger and more magnificent statuary as their ecologies crumbled around them. In fact, it is astonishing how little genuine innovation there is in modern science and technology, despite the proliferation of applications of innovations in basic science that occurred almost a century ago (Peacock 2017; Smolin 2006). It may be hard to tell which particular technological elaboration is an irrelevant sideshow, and which may lead to a genuine advance. Sometimes, as with photovoltaics, a succession of incremental improvements may add up to a disruptive technology (Meyer 2015). However, we know we haven’t got ingenuity working for us when there is a problem that threatens our survival, but which is not only not being addressed, but which we have no clear idea how to address. The twin crises of energy

30761_DesRoches.indd 193

2019-05-03 12:52:11

194

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

and climate are precisely such a problem. I’ll summarize a large and generally distressing literature by saying that while it is clear that certain technologies could greatly help to get us through the climate bottleneck if we could muster the social ingenuity needed to deploy them (e.g., wind and solar generation coupled to smart grids), there are key components of the problem (notably the need for “negative emissions”) for which there is presently no obvious way forward (Ramanathan and Xu 2017). Social innovations often struggle to keep up with certain technological innovations, such as genetic modification or nuclear technology. Ideally, there must be a coherent coevolution of the technological and the social. If there is another ancient Greek virtue that could be cited as a relevant aspiration for our time, it would be phronesis, practical wisdom; techne is not enough. Obviously, I have gone far beyond any notion of virtue that Plato or other ancients would have recognized. Plato himself had a horror of innovation because he was convinced it was destabilizing. He had no conception that his city-state would have to survive in an everchanging environment and that therefore it could not survive without innovation. Where I think the Socrates of Apology might have agreed with me is my emphasis on consciousness, awareness.12 His dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (38a) applies not only at the personal level but also at the societal and global or species levels. We have to use the instruments of science and critical selfreflection to see ourselves in our evolutionary context, to grasp both the perils and the possibilities we now face. In summary: creative ingenuity is an excellence that is characteristic of the human species. There are three key features of the virtue of ingenuity and its importance for human survival. First, ingenuity is the capacity to bring new things into the world. It has an evolutionary significance similar to that of mutation; it is game-changing and transmissible (via education and culture). Second, ingenuity depends crucially upon the ability to grasp elegance, beauty. Elegance itself is hard to define. However, we recognize that often a device like the sewing needle is technically effective precisely because it is elegant in certain ways. David Rothenberg (2011) draws attention to the underappreciated fact that many organisms with complex neurosystems seem to have a sense of beauty that contributes in subtle ways to their survival. This shows up in humans in creative problem-solving, which works in important part via the grasp

30761_DesRoches.indd 194

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Virtue in the Anthropocene

195

of elegance. The human ability to recognize and generate apparently useless beauty is one of our most powerful survival traits – certainly classifiable as an arête in itself. In a crisis, one solves a problem any way one can, but at its best the exercise of ingenuity can itself be elegant; it has the quality of a fine performance. It is arguable that no solution to the complex of ecological problems our species faces today has a hope of not simply degenerating into another “progress trap” unless it possesses an elegant coherence of the technical and the humanistic. To be not merely another stop-gap, a solution to the climate and energy problem must be a product of arête, not desperation. Finally, creative ingenuity is not something that can be taken for granted. Society must accept the risks posed by ingenuity: those who benefit from the ways we presently do business may suffer when those ways are rendered obsolete by another Einsteinian “happy thought.” We have to anticipate and overcome the lethal socio-political dynamics that militate against the exercise of ingenuity in stressed cultures, and we have to do this before the end-game stage, when it is too late. And we must find ways to not only tolerate but support those who see things in different ways, because they are the ones who will spark the innovations, both technological and philosophical, that will ultimately keep the lights on – if anything can.

n otes I am grateful to Greg Mikkelson and the Centre de recherche en éthique (C R É ) at the Université de Montréal for the opportunity to present an ­earlier version of this chapter to a well-informed and perceptive audience. Thanks for financial and material support are due to the C R É, the University of Lethbridge, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am also grateful to many people for stimulating discussions of the topics covered in this chapter, including (but not limited to) Bryson Brown, James Byrne, Antoine Corriveau-Dussault, Valéry Giroux, Allen Habib, Hugo Hito Hey, Frank Jankunis, Richard Kover, Pamela Lindsay, Greg Mikkelson, Thomas M. Robinson, Michael Stingl, Jennifer Welchman, Grant A. Whatmough, audience members when the chapter was presented at the 2016 meeting of the Western Canadian Philosophical Association (University of Alberta), and numerous students in my environmental philosophy courses over the years. A particular note of thanks to the editors of this volume for their encouragement and good advice, and

30761_DesRoches.indd 195

2019-05-03 12:52:11

196

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

to an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Naturally, none of these fine persons or organizations are responsible for any errors or omissions that may remain in this chapter.   1 On climate and the imminent threat to the cryosphere, see Hansen et al. 2016; Anderson 2015; I PCC 2016. On extinctions and defaunation (the depopulation of the animal kingdom) see Dirzo et al. 2014; Kolbert 2014; L P I 2016. On the human impact on forests (and the impact of deforestation on humans) one of the most comprehensive references is still Perlin 1989. On soil depletion, see Montgomery 2007; FA O 2015. On the impact of climate change on fisheries, see Huelsenbeck 2012; on fisheries depletion, see Pauly and Zeller 2016.   2 While there were obviously ascetic tendencies in some classical Greek thinkers, see both Plato’s and Xenophon’s versions of the Symposium as evidence for an unabashed acceptance of finely-modulated sensuality.   3 Both the drunkard and the teetotaller would, in the ancient Greek view, exhibit a distressing lack of sophrosyne (moderation, balance, “common sense”). The excesses of the drunkard are merely disgusting, while the person who refuses to enjoy a cup of wine with friends is a sorry specimen who does not understand that life is short. I’m aware that by modern standards the ancient Greek view must seem insensitive. But it was based on an uncompromisingly realistic assessment of the possibilities for a decent (if unavoidably short) life in the often-harsh world in which the Greeks found themselves.   4 See, e.g., Meno 88–90.   5 Thanks to Michael Stingl for this observation.   6 Marean (2015) defines “hyperprosociality” as a uniquely human capacity to cooperate with unrelated individuals for a common purpose. Too often, members of a tribe or nation may be prosocial only to more effectively slaughter some other group that they perceive as a competitor. The human species has yet to learn the trick of being reliably prosocial on a planetary scale – even though we face survival challenges such as anthropogenic climate change that can only be addressed on that scale.   7 There have been several episodes in geological history in which a rapid increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration has triggered an episode of global warming, often associated with a mass extinction. However, there is evidence that the rate at which humans are increasing current C O 2 levels is geologically unprecedented, at least in the past 66 million years (Zeebe, Ridgwell, and Zachos 2016); we are, therefore, taking the earth system into uncharted territory.

30761_DesRoches.indd 196

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Virtue in the Anthropocene

197

  8 The problem of competence is not to say how practice and theory become socially accepted by the community of knowers and doers; rather, it is to say how it is that practice and theory can be effective whether or not they are socially accepted. Knowledge is not validated by social acceptance (except knowledge about matters that are specifically social) but by its effectiveness, if any, in coping with realities that are by and large non-social.   9 It is sometimes hard to tell whether any particular regime is authoritarian purely out of self-interest, or out of a genuine belief that its society could not survive without rigid control. The rulers come to identify their own self-interest with the interests of their societies: “L’état c’est moi.” 10 Here I rely not only on published sources such as the writings of Jared Diamond (2005), but on private communication with some who have close-hand knowledge of oral tradition on Rapa Nui. The tale of Rapa Nui is complicated, incompletely known, and intensely tragic, and I do not presume to be an expert on the subject. Diamond asks, what were they thinking when they cut down the last tree? In fact, there is evidence that the islanders were trying to conserve the last of their great palm trees, which had disappeared by the time of the first European contact. The trees were obviously victims of deforestation, but they may have also been victims of rats (imported by the Polynesian founders of the island society themselves) and – my own guess – further weakened by falling soil water levels. (The porous volcanic soil on the island is very well-drained, and without a thick blanket of organic material on the surface it probably could not hold enough water to maintain large trees; deforestation begets deforestation.) Around the time that the palm trees became extinct in (probably) the early 1600s CE, the islanders abandoned the statue culture (rapidly and violently according to oral tradition) and suffered a drastic downsizing of population (though it is hard to be sure of the precise numbers). But then the surviving islanders apparently regrouped, learned to cope with much more restricted resources, and were on their way to establishing something closer to a sustainable culture when they suffered the devastating impact of European contact – culminating in the enslavement and consequent death of most of their adult population in the 1800s, and then the seizure of most of the island as sheep pasture shortly thereafter. (The thousands of sheep, owned by a French entrepreneur who was ultimately murdered by a local, completed the denudation of the natural ­vegetation of the island.) So the islanders and their once-lush island were victims both of piratical colonization and ecological overshoot. In

30761_DesRoches.indd 197

2019-05-03 12:52:11

198

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

inadvertently engineering the degradation of their own environment, they were in no way uniquely unwise or shortsighted compared to the many other peoples, ancient and modern, who have despoiled their lands. 11 I have chosen my words carefully here. I do not claim that H. sapiens has in the course of its mostly violent history benefited as much as it might have from intelligent foresight; luck (in the form of abundant resources and a tolerable climate), language, prosociality, technological ingenuity, and sheer aggression arguably played larger roles in the successful irruption of the human macroparasite (McNeill 1976). But there is no sustainable future for humanity that does not include a leading role for certain virtues that are essentially philosophic. 12 One of the most interesting problems in classical scholarship is to distinguish the philosophical views that may have been held by the historical Socrates from the views expressed by Plato at various times in his long career, often using Socrates as mouthpiece (Vlastos 1999). In particular, as noted by Saul (2005), there is a sharp contrast between the anti-­ authoritarianism and iconoclasm expressed by Socrates in several of the early dialogues, and the merciless, theocratic authoritarianism that appears in Plato’s Laws. It is not my purpose in this chapter to contribute to the scholarship on the historicity of Socrates, but we can’t avoid noting the existence of this problem.

30761_DesRoches.indd 198

2019-05-03 12:52:11

10

Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene The Challenge of Hybridization Jennifer Welchman

In 1984, Jared Diamond famously reduced the principal drivers of extinction to an “evil quartet,” or, if you prefer, “four horsemen” of a coming environmental apocalypse: (i) overhunting, (ii) introductions of exotic species, (iii) habitat disruption, and (iv) chains of linked extinctions (e.g., trophic cascades, or co-extinctions) (Diamond 1984). Since the turn of the century, conservation biologists have become alarmed by the appearance of a fifth “horseman:” extinction by hybridization or “introgression.” Hybridization, or genetic introgression, is the “introduction of genetic material from another species or subspecies into a population,” which conservation biologists see as a potential “threat to the genetic integrity of a range of canid, fish, plant, etc., species” (Frankham, Ballou, and Briscoe 2010). Should two species or subspecies hybridize extensively, their offspring could become a “hybrid swarm” that might replace one or both of the parent species. Extinction by hybridization is not unrelated to the drivers previously identified, since overhunting, species introductions, habitat disruption, and chains of extinctions are typically involved in creating the conditions in which species or subspecies, hitherto reproductively isolated, begin to hybridize. But extinction by hybridization works in a notably different way. When any of the traditional “evil four” is the cause, extinction occurs through the failure of species at risk to reproduce. Ironically, extinction by hybridization occurs when species

30761_DesRoches.indd 199

2019-05-03 12:52:11

200

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

at risk succeed in reproducing through novel means. One or both of the parent species may become genetically extinct. How in such cases should conservation managers respond? Should they try to eliminate hybrids to preserve pure genetic stock or preserve them for the genetic legacy their hybrid genomes retain? Those of us who are not biologists might wonder how successful reproduction could possibly lead to species extinction. Was it not a standard feature of our basic biology curricula that hybridization between species and even subspecies was a “reproductive mistake” (Mallet 2005, 229)? Any viable offspring was supposed to be either infertile (e.g., mules) or subject to “outbreeding depression” (i.e., reduced fitness owing to impure inheritance of either parent’s adaptive traits). If so, interspecies and intergenus hybridization should be a self-limiting phenomenon constituting little or no threat to parent populations. And in fact this is precisely what we were taught. Until recently, biologists themselves shared the “almost instinctive, commonsense view that hybridization is always unnatural or extremely rare” (Mallet 2005, 299). They did so because it was directly entailed by the “biological species” concept, introduced by Ernst Mayr in 1942, and was the reigning species concept in conservation biology through the early twenty-first century. In biology, the term “species” has multiple senses. It can refer to (1) a ranking in a taxonomy of living creatures, (2) to types of creatures assigned to that ranking, and (3) to populations of wild creatures identified as instances of a particular species type. To be useful for conservation biology, the definition adopted must be one that can be “operationalized.” That is, it must offer useful practical guidance for determining which live creatures belong to one or another species type. Before Darwin, taxonomists had relied primarily on morphological criteria to define and delineate species, i.e., similarities of the structure and appearance of organisms (as paleontologists for the most part continue to do to this day.) Darwin’s theory of evolution switched their focus to inheritance. For Darwin, species were populations sharing a common lineage, each constituting a distinct branch on his “tree of life.” But how was one to say when a branching had occurred? Mayr’s suggestion (wildly simplified) was that if species form really distinct branches on the tree of life, they will no longer be interbreeding either with the parental stem nor other discrete branches (Mayr 1942). Thus, on Mayr’s biological species concept, a species is a

30761_DesRoches.indd 200

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

201

population sharing morphological characteristics that is “reproductively isolated” from any related populations. Geographical barriers would usually begin the process, but eventually diverging species populations would be isolated by their diverging behaviours, so each would be unwilling or unable to mate with members of related species, even when the opportunity arose. Subspecies are subpopulations of a species that are partially but not wholly reproductively isolated, populations that have not completed the process of evolving into distinct species. For conservation managers, Mayr’s proposal was useful as it gave relatively simple directions for grouping a region’s populations into species and subspecies. However, it had its drawbacks. For one thing, it cannot be applied to creatures that reproduce asexually. For another, because it relies on a feature external to animals’ biological natures to demarcate species, geographical separation, it can lead to confusing results. For example, when Canada’s red mulberry trees (morus rubra) and Asian white mulberry trees (morus alba) were identified as distinct species, geography reproductively isolated them. But the introduction of the white mulberry ended that isolation, resulting in extensive interbreeding with red mulberry trees in Canada. Should we now continue to view them as two distinct species or reclassify them as related subspecies or as members of a single species?1 Not surprisingly, Mayr’s definition has been challenged and a host of revisions and alternatives proposed by philosophers of science, systematic taxonomists, and others. Philosophers have debated questions of whether species are real or nominal entities, populations of individual organisms versus superorganisms, and the theoretic advantages and disadvantages of monistic versus pluralistic definitions. Systematic taxonomistics, more interested in delineating relationships between species and other taxa, ancient and modern, have hotly debated questions about how best to define and demarcate when and how population groups undergo significant evolutionary change. From these debates a host of alternate species concepts have been proposed, none of which command general assent. For example, organisms similar in structure and capable of interbreeding will nevertheless often differ significantly in the environmental resources they exploit for food and shelter, leading some to propose that the biological concept be revised to incorporate ecological criteria. That is, species would be defined – at least in part – ecologically, by referring to the ecological niches they inhabited and to

30761_DesRoches.indd 201

2019-05-03 12:52:11

202

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

which they were adapted.2 For practical purposes, this means looking at how creatures function in the environments they inhabit. White mulberry was introduced as forage for imported Asian silkworms that found native red mulberry unpalatable. Given the different roles each plays in its respective habitat, on the “ecological species concept,” red and white mulberry are different species, despite their capacity to interbreed. But ecological species concepts and criteria reveal nothing about any particular species’ evolutionary relationships to other related populations, past or present. Concepts and criteria incorporating information gleaned from new genetic technologies provided indicators of lineal relationships, leading to proposals that membership within species and subspecies be determined on the basis of genetic similarity (genetic species concept) and/or lineal descent from a single common ancestor (phylogenetic species concept).3 Red and white mulberry trees consistently differ at several sites in their respective genomes. So again (albeit for different reasons), red and white mulberry trees are distinct species, despite their capacity to interbreed. From the systematic taxonomist’s perspective, both the genetic and phylogenetic species concepts have considerable appeal because the information each incorporates in its definition is more revealing of the relations species stand to their ancestors, sibling species, and descendants than the biological or ecological alternatives. But questions remain. What degree of divergence in creatures’ genetic inheritance should be required for distinguishing related species? At what point do “daughter” lineages diverge sufficiently from their parent stock to be recognized as distinct lineages? Should morphological and ecological criteria be taken into account and if so, what sorts? Genetic and phylogenetic concepts are also important to conservation biologists concerned about protecting biodiversity in the field. But in this domain their employment is not only dogged by lingering theoretical questions but serious practical problems. One is the difficulty of finding the resources to do the genetic analyses required. As the authors of a recent study of methods of controlling hybridization in Italian wolves note, “Non-invasive genetic investigations for management purposes, although feasible in theory, pose technical limitations and rely heavily on funding availability. Consequently, the use of genetic analyses aimed at ultimately removing admixed individuals … in nature is not as easily applicable as it sounds” (Lorenzini 2014, 155).

30761_DesRoches.indd 202

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

203

A second drawback is that even when final resources can be found, basing conservation practice on genetic or phylogenetic species concepts appears to result in “taxonomic inflation,” the multiplication of taxa (species, subspecies, and genera) through the “splitting” of genera and species into ever smaller groupings. This has led some to warn that “uncritical acceptance of new species [so defined] creates an unnecessary burden on the conservation of biodiversity” (Zachos et al. 2013, 1). Wildlife managers who previously had one substantial genetically diverse population to manage may find themselves managing a plethora of newly distinguished populations each with its own conservation requirements (Isaac, Mallet, and Mace 2004). With public funds for conservation already scarce, dividing those scarce resources to try to protect ever more distinct species grouping could be a recipe for disaster. Still other management problems may arise. The authors of a study on taxonomic inflation in ruminants remark, “An example, which encompasses many of the practical issues, is species translocations, where individuals are moved from one area to another. At times, the procedure may be the only viable solution to human–wildlife conflicts or in the conservation of small populations … If populations are designated as belonging to different species, management efforts will be severely hampered by legal obstructions” (Heller et al. 2013, 492). In the absence of any generally accepted definition of species, conservation biologists are perforce pluralists when it comes to species, routinely employing multiple definitions in their efforts to analyze and explain which forms of wildlife should receive protection as “species at risk.” However, practicalities have dictated that the oldest, simplest, and cheapest conception, the biological species concept, should remain the default position, to be enriched by insights from ecological, genetic, and/or phylogenetic investigation when and if the need or opportunity arises. This helps to explain why the community was slow to recognize interspecies hybridization as a threat to wild animal life before the turn of the century or to communicate it to the lay public. If your default conception of species and subspecies is the biological species concept, you would not expect hybridization to be playing a significant role in the life history of the populations you are managing. You would not be surprised to find interspecies hybrids from time to time. Nor would you be surprised to find “hybrid zones” of intermixed creatures at the territorial boundaries of related species and

30761_DesRoches.indd 203

2019-05-03 12:52:11

204

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

subspecies. But as long as you believe that these hybrids are either sterile or subject to outbreeding depression that will prevent significant gene flow back into their parent populations, you will not expect hybridization to substantially affect those parent populations. Consequences you do not expect you do not look for. Should you find an instance, nonetheless, you will consider it an interesting anomaly and describe it as such if you write it up for publication. This is essentially what happened through the 1990s. Occasional papers discussed so-called anomalous findings of interspecies or intergenus hybridization, often discovered during studies of the effect of introduced species on native wildlife. Not until 1996, when two teams of biologists published reviews collecting observations of hybridization from multiple biological disciplines, did assumptions about the prevalence of hybridization in nature begin to change (Rhymer and Simberloff 1996; Levin, Francisco-Ortega, and Jansen 1996). The fifth horseman of the environmental apocalypse, extinction by hybridization, had come into view. Wildlife biologists and conservationists reacted with alarm. In a 2002 essay in American Science, Donald Levin explains why: Simple arithmetic explains why when two species hybridize, the less abundant one usually suffers the most: All else being equal, the minority species sustains a proportionally greater decline in its reproductive rate [when the hybrids are infertile.] A rare plant or animal can be driven to extinction even when the hybrids are not sterile. The abundant relative just overwhelms it. The fertile hybrids provide pipelines for the movement of genes from the abundant species into the rare one, contaminating its gene pool. Soon all of the rare organisms are tainted with alien genes, and eventually the rare species no longer exists as such. It is first mongrelized, then fully assimilated. (Levin 2002, 257; emphasis added) The pejorative terminology Levin uses might seem unusual coming from a scientist, but it has become the norm. Genetic introgression is now routinely described in the literature as: genetic contamination, pollution, infection, swamping, homogenization, and/or assimilation. Since much of the early literature on the phenomenon grew out of research on introduced species, Levin’s emotive terminology is understandable, if, nevertheless, regrettable. In Canada, as in most nations

30761_DesRoches.indd 204

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

205

around the world, native wild life are considered a natural public good, a part of the nation’s natural inheritance, to be preserved for the sake of present and future generations. No such obligations apply to introduced wildlife that were not part of a nation’s natural patrimony, least of all when introduced species seemed liable to disrupt native ecosystems or displace native counterparts. To capture public attention for the potential threat introduced species posed to their wild counterparts, by the turn of the last century conservationists were routinely employing metaphors of assault and invasion to characterize the ecological impact of introduced species. This language was simply carried over into the discussion of introductions of genetic material from one species’ genome into another. However, interspecies hybridization is not limited to interactions between native species and exotic foreign invaders. Often the interbreeding populations are both native species, brought together by the combined forces of habitat disruption and – increasingly – climate change. When climate change makes a species’ home territory less suitable, it may be forced to migrate into new territories. Species migrating due to climate are better characterized as refugees than invaders. Their effect on indigenous wild inhabitants thus raises new and unresolved challenges for conservation policies in the Anthropocene. Most Canadians first became aware of these challenges in 2006 thanks to widespread media coverage of a “grolar” bear (grizzly–polar bear hybrid) shot by an American hunter in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Initially elated, the hunter soon found himself in an alarming legal limbo. Had he shot a polar bear, legally? Or had he poached a grizzly bear, illegally? Unfortunately for the hunter, neither Canadian nor American law provided any guidance on the status of the hybrid bear or whether the hunter should be fined for killing it (CBC News 2006). Eventually, Canadian authorities ended the matter by absolving the hunter of deliberately targeting a prohibited grizzly bear and allowing him to return to the United States with his trophy. But the larger issue of the conservation status of hybridized wild life remained unsettled. That there is a larger issue here has only become more apparent over the intervening decade. Thanks to the effects of global warming, more and more instances of interspecies hybridization are being documented around Canada. Not all pose immediate threats of genetic extinction of species at risk. But even seemingly innocuous examples are already worrying

30761_DesRoches.indd 205

2019-05-03 12:52:11

206

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

wildlife managers. Consider for example, hybridization in flying squirrels. The northern territorial boundary for southern flying squirrels, abundant in the United States, had until recently extended only marginally into southern Ontario. As the climate warms, southern flying squirrels are expanding their range northward in the province, where they are meeting and interbreeding with northern flying squirrels, the predominant species in Canada. Northern flying squirrels are not endangered, so Ontario residents in affected areas are amusing themselves with debates about what to call the hybrids (Can-Am flying squirrel being just one suggestion). Wildlife managers are less amused. As one remarked in an interview, “Management-wise, it certainly causes a problem … What should we do with these hybrids? Should we shoot them? Should we preserve them? We need to know more about their impact” (Oosthoek 2013). The discovery of lynx-cats (i.e., Canada lynx-bobcat hybrids) along Canada’s border with the United States is a second example. Hybridization with bobcats does not currently threaten the Canada lynx survival in Canada. But it may pose a threat to smaller populations in United States where global warming is diminishing the deep snow packs that previously afforded them winter refugia from bobcats. Though relatively few hybrid animals have been discovered to date, hybridization may well be more common than had been realized. As a scientist involved in one study remarked, “If the hybrids [of a rare species and common one] are reproducing, you have to question, all of a sudden: What are we protecting?” (Schwartz quoted in Edgecomb 2003).4 But other examples involve more iconic species at risk in Canada whose status is such that no threat can be viewed as wholly innocuous. Take for example the northern spotted owl, which inhabits old growth forests from Oregon to British Columbia. Already in decline due to human habitat disruption, spotted owl numbers have dropped further since barred owls have moved westward into their forests. Barred owls are larger and more aggressive than spotted owls, often driving their smaller counterparts from prime nesting sites. Interbreeding has also occurred. “Sparred” owls, the progeny of these matings, both compete with pure spotted owls and provide a bridge by which barred owl genes can make their way into the spotted owl gene pool (Welch 2009). In hopes of protecting northern spotted owls, both American and Canadian conservation agencies have experimented with killing and translocating barred owls from spotted owl

30761_DesRoches.indd 206

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

207

territory, although this is discouraged under the joint CanadianAmerican International Migratory Bird Treaty (Plynn 2014; Hiag et al. 2004; see note 5 below). But if an exception is to be made for killing barred owls to protect spotted owls, what about their sparred owl progeny? Should they be exempted to preserve the spotted owl genes they carry? Or should they also be culled because they compete with their endangered parental stock? Eastern coyotes, also known as coy-wolves, are a hybrid swarm of wild canids, the descendants of western coyote ancestors who have successfully migrated to the Atlantic seaboard of Canada and the United States, meeting and interbreeding with grey wolves along the way. Larger than their western ancestors, they are now the apex predator in regions of Eastern Canada and the United States Atlantic seaboard from which eastern wolves (and a southern subpopulation, the red wolf) had been extirpated. Genetically distinct from their western ancestors, but able to interbreed successfully with wolves, it is feared that eastern coyotes now pose an extinction threat to the one remaining relatively genetically pure population of eastern wolves in Canada (the wolves of Ontario’s Algonquin Park) and to the one free-ranging population of red wolves in the United States, a pack reintroduced to a remote area of North Carolina. Culling coyotes and coyote-wolf hybrids to protect the threatened populations of eastern and red wolves has been contemplated. In Canada, the risk of accidentally killing genetically pure members of Algonquin Park’s wolves has been ruled too great. Killing coy-wolves and coywolf–wolf hybrids in the immediate vicinity of Algonquin Park is thus prohibited, despite fears that outside the Park “gene introgression by Eastern Coyotes threatens the persistence of Eastern Wolves” (C O S E W I C 2015). In the United States, another tactic is being employed: coy-wolves are being captured and sterilized around the red wolf introduction site to create a buffer guard of eunuchs to stand between these red wolves and potential coy-wolf mates (Gese and Terletzky 2015). What are conservation managers to do? North American conservation policies offer little guidance. A recent review of wild life conservation policies in the US and Canada reports that “in most policies, hybrids are either unrepresented or considered a threat to conservation goals” (Jackiw, Mandil, and Hager 2015, 1041). The International Migratory Bird Treaty between the United States and Canada does not mention hybrids directly, but each country’s

30761_DesRoches.indd 207

2019-05-03 12:52:11

208

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

accompanying regulations do extend protections to hybrids of native migratory species. Interestingly, this is not because the hybrids themselves are assigned conservation value, but because regulators in each country are concerned that collectors will try to evade restrictions on the possession of listed birds by claiming (or causing) a captive bird to be a hybrid, unduly complicating the work of wildlife agencies and officials.5 Neither Canada’s Species at Risk Act nor the United States’s Endangered Species Act mention hybrids. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada’s guidelines for creating status reports for endangered Canadian species refers to hybridization as a form of “anthropogenic threat” (Jackiw, Mandil, and Hager 2015, 1045). Presumably the same kind of thinking underlies the neglect of hybrids by the Species at Risk Act and the Endangered Species Act; hybrids are reproductive mistakes, products of an unnatural miscegenation that would not occur but for human intervention in the natural environment. Thus, hybrids are not recognized as constituents of either nation’s “wildlife,” are seen as nuisances rather than natural assets, and are assigned no conservation value for present or future generations.6 In the Anthropocene, however, maintaining such prejudices is no longer justifiable even when they might still seem practical. Practicality aside, I would argue that our wildlife conservation goals and policies regarding hybrids should be revised for at least three reasons. To begin with, I see no reasonable grounds for considering interbreeding arising from species migration due to climate change or habitat disruption as distinctively “anthropogenic.” In the Anthropocene, there is no aspect of human or animal life not influenced by anthropogenic processes. The survival of some Canadian species is no less a byproduct of human influence than the extinction of others. When human fingers are everywhere, the mere presence of human fingerprints is insufficient to distinguish any particular thing as anthropogenic in a problematic sense. What sort of active involvement should be required before we consider hybridization genuinely and problematically anthropogenic? Intentional release of species into new territories, with the goal of establishing a naturalized population might be one, such as the intentional release of Asian white mulberry trees into North America to create a food source for silkworms. An even clearer case of active involvement would be intentional interbreeding to create hybrid forms of the sort involved in the development of the “beefalo” (a

30761_DesRoches.indd 208

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

209

commercially valuable bison-cattle hybrid). Bison and cattle do not readily interbreed even when herds live in adjacent ranges: “This hybridization issue [was] purely a function of humans forcing it. Under natural conditions it just does not happen” (du Toit in Debucquoy-Dodley 2016). But hybrids are more acceptable to bison than cattle, so hybrids allowed to mingle with parental herds became conduits for the flow of cattle genes into bison herds. As a result, most bison herds in the United States possess at least 2 per cent cattle genes. To many in the conservation community: “most of the bison alive today in North America are essentially hybrids. They’re a mix in some way of bison and cattle genes.” For this reason some are calling for the remaining pure herds to be isolated to protect their genetic integrity. As one put it, “If you don’t have the genome, nothing else you do makes a damn difference … What you are preserving isn’t the species; it is something the hell else – a shadow” (Derr in Marris 2009, 951). Here we have a clear instance of one of the many absurdities into which uncritical acceptance of species definitions can lead us when they are based on minor genetic differences in creatures’ genomes. By the logic voiced above, I and the several billion other human beings on the planet whose genomes contain a comparable percentage of Neanderthal genes (and in some instances considerably more) are not truly human beings at all (Lowery et al. 2013).7 We are a hybrid swarm of “something the hell else,” and thus but a “shadow” of what we might have been had our ancestors not succumbed to Neanderthals’ come-hither looks. If we belonged to any other genus, conservationists would no doubt seek to ban individuals like me from visiting regions inhabited by genetically pure human beings (principally Africa) in defence of the human genome. But this is clearly ridiculous – and not solely because members of the genus Homo are bearers of moral and political rights to exercise their personal autonomy. It is ridiculous because the differences arising from the presence or absence of a few Neanderthal genes do not cause any significant structural or behavioural differences in how individual human beings live their lives or how we interact with one another and our environments. There are cultural differences in how we interact and affect our environments. But these differences have no biological basis. Thus they provide no good reason for dividing human beings into different species. Whenever the same is true of hybridized wildlife, it could be equally ridiculous to take minor

30761_DesRoches.indd 209

2019-05-03 12:52:11

210

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

differences in their genetic makeup as the basis of species discriminations or conservation decisions. This leads to my second consideration: hybrid swarms can offer important ecological benefits. For example, the arrival of the coy-wolf in the East has had the highly desirable effect of reintroducing an apex predator into environmental systems distorted by their absence. Coy-wolves’ favourite large prey is whitetail deer, whose numbers have grown exponentially since wolves were extirpated. Coy-wolves are more adaptable than wolves to living in proximity to human beings, an asset in more urbanized Eastern Canada and the US. When a hybrid population interacts with its environment in this way, why not accept it as a novel species or population of wild canid? (See Way 2013). Hybridized bison, unlike the coy-wolves, are not products of non-intentional natural forces. Yet they too are playing an extremely useful role in helping to rewild the North American West. Many are nearly genetically pure and are morphologically and ecologically identical to genetically pure bison. So even though they came by their cattle genes through direct human action, why not accept and protect these animals as bison? This leads to my final consideration. We would all agree that there are often very good reasons for conservationists to be concerned by, and, when practical, to try to prevent hybridization of wildlife species. It can be a genuine threat both to the persistence of wildlife species and the stability of fragile ecosystems they inhabit. But I think we should reflect carefully on what our reasons actually are whenever we are tempted to intervene to prevent hybridization, especially between native species. We should ask ourselves just what it is that we are really trying to achieve in each case. Is it the conservation of wild life, life created, shaped, and sustained or discarded by natural processes? Or is it the preserve particular forms of life to which we are sentimentally attached, as we often are to species that happen to have played some special role in human cultural heritage. If it is the latter, the public good our intervention is aimed at is cultural not ecological. There is nothing bad or wrong about wanting to preserve cultural relicts, including living cultural relicts. Nor is it always or necessarily incompatible with wildlife conservation. But heritage preservation is a very different kind of conservation practice, with its own distinct goals. Take the current debate in Scotland over how to conserve the Scottish wildcat, Britain’s only wild feline species, now almost extinct thanks to hunting, habitat disruption, and interbreeding with feral

30761_DesRoches.indd 210

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

211

domestic cats. Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland hope to increase the free-ranging population of wild cats by captive breeding, including breeding hybrids with reasonably representative wild genomes. The offspring would eventually be released in protected nature reserves. Save the Scottish wildcat, a non-profit organization, has argued for an alternative strategy, removing pure wildcats to “havens,” where they would be reproductively isolated from feral cats, to preserve their genetic integrity (B B C 2015). Both approaches could be successful in their aims, but note how different those aims are. The first aims to strengthen and sustain the wildcat as a functional part of the environments into which the captive-bred animals will be released. The second aims to preserve, intact, a symbolic relict of Scotland’s past. I hope both succeed, because I think both are justifiable – but on different grounds. Cultural heritage values are important to communities and when a species has such a value, intervention in wild processes to preserve it intact would be justifiable. In Canada, many species are of special cultural importance to particular groups, for example the six “nationally significant populations” of white sturgeon, a species at risk whose range in Canada is limited to the Lower Fraser River, Mid Fraser River, Nechako River, Upper Fraser River, Upper Columbia River, and Kootenay River of British Columbia. All these populations are declining due to the combined effects of overfishing, habitat disruption, alternation of river flows caused by dams, and other human development in these watersheds. Though the various populations differ genetically, the differences are not sufficient to warrant being designated as distinct species or even subspecies (Fisheries and Oceans Canada 2014). Nevertheless, efforts are being made to maintain each distinct population intact, rather than replace declining stocks in one region with fish recruited from other populations. While this is partly justifiable on ecological grounds, there are other considerations involved. Each of these populations has played an integral role in the history, culture, and ways of life of the First Nations peoples inhabiting the region, in particular the Coast Salish, Nlaka’pamux, Okanagan, Secwepemc, St’át’imc and Tsilhqot’in. Each nation has its own sets of traditions and associations with the different watersheds in the region. Thus each of the six populations of sturgeon has unique sets of associations with these First Nations peoples, past and present. The special importance of these cultural associations would be sufficient to warrant extra efforts to maintain

30761_DesRoches.indd 211

2019-05-03 12:52:11

212

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

the distinct identity of these populations, even if no ecological benefits were to flow from them. But the percentage of wildlife species of which this can honestly be said is not large. When it is not large, the goal of conserving wild life for future generations will justify a more hands-off approach. Often – though by no means always – we should be prepared to override our sentimental attachments to particular forms of wild life in favour of letting wild natural processes take their course. And we should be no less prepared to do so with attractive “poster child” species, such as the northern spotted owl and eastern or red wolves, than with less iconic species, such as northern flying squirrels. If hybrid swarms of lynx-cats, coy-wolves, grolar bears, sparred owls, and Can-Am squirrels are the result, so be it. It is time we put aside any lingering tendencies to dismiss hybrids as the mongrel offspring of unnatural miscegenation and acknowledge their claim to be recognized as Canadian wild life.

n otes   1 Interbreeding is said to pose the primary extinction threat to the red mulberry in Canada (see COS EW I C 2014).   2 See Van Valen (1976). For an application to wolves (an approach favoured by the province of Quebec), see Theberge (1991).   3 For a general introduction to classic texts presenting these and many other rival species concepts, see Ridley (2004) and Wilkins (2009).   4 See also Koena et al. (2014) who write: “Based on our observations throughout regions of sympatry in Canada, however, hybridization and introgression between lynx and bobcat appear relatively rare … This may yet change however, if climate warming results in the bobcat distribution shifting farther northward such that sympatry with lynx is increased. Increased sympatry may lead to increased hybridization and introgression, which could exacerbate population declines of Canada lynx at the trailing range edge” (113).   5 For example, in its explanation of its most recent revisions of its definition of “hybrids,” the United States Fish and Wildlife service clearly focuses on captive birds: “Identification of hybrids is difficult … Thus, hybrids present challenges to law enforcement officers in the field. Experts at museums, falconers, and propagators may be available to assist law enforcement officers. However, import of hybrids is of less concern than is identification of hybrids produced by propagators here in the U.S. And,

30761_DesRoches.indd 212

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene

213

in most cases it may be difficult for a law enforcement officer to get prompt assistance from anyone for identification of raptors while conducting inspections or field investigations” (United States Fish and Wildlife Service 2013, 65577). Canada’s migratory birds regulations reveal similar motivation and concerns about non-purebred or atypical birds. Migratory birds are defined as “migratory game birds, migratory insectivorous birds and migratory non-game birds as defined in the Act, and includes any such birds raised in captivity that cannot readily be distinguished from wild migratory birds by their size, shape or colour, and any part or parts of such birds” (Migratory Birds Act 2016; emphasis added).   6 Happily for wild hybrids, not all in wildlife conservation take such a dim view of hybrids’ conservation value, at least when both parents are native species. See, e.g., Allendorf et al. (2001), Jackiw, Mandil, Hager (2015), Stronen and Paquet (2013), Piett, Hager, and Gerrard (2015). Others have pointed out that introgression can offer species adaptive advantages, e.g., Mallet (2005), Canadian naturalist John Acorn (2009), and Hedrick (2013).   7 For a comparision of rates of introgression in contemporary European and Asian populations, see Wall et al. (2013). Evidence that shared components of humans and Neanderthals are not inheritances from a common African ancestor is discussed in Wang (2013).

30761_DesRoches.indd 213

2019-05-03 12:52:11

30761_DesRoches.indd 214

2019-05-03 12:52:11

P art Fo u r Environmental Philosophy and Policy in Canada

30761_DesRoches.indd 215

2019-05-03 12:52:11

30761_DesRoches.indd 216

2019-05-03 12:52:11

11

Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets C. Tyler DesRoches

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

Does the human right to water entail moral limits to water markets? This question is striking, not least because the most esteemed theorists in the history of economic thought regularly invoked water as the example of a good that has no economic value and, therefore, no market. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith famously claimed that “nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it” ([1776] 1976, 44–5). No contemporary economist would agree with Smith’s claim. Today, water possesses enormous economic value and, unlike eighteenth-century Britain, water is becoming increasingly scarce in a growing number of jurisdictions. To resolve this problem, many countries, including Australia, Chile, Spain, and the United States, are turning toward water markets – in one form or another. In Canada, for example, water markets have been concentrated in Alberta, where the provincial government employs various kinds of market transactions to allocate the right to use water (Horbulyk 2007). Free-market economists emphasize the benefits of water markets, including the efficient distribution of a scarce resource to those who value it the most (Anderson and Leal 2001, 2010; Anderson and Snyder 1997). As the supply of water dwindles relative to its demand, standard economic theory predicts that, other things being equal, the price of water will rise. Far from being unfavourable, this effect is expected to incentivize the owners of water, or those with the right

30761_DesRoches.indd 217

2019-05-03 12:52:11

218

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

to use it, to either conserve it or sell it to a buyer who will. Given these advantages, it is unsurprising that most economists do not explicitly recognize any moral limits to buying and selling water, let alone ones prompted by the human right to water. Predictably, not everyone believes that water should be bought and sold in the marketplace. The Canadian environmental thinker Maude Barlow, for one, insists that water is not the kind of good that should be distributed by the free market. Barlow insists that water is not merely a resource, or even a basic human need, but a human right. From this proposition, she concludes that water “must never be bought, hoarded, traded, or sold as a commodity on the open market” (Barlow 2013, 65).1 Barlow’s main claim is that no water markets should be permitted, let alone ones that are restricted on moral grounds. From this limited purview, the choice is stark. Either water markets are to be left unbridled, without any clearly defined moral limits, or the human right to water entails that no water market should be sanctioned. This chapter engages what is perhaps the most convincing philosophical conception of the human right to water – due to Mathias Risse (2014) – and argues against both of these views. While it is true that the human right to water entails that some water markets should be blocked, there is no necessary connection between commodifying water and violating the human right to water. 2 r  i s s e o n t h e h u m a n r i g h t t o wat e r

The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not mention the human right to water, but in 2002 the Committee on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights formally recognized a human right to water in its General Comment 15, where it states: “The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses. An adequate amount of safe water is necessary to prevent death from dehydration, to reduce the risk of water-related disease and to provide for consumption, cooking, personal and domestic hygienic requirements.” No doubt this declaration raises a number of unanswered questions, such as the nature of human rights, the precise amount of water that every holder of a right to water must have, and who is obligated to fulfill such rights. For the most part, this chapter will set aside these issues and will not mount any substantive defence for the claim that

30761_DesRoches.indd 218

2019-05-03 12:52:11



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

219

water is a human right. Instead, it focuses on understanding how we might ground the human right to water philosophically, and the implications that such a conception has for restricting water markets. For this purpose, a “right” is to be understood as an entitlement that a right-holder has to be in a certain state. In particular, the holder of a positive right is entitled to some kind of good or service and the only good that we are concerned with here is some minimal quantity and quality of water.2 Strikingly, philosophers have had little to say about the human right to water.3 The most convincing and complete philosophical conception of the human right to water is due to Mathias Risse (2014), and therefore, this brief chapter will give exclusive attention to his influential Lockean conception. Risse follows John Locke’s chapter five, “Of Property,” in Two Treatises of Government, where Locke ([1689] 1980) claimed that God gave the Earth in common to mankind and that, originally, in the state of nature, each person had an equal claim to make use of the Earth and its products.4 Locke then famously grapples with the topics of original acquisition and private property. How can one person come to own previously unowned objects when such objects are entrusted to no one in particular but in common to all of mankind? Locke’s answer to this question does not depend on the social utility of private property but, instead, since each person naturally has ownership in themselves, and in their ability to labour – selfownership – people can come to own previously unowned objects by mixing their labour with them and improving these objects for the benefit of life. Since everyone in the Lockean state of nature has common ownership of the Earth, Locke must somehow ensure that such claims are not breached by individual appropriations of private property. To resolve this problem, Locke argues that appropriations are sanctioned only insofar “enough and as good left for others.” Otherwise, Locke affirms: “For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same” ([1689] 1980, 21). It is primarily from these two passages that Robert Nozick (1974) attributes Locke’s theory, with a specific proviso. Nozick explains

30761_DesRoches.indd 219

2019-05-03 12:52:12

220

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

that “a process normally giving rise to a permanent bequeathable property right in a previously unowned thing will not do so if the position of others no longer at liberty to use the thing is thereby worsened” (1974, 178). This proviso requires that all acquisitions must not worsen the situation of others and, therefore, it represents a bona fide constraint on property rights. To determine if the proviso has been violated one must show that others are below their baseline case, or starting position, because of the appropriation. Thus, the crucial question to ask is whether the appropriation of an unowned object has worsened the situation of others. For Risse (2014), as for Locke, it is in virtue of the fact that humanity collectively owns the Earth in common, prior to any individual appropriations, that everyone possesses a set of natural rights to the Earth’s resources. Because resources originally belonged to humankind collectively, everyone is entitled to some minimal and proportional share of the Earth’s resources. This right to a proportional share of resources ipso facto encompasses a positive right to water. After all, how could it exclude water? Be that as it may, it should be clear that, on this account, people are not entitled to collectively own all of the world’s water. As Locke states above, there are some individual appropriations of resources, including water, that can be made without worsening the situation of others and, therefore, should be permitted. Clearly, this conception is inextricably tied to the Lockean proviso. According to this conception, then, people have a natural right to that minimal quantity and quality of water required to make them at least as well-off as they would have been in the Lockean state of nature, prior to any original individual appropriations.5 Does this conception of the human right to water entail specific moral limits to water markets? If so, what is the nature and structure of such limitations? Before answering these questions in section 4, section 3 argues that none of the most prominent views on the moral limits to markets can properly account for the moral limits to markets engendered by the human right to water. 3 m  oral limits to markets

Are the norms of the free market appropriate for regulating the production, exchange, and enjoyment of all goods? (Anderson 1990b). Why not buy and sell everything? Should votes and kidneys be for sale, much like hamburgers and potato chips? If not, why not? Among

30761_DesRoches.indd 220

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

221

scholars who argue for moral limits to free markets, there is significant disagreement about why such limits should exist in the first place.6 One can divide these scholars into two camps. The first gives explicit focus to the harmful consequences caused by certain market transactions. Debra Satz (2010), for instance, argues that the limits to free markets should be determined by the harmful consequences that are caused by buying and selling items when agents have either weak agency or vulnerability. The second camp consists of several scholars, including Elizabeth Anderson (1990a, 1990b), Margaret Radin (1996), Michael Sandel (2012), and Michael Walzer (1983). They argue that there are moral limits to markets, not because specific market participants possess a ruinous property but because the distribution of goods should be consistent with their social meaning. These scholars emphasize that the market is not a neutral mechanism for distributing goods and services but, invariably, involves treating goods in a specific way: as commodities. Since not all goods in human life should be treated as commodities, these scholars argue that there is a class of goods that should not be for sale. From this point forward, I will label Satz’s (2010) view as a consequentialist view and group Anderson (1993), Radin (1996), Sandel (2012), and Walzer (1983) together, portraying their view as a conventionalist view. Satz (2010) argues that when buying and selling goods in the marketplace causes extremely harmful consequences, then such transactions should be blocked. She describes such markets as “noxious” since they are characterized by participants who, as mentioned already, have either weak agency or vulnerability. Both of these undesirable properties can be the source of extreme harms to individuals and society. Weak agency is problematic for individuals who do not possess sufficient information about the nature or consequences of a particular market and, as a result, these individuals end up engaging in actions that are harmful toward their own welfare. Vulnerability, on the other hand, refers to the status of participants in a market who have very unequal needs for the goods that are being exchanged. Consider, for example, the poor and destitute man who has no other choice but to sell his kidney to a rich foreigner to support his family. This kind of transaction is not a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange between two market participants. Rather, such a transaction is characterized by a vulnerable agent who acts out of desperation, which causes extreme harm to society.

30761_DesRoches.indd 221

2019-05-03 12:52:12

222

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Such a transaction promotes servility and dependence while undermining democratic governance and other-regarding motivations (Satz 2010, 98–9). It is critical to recognize that, for Satz, however, the mere existence of noxious markets does not imply that there is an objective list of items that should never be for sale. On the contrary, her framework, which consists of both the sources (weak agency and vulnerability) and consequences (extreme harms for both individuals and society) of noxious markets, is meant to serve as a guide for evaluating the acceptability of specific markets on a case-by-case basis. The second camp, occupied by Anderson (1990a), Radin (1996), Sandel (2012), and Walzer (1983) underscores the social meaning of goods as the basis for limiting the reach of markets. This conventionalist view provides the reason why, for example, human babies should not be for sale. Quite simply, babies are not the kind of good that should be for sale since treating them like commodities is corruptive. Sandel explains that, “to corrupt a good or a social practice is to degrade it, to treat it according to a lower mode of valuation than is appropriate to it” (2012, 34). Under this account, slapping a price tag on a baby and selling it in the marketplace would involve valuing the baby in the wrong kind of way. Or, take the example of friendship. Sandel (2012) argues that friendship is not the kind of human good that that can be put up for sale without degrading or corrupting it. Sandel argues that friendships are the kind of good that cannot be bought and sold since, as he puts it, “the money that buys the friendship dissolves it, or turns it into something else” (2012, 94). While it is true that one might be able to pay others for the services that would be expected from a friend, the friendship itself, if it is a bona fide relation between individuals, is not the kind of thing that can be bought and sold in the marketplace without degrading or corrupting it. The consequentialist and conventionalist views are both problematic. One challenge for the latter view, as pointed out by Satz (2010), is that the social meanings of goods are frequently contested. Different individuals and different moral communities are bound to attribute a wide variety of social meanings and values to specific goods. Without a widespread consensus, the social meaning of goods cannot be expected to serve as a benchmark for deciding when some item should not be for sale. Another worry is that, in some cases, there is only a tenuous connection between the social meaning agents attribute to a good and its distribution by the market. Conventionalists worry that buying

30761_DesRoches.indd 222

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

223

and selling certain socially significant goods can crowd out or uproot other important ways of valuing such items, but Satz argues that “the market price is rarely the direct expression of our evaluative attitudes towards goods” (2010, 82). Take the example of buying and selling sacred texts. Does the atheist bookstore owner who sells religious texts undermine the social meaning and value of the Bible for Christians? When sacred texts are treated as mere commodities, does this treatment undermine other important ways of valuing such items? On the contrary, buying and selling sacred texts in the marketplace does not seem to displace their social meaning or importance among those for whom they matters. Instead, the same item can be treated quite differently by the market participants who are involved in the same market transaction. The atheist bookstore owner can treat religious texts as mere commodities, recognizing that such items have no other value apart from their contribution to his profit margin, without affecting their sacredness for the religious buyer. The social meaning of precious goods need not be undermined when they are treated as commodities. Satz (2010) appears to assume that her consequentialist account is more detached from the conventionalist view than it actually is. If Satz’s view is genuinely consequentialist, then it should account for any harmful consequences that arise from destroying the social meaning of certain goods for a particular individual or moral community, even if such pernicious consequences turn out to be anomalous or infrequent. Rather than viewing the conventionalist view as opposed to Satz’s consequentialist view, it might be better to recognize the former as being subsumed by the latter. The main upshot for doing so is that we would possess a more general consequentialist theory that can account for the significant social meaning of certain goods, all the while explaining why some things should not be for sale. Such a generalized consequentialist theory would extend beyond Satz’s emphasis on weak agency and vulnerability to include all sources of significant harms that arise from market transactions, including those that might arise from corrupting goods that possess special social meaning for a particular moral community. Do any of these views – the generalized consequentialist, narrow consequentialist, or conventionalist view – properly capture the moral limits to markets engendered by the human right to water? The consequentialist views would only prescribe blocking particular water markets because of the harms caused by violating the human right to water. This is a problem because if it is morally wrong to

30761_DesRoches.indd 223

2019-05-03 12:52:12

224

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

violate anyone’s human right to water, it is because people have this right and, other things being equal, rights should not be violated. In other words, the wrongness of violating human rights does not stem from any consequences – harmful or beneficial – that would arise from such a transgression. My claim here is not that violating the human right to water would cause no harm.7 Rather, the human right to water entails moral limits to markets that cannot be properly captured by the consequentialist views because of their exclusive focus on the harmful consequences that may be caused by treating water like a commodity.8 On this question, the conventionalist view fares no better. While it may be true that there is a set of goods that should not be treated as commodities because doing so would corrode or corrupt them, this claim is immaterial to the issue at hand. No one believes that, if the human right to water entails moral limits to markets, it is because they would corrupt the special social meaning of “water rights.” Even if the proponents of the conventionalist view are correct to claim that the free market is not a neutral mechanism for distributing goods and services, but involves treating them in ways that may undermine their proper modes of valuation, it is difficult to see how this worry captures the moral limits to markets imposed by the human right to water.9 Without any uncontroversial universal view on the moral limits to markets that can account for the limits to water markets engendered by the human right to water, the next section shows how Risse’s (2014) conception of the human right to water entails specific moral limits to water markets. 4 h  ow wat e r r i g h t s e n ta i l m o r a l l i m i t s t o wat e r m a r k e t s

In section 2, it was claimed that Risse’s conception of the human right to water is inextricably tied to the Lockean proviso that original acquisitions must not worsen the situations of others. In most cases, appropriating unowned objects will not violate Locke’s proviso. In other words, there are many original acquisitions or appropriations that would not worsen the situation of others. For example, it seems clear enough that the proviso would not be violated if a person were to appropriate all of the discarded grass clippings in the world. However, Nozick (1974) affirms that the proviso is particularly wellsuited to cases where people appropriate the necessary conditions of

30761_DesRoches.indd 224

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

225

life. He gives the example of one person coming to own all of the drinkable water in the world and argues that if such an appropriation were to take place, then it would violate the Lockean proviso (though Nozick is skeptical that such an appropriation could actually happen since water would eventually become prohibitively expensive to the agent attempting to appropriate it all).10 Why? Such an appropriation would almost certainly worsen the situation of others because, unlike discarded grass clippings, every agent requires some quantity and quality of water to live any life at all. It is important to recognize that in a case such as this, the proviso is not violated merely because some water is appropriated (recall Locke’s example above when one person drinks from a river without worsening the situation of the next agent who endeavours to drink from the same river) but because all of the water is appropriated, and this substance has a special relation to agents, one that cannot be easily substituted for another and, therefore, is bound to worsen the situation of others. It is crucial to recognize that the proviso can also be violated if an original acquisition combines with spontaneous natural events that, jointly, worsen the situation of others. To adapt one of Nozick’s (1974) examples, suppose I were to appropriate 1 of 10,000 watering holes in a desert and that, in the beginning, this appropriation does not worsen the situation of others one iota. While everyone is certainly affected by my appropriation, since they can no longer appropriate my specific watering hole, no one’s situation is immediately worsened by my owning the watering hole, and, therefore, the condition underlying Locke’s proviso is met. But suppose further that quite independent of my own activities, a natural disaster strikes post facto – well after I had appropriated my watering hole – and, mysteriously, all of the other watering holes in the desert except for mine dry up. In this case, my appropriation of the watering hole and the natural events combined to make water radically scarce and thus violate Locke’s proviso. As Nozick avows, the original process that would have normally given rise to a permanent bequeathable property right in a previously unowned thing – my watering hole in the desert – no longer applies since the situation of others has been worsened. Of course, not every event that worsens the situation of agents violates the proviso. The proviso is only violated when agents are harmed by specific causes. These causes are either the acquisition of unowned things or, as demonstrated in the foregoing case, the

30761_DesRoches.indd 225

2019-05-03 12:52:12

226

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

acquisition of unowned things plus certain other natural events that combine to worsen the situation of others. This means that, for example, unassisted nature cannot violate the Lockean proviso. An agent’s situation will surely be worsened if he chooses to live as a hermit in the Negev desert and a natural disaster causes all of his water supply to evaporate. However, in this case, the condition underlying Locke’s proviso would still be met because no other agent’s appropriation caused the scarcity of water and thus did not cause the desert hermit’s situation to be worsened. For Locke’s proviso to be violated, the hermit’s situation must have been worsened by the activities of another, even if those activities are combined with natural events. Now that we have a better idea of what Locke’s proviso is and how it can be violated, what, if any, moral limits does it impose on buying and selling water? As described in the introduction to this chapter, free-market economists do not generally recognize any such limits. In fact, some have argued that as water becomes increasingly scarce it should be privatized and then bought and sold in the marketplace. For example, Anderson and Snyder (1997, 11) state, “private rights must be established to enable individuals acting in a market to determine water allocation.” Without explicitly recognizing limitations to buying and selling water, Anderson and Leal (2001, 105) argue that, “because [water] is a necessity of life … it must be entrusted to the discipline of markets that encourage conservation and innovation.” These authors maintain that the free market will distribute water like any other commodity: according to its most valued use. The market does this by efficiently allocating water to those who are willing and able to pay the most for it. Even in the aftermath of a terrible natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, for example, some economists have defended the practice of price gouging because charging a relatively high price for water in such urgent circumstances represents its scarcity and, moreover, such prices have beneficial consequences (Culpepper and Block 2008). As standard economic theory predicts, high prices will incentivize the owners of water to transport their water to the disaster zone and sell it, rather than choosing to sell it in a jurisdiction where the price is relatively low. This free-market approach to distributing water treats water as an ordinary commodity and does not explicitly recognize any limits to buying and selling it. The problem with this line of reasoning is that water, or, at the very least, a specific quantity and quality of water, is not merely an ordinary

30761_DesRoches.indd 226

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

227

commodity and there are moral limits to buying and selling it. Some instances of buying and selling water – for example, during a natural catastrophe – will violate the Lockean proviso in the same way that the proviso was violated in the example above, when I came to be the sole owner of the last watering hole in the desert through a combination of my original appropriation of water and the subsequent natural events that, together, caused water to become perilously scarce. In both of these cases, as the owner of water, if I were to prevent others from obtaining it by charging a high price or otherwise, then their situation would be worsened, not merely by the natural events that took place following my original appropriation, but by my appropriation itself plus the natural events that were beyond my control. While my claim is that some buying and selling of water should not be permitted, it should also be recognized that the price of water on its own need not prevent others from acquiring it and, as a consequence, my claim that some water should not be bought and sold, even when water is extremely limited, is a qualified one. Suppose, for example, that in the case of a natural disaster the only water available is owned by a person who, no matter what the circumstance, endeavours to sell it for a very low price – almost gratis. Suppose further that the price was so low that it prevented no one from actually using or obtaining it. In this case it would be difficult to sustain the claim that the situation of others was worsened by this benevolent owner’s appropriation of water combined with the subsequent natural events that caused the disaster and eventual scarcity of water. In other words, it would be difficult to sustain the claim that Locke’s proviso has been violated. In this special case, the grounds we had for blocking the sale of water – when its high price excludes other agents from accessing it – have been removed.11 But of course this is a fictional case. No theory predicts that owners will benevolently sell their water at a relatively low price when others need it for survival. On the contrary, economic theory predicts that ceteris paribus the opposite to be true: owners of water will sell their water at a relatively high price when it becomes increasingly scarce, even when others need it for their continued existence. This theoretical prediction alone is sufficient reason to underscore the moral limits of buying and selling water in those cases when others urgently need it (with that being said, while their urgent need is surely a reason for imposing moral limits to buying and selling water, it is not the reason under consideration).

30761_DesRoches.indd 227

2019-05-03 12:52:12

228

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

The proviso requires that buying and selling water in the marketplace is limited in some minimal sense. If water is radically scarce and such transactions exclude agents from obtaining it, they should be blocked. We have seen that the proviso can be violated when others are harmed by the original appropriation or by the appropriation combined with certain natural events. However, Nozick explains that there is an exceptional class of cases when the situation of others is worsened and the proviso is still not violated: when the agent who appropriates some object also compensates those who were harmed so that their situation is no longer worsened. To continue along with our example, in the case of water, any such compensation will have to be in-kind and involve a specific distribution: according to those whose situation has been worsened.12 Is the free market expected to distribute water in this manner? If the market did distribute water to those whose situation has been worsened by the appropriations of others, then, for all intents and purposes, such a distribution would qualify as compensation and it would appear that Locke’s proviso would also remain intact. But the problem here is obvious. The market does not automatically distribute water to those whose situations have been worsened to safeguard Locke’s proviso. Rather, the market, as just mentioned, allocates scarce resources to those who are willing and able to pay for it. Therefore, the free-market outcome is not likely to coincide with the outcome required to keep Locke’s proviso intact because it is unlikely that the specific agents who are willing and able to pay the most for water are not going to be the same agents who have been harmed and who need water to survive.13 But what is one to make of the free-market environmental economist’s argument that price gouging in a disaster zone signals and incentivizes the owners of water to transport and sell it to those in the disaster zone? Surely, this is a beneficial consequence of the free market, one that, given the dire circumstances, should be enthusiastically embraced. After all, who would object to transporting water to a disaster zone where there are agents in desperate need of it? While I do not deny that, on the whole, such activities would seem to have positive consequences, the point that I am making is that such consequences are not likely to prove sufficient for keeping the proviso intact and it is keeping the proviso intact that is our sole concern here. Why will the proviso be violated in this case? Water might be transported into a disaster zone because it bears a relatively high price,

30761_DesRoches.indd 228

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

229

but once again, it is not likely to be distributed in the specific way required by the proviso. What matters when it comes to Locke’s proviso is not merely the promise of transporting a large quantity of water to a disaster zone for the purpose of selling it, but ensuring that those agents who have had their situation worsened by the appropriation and subsequent natural events are compensated to such an extent that they are not worse off from their baseline case. In short, the problem with the free-market environmental economist’s line of reasoning when applied to water is that price gouging in a disaster zone, for example, does not, on its own, ensure that the conditions underlying the proviso will be met. Economically efficient outcomes do not require a specific distribution, but Locke’s proviso does. Surely, an alternative policy might be used to preserve the efficiency of the price system and incentivize the supply of water where it is needed the most: to make monetary transfers to “needy” individuals (those individuals whose situations have been worsened). Under this arrangement, the monetary transfers could be used by such individuals for any purpose, including purchasing water in the marketplace. However, whether such a policy would help to leave the proviso intact remains an open question since a monetary transfer to an individual in need of water is not identical to a transfer of water in kind. If it were guaranteed that the individuals who received monetary transfers could thereby attain sufficient water so that the proviso is left intact, then our worry about violating the proviso would be diminished significantly or alleviated altogether.14 5 c  onclusion

This chapter began by contrasting two positions on the moral limits to water markets entailed by the human right to water. While freemarket economists do not generally recognize any such limits, Maude Barlow has argued that the human right to water entails that no water markets should be permitted. If we accept Risse’s (2014) conception of the human right to water, then both views are mistaken. If water markets prevent people from obtaining some minimal and proportional share of water, by charging a prohibitively high price, or otherwise, then those markets put the human right to water in jeopardy and should be blocked. The main claim defended in this chapter is compatible with Barlow’s conclusion that no water should be treated

30761_DesRoches.indd 229

2019-05-03 12:52:12

230

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

as a commodity. After all, no positive argument has been given to support the claim that water should be commodified. However, it should be remarked that the position defended in this chapter departs from Barlow’s view since it is also compatible with the claim that some water should be treated as a commodity. While the human right to water entails definite moral limits to free markets, it would appear that Barlow goes too far in claiming that it therefore entails that all water should never be commodified. However, since some water is a human right, then all water is never merely a commodity and should never be treated as such. Even if it turns out that we may treat some water as a commodity, the conclusion defended in this chapter would still stand: the human right to water entails moral limits to buying and selling it. There are at least two limitations to the foregoing analysis that ought to be made explicit. First, the “real-world” implications of the Lockean proviso remain underexamined in this chapter. Risse’s philosophical conception of the human right to water appears to be limited to cases when water is relatively abundant, which is not always the case. After all, if water cannot be acquired without worsening the situation of someone (thus violating the Lockean proviso), then, strictly speaking, either the proviso is inapplicable in such cases or no one is permitted to acquire water. Neither alternative seems desirable. Moreover, one might reasonably ask, what action might a government take if the proviso is violated? Would a violation of the proviso justify the renationalization of all or some water resources? If a government had strong evidence to believe that the proviso would be violated in the near future, can such a government pre-emptively set limits on water markets to avoid this violation? These are significant and complex practical questions that would have to be addressed by anyone proposing to actually ground the human right to water in the Lockean proviso. Second, while it should be clear that this chapter has established that some water should not be treated as a commodity, it has not determined the proper scope of all water markets. Clearly, even if water markets violated no human rights, it would not follow that such markets should be left completely unchecked. Why? There are almost certainly independent moral reasons – not examined in this chapter – against privatizing and subsequently buying and selling water. For example, it is well-known that many moral communities

30761_DesRoches.indd 230

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

231

treat specific bodies of water as vitally important, or even sacred. Naturally, the question arises as to whether this special ascription of value is compatible with commodifying water (a question that is taken seriously by conventionalists, as discussed in section 3 above). In some cases, both modes of valuation may be congruous: buying or selling water would not eliminate the culturally significant values ascribed to water. In other cases, however, the simple act of commodifying water and allowing the free market to determine its allocation could have a crowding-out effect: it could eliminate culturally significant values that ought not to be eliminated. In all such cases, barring the explicit consent of the community members concerned, the default position should not be to treat water as a commodity. The point being made here is that, independent of the human right to water, there are almost certainly reasonable grounds for imposing moral limits to water markets. However, the analysis in this chapter was restricted to analyzing the moral limits to water markets engendered by the human right to water.

n otes   1 For more on her position, see Barlow (2002, 2007). On the topic of governing water resources in general, from a Canadian perspective, see Bakker (2007).   2 For more on rights, see Wenar (2015).   3 For the exceptions, see Bleisch (2006) and Veigha da Cunha (2009). For literature on the related and growing field of “water ethics,” see Brown and Schmidt (2010) and Groenfeldt (2013).   4 For a modern-day secular argument supporting the claim that the earth originally belongs to humankind collectively, see Risse (2014).   5 See Pogge (2005).   6 Others argue that markets have no moral limits (Brennan and Jaworski 2016).   7 Clearly, vulnerable people living in poverty may, out of desperation, choose to sell their water or their rights to use a body of water, thereby inflicting harm on themselves and the rest of society. The narrow and generalized consequentialist views would capture these harms and correctly judge that such markets should be blocked.   8 Of course, this particular criticism only succeeds if consequentialism is actually unable to accommodate rights, a claim that is not

30761_DesRoches.indd 231

2019-05-03 12:52:12

232

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

uncontroversial. Philip Pettit (1988), for one, has argued that consequentialism can recognize rights because this is the best way to promote a ­certain sort of desirable consequence. For more on consequentialism and rights, see Brandt (1984) and Gibbard (1992).   9 The conventionalist view is not inapplicable to every question concerning the moral limits of water markets. For example, it is well known that many communities treat water or specific bodies of water as vitally important, even sacred (Altman 2002). Naturally, the question arises as to whether ascribing sacred value to water is compatible with commodifying it. In some cases, it may be that the two modes of valuation are congruent: buying or selling water does not eliminate the culturally significant values ascribed to water. In other cases, however, it is easy to imagine that the very act of commodifying water has a crowding-out effect that eliminates culturally significant values that ought not to be eliminated. 10 If Locke’s proviso would be violated by appropriating all of the water in the world then it would also violate the proviso if one were to purchase all of the water in the world, knowingly or not. Nozick states, “if my appropriating all of a certain substance violates the Lockean proviso, then so does my appropriating some and purchasing all the rest from others who obtained it without otherwise violating the Lockean Proviso. If the proviso excludes someone’s appropriating all the drinkable water in the world, it also excludes his purchasing it all” (1974, 179). 11 By the term “sale,” I mean the transfer of the possession of ownership or title of a good or property in exchange for money or some other commodity. 12 Why in-kind? I cannot be compensated post facto for a loss in some condition required for survival. It is worth noting that the owner of water might also have to be compensated in some sense. Consider the watering hole example above. Suppose it was only through great cost and effort that I maintained my watering hole while others did not and this was, in part, the reason why my watering hole was the last one that remained after the natural disaster. The process that originally gave me property rights in my watering hole might no longer obtain since it violates the ­proviso, but given that I have incurred great cost to maintain my watering hole I would have claim to some reasonable compensation. 13 Even if the free market were to distribute water according to its most ­valued use, such a distribution would not override those who have a claim not to be harmed by the appropriations of others. 14 It is worth recognizing that if monetary transfers are not made directly by the entity that owns the water (i.e., a private water company),

30761_DesRoches.indd 232

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Water Rights and Moral Limits to Water Markets

233

then compensation in the Nozickian sense would not really transpire because the costs of the transfers themselves would not be borne by those who own a disproportionate amount of the resource at hand. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this observation.

30761_DesRoches.indd 233

2019-05-03 12:52:12

12

Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management Eric Desjardins, Jamie Shaw, Gillian Barker, and Justin Bzovy

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

It has become increasingly clear that interconnected global-scale systems play critical roles in determining the local conditions across the Earth’s surface, and that human activity is now affecting these Earth systems in significant ways. Examples include global wind and ocean currents; patterns of precipitation and hydrology; the formation and melting of ice; the movement and operation of ecosystems and their component populations; the migration and sequestration of materials (such as carbon and nitrogen) by means of organic activity, combustion, and wind and water movement; and of course the flow of energy into, out of, and between the Earth’s systems, including shifts in heat energy patterns (climate change). Scientists, environmental activists, and policy-makers have recognized and discussed the importance of finding ways to correct, support, or improve the operation of these Earth systems, though their ideas about what this means are extremely disparate. Two main approaches can be distinguished, embodying differing world views that shape how people understand the existing problems and possible solutions. The most common approach focuses on physical and industrial processes, understood in broadly mechanistic terms; it sees human activity and natural processes as fundamentally distinct, and aims to develop ways for humans to control the global “machine” by adding to or modifying its components. Mainstream strategies of climate

30761_DesRoches.indd 234

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

235

change mitigation and radical geoengineering plans take this approach. Research and planning efforts using this approach generally take for granted that economic growth and industrial development are central social aims, and seek ways that these values can continue to be satisfied. This approach also has a characteristic epistemic style: it is reductive, and tends to foster confidence that current science and technology have the key factors well in view. It does not expect major epistemic or practical surprises, and seeks to use efficient control of Earth systems to avoid the latter. A different approach looks at Earth systems in functional terms and focuses on the role of organisms, ecosystems, and complex adaptive systems in general. It sees biological systems and their “abiotic” environments as richly interconnected – with ecosystems affecting patterns of temperature, wind, precipitation and hydrology, for example – and aims to repair, restore, or improve the integrated functioning of Earth systems. Many ecologists and environmentalists, and some economists, farmers, geologists, and hydrologists take this approach. Instances of research and planning that follow this approach express diverse values, but they tend to seek functional resilience rather than mechanical control, and to question the goals of traditional industrial development. This approach also has a characteristic epistemic style: it looks for complexity and interdependence, and as a result expects that a good deal of important information has yet to emerge. It expects surprises, and recognizes the need to integrate them into their world view, models, and management plans instead of merely trying to control them. This second approach embraces a wide range of more specific views and practices, from more conservative versions, such as attempts to assess the economic value of “ecosystem services” and the UN’s recent research on “climate-smart agriculture” to radical versions, such as the “Gaia theory” or “rewilding” initiatives. Projects that use the theoretical framework and methods of complex dynamical systems theory, such as the Limits to Growth models and the new Planetary Boundaries initiative, are important contributors to understanding natural processes. What these instances have in common is a broad perspective that sees Earth systems as functional and as globally integrated – we call this the “Geofunctions Perspective” (G F P ). As the two case studies presented in this chapter will show, the GFP has the potential to produce transformative change in environmental management. The first case study examines the events surrounding

30761_DesRoches.indd 235

2019-05-03 12:52:12

236

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

the moratorium placed on all cod fishing by the Canadian government on 2 July 1992. From the 1960s until the moratorium, fisheries management aimed at economic development and rested on scientific models that treated the relevant natural systems as if they could be analyzed into discrete parts that could be separately controlled and individually optimized. We show that the lack of G F P was an important contributor to this disastrous management failure. The resulting shortsightedness was exacerbated by a rigid approach to the collection and use of knowledge that excluded the relevant experience and values of many stakeholders, including the local fishers. Things have changed since the 1992 moratorium, but despite the recent push toward more precautionary, ecosystem-based, and integrative approaches to fisheries management, the actual guiding principles still fall short of fully embracing a GFP and integrating the knowledge and values of all stakeholders. The second case looks at an unorthodox form of rangeland management that marries ranching, restoration, and conservation. This “holistic management,” championed by ecologist and rancher Allan Savory, rests on the idea that ranching practices that mimic how herds of herbivores are constrained by the presence of predators can increase productivity and improve the ecological condition of the land. In presenting this case, we highlight the importance of the G F P for this revolutionary approach to land management. Holistic management was made possible by merging knowledge from different domains (ecology, hydrology, ranching, etc.) and by looking at functional relationships between ecological and social processes. Although holistic management has had some impressive successes, it has also raised a host of criticisms from scientists who doubt the claims made by Savory and other supporters. We consider these criticisms and argue that they needlessly foreclose an open form of inquiry that demands standards of practice and evidence that diverge from those standards in experimental science. Building from these two cases, we argue that endorsing a G F P in environmental management also requires embracing several types of pluralism. First, we need epistemic pluralism, because understanding the functional interdependencies of Earth systems requires bringing together tools, concepts, and models from a wide variety of different sources that may lack a common theoretical core. Second, bringing together different knowers and stakeholders often creates the con­ ditions for axiological pluralism, where multiple values must be

30761_DesRoches.indd 236

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

237

balanced and considered. This section also looks at the problem of pluralistic combination, i.e., how different theories, disciplines, and perspectives can be brought together. Like others (e.g., Feyerabend 1975; Schuster and Yeo 1986; Mitchell 2003), we recognize that there is no universal algorithm for this problem, but some general guidance could come from Chang’s (2012) distinction between tolerant and interactive pluralism. 2 t h e c o l l a p s e o f t h e at l a n t i c c o d f i s h e r y

The collapse of the Northwest Atlantic cod fishery is a clear example of the inadequacy of the mechanistic approach, which led to a dramatic depletion of a thriving cod population on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador (Bavington 2010). This case has received a lot of attention. The basic story is that one of the most abundant fish populations in the Northwest Atlantic was brought to near extinction because of poorly regulated and overly aggressive industrial fishing. Although correct, this version of the story only superficially touches upon a much deeper problem. The case of the collapse of cod fisheries is not a simple matter of managerial failure. The roots of the failure lie in the world view and assumptions that accompanied the objective of economic development and the comprehensive management plan of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (D F O ) during the 1960s to the 1990s. In comprehensively managing fisheries with economic development as their main goal, Canadian authorities relied on scientific models that make unrealistic equilibrium and reductionistic assumptions. In the process, they were further blinkered by a lack of regard for a diversity of values and perspectives. 2.1 o  ptimizing fisheries

During the 1960s to the 1990s, the entrenched values of economic development naturally supported a particular scientific approach to managing fisheries. The view was that managing any given natural resource to support healthy economic output requires a fair degree of predictability and control over that resource. But fisheries did not readily fit this pattern. For centuries, cod was known for being abundant, yet unpredictable. Up until the late 1960s, many families that relied on fishing for a living were in fact rather poor (Gough 2007, 312), and before the advent of bigger vessels with new technology,

30761_DesRoches.indd 237

2019-05-03 12:52:12

238

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

many fishers had to practise occupational pluralism, i.e., find various means of subsistence (Bavington 2010). Yet, after the Second World War, there was hope that fishing could become a more secure and reliable activity. Different factors can explain this shift in opinion. The creation of bigger and more powerful trawler boats equipped with radars, radios, autopilots, and sensitive sonars made fishing more efficient. Another important change was the creation in 1979 of a 200-mile offshore zone under Canada’s jurisdiction. This meant greater control over fishing and possibly a better average income for Canadian fishers. Up to that point, overfishing was mostly countered by trying to control the number of boats and licences. With the offshore zone in place, regulations were introduced to set catch quotas and control the mesh size on trawlers. But perhaps one of the most influential factors in managers’ hope for more stable and productive fisheries was the development of scientific management. The models and theories that were put forth in the 1970s made it look like populations behaved in a law-like manner, which made cod look like a predictable and controllable resource. The demographic models that supported this managerial vision appear in a 1978 DF O leaflet titled Fisheries Science: How and Why it Works for Marine Fisheries.1 This leaflet, put together by economist Scott Gordon and colleagues, contains the ecological and economic principles that support the notion of “optimal fishing.” The reasoning is quite elegant and simple. It rests on some of the theoretical developments that took place in population biology and economics during the 1950s and 1960s. The argument assumes that a population unaffected by fishing follows what ecologists call a “logistic growth” pattern (figure 12.1a). According to this model, a population has exponential growth when it is less abundant but gradually stabilizes as the population approaches the carrying capacity of the environment (the number of organisms of some species an environment can support) (figure 12.1b). When a population exceeds the carrying capacity, density-dependent factors (e.g., competition, predation, diseases) force a return toward equilibrium (i.e., negative growth). The assumption in the leaflet is that a “virgin stock,” i.e., a population that has not been under fishing pressure, is at (or close to) this carrying capacity: “A virgin stock exists in balance with its environment. It’s balanced because growth of individual fish in the stock and additions through reproduction equals the weight of fish which die from natural causes … such as

30761_DesRoches.indd 238

2019-05-03 12:52:12



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

239

predators, starvation or disease” (Gough 2007, 302). Fishing then affects fish mortality rate and reduces the abundance of a population below the carrying capacity. The result is an increase in growth: “The faster and more intensely a virgin stock is fished, the faster the remaining fish grow and replicate themselves” (ibid. 302). Of course, this increase in growth has a limit, since below a certain abundance the growth will diminish again. In theory, therefore, it is possible to maximize the number of catches (or total yield) by maintaining the population abundance where growth is at its highest. This is called the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY ) (figure 12.1). The theory of optimal fishing does not recommend maintaining the abundance at M S Y . The problem is that “if a stock is fished at the level of M S Y or close to it, the total catch will be maximized but the individual catch rates will become lower and lower as the M S Y level is approached” (ibid., 303). The idea instead is to maximize profit per vessel. This can be achieved by increasing the number of catches per boat, and the value of these catches per fishing effort. As the figures show, if these models are correct, the Optimal Sustainable Yield (O S Y ) strategy would require lowering the fishing effort. By doing so, the number of catch per boat can increase (figure 12.2a) and the gap between the cost and the dollar value of the catch will grow (figure 12.2b).2 The O S Y model became a very desirable managerial tool during the 1980s. The management of any fishery could follow the same basic rules: control the number of vessels to maintain the population at a level where population growth and abundance can maximize the profit per catch. The demographic models’ simplicity and universality lent them a compelling elegance and ease of application, but in practice these same features produced an approach to management that was simplistic and myopic. Governing authorities proved willing to apply the models despite lacking the accurate picture of abundance needed to properly set quotas, since despite some progress in measuring abundance, adequate data were still lacking (cf. Shelton and Morgan 2014). But more serious problems lurk in the background. The equilibrium assumptions behind the notion of M S Y are useful idealizations in theoretical population biology. They have been shown to approximate the behaviour of isolated populations under certain controlled laboratory conditions, but they are notoriously inadequate for representing populations outside the lab (Hengeveld and Walter 2010). It is

30761_DesRoches.indd 239

2019-05-03 12:52:12

240

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

12.1  Graphical representation of the logistic growth model

well-known from ecological research that the carrying capacity is not a fixed parameter. If environmental conditions and demographic processes are not constant, or when the effects of changing density are not instantaneous, then the dynamics of a population can become unstable and chaotic (Loreau 2010, 5). Moreover, the statistical attributes of populations that figure in the models and are believed to guide ecological performance and evolutionary trajectory are not real attributes; they are idealizations reified by managers in search of control and regularity. Furthermore, the demographic paradigm encourages a search for laws and general quantifiable principles, but it does so by taking target populations in isolation from their realworld contexts and by assuming too much stability in the factors

30761_DesRoches.indd 240

2019-05-03 12:52:13



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

241

12.2  Graphical representation of how the catch rate (a) and total catch value (b) change as a function of fishing effort (number of vessels)

determining their abundance (i.e., birth, death, and migration rates). In sum, by ignoring the complexity, heterogeneity, and unpredictability of ecological systems, managers developed tools that rested on unrealistic representations of the world and that consequently greatly exacerbated the very problems they were intended to solve. With time, the fishing community came to realize that the marriage between science and management was failing to deliver the promised predictability and control to the cod fishery. When John Crosbie, the Canadian minister of Fisheries and Oceans, announced a moratorium on all cod fishing in 1992, many had lost hope that technology and science would bring economic development and secure livelihoods. The problem, however, was not that managers were creating stronger ties with science. The use of an inadequate management approach

30761_DesRoches.indd 241

2019-05-03 12:52:13

242

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

and the general monistic attitude, i.e., the sole reliance on demographic models to the exclusion of other perspectives, information, and values, were the real problem. In shaping their approach to managing the cod fishery, government authorities proceeded as if the values of economic development and the managerial ecology that supported it were the only options. The DFO ignored alternative scientific perspectives and silenced several alternative environmental and social values. Assumptions of balance and equilibrium were central to early ecology, and remained prevalent for several decades. But these equilibrium assumptions started to fade out around the mid-twentieth century when evolutionary biologists and ecologists started to realize that many ecological systems are contingent and can shift unpredictably between multiple dynamic equilibria (Lewontin 1969; Holling 1973; Sutherland 1974; Kingsland 1995). This trend became especially influential in community ecology. By recognizing the relevance of chance perturbations and the order of arrival of species within a community, community ecologists realized that a given regional pool of species could assemble in very different communities, and it was impossible to reliably predict what outcomes would follow from local disturbances or interventions. The species composition and functioning of a local community in a region was not merely governed by predictable density-dependent factors and did not always follow a repeatable succession trajectory. The recognition of historical contingencies was accompanied by the view that ecological systems could maintain a degree of structural and functional stability, but if pushed beyond a certain threshold, they would transition rather abruptly into a different ecological “regime.” While in a given regime, an ecological system would nevertheless undergo important changes, and the relative abundance of species could change over time. In the 1980s, this picture was complemented by theories that suggested that multiscale interactions are also important drivers of ecological systems (see Holling on adaptive cycles). The adoption of this new perspective was a significant step in the development of a G F P , foregrounding the roles of contingency, complexity, heterogeneity, and functional integration. But although research informed by this new perspective was available at the time when fisheries management took a scientific turn, none of the insights it offered appear in the equilibrium demographic models that guided decisions about fishing management. Several aspects of this perspective on nature seemed to have reached

30761_DesRoches.indd 242

2019-05-03 12:52:13



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

243

resource managers now, but only very recently. In the context of the D F O ’s aim of managerial control of fish stocks and catch rates, this belated uptake of newer ecological ideas is perhaps understandable. Managers needed quantitative analysis, predictability, and stability, while the newer theories in ecology offered only contingencies, qualitative analysis, chaos, and a form of resilience characterized by the persistence of ecosystem functioning compatible with wide fluctuations in population abundance. But that is exactly our point here: that even though these theories, which posed a fundamental challenge to the possibility of achieving the kind of predictability and control that managers sought, were available and gaining wide recognition by the 1980s, the DFO experts nonetheless decided to rely exclusively on the demographic and equilibrium perspective that fit best with their broader assumptions and values. Even in a management context, other approaches were available at the time. Although his main preoccupation was the land, and not marine ecosystems, Aldo Leopold had been a leading figure in wildlife management during the first half of the twentieth century. From early on, Leopold worked toward the development of a more scientific/ ecological approach to land management. His work, however, was guided by a very different understanding of the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Leopold’s more philosophical ideas about management and conservation appeared in two books of essays published after his death. A Sand County Almanac (1949) and Round River (1953) offer stories and reflections about his own experience as a wildlife manager and restorationist. In these short essays, Leopold develops what he calls a “land ethic” based on the notion of the community of the land and the idea that we cannot approach nature conservation by treating each element in isolation. Leopold’s writing contains interesting insights that we can now interpret as precursors of the G F P in the context of ecosystem management. By presenting the land and people as being part of one community and by insisting on the interdependence of “every cog and wheel” (1966, 190), Leopold conveys the idea that Earth systems, including human society, are tightly integrated into a complex network of interactions. Embracing this perspective was at the very core of his land ethic. For him, conservation, defined as a state of harmony between humans and the rest of nature, was going nowhere because humans have underestimated the complexity of the world and have

30761_DesRoches.indd 243

2019-05-03 12:52:13

244

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

seen the rest of nature merely as a collection of resources rather than as functional components or agents contributing to a larger whole. Moreover, although Leopold followed many ecologists at the time in believing that there is something like an inherent balance of nature, a close reading of his understanding of this metaphor shows that what he had in mind was not stability but a continued flow of dynamical equilibria. In “the Land Ethic,” Leopold speaks about the biota as a complex “energy circuit,” i.e., an intricate network of food chains. He calls this the land pyramid, which suggests the presence of order and structure in what seems like complete chaos. But this structure is not static. In discussing the effect of humans on the land pyramid, Leopold highlights the fact that some regions have undergone significant transformations as the result of human activity, and now exist in novel dynamic equilibria: Western Europe, for example, carries a far different pyramid than Caesar found there. Some large animals are lost; swampy forests have become meadows or plowland; many new plants and animals are introduced, some of which escape as pests; the remaining natives are greatly changed in distribution and abundance. Yet the soil is still there and with the help of imported nutrients, still fertile; the waters flow normally; the new structure seems to function and to persist. There is no visible stoppage or derangement of the circuit. Western Europe, then, has a resistant biota. Its inner processes are tough, elastic, resistant to strain. No matter how violent the alterations, the pyramid, so far, has developed some new modus vivendi which preserves its habitability for man, and for most of the other natives. (Leopold 1966, 256) Leopold was also well aware that historical contingencies could leave a lasting mark on the evolution of ecosystems. In “The Round River,” he tells the story of the Spessart Mountain in Germany. The south slope of this mountain is dominated by magnificent oaks, whereas the north slope bears only “indifferent Scotch pines.” “Both slopes are part of the same state forest; both have been managed with equally scrupulous care for two centuries. Why the difference?” (Leopold 1966, 191). The answer lies in the history of events that affected that forest during the Middle Ages. The south slope was declared a hunting preserve by a bishop, whereas the north slope had been used for agriculture and then replanted with pines. Centuries later, the

30761_DesRoches.indd 244

2019-05-03 12:52:13



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

245

difference remains. What maintains these two physically connected pieces of land in alternative states is not the activities on the surface of the land, but what happens in the soil. By practising agriculture, the people of Spessart transformed the microscopic soil flora and fauna: “The number of species was greatly reduced, i.e., the digestive apparatus of the soil lost some of its parts. Two centuries of conservation have not sufficed to restore the loss” (ibid.). This is but one example where Leopold demonstrates that things are not always as simple as they seem, that there are intricate interdependencies in ecological processes that affect the overall functioning of ecosystems. The fact that Leopold was able to see this indicates that he had adopted something like a GFP in interpreting the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Although scientific ecology was still in its infancy, Leopold was able to merge what ecosystem ecologists had to say with his own experience to recognize that ecosystems can exist in alternative dynamic equilibria, that the processes occurring at different scales are functionally integrated, that past vagaries can have long-lasting and unexpected consequences, and that our approach to management should reflect and respect this complexity. By focusing almost exclusively on the science of M S Y and O S Y for years, fisheries managers in Canada took a far narrower avenue than the one laid out decades before by Leopold. Although less established at the time when fisheries were becoming more comprehensively managed, Adaptive Management (AM ) could also have become more important at an earlier stage. This type of management finds its roots in the resilience thinking movement that started in the 1970s with the work of C.S. Holling and his colleagues.3 Unlike the MSY paradigm, A M explicitly rejects the idea of management as control. There are different models of AM (see McFadden et al. 2011 for a review), but they generally share a recognition of the tentative nature of any knowledge and management strategy, and the use of an iterative process whereby problems, goals, and plans are regularly identified, implemented, and revised. Depending on the degree of control and integration, A M can be more or less experimental and cooperative. In certain situations, different strategies can be more readily tested at once (e.g., different policies or treatments are implemented at different locations of a same type). This form of experimental approach, called active AM, requires a greater involvement and monitoring by the management team, which is not always feasible. Practical difficulties attend any effort at active experimentation over a domain as large and diverse as the cod fishery,

30761_DesRoches.indd 245

2019-05-03 12:52:13

246

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

and experimentation also raises the possibility of injustice in contexts where peoples’ livelihoods might be affected by differing experimental regulations. These difficulties are not insurmountable, however. One of the mechanisms used in A M to prevent injustice and to support large management projects is the involvement of multiple stakeholders. For many, it is important that management is not only a “top down” hierarchical process; information and decision-making has to flow from the bottom up as well (Stringer et al. 2006), resulting in cooperation between all stakeholders. In larger projects, like the one involving fisheries, co-management can be implemented by a polycentric form of governance, in which authority is not concentrated in a single body but divided among several different ones. The management of Canadian fisheries is already polycentric in a limited sense insofar as different levels of government are empowered to deal with different aspects of fisheries regulation. But this model remains hierarchical and it does not reflect what many proponents of A M have in mind. The idea of polycentric governance is more like ecological systems, where multiple processes can have regulating effects without completely controlling the behaviour of the system, and properly refers to a dispersed and organic form of regulation. Polycentric governance might therefore be a better notion than management when a region finds its ecologies and different related social activities affected by various groups (e.g., Indigenous, federal, provincial, and municipal authorities, environmental N G O s, and businesses). Such polycentric governance stretches the notion of management to its limit; it suggests that it is impossible to control for the ecological/environmental processes and the social elements of the social-ecological system. As we will see in a moment, the most recent D F O guidelines are now advocating several elements mentioned above. The point here is simply that, up to very recently, there has been a notable lack of appreciation for management approaches that take a G F P . It is not too much to say that, had the authorities decided to look at nature from the perspective of Leopold or A M , then perhaps an ecological and social collapse could have been avoided. 2.2 n  ew directions

Things have changed since the 1990s. After over twenty years of a commercial fishing hiatus, wild cod populations show signs of

30761_DesRoches.indd 246

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

247

beginning to recover (Rose et al. 2015). The DFO management guidelines for fisheries and conservation of aquatic ecosystems have also been updated. Three general points are worth mentioning. First, several Acts, including the new Fisheries Act, promote an ecosystem approach that considers the relationship between a target species and its habitat, including other commercial and noncommercial species. This means that regulations take into consideration not only how many specimens of each species swim in the sea and how many are landed, but also whether or not fishing practices are harming the habitat of whatever is being fished, including other species that might depend on the exploited resource. Moreover, in compliance with the 1995 United Nations Fish Stock Agreement (UNFS A), the D F O has established a Precautionary Approach protocol to reduce risks as much as possible despite uncertainty about population dynamics (more on this in a moment). Finally, the DF O now takes an integrative approach. The overarching goal of the Fisheries Act now is to promote productive commercial, recreational, and Aboriginal fisheries. Here, there is an explicit effort to integrate multiple stakeholders and values. However, the current direction in management still fails to fully embrace a GF P or give sufficient room for pluralism. The adoption of an ecosystem-based management enables managers to think in terms of social-ecological systems, where human behaviours rather than fish populations are the target of regulation. However, this shift does not mean that demographic models and the idea of M S Y have been replaced by a GF P . The ecosystem perspective has simply been added to the demographic paradigm and the idea of M S Y.4 In 2006, the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat published a Science Advisory Report that outlines how the precautionary approach advocated by the UNFSA should apply in the context of fisheries (this came into effect in March 2012). In brief, the Canadian precautionary framework prescribes three stock status zones with reference points and adjusted fishing mortality. The Cautious Zone is the key novelty in this framework. It allows fisheries to adjust proportionally the fishing pressure and thus enable stocks to recover before getting to the critical zone. The upper stock reference point sets the beginning of this cautious zone, i.e., the threshold below which the removal rate is gradually reduced. The limit reference point marks the level of stock where fisheries are prohibited. To comply with the UNFSA, the removal reference in the healthy zone must not exceed the MSY .

30761_DesRoches.indd 247

2019-05-03 12:52:14

30761_DesRoches.indd 248

2019-05-03 12:52:14

12.3  Precautionary approach framework The removal rate (fishing mortality) should be adjusted according to the amount of stock estimated. In the healthy zone, the removal rate should not exceed M SY . In the cautious zone (80–40 per cent of M S Y ), removal rate decreases linearly. In the critical zone (stock below 40 per cent of MS Y ) fishing is prohibited (DF O 2006, 2009).



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

249

In 2009, the D F O established that the stock status is evaluated in terms of spawning biomass or egg production. Also, the protocol proposes a provisional harvest rule according to which the limit reference point is set to 40 per cent of the M S Y stock status, and the upper reference point at 80 per cent of the M S Y stock status. When the M S Y is not known, which seems to be common, the protocol says to follow the F0.1 rule, i.e., harvest at 10 per cent of the estimated biomass. This rule of thumb, established as the O S Y level since the late 1970s, roughly entails catching one out of five fish (Gough 2007, 304). We thus see that by following the U N F S A recommendation, commercial fishing regulation still rests on demographic models and the idea of M S Y . In these documents, the health of a population is still reduced to a number, and very little is done to take into consideration how well a species functions in its broader socio-ecological context. The lack of a GFP is also reflected in the way aquaculture has been promoted. It is often suggested that aquaculture reduces pressure on wild species. As we now know, this common belief is not universally true (Naylor et al. 2000); farmed carnivorous fish must eat to grow. As a result, the rapidly growing fish farming industry is now harvesting enormous quantities of smaller fish (e.g., capelin, sand eel, and Norway pout) that serve as feed for larger and more desirable commercial species. However, these pelagic fisheries affect many wild species, including cod, seals, and seabird colonies (Naylor et al. 2000). Even if it looks like the wild populations of cod have benefited from the moratorium, it would be premature to think that fisheries can resume, for collapsed populations can remain fragile, especially when there is increasing pressure from aquatic farms that are significantly weakening other important links in the food chain. So, despite the use of a precautionary protocol and the ecosystembased and integrative approach now advocated by the D F O, a lot remains to be done to restore collapsed populations and prevent other fisheries from undergoing the same fate as the cod fishery. Adopting a GFP would involve expanding further the ecosystem-based approach to build a better understanding and evaluation of social-ecological functioning. The health of marine ecosystems cannot simply be based on an estimate of MSY and the rate at which individual populations return to their equilibrium. In a recent paper, Neubauer et al. (2013) argue that moderate overexploitation could increase the recovery rate of species, but that severe overexploitation, like the one experienced

30761_DesRoches.indd 249

2019-05-03 12:52:14

250

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

by cod, tends to increase the unpredictability of recovery. This type of analysis is useful and it calls for increased precautionary measures for severely reduced stocks. But it does not go much further than the managerial and demographic perspective. “Resilience” for these researchers means “short recovery time,” but following the resilience thinking tradition, the GFP would recommend that we also pay attention to resilience as the capacity of the whole social-ecological system to adapt while maintaining structure and function within a certain range of variability. To promote this type of resilience, researchers and decision-makers need to better understand the relationship between commercial and noncommercial species, how these are affected by the changing physical and chemical conditions of oceans, and the socio-economic factors that affect fisheries. This requires the participation of several disciplines and kinds of knowers, and, as we will see later, it also calls for different forms of pluralism. Before we elaborate this point, we will look at another case of environmental management. 3 h  olistic management

In a now-controversial T E D talk in 2013, Allan Savory claimed to have discovered a strategy for range and grazing management that can simultaneously combat climate change, rehabilitate desertified ecosystems, improve local biodiversity, and increase profitability for ranchers around the world. He calls this strategy “holistic management” (or “planned grazing.”) Boldly stating that “there is no other alternative left to mankind,” Savory’s talk provoked discussion both from the general public and from the scientific community. The response from the scientific community was mixed, with some claiming that holistic management was a “hoax” and “fraud” that would be unable to deliver on its promises. This section will briefly recapitulate some of these claims and the responses that followed. The basic idea behind holistic management is quite simple: by mimicking natural ecological situations (specifically, predator-prey relations) for herds in enclosed farmlands, ranchers can control the rates and areas where those herds trample on land. This periodic trampling, as well as the distribution of grazing and animal urine and manure, is thought to improve the ability of the soil to absorb water and to sequester carbon. The periodic movement of the herd and extended recovery time before it is returned to the same plot prevents

30761_DesRoches.indd 250

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

251

desertification by overgrazing and instead enables the growth of more diverse and dense plant cover, which enhances grazing conditions and thus increases ranch profitability. Importantly, however, holistic management involves not just rotating the livestock between paddocks on a fixed schedule (what is called “rotational grazing”), but constantly adjusting the rotation schedule in response to ongoing monitoring of conditions in the paddocks. Savory himself has employed holistic management in his native Zimbabwe and in the southern United States with great success. His method, over the past forty years or so, has since gained worldwide popularity and has been used by many ranchers on six continents. Based on testimony (and photographs), holistic management has succeeded in many of its stated aims (e.g., livestock weight gains, annual forage production, and quality of forage, among others). Given how miraculous the claimed results seem, holistic management has understandably been met with resistance. Briske et al. (2013), for instance, write “[w]e find all of Mr Savory’s major claims to be unfounded and we express deep concern that they have the potential to undermine proven, practical approaches5 to rangeland management and restoration that are supported by a global community of practitioners and scientists” (72). We will not detail these positions here, but simply remark on the debate surrounding what evidence supports the claims made by proponents and detractors of holistic management. Range managers who choose traditional continuous grazing, rotational grazing, and holistic management share many goals. They all seek to increase livestock weight and fertility, forage quantity and quality; most also aim to contribute to non-commodity goals such as enhancing diversity in plant species, soil health, water quality, and carbon sequestration (Roche et al. 2015). The questions that ensue surround which method best achieves these goals and under what conditions it can be effectively implemented. In an analysis of studies comparing rotational grazing with continuous grazing, Briske et al. (2008) summarize the results as follows: 1 Chronic, intensive grazing is detrimental to plant growth and survival; 2 Primary productivity can be increased by lenient grazing and decreased by severe grazing; 3 Forage quality is often improved by frequent grazing; and

30761_DesRoches.indd 251

2019-05-03 12:52:14

252

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

4 Species composition of plant communities can be modified in response to the frequency, intensity, and seasonality of grazing. The first point is due to the removal of leaf coverage, which is necessary to absorb photosynthetically active radiation and convert it to chemical energy (ibid.). The second has been confirmed by experiments that show how rest after defoliation is necessary for maximal plant production (Milchunas and Lauenroth 1993). The third is due to the tendency that frequent grazing has to increase younger plant generation, which has higher soluble to structural ratios, and thus to optimize caloric energy per biomass (Walker et al. 1989). The fourth states that the heterogeneous grazing patterns, which typically accompany larger herds, will ensure less fluctuation in plant biodiversity. This much is (relatively) uncontroversial. However, there is a great deal of controversy as to what evidence there is to support the claim that rotational grazing is superior to traditional continuous grazing. The debate between continuous and rotational grazing has been going on since André Voisin’s landmark book Grass Productivity (1957). We will not recapitulate the entire debate here but will rely on Holechek et al.’s (2001) summary of published results from the A G R IC OL A database:6 17/19 (89%) experiments reported no differences for plant biomass (standing crop) between rotational and continuous grazing with similar stocking rates. • When stocking rate7 was less for continuous grazing, 3/4 (75%) reported either no difference or greater plant production for ­continuous grazing. • Across all stocking rates, 19/23 (83%) experiments reported no different in plant production, 3/23 (13%) reported greater plant production for rotational grazing, and 1/23 (4%) reported greater plant production for continuous grazing. • 16/28 (57%) reported no differences for animal production per head, and 10/28 (36%) reported greater per head production for continuous grazing. • When stocking rates were less for continuous grazing, 9/10 (90%) reported similar or greater per head production for ­continuous grazing. •

30761_DesRoches.indd 252

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

253

Across all stocking rates, 19/38 (50%) reported no difference in animal production, 3/38 (8%) reported greater production for rotational grazing, and 16/38 (42%) reported greater production for continuous grazing.

•

As summed up by Briske et al. (2008), “[t]hese experimental results conclusively demonstrate that rotational grazing is not superior to continuous grazing across numerous rangeland ecosystems” (8). In conjunction with this mounting evidence against rotational grazing, critics of holistic management often argue that there is little to no evidence for holistic management. At many points, critics (Briske et al. 2013, 74; Briske et al. 2014, 39) point to a lack of “scientific” studies supporting the thesis that holistic management is superior to more traditional approaches. The only evidence is based on the testimony of those who have used holistic management. Briske et al. (2008), for example, state that “[c]ontinued advocacy for rotational grazing as a superior strategy of grazing on rangelands is founded on perception and anecdotal interpretations, rather than an objective assessment of the vast experimental evidence” (3). If these testimonies are set aside, there seems to be little scientific evidence that could justify policies advocating a shift in methods used by ranchers. The responses to criticism of holistic management and rotational grazing have been equally multifarious. However, two main replies are often given.8 The first is that holistic management, as expounded and taught by Savory and his colleagues, is not the same process as rotational grazing. Therefore, the evidence against traditional forms of rotational grazing doesn’t necessarily amount to a refutation of holistic management. Proponents of holistic management cite numerous differences between holistic management and traditional forms of rotational grazing. The claimed effectiveness of holistic management depends on both the intense concentration of grazing and trampling and the long recovery time before animals are returned to the same location. If a rotational grazing system employs paddocks that are too large, or a rotation schedule that returns the herd too quickly to recovering paddocks, the effect will be very different. Most important, however, is the role in holistic management of constantly monitoring and adjusting the grazing pattern to the condition of the soil and vegetation. In this respect, holistic management is best understood as a form of adaptive management; what makes

30761_DesRoches.indd 253

2019-05-03 12:52:14

254

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

it adaptive is precisely the active response by which managers respond to feedbacks from the land. The second criticism is that most experimental evidence that exists is too limited to amount to a strong refutation. For example, many of the aforementioned studies that purport to disconfirm holistic management are relatively short studies that hide the fact that “well managed ranches that improve species composition and soil health become much more productive over periods of time” (Teague et al. 2013, 707). Additionally, most studies are on paddocks of less than 25 ha, which is much smaller than the typical ranch (Norton 1998). More generally, “the results of the numerous small-scale experimental studies evaluated by Briske et al. (2008) bear little resemblance to the outcomes of ranch-scale management … [m]ost grazing trials have not represented operational scale soil-plant-animal interactions and the resulting effects of defoliation” (Teague et al. 2013, 709). Given these responses, it isn’t clear that holistic management has been refuted by experimental evidence. This final response reflects the way in which the G F P is related to the debate over holistic management. Although, as noted above, most range managers share a variety of goals for commodity production and enhancing ecosystem services or functioning, there are important differences to note in the conceptual frameworks that inform both the research and practice of these different approaches to grazing management, and in the priorities of the practitioners. Traditional range management developed with the main aim of maximizing the production of livestock. As with M S Y approaches to natural resources, it was important to balance the absolute quantity of production against the quality of the output, the economic efficiency of production, and the sustainability of production over time. These considerations led to the inclusion of non-commodity goals such as soil and pasture health, invasive weed management, and water quality in assessing management strategies. But as with MSY-based approaches to natural resource management, the representation of rangeland ecosystems employed in traditional range science and management was a simplified and mechanistic one that focused on a few critical metrics, in particular livestock and forage productivity. Holistic management, by contrast, was explicitly developed as a way of reproducing the ecological functions of herds of grazing animals in interaction with large predators. The promoters of holistic

30761_DesRoches.indd 254

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

255

management have strongly emphasized its effects on the biodiversity of native bird and mammal species as well as plants. Some have made a point of exploring the prospects for conservation of wild grazing animals and even predators on land under holistic management. And many focus on the way that holistic management contributes to better hydrological functioning, soil building, and carbon sequestration. These emphases reveal that holistic management is a management approach that goes unusually far in adopting a G F P . This is also reflected in the goal priorities of ranchers: those who give the highest priority to livestock productivity are the most likely to practise traditional continuous grazing, while those who prioritize broader ecosystem functions are more likely to choose some form of adaptive rotational grazing more akin to holistic management (Roche 2015). The two case studies used in this chapter are very different, but they both indicate the consequences of a lack of pluralism. Suffice it to say for now that what troubles researchers about holistic management is the use of evidence that does not reflect scientific standards. The “research program” for holistic management relies on practitioners’ implicit expertise and testimony, on place-based knowledge obtained through interactive observation over long periods, and on extensive informal social transmission (Knapp and Gimenez 2009). It thus adopts a methodology that is quite different from, and arguably incommensurable with, the traditional scientific methodology employed in ecological and biochemical studies. Although we believe that our policies and environmental management practices should rest on good evidence, we think that the negative reaction that holistic management has received from some scientists is symptomatic of an unjustified monistic attitude. More specifically, it (partially) comes from an overly quick dismissal of testimony based on local knowledge as a legitimate form of evidence. The role of testimony in epistemology is an ongoing topic of debate (Lackey and Sosa 2006; Fricker 2007). Specifically, it is widely recognized that the ability of social groups to collaborate on some epistemic project (in this case, knowledge of grazing methods) depends on the ability of individuals to accept each others’ testimony, since it would not be feasible to directly verify all the testified evidence. Testimony also plays a central role in the assurance that the experimental reports cited above are legitimate. So why should the testimony of farmers, who report that they have practised holistic management and often kept careful records for years, not count as genuine evidence

30761_DesRoches.indd 255

2019-05-03 12:52:14

256

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

in its favour? There are many reasons why we may disbelieve a speaker’s testimony. The speaker may have some conflict of interest, they may have a reputation for being deceptive, their memory and perception may be distorted, etc. The former two reasons are rarely cited as reasons to discredit proponents of holistic management (though some critics have accused Savory himself of being a huckster or charlatan). Indeed, the mere fact that so many different practitioners around the world have reported success with holistic management makes it seem highly implausible that there is some collective attempt to fabricate support for it. This third reason could certainly make us hesitate to accept these claims at face value, but it doesn’t give enough of a reason to suggest that “Mr Savory’s claims … should not be used to guide any aspect of grazing management or research” (Briske et al. 2014, 41). While this testimonial evidence doesn’t entail accepting holistic management without some further testing of its claims, it does lend credibility to holistic management. More acutely, there is evidence, albeit incomplete, for holistic management once we acknowledge that the testimony of its practitioners counts as legitimate evidence. 4 f r o m t h e g f p t o p l u r a l i s m The ecosystem is not more complex than we think, it is more complex than we can think. Frank Egler9

Our goal in presenting some of the episodes that marked the transformation of Canadian fisheries and the controversies surrounding holistic management is to suggest that we cannot adequately manage (or govern) social-ecological systems unless we endorse a G F P and pluralistic approach. We gave reasons for adopting a G F P as we presented the two cases. In this section, we further justify and explain the need for pluralism in environmental management. Since pluralism has come to mean different things within philosophy and the sciences, it is also worth specifying what kind of pluralism we are advocating in this chapter. Pluralism is a general philosophical position that can apply to different domains of inquiry. In this chapter, we are mainly interested in epistemic and value pluralism. Epistemic pluralism denies that there is always one correct interpretation of a phenomenon; value pluralism denies that there is always one

30761_DesRoches.indd 256

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

257

objective set of values to guide our actions. We believe that the monistic correlates to epistemic and value pluralism are not only unrealistic but also detrimental for social-ecological studies and interventions, especially in cases like the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery and holistic management. The epigraph from ecologist Frank Elger touches on one of the reasons why epistemic monism is unrealistic. Elger expresses a pessimistic attitude according to which there will never be a complete and correct perspective on nature. A pragmatic corollary follows from this idea, namely that the best we can realistically hope for is mere adequate representations of phenomena. Now, pragmatism in this sense does not necessarily entail pluralism.10 It is consistent with pragmatism in that there might be a single correct or best interpretation of a particular phenomenon of interest, and that we might be capable of grasping it. However, even if there could, in principle, be one correct interpretation of a phenomenon and one set of best practices for a given goal, we are constantly operating under some degree of uncertainty in a world of great complexity. In our world, geological, social, and ecological processes are functionally integrated to different degrees and at different scales. They are thus affected by a complex and heterogeneous network of interactions. The models and theories that account for any given phenomenon might apply to one aspect or to one level of organization, but more often than not, multiple models, research strategies, and domains of inquiry are needed to account for multiscale interactions and other important aspects of the phenomenon investigated. The ecologist’s sensitivity to this epistemic aspect of the human condition lies behind Elger’s pessimistic remark. These considerations also underlie the conclusions of an important early philosophical advocate of pluralism, Otto Neurath. Despite his adamant commitment to the unity of nature, Neurath was a strong defender of the necessity of pluralism in many cases of urgent practical decision-making. Consider this telling hypothetical scenario: “In order to formulate the individual prediction: ‘This forest fire will soon be extinguished’ we combine biological statements (concerning trees, etc.), chemical statements (concerning fire, etc.), sociological statements (concerning fire service, etc.) and statements of other disciplines” (Neurath [1936] 1983, 132). The scenario is common enough in interdisciplinary activities; the kinds of knowledge brought forth by a variety of inquiries must come together to achieve certain elemental epistemic goals.

30761_DesRoches.indd 257

2019-05-03 12:52:14

258

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Each of these inquiries (e.g., biology, chemistry, sociology, etc.) contains methods, instruments, and standards that are unique to it, and each contributes from this unique store of knowledge to the knowledge necessary to combat the forest fire. However, this does not entail that the disciplines involved in a multi-faceted explanation have been unified into a single theory (i.e., a set of propositions derived from a common observational basis). Instead, Neurath writes, “rather that we succeed in only partial systematisations … loosely correlated statements, which cannot be coordinated with theories straight away” (ibid., 133). Thus, epistemic pluralism at the level of disciplines, areas of research, lines of inquiry, or “styles of reasoning” (Hacking 1996) best serves some kind of unity of action.11 Note that Neurath’s pluralism says nothing about how the various disciplines interact with each other. He only gives a synchronic sketch of how extant knowledge of various disciplines can provide a somewhat coherent bundle of knowledge sufficient for action. While this view may be appropriate if our goal were to collect currently existing knowledge to jointly support a policy at a given point, the G F P requires an ongoing and (hopefully) evolving research program in which a diversity of disciplines interact with each other. What we need to know, then, is what the appropriate norms of interaction are. Mitchell’s (2003) taxonomy of integrations takes us a little further than Neurath, but she ultimately argues that all we can hope for is a piecemeal (or non-algorithmic) integration.12 This conclusion is directly related to the facts that systems are complex, that outcomes in this world are often highly historically contingent, and that each place is in some significant sense unique. As argued by Ostrom (2007, 2009), resource managers far too often look for universal interpretative and intervention tools (like the MSY and OSY models). However, when researchers start looking at chains of interactions that govern social-ecological systems (S E S s), they realize that the phenomena found in each place are driven by particular sets of processes unique to that place. Our research and management frameworks should enable us to reveal and encourage diversity instead of assuming that all types of SESs everywhere could (or, worse, should) be managed under a single approach. So, Ostrom’s position further supports Mitchell’s point; the way in which models and perspectives are brought together is not a simple matter of applying a universal algorithm. Although there might be no general “norms of interaction,” a friendly subdistinction that may be helpful here has been provided, we believe, by Hasok Chang. In his 2012 book Is Water H2O?, Chang

30761_DesRoches.indd 258

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

259

distinguishes between two kinds of pluralism: tolerant pluralism and interactive pluralism. The relation between models and perspectives in research programs would be quite different depending on which of these two kinds of pluralism is adopted. Tolerant pluralism “allow[s] different systems [disciplines] to co-exist, with respect and toleration for each other” (Chang 2012, 269). Furthermore, “[i]t is not required that the different systems should have any interaction with each other, and the practitioners of each system may even be strong monists13 … what is important is that each system is allowed to exist and pursue its potential” (ibid.). Thus, interactions, for tolerant pluralism, are quite minimal; researchers should employ a laissez faire approach and leave researchers in other disciplines to study their own domain as they see fit. Interactive pluralism, on the other hand, goes beyond tolerant pluralism and “seeks benefits from having different systems interact with each other rather than standing separately and delivering separate sets of contributions” (ibid.). Of these benefits, Chang lists integration (279–80), co-optation (280–2), and competition (282–4).14 This interaction, Chang argues, requires a (somewhat) common language and, we may add, some degree of competency in the approaches of other disciplines. The interactions of interactive pluralism, therefore, are stricter than tolerant pluralism and as such perhaps more amenable to something like “norms,” albeit context-dependent and place-based. Whether or not tolerant or interactive pluralism will be useful will depend on the specific goals and contingencies of a particular situation. Adopting tolerant pluralism would be most appropriate for the case of holistic management. Our analysis of the controversy surrounding holistic management suggests that we need more research into the efficacy and limits of holistic management, which would also require some openness about different standards of evidence. Simply because the actual evidence is based on the general and somewhat vague experiential reports of practitioners of holistic management, and not well-formulated hypotheses, does not mean that there is no reason to exclude holistic management as a research program. Indeed, the potential that holistic management may have for aiding in environmental, economic, and global starvation issues provides pressing reasons for pursuing it further. However, adopting tolerant pluralism further demands that, at this point, holistic management should interact only minimally with traditional research on grazing.15 Two main reasons could justify such separation. First, much of the knowledge that practitioners of holistic management have is tacit.

30761_DesRoches.indd 259

2019-05-03 12:52:14

260

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

While some of the knowledge of holistic management can be explicitly stated (it is being taught, after all),16 much of the knowledge of how to respond to changing environments and circumstances, how to monitor plant and animal activity, and capitalize on unexpected changes comes from learned experiences and has not been made entirely explicit. Furthermore, the particulars of holistic management involve applying highly contingent knowledge; the details of the history of the soil, precipitation, herd type, temperature, and many other factors change from ranch to ranch and from season to season (even day to day). This kind of knowledge is not focused on making concrete predictions or forming generalizations, but adapting to contingent and local phenomena. Therefore, much of the current knowledge gained from biochemical experiments provides few substantial constraints on the limits or deficiencies in holistic management. Interaction between narrow experimental results and more general management strategies would be unwise given the early stage of holistic management since it would distract from attempting to make the underlying assumptions explicit. Furthermore, it isn’t even clear how holistic management could be tested yet.17 Until holistic management and its various incarnations can be stated more formally, it seems as though traditional experimental methods have little to offer to advance the holistic management research program.18 Tolerant pluralism can also play a role in fisheries management. We suggested earlier that the GF P calls for a better understanding of the way in which SESs are functionally integrated and how they can adapt to change. This means devoting resources to develop a type of understanding and set of management tools that go beyond the demographic perspective that has been dominating fisheries management for decades now. Like the case of holistic management, making room for the G FP in fisheries management could also mean that we have to be open to different standards of success and evidence. If the goal is to improve the capacity of a social-ecological system to adapt while maintaining a certain degree of structural and functional integrity, but not to produce a certain amount of resources year after year, then we have to pay attention to other factors and processes (e.g., institutional and biological response diversity and functional redundancy). If the methods employed to pursue this knowledge do not only rely on standard scientific research, but give an active role to various groups of knowers (e.g., local fishers or Indigenous Peoples), then we

30761_DesRoches.indd 260

2019-05-03 12:52:14



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

261

should also be open to the possibility that testimony will, again, be part of the evidence used to write policies. The point here is not to tell researchers what they ought to look for, but rather to highlight the fact that a GF P calls for tolerant pluralism. Although developed in the context of epistemological inquiries, Chang’s notion of tolerant pluralism can also be extended to axiological analysis. The need for tolerant value pluralism is especially relevant when we consider the fact that the integration of stakeholders comes with a respect and empowerment of multiple values. The fishing community in Labrador and Newfoundland was probably divided between those who wanted to rely on fisheries for recreation and subsistence, and those who wanted to further develop the industry to maximize profit. Local fishers who had been practising subsistence and recreational fishing, along with Indigenous Peoples who did not want to “organize” and follow the industrial movement, were not, at least during the years of development, given much of a voice in the process (Gough 2007). Moreover, many fishers were in fact critical of the new technologies (e.g., jiggers and draggers) that radically changed the relationship they had with marine species (Bavington 2010). It is true that the DFO guidelines insist on integrating stakeholders, but it is not clear that the value of economic development has lost its higher rank. The language in the Fisheries Act still to this day emphasizes productivity, and the main reason for taking an integrative approach is not justice, but efficacy. A true diversity of values thus needs to be empowered from the very beginning, otherwise we risk perpetuating the monistic attitude that has prevailed since the advent of comprehensive management in the late 1960s. While we recognize that epistemic pluralism is itself a normative position and, therefore value-laden, it remains true that a G F P requires both acknowledging the different roles pluralism plays in both environmental policy and research. Our analysis suggests that the evidential controversies surrounding holistic management would not benefit from interactive pluralism. If, on the other hand, we look at a situation, not from the theoretical viewpoint of deciding whether or not adopting some method or conceptual framework is sufficiently warranted by the evidence, but from the practical viewpoint of implementing a strategy for a particular place and time, then adopting interactive pluralism becomes a necessity. As stated above, the complexity of many environmental problems makes it clear that different disciplines and stakeholders

30761_DesRoches.indd 261

2019-05-03 12:52:14

262

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

are essential to make informed decisions. Decision-makers need a way to communicate with various knowers to organize action around a certain set of goals. Not everyone must endorse the same world view and hold the same values, but the group of people involved in developing policies for a given region has to at least agree initially that the project will take a certain direction. The specific form of interaction will depend on the case at hand. Take the case of the cod fisheries for example. The general D F O guiding principles encourage looking at the situation from the viewpoint of productivity and conservation. When productivity was not possible after the populations crashed, the tide turned toward restoring that resource. Although a moratorium on cod fishing was imposed in 1992, other avenues could have been explored. To further improve the chance of recovery, the prohibition could have been on groundfish and pelagic fisheries, for example. Perhaps aquaculture could have played a more significant role in replenishing the stocks. We mention these alternative measures to show that even when a particular goal has been set, a diversity of options must be explored to reach that goal. In deciding which one(s) of them should be pursued, there must be interaction between disciplines and perspectives. This demands that we go further than merely tolerating the existence of multiple models and explanations. It requires ongoing discussion, comparison, and possibly collaboration between diverse groups of knowers. 5 c  oncluding remarks

Philosophers of science sometimes object that pluralism is too permissive, that it opens the door to views that would not normally be considered scientific, sometimes referred to as mere “folk” versions of scientific approaches (e.g., folk-taxonomy, folk-psychology). Some philosophers have thus tried to develop a pluralism that keeps the plurality scientific, focusing, for example, on well-accepted theories (e.g., Mitchell 2003; Kellert et al. 2006; Wimsatt 2007), or notions of what makes a genuine causal explanation. Our analysis shows that in the context of environmental management, embracing a G F P requires a less constrained form of pluralism. There has been a tendency in science to parse out and analyze the world in terms of its most basic and simple causal relationships. In environmental management, this reductionist-mechanistic approach has encouraged the idea

30761_DesRoches.indd 262

2019-05-03 12:52:15



Geofunctions and Pluralism in Environmental Management

263

of predictability and control, and it mostly left decision-making in the hands of those who possess a monistic world view and pursue a certain type of knowledge acquisition. Our current environmental problems are urgent and complex, and we cannot find solutions unless we actively look for understanding in multiple directions. By looking at Earth systems as complex and functionally integrated, an increasing number of researchers and practitioners are going beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to push the limits imposed by the reductionist-mechanistic approach. Starting with the premise that our understanding is tentative and that the world is complex, contingent, and changing, they call for the use of more experimental, adaptive, and inclusive approaches. As we follow their lead in including and empowering a diversity of perspectives, we must also be open to the possibility that different standards of evidence can be established.

n otes   1 Reproduced in Gough (2007).   2 In figure 12.2b, the ratio is (Catch value at O / Costs) > (Catch value at MS Y /Costs).   3 The literature on Resilience Thinking is vast and diverse. For an accessible and comprehensive review of the conceptual elements of this movement, and connections to Adaptive Management, we recommend: Gunderson (2000), Walker and Salt (2006), and Desjardins et al. (2015). For a critique of the “command and control” approach see Holling and Meffe (1996), and Peterson (2005). For more philosophical analysis of adaptive management, see the work of Bryan Norton (2005).   4 The main sources used for this section are: DFO. 2006. A Harvest Strategy Compliant with the Precautionary Approach. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2006/023; DFO. 2009. “A Fishery Decision-Making Framework Incorporating the Precautionary Approach.”   5 The “proven and practical approach” here is traditional methods of “­continuous grazing” (see Briske et al. 2008).  6 www.ebscohost.com/academic/agricola.   7 The stocking rate is the number of animals on a given land surface over a time period.   8 There are, in addition to these replies, many methodological criticisms of studies cited against holistic management (see Teague et al. 2013; Teague 2014).

30761_DesRoches.indd 263

2019-05-03 12:52:15

264

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

  9 Cited in Wynn’s Foreword to Bavington (2010, xi). 10 For discussions of the relationship between pragmatism and pluralism, see Misak (2005) and Shaw (2016). 11 A similar line of argument has been used by other proponents of scientific pluralism, even when their respective views ultimately differ in other key respects. It is, for example, at the basis of the idea of “relative significance” of alternative factors in evolution (Beatty 1984), the view that there is a “division of cognitive labour” in scientific explanations (Kitcher 1990), or Mitchell’s (2003) notion of integrative pluralism. 12 Mitchell details three kinds of integration: mechanical integration (i.e., integrating additive properties into a single explanation, e.g., vector ­analysis); local theoretical unification (i.e., a highly general and idealized description of many local phenomena); and explanatory (or concrete) ­integration (i.e., using multiple, potentially incompatible, models to ­converge on a single explanation). See her “Why Integrative Pluralism?” (2004, 88–9) for more details. 13 By “monists,” Chang means scientists with a “firm belief in the unique superiority of one’s own system” (Chang 2012, 294). 14 This list should not be construed as exhaustive. 15 It should be emphasized that we are not supporting the view that the holistic management research program and the traditional experimental research program should never interact. It may (and most likely will) become necessary eventually. We are only defending tolerant pluralism for now and the foreseeable future. 16 Savory also discusses many of the basic ideas of holistic management in his T E D talk and Teague et al. (2013) outline five “principles” of holistic management. 17 Teague et al. (2013) propose a set of testable hypotheses that they believe can be deduced from the basic principles of holistic management. This provides a starting point for scientifically investigating holistic management. However, it isn’t clear that these hypotheses accurately represent holistic management as it is applied around the world. We should not be hasty in assuming that these bundles of as yet untested hypothesizes constitute holistic management as practised. 18 It should be noted that our adoption of tolerant pluralism does not mean that we reject all interaction full stop, merely that most of the methods of experimental ecology that have been thus far touted as disconfirming evidence of holistic management can teach us little about how to further holistic management research programs.

30761_DesRoches.indd 264

2019-05-03 12:52:15

13

Being Objective How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management Jennifer Jill Fellows

1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

Many researchers involved in studying co-management agree that the success of any co-management project depends on trust (see, for example, Dowsley 2009; Stenseke 2009; Zulu 2013). And yet, Paul Nadasdy, among others, reports that co-management projects in the Canadian Arctic are often viewed as a success by southern scientists and policymakers, while being viewed with much less enthusiasm by Inuit communities. One reason cited for this is that the Inuit feel that their knowledge-claims have not been properly heard or understood (Nadasdy 1993, 2003; Lokken 2015). Since the success of co-­ management depends on trust, it should be worrying to us all that our current co-management strategies may well be failing to build trust. Naomi Scheman has persuasively argued that one function of the term “objective,” when attached to either an individual knower or to a knowledge-claim, is to indicate that the knower or claim is worthy of trust (Scheman 2011, 207–31). Thus, it becomes immediately apparent that a society’s conception and perception of who counts as objective (and therefore, a trustworthy source of knowledge) may be critical to the success of any co-management project. In this chapter I propose that, to build trust, and thereby develop the best co-management policies possible, we (the southern Canadian public) need to rethink our perceptions of what “objectivity” entails,

30761_DesRoches.indd 265

2019-05-03 12:52:15

266

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

and of who is a knower, or source of knowledge. In particular, I will argue that our current conception of objectivity in terms of “Mr Nowhere” results in an unwarranted and unhelpful critique of Indigenous knowledge, which further strains the relationship between Inuit communities and southern Canadian policy-makers. In effect, we need to understand objectivity in a different way, so that we can include, in good faith, Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous knowers under the heading of “objectivity.” I suggest that we come to see the scientist not as the paradigm source of objective knowledge, but as one epistemologically fruitful way of life among others. This will, I hope, open the possibility for considering other epistemologically fruitful ways of life, which may allow a more trusting and beneficial relationship to be built in these co-management projects. Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015) argues that climate change is not only an ecological concern; it is also cultural. Philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte (2014) has made a similar case. If these arguments are correct, then co-management projects aimed at conservation are not merely a matter of knowledge-integration, but of cultural preservation as well. So it follows that to change the role of the epistemic subject, we – the southern Canadian public – must change the culture we live in. More specifically, we must shift our cultural perceptions of science as the paradigmatic example of an objective and trustworthy source of knowledge, to viewing it as one among many epistemically fruitful ways of being objective. Sandra Harding (2015) calls on us to change our concept of objectivity by beginning research from the most marginalized members of society. This is my attempt to take her call seriously. If climate change is not only an ecological, but also a cultural issue, then a necessary way of dealing with it will, likewise, be cultural. 2 c  o - m a n a g e m e n t a n d c l i m at e p o l i c y

In an earlier paper, I argued that the success of marine-protected areas depends on having the local communities on board (Fellows 2013). The same appears to be true of the success of any conservation project. Currently, co-management is a growing system of management and conservation in the Canadian Arctic, and for good reason. As Ford et al. note, even if the global population does manage to curtail carbon emissions, current environmental impact models predict that the carbon already in the atmosphere will have a significant effect on the Arctic (Ford 2007). Ford goes on to recommend that,

30761_DesRoches.indd 266

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 267

given the Arctic’s vulnerability to climate change, preventive measures will not be enough. What is needed, in addition to global preventive measures, is local adaptive policies. And these adaptive policies are best done through co-management (Ford 2007). And, as several researchers have found, the importance of trust between those involved in co-management cannot be overstressed as a requirement of the success of a co-management practice (Dowsley 2009; Stenseke 2009; Zulu 2013). Geographer Martha Dowsley reports that holders of Indigenous knowledge and scientists “can only work effectively together when both forms of knowledge are reported honestly and when both sides trust each other” (Dowsley 2005, 55). If they do not have trust in one another then the stakeholders involved are unlikely to adopt the policy decisions made at roundtable discussions. And if those living in the areas where these management policies are implemented do not adopt the policies, then the policies often prove to be unsuccessful at reaching the goals laid out by the co-management team (Lundquist and Granek 2005, 1772). It should thus concern everyone who has an interest in environmental policy that, while we often hear reports that co-management in the Canadian Arctic is a resounding success, not everyone involved views the conservation efforts positively. Anthropologist Paul Nadasdy has argued that co-management projects can be viewed as a success by some people at the table, but as a failure by others. In particular, the Inuit communities Nadasdy interviewed reported often feeling dissatisfied with the outcomes of these co-management discussions because they felt their views were not included (Nadasdy 1993, 367–8). Lokken also discovered this feeling of discontent when, for his M A thesis, he interviewed several Inuit communities who reported that they felt their knowledge-claims were not taken seriously by the scientists and policy-makers in these co-management discussions (Lokken 2015). Supporting this observation from various Inuit communities, Nadasdy notes that even when scientists do value Indigenous knowledge-claims there are often political pressures on those scientists to “back up” their recommendations with Western scientific evidence rather than relying on testimony from Inuit hunters and Elders (Nadasdy 2003, 376). Thus, even when the intention is to respect Indigenous knowledge, it is not always possible for scientists to do so. But there is also genuine push-back from others involved in comanagement who do not think Indigenous knowledge should be

30761_DesRoches.indd 267

2019-05-03 12:52:15

268

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

included, or who think the only reason it is included is political, rather than environmental or epistemic. In one objection to the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in policy development, government consultant Albert Howard and political scientist Frances Widdowson argue that “[t]he integration of traditional [Indigenous] knowledge hinders rather than enhances the ability of governments to more fully understand ecological processes since there is no mechanism, or will, by which spiritually based knowledge-claims can be challenged or verified. In fact, pressure from Aboriginal groups and their consultants has made [Indigenous knowledge] a sacred cow for which only uncritical support is appropriate” (Howard and Widdowson 1996, 35; emphasis added). Here, Howard and Widdowson make two claims. First, they claim that Indigenous knowledge cannot be challenged or criticized, and therefore its inclusion is not rigorous. I will take up this first concern later in the chapter. However, Howard and Widdowson also make a second, less overt, claim. They claim that Indigenous knowledge should not be included because it is spiritually motivated, and that the only reason for adopting it is political. This stance implies that we can and successfully do separate the political and spiritual from the epistemic in Western culture, particularly in Western scientific practices. In other words, Howard and Widdowson object to the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge because it is not free from political, spiritual, and/or cultural values. In doing so, they imply that Western science is free of these values. In her 2015 book, Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research, Sandra Harding sets out to show that such an assumption is faulty. 3 t h e v i e w o f m r n ow h e r e

To show that the assumption of science as value-free is faulty, Harding relies on work previously done by historians Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison. In their 2007 book, Objectivity, Daston and Galison make two central claims: 1) they noted that the history of the term “objectivity” in science is a history of reconceptualization. The term “objectivity” has not always been understood to refer to the view from nowhere, as Daston notes in her 1992 article, and again reinforces in the 2007 book; and 2) the history of objectivity is also the history of the scientific self. In other words, our concept of what traits are necessary to be a scientist depend on our understanding of what is required to be objective, and neither of these terms are static. Daston

30761_DesRoches.indd 268

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 269

and Galison characterize objectivity in terms of what is seen as problematic in the epistemic subject (Daston and Galison 2007, 37). Different types of objectivity are set up in opposition to different features of the epistemic subject that are seen to hinder knowledge acquisition. Exactly which aspects of the self are a hindrance shifts in different eras. At one time, it was aesthetic tastes that led scientists to idealize nature (Daston and Galison 2007, 34). At another time, idiosyncrasies in communication were viewed as rendering knowledge hard to share (Daston and Galison 2007, 600). In her 2015 book, Harding accepts both of Daston’s and Galison’s claims and develops them further. She uses Daston and Galison to support her claim (which she recognizes as not unique to her) that science and society co-create and co-constitute each other (Harding 2015). Harding illustrates that our current concept of objectivity is a “Mr Nowhere” conception (or a view from nowhere) (Harding 2015, 154). In the past, the concern might have been aesthetic tastes, or communicative quirks. Now the concern is with the role values play (or rather, should not play) in knowledge acquisition. An objective person must remove those aspects of themselves that see the world from a specific perspective and instead aim to see it from no perspective. What unites all the different types of objectivity that have existed is their opposition to subjectivity. Tastes, idiosyncrasies, emotions, and now values have all been relegated to the subjective and have come to be seen in opposition to the objective. Objectivity, then, becomes a way of working upon the self to eliminate those aspects of one’s own subjectivity that are seen as antithetical to the production of knowledge. Harding relies on Daston and Galison to argue that objectivity itself has not always been conceptualized in value-free or value-neutral terms, and she further argues that the value-free conception of objectivity is itself motivated by strong cultural values. In illustrating the ways in which science and society co-create and co-constitute each other, Harding points out that the Western European focus on secularism, on a perspective that is divorced from any ­religious or spiritual values, is itself distinctly Christian, specifically Protestant. Relying on Shannon Sullivan’s work, Harding argues that secularism grows out of a specifically Protestant belief that religion is personal and private. “Thus, the Western secularist stance appears distinctly Christian to many non-Western observers in spite of secularists’ assumption that they have specifically given up being observant Christians” (Harding 2015, 131–2). Here, Harding illustrates that

30761_DesRoches.indd 269

2019-05-03 12:52:15

270

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Mr Nowhere is not actually nowhere at all, but is deeply culturally embedded. Furthermore, Mr Nowhere is not free from spiritual influence, specifically the Protestant spiritual influence of the society that created this ideal of objectivity. Howard and Widdowson are, then, simply mistaken in their assumption that Indigenous knowledge is deeply cultural and spiritual whereas scientific knowledge is not. Harding’s book illustrates that all knowledge-making practices are culturally imbedded, and thus none are free from values. Furthermore, Harding implies that Mr Nowhere can actually be detrimental because the knowledge he produces is less practical and of inferior quality, and sometimes downright false. He is unable to see salient points precisely because he is looking from nowhere. For example, a view from Mr Nowhere has historically left scientists under the incorrect impression that overpopulation was a cause of poverty. “The population experts had argued that poor women’s ignorant and irresponsible reproductive behaviours were causing such poverty” in the developing world (Harding 2015, 62). It is only by beginning research from the perspectives of the women themselves that one can recognize that a “high birth rate is a rational economic practice for poor people” because poor people often lack access to the health care and prenatal care necessary to secure a future for any given child, so having multiple children gives one a greater chance of having a child live to adulthood (Harding 2015, 62). It is not that women were acting irrationally at all, but rather that – given their social situations and lived experiences – their choices to have multiple children were entirely rational. “It took starting research from the daily lives of poor people, and especially poor women, to bring into focus the actual causal relations between poverty and ‘overpopulation’” (Harding 2015, 63). But Mr Nowhere cannot begin research from the daily lives of anyone, as such research is located somewhere, and is manifestly not beginning from “nowhere.” Thus, not only is Mr Nowhere unattainable, he should be undesirable for anyone who wants to successfully produce knowledge. These illustrations of Mr Nowhere’s unattainability and undesirability may serve to undermine Howard and Widdowson’s unstated assumption that Indigenous knowledge is spiritual in a way science is not. However, they do not appear to address Howard and Widdowson’s second objection to the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge: that it cannot be challenged or verified. Yet I argue that this second claim by Howard and Widdowson is also fallacious. Science,

30761_DesRoches.indd 270

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 271

as Harding argues, has a spiritual, Protestant basis and yet it can be challenged. The problem may simply be who is in a position to challenge the material. Certainly, just as not everyone can challenge science (one must, at the bare minimum, understand the scientific claims being made, and the tests and observations upon which those claims rest to challenge them), it might well be that not everyone is in a position to challenge Indigenous knowledge-claims. Nadasdy makes a relevant observation here. [M]ore than once at conferences and workshops on co-management or T E K [traditional ecological knowledge], I have heard well-meaning bureaucrats and scientists plead with First Nations people to “tell us what traditional knowledge is, so we can use it.” … By contrast, if a First Nations elder were to stand up at one of these meetings and ask a biologist to teach him/her then and there the principles of conservation biology “so we can use it,” these same well-meaning officials would probably chuckle at the absurdity of the request and patiently explain to the elder how many years of training are required before one can be expected to master and use that kind of knowledge. (Nadasdy 2003, 157) The problem Nadasdy identifies here is one of a failure of biologists and policy-makers to recognize Indigenous knowledge as a type of expertise, and one that cannot be easily learned (much less mastered) in an afternoon. We do not expect first-year ecology students to have the expertise to critique ecological knowledge-claims made by PhDs. And, if we take Indigenous knowledge seriously, we should be equally skeptical of critiques that come from non-experts in this area. However, that the knowledge-claims must be challengeable is an argument I support. I will return to this point in the second-last section of this chapter. Having shown Mr Nowhere to be a hindrance to the production of knowledge, Harding uses her seventh chapter to begin to rethink objectivity by suggesting we “identify kinds of new proper scientific selves that have already been emerging in social justice research” (Harding 2015, 142). And she goes on to develop a view of the proper knowing self as being a self that begins research from the view of marginalized individuals (Harding 2015, 161). In effect, she argues that we must have a new concept of objectivity in terms of something

30761_DesRoches.indd 271

2019-05-03 12:52:15

272

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

like situated knowledge, that is, in knowledge gained through examining an individual’s social situation and focusing on lived experience and testimony. Given Harding’s proposal, it seems she would certainly support co-management projects. If one were to be objective, a concept of objectivity that necessitated beginning research from the lives of the most marginalized would require one to listen to Indigenous communities and include them in policy development and implementation. And realizing that all knowledge-making practices are co-created and co-constituted by the societies in which they are formed would block the kind of objections – like Howards and Widdowson’s – that reject Indigenous knowledge due to its spiritual and social bias. It would further suggest that any critique of Indigenous knowledge one wanted to raise would need to come from the correct social context, or at least from a place of familiarity with the society in which the knowledge-making practice originated. But it’s still not clear how to bring about this reconceptualization of objectivity that Harding calls for. Harding gives one strategy for how this reconceptualization of objectivity might be accomplished: by labelling Indigenous knowledge as a science in its own right. She makes the case both here in her 2015 book and in an earlier article that states that every culture has what may be termed “science.” [T]he conventional histories of WMS T [Western Modern Science and Technology] that we all learned, and that still are assumed by most historians and philosophers of science today, are Eurocentric … they conflate Western scientific traditions with all ­possible scientific activity, or, to put the issue another way, they restrict “real science” to WMS [Western Modern Science]. Yet every culture does science for every culture must ask questions about its particular location in nature‘s heterogeneous order, and will bring culturally distinctive discursive resources (metaphors, models, narratives) to this task. (Harding 2002, 97) By calling Indigenous knowledge “science,” Harding is hoping to grant it the same prestige those in Western culture grant Western science and Western scientists: the status of objective knowledge and knowers, respectively. Naomi Scheman has persuasively argued that objectivity is used to indicate trustworthiness (of both the knower and of the knowledge-claim). “Central to what we do when we call

30761_DesRoches.indd 272

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 273

an argument, conclusion or decision “objective” is to recommend it to others, and, importantly, to suggest that they ought to accept it, that they would be doxastically irresponsible to reject it without ­giving reasons that made similar claims to universal acceptability. Objective claims, that is, are always disputable, but they are not, without dispute, rejectable.” (Scheman 2011, 207–8). If an individual or knowledgeclaim is objective, then he or she or it is trustworthy. Thus, given the importance of objectivity in Western European culture, as illustrated by Scheman, and the historical link between objectivity and science, as illustrated by Daston and Galison, the strategy of rhetorically placing Indigenous knowledge at the same level as Western science by insisting that we refer to Indigenous knowledge as scientific makes sense. But I worry that this is not the right strategy. For there is no getting around the fact that the term “science” is a Western European term, and thus could be seen as one more exercise of colonial power. Harding addresses this concern, arguing that “[I]t might seem like one more piece of Eurocentric appropriation to refer to Indigenous knowledge as sciences, as I will do here. Yet I do so for strategic ­reasons. I intend to level the epistemological playing field so that we can begin to understand the costs to us and to Indigenous cultures of conceptualizing Indigenous knowledge only as myth, magic, and superstition, or only as a residue of tradition that should be replaced by modern Western sciences’ rationality and technological expertise” (Harding 2015, 81). Here, Harding acknowledges the potential problem of calling Indigenous knowledge “science” but claims that her choice to do so is rhetorical and is mainly aimed at those of us who occupy a Euro-American cultural framework. I understand the goal of doing this, but worry that it might actually conflict with the aim of redefining objectivity in terms of empowering and listening to marginalized groups. If so, it may well exacerbate the breakdown of trust noted by Nadasdy and Lokken and further jeopardize co-­ management projects. Beginning from the lives of one marginalized group – the Inuit of Kluane County in the southwest Yukon – Nadasdy questions whether it is appropriate to call Indigenous knowledge “science,” or even to call it “knowledge.” It is important to note that, in raising these questions, Nadasdy is not questioning the importance of scientists listening to the Inuit in these co-management situations. Rather, he is questioning the practice of referring to Indigenous knowledge as knowledge.

30761_DesRoches.indd 273

2019-05-03 12:52:15

274

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

He raises this question because of the responses he received when interviewing the Inuit of Kluane County and hearing their reflections on the success of co-management in general. After spending a year living with the Inuit of Kluane County, Nadasdy made the following claim: “[T]he term ‘knowledge’ itself is loaded with a great deal of cultural baggage. As a result, applying this term to First Nations peoples’ lived experiences has the effect of imposing on their lives a set of ‘foreign’ assumptions about the nature of the world and how humans can relate to and ‘know’ it. And these assumptions then become the criteria for distinguishing which of their experiences are relevant and which are not” (Nadasdy 2003, 95). Nadasdy goes on to argue that, in co-management situations, more often than not it is the Inuit who must learn to speak in the language of Euro-North American science, something that should come as no surprise to a standpoint theorist, a Marxist, or even a Hegelian. The theme that it is marginalized groups who know more (and in particular that they know more about the dominant group than the dominant group knows about them) is a long-standing one in philosophy. But Nadasdy points out that the amount of time an Inuk spends learning to speak in the language of Euro-American science is time lost on the land with other hunters and Elders. The Kluane First Nation itself does not refer to the expertise and advice it has to offer by the term “knowledge” but prefers to label it a “way of life” (Nasasdy 2003, 63). For the people of the Kluane First Nation to gain the expertise to speak to southern Canadians, they must learn the way of life of southern Canadians at the expense of embodying their own way of life. But familiarity with the Inuit way of life was necessary to have information to communicate to southern Canadians in the first place. In other words, the more adept they become at speaking to southern Canadians, the less Indigenous knowledge they may have to impart. “By framing debates over land and animals in the Euro-North American languages of biology and property relations, these processes put most Kluane people at an automatic disadvantage when dealing with government biologists and lawyers. And by forcing Kluane people to bureaucratize their society and spend their days in an office rather than out on the land, these processes serve to undermine the very social relations, practices, beliefs and values the Kluane people hope to ­preserve through co-management and land claims in the first place” (Nadasdy 2003, 263).

30761_DesRoches.indd 274

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 275

Kyle Powys Whyte’s research serves to strengthen Nadasdy’s observations. Whyte argues that “[c]limate change impacts are disruptive when structures of organization can absorb the ecological changes only by changing key components of the structure themselves. For example, sea-level rise may force a community to relocate and adopt a new economy. Shifting growing seasons may require a community to change its diet … Such disruptions are often experienced as harmful to certain values” (Whyte 2014, 601–2). Whyte illustrates that everything from the availability of culturally significant foods, to the manner of acquiring those foods (hunting, or purchasing) to methods of travel (as the ice sheets melt, areas of the Arctic become inaccessible by dog sled or skidoo) to housing and lifestyle are affected by our changing climate. Our very cultural values and ways of life can thus be affected by a changing climate. We have good reason to accept that our changing climate itself is not simply an environmental issue, but a cultural one as well. Thus, co-management projects aimed at protecting and preserving certain ecosystems can be viewed as projects aimed at protecting and preserving certain cultural ways of life as well. However, what I have illustrated here is that Western European attitudes to climate science, toward the term “objectivity” and toward knowledge and knowers are likewise cultural. And just as activist Watt-Cloutier argues that the Inuit have the right to be cold, and to practise their culture (Watt-Cloutier 2015), one might also argue that they have the right to their way of life in a broader more epistemic sense. Not just to live, hunt, and eat what they wish, but to express their knowledge-claims in ways that are not Eurocentric.1 My worry is that Harding’s proposal to refer to Indigenous knowledge as science will only contribute to the erosion of Indigenous knowledge and does not fully honour Harding’s own call to reconceptualize objectivity. Beginning by labelling Indigenous knowledge “science” is not truly beginning from the point of view of the most marginalized, as Harding calls on us to do. This is because the Inuit of the Kluane Country – who are the most marginalized in this case – do not call their own knowledge “science” or even “knowledge.”And yet, it is understandable that Harding has chosen the language of science throughout her book. For one thing, she is writing in and for a society well used to the term science. And for another, the term “science” does have a strong rhetorical punch within that society in ways that the term “way of life” certainly does not.

30761_DesRoches.indd 275

2019-05-03 12:52:15

276

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

Nonetheless, I want to suggest another, perhaps complementary way, of understanding how we might go about changing our conceptualization of the epistemic subject, a way that I hope will allow us to focus on the intersection between the epistemic and the cultural. This way depends not on understanding the Indigenous knower as a scientist, but on understanding the scientist as practising a way of life. To develop this account, I will have to return to Daston and Galison’s assertion that the history of objectivity is part of the history of the scientific self, and speak more generally about how societies make up people. 4 t h e m a k i n g o f m r n ow h e r e

Daston and Galison identify objectivity as an ideal that is tied to the shaping of the knowing subject. But it is not the only ideal that shapes selves. Ian Hacking has suggested that all ideals are a way of working on the self (Hacking 2004, 116). He argues that categories of personhood are not static, but change in different communities at different times. As one example, Hacking speaks of his inability, growing up in Canada, to be a garçon de café. The category of being a garçon de café was one that did not exist in British Columbia in Hacking’s childhood. It is one that is restricted to France, and to a certain type of service job in France (Hacking 2004, 109). Likewise, even if I were to have been raised in France in the 1940’s, as opposed to Alberta in the 1980’s, I could not have been a garçon de café either. This is not only because I was not a child in France, but also because I am not a garçon. Thus, even if I was in the correct social circumstances, the label would not be socially recognized to fit me. The implication is clear; through labels and ideals, communities create categories of personhood. There are certain types of person that it is impossible for one to be precisely because it is impossible for one to be seen as that type of person by society, either because the label does not exist, or because the label cannot be made to fit. In an earlier book, Hacking argues that “[b]eing seen to be a certain kind of person, or to do a certain kind of act, may affect someone. A new or modified mode of classification may systematically affect the people who are so classified” (Hacking 1995, 239). In other words, the categories we apply to people do not just label them, but can affect their sense of self. Hacking made the case that this “making up people” as he called it, applied not only to waiters but also to the mentally

30761_DesRoches.indd 276

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 277

ill, the doctors who treat them, professors, prime ministers, and really virtually any category of person that exists (at least in part) because of culture (Hacking 1995, 2004).2 Notice that some of these categories of personhood (doctor and professor, for example) are not only categories of personhood, but are also viewed as experts, as sources of knowledge, as knowers. One trusts one’s professor and one’s doctor in their areas of expertise. Extending Hacking’s argument with Daston and Galison’s observations on objectivity and its relationship to knowing subjects, one can argue that a community creates the ideal of objectivity alongside the category of epistemic subject (since a knower, typically, must be objective) and then judges whether an individual is an epistemic subject based on what degree she conforms to the obligations placed on her by the ideal of objectivity. This is not a new argument. Lorraine Code in 1991 argued something similar in asking the question “Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant?” Code claimed that objectivity was understood as being rational, detached, and unbiased. In other words, as Mr Nowhere. By contrast, women have been characterized as irrational, emotional, and biased because of their attachments to others (particularly family). On the basis of this observation about the categories of objectivity and of women, Code argues that “[o]bjectivity, quite precisely construed, is commonly regarded as a defining feature of knowledge per se. So, if women’s knowledge is declared to be naturally subjective, then a clear answer emerges to my question. The answer is that if the would-be knower is female, then her sex is indeed epistemologically significant, for it disqualifies her as a knower in the fullest sense of that term” (Code 1991, 63). Here Code quite clearly illustrates that society arbitrates who counts as a knower, and that the concept of objectivity is part of this arbitration. She further demonstrates that objectivity as a concept can be harmful to marginalized groups. However, Code does not take the further step that Daston and Galison do of recognizing that objectivity can be (and has been) reconceptualized. Still, Code’s observation gives support to the claim that society uses the concept of objectivity to adjudicate between those who count as knowers and those who do not. If we accept Hacking’s argument about the creation of ideals as creating categories of persons, then it is not just that society adjudicates between knowers and non-knowers, but that society determines the concept of objectivity itself by which knowers are adjudicated. In other words, objectivity is a category,

30761_DesRoches.indd 277

2019-05-03 12:52:15

278

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

created, re-created, and maintained by society. And thus knowers are made up, just as other categories of person are. Once Harding‘s work is examined in light of Hacking’s and Daston and Galison’s, “science” itself begins to look like a way of life, not just as a way of producing knowledge. That is, “the scientist” can be seen as a category of person, a way of being in the world, and of working on oneself. Being a scientist, and being seen to be a scientist, is one way of interacting with the world and with other people. Being a hunter or an Elder in the Kluane community is another. Both ways of being in the world have specific ideals that regulate behaviour, and specific cultural cues that indicate who can correctly be judged to be occupying the specific category of person, and who cannot. Thus, Harding’s suggestion that we begin our research by listening to the most marginalized groups elicits the information that the Kluane feel their way of life is not being epistemologically respected. This, combined with the recognition that we are not merely speaking about knowledge, but about categories of persons, may provide a solution to the co-management problem. One of our current problems is in applying the Western scientific standard to Indigenous ways of life. It results in frustration for some scientists and policy-makers because they do not perceive Indigenous knowers to be occupying the “correct” Western objective ideals necessary for being an epistemic subject. It also results in frustration for Indigenous communities, who perceive an erosion, distortion, and, at worst, loss of their own way of life as they struggle to occupy Western categories of personhood and communicate their knowledge in Western epistemic terms. So, I propose that, rather than considering Indigenous knowledge as a science, a more fruitful avenue might well be to consider the scientist as one community’s way of categorizing the epistemic subject. It is certainly a way that is very important to our own community, but just as the garçon de café is not the only kind of waiter, Mr Nowhere need not be seen as the only kind of epistemic subject possible. There are different ways to become (and be recognized as) an epistemic subject. There are multiple epistemologically fruitful ways of being in the world. 5 t h e c u lt u r a l d i m e n s i o n o f c l i m at e p o l i c y

Of course, in saying that it is time to revise the category of epistemic subject, I am saying something that may well be daunting. Harding

30761_DesRoches.indd 278

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 279

argues that the new objective epistemic subject must be someone who begins their research from the lives of the most marginalized. Given my discussion of the ways in which we can view scientists and Indigenous hunters and Elders as different ways of life, I can easily support such a call. If we are to learn to speak in the language of Indigenous communities, rather than require them to adopt the ­mainstream language of southern Canadians, then we need to be able to understand their way of life as distinct from our own, with its own ideals, categories of persons, and ways of working on the self. Beginning from their lives seems like an excellent place to start. This understanding may well be imperfect, but that does not mean it is impossible. I suggest that what is needed to begin research from the lives of the marginalized is not necessarily to label those persons as scientists, or even as knowers, but instead to label our own scientists as practising an epistemologically fruitful way of life. In other words, I speculate that one way this project might succeed is if southern Canadian society came to view the scientist as only one valuable (among many valuable) way of being in the world. It is undeniable, given what I said in the first section of this chapter, that this is a political move. It is political in the sense that the more the stakeholders (the Indigenous communities themselves) feel invested in, and respected in, the co-management project, the greater the likelihood a project has of success. This might lead one to have concerns along the same lines as those expressed by Howard and Widdowson above. But notice that in claiming this move is political, I am not claiming that it is only political. Indeed, I argue that it is also epistemic. We want these co-management projects to succeed. And statistically they are more likely to succeed when the stakeholders are on board. That is an epistemic claim. Furthermore, it is often the case that the Indigenous way of life provides insights that scientists lack, and that can provide scientists with epistemic claims they would otherwise not have access to. Dowsley points to one example in 1996 when Inuit hunters and Elders reported that polar bear populations were declining, and called for a lowering of the hunting quota. Scientists did not corroborate these Indigenous claims until 2001, when they found that the Inuit had been correct (Dowsley 2009, 50). This is a valuable fact, and one that could have easily been missed were the entire concept of Indigenous knowledge dismissed for being spiritually based or not objective. The Inuit often know more about northern ecological issues because they experience the land year-round. As Shari Gearheard and Jamal Shirley report, there are some places

30761_DesRoches.indd 279

2019-05-03 12:52:15

280

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

in the Arctic where “local Inuit refer to researchers as ‘siksiks’ – ‘ground squirrels’ in Inuktitut” (Gearhead and Shirley 2007, 63). They compare scientists to ground squirrels because the scientists only pop up in the summer months, “scurry around on the tundra doing whoknows-what, and then disappear just as quickly” (Gearhead and Shirley 2007, 63). Scientists, due to the expense of Arctic research, are rarely able to conduct long-term investigations. So, even when Indigenous claims conflict with science, they are not necessarily wrong. Nor, though, does it mean that Indigenous knowledge itself should be immune to any criticism if these claims are to be socially recognized as epistemologically fruitful ways of life. Indeed, Inkeri Koskinen, referring to traditional knowledge, argues that critiquing another’s knowledge-claim is essential if one is to show the other respect as an epistemic subject (Koskinen 2014). If one is barred from critiquing a knowledge-claim, then in effect the knowledge-claim being made is not genuinely being treated as knowledge at all, but as something more like faith, or dogma. However, the model I’ve developed here, one that suggests that there can be diverse ways of being in the world, thus diverse epistemic subjects, does mean that one cannot successfully critique Indigenous knowledge by simply pointing out that it is unscientific, that it is spiritually based, or that it is culturally embedded. It is unscientific precisely because it is not Western science. It developed in a culture distinct from the one that created Western science. But that does not mean it is epistemologically worthless. It is spiritually based, and culturally embedded, but both of these claims are also true of Western science, and yet scientific knowledge is highly valuable, and can be effectively criticized. If we accept multiple categories of epistemic subjects, and multiple epistemologically successful ways of being in the world, such dismissals of Indigenous knowledge will not suffice. Any critique of Indigenous knowledge or of Western science should not be of the entire knowledge-system (as Howard’s and Widdowson’s are), but instead should focus on specific knowledge-claims. And, any critique cannot take the form of an outright dismissal, or refusal to accept a way of life that is not “backed up” by science. Instead, it must be a dialogue, or a negotiation, between experts in different ways of life.3 Science has had, and continues to have, an amazing track record of solving problems, producing knowledge, and allowing us to understand our world. Nothing that I have said here should be taken to

30761_DesRoches.indd 280

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 281

deny these truths. Western science is a wonderfully epistemologically fruitful way of life. The challenge that faces Western society now is to recognize that it is not the only epistemologically fruitful way of life. I am not calling on southern Canadian society to give up the way of life of the scientist. Instead, I am asking us to broaden our understanding of objectivity, and by extension of who counts as an epistemic subject. Scientists certainly count. But Inuit hunters and Elders should count too. Their way of life is no less culturally influenced or biased than our own, and the knowledge-claims that emerge from it deserve our full consideration. I am proposing that we adopt Harding’s reconceptualization of objectivity in terms of beginning research from the lives of the marginalized, and use this as an opportunity to recognize additional ways of being in the world, and different kinds of experts, knowers, and sources of knowledge. 6 c  onclusion

Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier argues that climate change is a human rights issue. By that she means that our changing climate is robbing her people of the right to their way of life. As the Arctic ice melts earlier each year, and the Northwest Passage remains open, something that was unprecedented even a few decades ago, Inuit of Canada are losing their ability to practise their culture. But our current co-management practices, often aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change, are also affecting their way of life. The more we insist that Indigenous knowers share their knowledge in a language intelligible to Western scientists and policy-makers, the more we risk losing the very insights we seek. It is up to us, all of us who call southern Canadian society home, to change our social views on who is a knower, and what counts as being objective. If we want successful co-­management of the Arctic to mitigate the effects of climate change, we need to collectively change our social ideals about knowledge and objectivity. It is time to embrace more epistemologically fruitful ways of life than simply Mr Nowhere. Climate change is not just an ecological problem. Its solution, is, likewise, not only one for ecologists.

n otes   1 I struggle here when talking about this because, as someone whose knowledge-practices have been co-constituted in a Western European society,

30761_DesRoches.indd 281

2019-05-03 12:52:15

282

Canadian Environmental Philosophy

I lack the words to refer to Indigenous knowledge as anything other than “knowledge.” I will, throughout the rest of the chapter, use “knowledge” and “way of life” or “way of being” interchangeably, choosing whichever is most grammatically correct. But this is, at best, an imperfect solution to the problem of categorization here.   2 Some might question whether the mentally ill are culturally created categories (rather than, say, naturally occurring categories of personhood). Hacking is not arguing that mental illnesses are not real. This is not a ­realism/anti-realism debate. Instead, he is arguing that the ways in which mental illness are framed, classified, and understood, is cultural. For example, hysteria is no longer a mental illness according to the latest issue of the D S M, though it was an illness for decades. Likewise, homosexuality is no longer a mental illness, though it, too, was once classified as such in the D S M. The point isn’t that the behaviours associated with hysteria or homosexuality have vanished. The point is that we, as a society, have come to view them differently. In the case of homosexuality, we no longer recognize it as an illness (and a good thing, too!). In the case of hysteria, many of the symptoms have been reclassified as belonging to other illnesses (such as depression, bipolar disorder, or dissociative identity disorder). One might argue that this is merely a factor of psychology’s growing sophistication. Hacking’s point, though, is that these labels affect people’s sense of self, and the way they navigate the world around them. Being told one has hysteria places one is a specific category, and alters the ways one thinks about oneself. This is a different experience from being told one has depression (Hacking 1995).   3 One might object that we could, in theory, avoid any and all metaphysical discussion of objectivity, categories of knowers, and trust if we simply adjudicated the knowledge-claims on the basis of the facts themselves. For some of these knowledge-claims, this would, in theory, work. Take the Inuit claim that the polar bear population was dwindling that I cited above. Rather than worrying whether the claim is, itself, spiritually based, one could simply test the claim to see if it is accurate. A spiritually-based claim and a value-free claim (were such a thing possible) could both, in theory, accurately depict the world. To such objections, I respond that this is, for some claims, in theory, possible. However, the Inuit make many more claims that it may be harder to adjudicate (see Fellows 2017). Furthermore, continually adjudicating another’s claims is not necessarily the best foundation to build a trusting relationship on, as it doesn’t send a message of trust if one must scrutinize the claims made. Certainly, if a claim strikes one as especially surprising, some investigation is warranted.

30761_DesRoches.indd 282

2019-05-03 12:52:15



How Mr Nowhere Threatens the Success of ­Co-Management 283 But to investigate every claim is to undermine one’s interlocutor as a source of knowledge. Finally, while this might be possible in theory, in fact these metaphysical debates are happening. Howard and Widdowson are claiming that Indigenous knowledge is not knowledge because it is spiritually based. They are not adjudicating individual knowledge-claims, but stating that an entire source of knowledge is not objective and, therefore, not trustworthy. Therefore, I don’t see a way to avoid metaphysics in this issue, much as I know many of my colleagues would wish to.

30761_DesRoches.indd 283

2019-05-03 12:52:15

30761_DesRoches.indd 284

2019-05-03 12:52:15

References

Acorn, John. 2009. “The Unnatural Selection of Unnatural Acts.” American Entomologist 55 (4): 270–1. Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. London: Verso. Agar, Nicholas. 2001. Life’s Intrinsic Value Science, Ethics, and Nature. New York: Columbia University Press. Allee, W.C., Alfred E. Emerson, Orlando Park, Thomas Park, and Karl P. Schmidt. 1949. Principles of Animal Ecology. Philadelphia, PA : Saunders Co. Allen, T.F.H., and T.W. Hoekstra. 1992. Toward a Unified Ecology. New York: Columbia University Press. Allendorf, Fred W., Robb F. Leary, Paul Spruell, and John K. Wenburg. 2001. “The Problems with Hybrids: Setting Conservation Guidelines.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16 (11): 613–22. Alroy, J., et al. 2008. “Phanerozoic Trends in the Global Diversity of Marine Invertebrates.” Science 321: 97–100. Altman, Nathaniel. 2002. Sacred Life: The Spiritual Source of Life. Mahwah: HiddenSpring. Amarasekare, P., and R.M. Nisbet. 2001. “Spatial Heterogeneity, SourceSink Dynamics, and the Local Coexistence of Competing Species.” The American Naturalist 158 (6): 572–84. https://doi.org/10.1086/323586. Anahareo. 2014. Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl. Edited by Sophie McCall. Winnipeg, M B: University of Manitoba Press. Anderson, B. 2006. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Anderson, Elizabeth S. 1990a. “The Ethical Limitations of the Market.” Economics and Philosophy 6: 179–205.

30761_DesRoches.indd 285

2019-05-03 12:52:15

286 References

– 1990b. “Is Women’s Labor a Commodity?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1): 71–92. – 1993. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Anderson, Kevin. 2015. “Duality in Climate Science.” Nature Geoscience 8 (December): 898–900. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2559. Anderson, Terry L. and Donald R. Leal. 2001. Free Market Environmentalism. New York: Palgrave. – 2010. “Priming the Invisible Pump.” In Water Ethics: Foundational Readings for Students and Professionals, edited by Peter G. Brown and Jeremy J. Schmidt, 91–104. Washington: Island Press. Anderson, Terry L., and Pamela S. Snyder. 1997. Water Markets: Priming the Invisible Pump. Washington: Cato Institute. Appiah K.A. 2000. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton. – 2007. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Appleyard, Donald. 1979. “The Environment as a Social Symbol: Within a Theory of Environmental Action and Perception.” Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (2): 143–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01944367908976952. Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by Richard McKeon. New York: Random House. Atwood, Margaret. 2004. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Ayala, Francisco J. 1970. “Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology.” Philosophy of Science 37 (1): 1–15. Bakker, Karen, ed. 2007. Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water. Vancouver: U BC Press. Barker, Matthew J., and Alana Friend Lettner. 2017. “Environmentally Virtuous Agriculture: How and When External Goods and Humility Ethically Constrain (or Favour) Technology Use.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 30: 287–309. Barker, Matthew J., and Robert A. Wilson. 2010. “Cohesion, Gene Flow, and the Nature of Species.” The Journal of Philosophy 107 (2): 59–77. Barlow, Maude. 2002. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. New York: The New Press. – 2007. Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. New York: The New Press. – 2013. Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever. New York: The New Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 286

2019-05-03 12:52:15

References

287

Barry, Brian M. 1978. “Circumstances of Justice and Future Generations.” In Obligations to Future Generations, edited by Richard I. Sikora and Brian M. Barry. Winwick, Cambridgeshire: White Horse Press. – 1981. Intergenerational Justice in Energy Policy. Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland. Reprinted in D. MacLean and P.G. Brown, eds. 1983. Energy and the Future. Totowa, NJ : Rowman and Littlefield. – 1997. “Sustainability and Intergenerational Justice.” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 89: 43–64. Basl, John. 2017. “A Trilemma for Teleological Individualism.” Synthese 194 (4): 1057–74. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1316-0. Bavington, Dean. 2010. Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse. Victoria: UB C Press. B B C News Scotland. 2015. “Scottish Wildcat Captive Breeding Plan Defended.” 2 April. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlandsislands-32162029. Beatty, John. 1984. “Pluralism and Panselectionism.” PSA : Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association: 113–28. Beckerman, Wilfred, and Joanna Pasek. 2001. Justice, Posterity, and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beitz C. 1999. Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Benhabib, S. 2004. The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bicchieri, Cristina. 2006. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Billinghurst, Jane. 1999. Grey Owl: The Many Faces of Archie Belaney. Vancouver: Greystone Books. Bina, O., and S. Vaz. 2011. “Humans, Environment and Economies: From Vicious Relationships to Virtuous Responsibility.” Ecological Economics 72 (December): 170–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon. 2011.09.029. Bishop, Michael. 2015. The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being. New York, NY : Oxford University Press. Biswas, Shekhar R., and Azim U. Mallik. 2010. “Disturbance Effects on Species Diversity and Functional Diversity in Riparian and Upland Plant Communities.” Ecology 91 (1): 28–35. Blanchette, Carol Anne. 1996. “Seasonal Patterns of Disturbance Influence Recruitment of the Sea Palm, Postelsia Palmaeformis.” Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 197 (1): 1–14.

30761_DesRoches.indd 287

2019-05-03 12:52:15

288 References

Bleisch, Barbara. 2006. “The Human Right to Water–Normative Foundations and Ethical Implications.” Ethics and Economics 4: 1–23. Blum, L. 1987. “Compassion.” In The Virtues: Contemporary Essays in Moral Character, edited by R. Kruschwitz and R. Roberts, 229–36. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Boorse, Christopher. 1976. “Wright on Functions.” Philosophical Review 85 (1): 70–86. Borràs, S. 2016. New Transitions from Human Rights to the Environment to the Rights of Nature. Transnational Environmental Law 5: 113–43. Botkin, Daniel B. 1990. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Bouchard, Frédéric. 2008. “Causal Processes, Fitness, and the Differential Persistence of Lineages.” Philosophy of Science 75 (5): 560–70. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boyd, R. 1988. “How to Be a Moral Realist.” In Essays on Moral Realism, edited by G. Sayre-McCord, 181–228. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press. – 1991. “Realism, Anti-Foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Studies 61 (1): 127–48. https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF00385837. – 1999. “Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa.” In Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, edited by R. Wilson, 141–85. Cambridge, MA : MI T Press. B P (British Petroleum). 2016. “BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016.” http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/­ statistical-review-of-world-energy.html. Bradley, B. 2001. The Value of Endangered Species. Journal of Value Inquiry 35: 43–58. Brandt, R.B. 1984. Utilitarianism and Moral Rights. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 1–19. Braz, Albert. 2002. “The White Indian: Armand Garnet Ruffo’s Grey Owl and the Spectre of Authenticity.” Journal of Canadian Studies 36 (4): 171–87. – 2007. “St. Archie of the Wild: Grey Owl’s Account of His ‘Natural’ Conversion.” In Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination, edited by Janice Fiamengo. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/docDetail.action?docID=10382213. – 2015. Apostate Englishman: Grey Owl the Writer and the Myths. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 288

2019-05-03 12:52:15

References

289

Brennan, Jason, and Peter M. Jaworski. 2016. Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests. New York: Routledge. Briske, David D., J.D. Derner, J.R. Brown, S.D. Fuhlendorf, W.R. Teague, K.M. Havstad, R. Li Gillen, Andrew J. Ash, and W.D. Willms. 2008. “Rotational Grazing on Rangelands: Reconciliation of Perception and Experimental Evidence.” Rangeland Ecology & Management 61 (1): 3–17. Briske, David D., B.T. Bestelmeyer, J.R. Brown, S.D. Fuhlendorf, and H.W. Polley. 2013. “The Savory Method Can Not Green Deserts or Reverse Climate Change.” Rangelands 35 (5): 72–4. Briske, David. D., B.T. Bestelmeyer, and J.R. Brown, 2014. “Savory’s Unsubstantiated Claims Should Not Be Confused with Multipaddock Grazing.” Rangelands 36 (1): 39–42. Broome, J. 2012. Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World. New York: W.W. Norton. N Y. Brubaker, Rogers. 2016. Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brysk A. 2009. Global Good Samaritans: Human Rights as Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Cafaro, P. 2001. “The Naturalist’s Virtues.” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8: 85–99. – 2004. Thoreau’s Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press. Cahen, Harley. 1988. “Against the Moral Considerability of Ecosystems.” Environmental Ethics 10 (3): 195–216. Callicott, J. Baird. 1980. “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair.” Environmental Ethics 2: 311–38. – 1982. “Hume’s Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold’s Land Ethic.” Environmental Ethics 4 (2): 163–74. – 1984. “Non-anthropocentric Value Theory and Environmental Ethics.” American Philosophical Quarterly 21: 299–309. – 1985. “Intrinsic Value, Quantum Theory, and Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 7: 257–75. – 1989. In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany, N Y: State University of New York Press. – 1992. “Aldo Leopold’s Metaphor.” In Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management, edited by Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton, and Benjamin D. Haskell, 42–56. Washington, DC : Island Press. Cited as reprinted (as “Aldo Leopold’s Concept of Ecosystem Health”) in Callicott, J. Baird. 1999. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in

30761_DesRoches.indd 289

2019-05-03 12:52:15

290 References

Environmental Philosophy, 333–46. Albany, NY : State University of New York Press. – 1992. “Can a Theory of Moral Sentiments Support a Genuinely Normative Environmental Ethic?” Inquiry 35 (2): 183–98. – 1995. “The Value of Ecosystem Health.” Environmental Values 4 (4): 345–61. Cited as reprinted in Callicott, J. Baird. 1999. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, 347–64. Albany, NY : State University of New York Press. – 1996. “Do Deconstructive Ecology and Sociobiology Undermine Leopold’s Land Ethic?” Environmental Ethics 18 (4): 353–72. Cited as reprinted in Callicott, J. Baird. 1999. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, 117–39. Albany, NY : State University of New York Press. – 1999. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany, N Y: State University of New York Press. – 2002a. “From the Balance of Nature to the Flux of Nature: The Land Ethic in a Time of Change.” In Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience, edited by Richard L. Knight and Susanne Riedel, 90–105. New York: Oxford University Press. – 2002b. “The Pragmatic Power and Promise of Theoretical Environmental Ethics: Forging a New Discourse.” Environmental Values 11 (1): 3–25. – 2003. “The Implications of the Shifting Paradigm in Ecology for Paradigm Shifts in the Philosophy of Conservation.” In Reconstructing Conservation: Finding Common Ground, edited by Ben A. Minteer and Robert E. Manning, 239–61. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. – 2011. “Postmodern Ecological Restoration: Choosing Appropriate Temporal and Spatial Scales.” In Philosophy of Ecology, edited by Kevin DeLaplante, Bryson Brown, and Kent A. Peacock, 301–26. Oxford; Amsterdam; Waltham: Elsevier. – 2013a. “Ecology and Moral Ontology.” In The Structural Links between Ecology, Evolution and Ethics: The Virtuous Epistemic Circle, edited by Donato Bergandi, 296: 101–16. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Springer. – 2013b. Thinking like a Planet: The Land Ethic and the Earth Ethic. New York: Oxford University Press. Callicott, J. Baird, Larry B. Crowder, and Karen Mumford. 1999. “Current Normative Concepts in Conservation.” Conservation Biology 13 (1): 22–35.

30761_DesRoches.indd 290

2019-05-03 12:52:15

References

291

Cardinale, Bradley J., J. Emmett Duffy, Andrew Gonzalez, David U. Hooper, Charles Perrings, Patrick Venail, Anita Narwani, et al. 2012. “Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity.” Nature 486 (7401): 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11148. Carruthers, Peter. 2006. The Architecture of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Catton, W.R. Jr. 2009. “Understanding Humanity’s Damaged Future.” Sociological Inquiry 509–22. C B C News. 2006. “Strange Bear was Grizzly-Polar Hybrid, Tests Show.” 10 May. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/strange-bear-was-grizzly-polarhybrid-tests-show-1.570443. Chakrabarty D. 2009. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35: 197–222. – 2015. “The Anthropocene and the Convergence of Histories.” In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, edited by C. Hamilton, C. Bonneuil, and F. Gemmene, 44–56. London: Routledge. Chang, Hasok. 2012. Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism. New York City: Springer. Chapin, David. 2000. “Gender and Indian Masquerade in the Life of Grey Owl.” American Indian Quarterly 24 (1): 91–109. Chappell, Timothy. 2013. “Virtue Ethics in the Twentieth Century.” In Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics, edited by Daniel Russell, 149–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://www.­ cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/philosophy/ethics/cambridgecompanion-virtue-ethics. Christensen, Wayne D., and Mark H. Bickhard. 2002. “The Process Dynamics of Normative Function.” The Monist 85 (1): 3–28. Code, Lorraine. 1991. What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Cohen, Gerald A. 1989. “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice.” Ethics 99 (4): 906–44. – 1997. “Where the Action is: On the Site of Distributive Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 26 (1): 3–30. – 2000. “If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich.” The Journal of Ethics 4 (1–2): 1–26. Collingwood, R.G. 1960. The Idea of Nature. London: Oxford University Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 291

2019-05-03 12:52:16

292 References

Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (C OSEWIC ). 2014. COSEWIC assessment and status report on the Red Mulberry Morus rubra in Canada, Ottawa. https://www.canada.ca/en/environmentclimate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-­assessmentsstatus-reports/red-mulberry-2014.html. – 2015. COSEWIC Assessment and Status Report on the Eastern Wolf (Canis sp. cf. lycaon) in Canada. Ottawa. http://www.registrelep-­ sararegistry.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=65C48F31-1#_06. Connell, J.H. 1978. “Diversity in Tropical Rain Forests and Coral Reefs.” Science 199 (4335): 1302–10. Cooper, Gregory John. 1998. “Teleology and Environmental Ethics.” American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (2): 195–207. Costanza, Robert. 1992. “Toward an Operational Definition of Ecosystem Health.” In Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management, edited by Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton, and Benjamin D. Haskell, 239–56. Washington, DC : Island Press. Costanza, Robert, Rudolf de Groot, Paul Sutton, Sander van der Ploeg, Sharolyn J. Anderson, Ida Kubiszewski, Stephen Farber, and R. Kerry Turner. 2014. “Changes in the Global Value of Ecosystem Services.” Global Environmental Change 26 (May): 152–8. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.04.002. Costello, Elizabeth K., Keaton Stagaman, Les Dethlefsen, Brendan J.M. Bohannan, and David A. Relman. 2012. “The Application of Ecological Theory toward an Understanding of the Human Microbiome.” Science 336 (6086): 1255–62. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1224203. Crutzen, Paul J. 2002. “Geology of Mankind.” Nature 415: 23. Crutzen P.J., and E.F. Stoermer. 2000. “The ‘Anthropocene’ IGBP Newsletter.” Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden 41: 12. Culpepper, Dreda, and Walter Block. 2008. “Price Gouging in the Katrina Aftermath: Free Markets at Work.” International Journal of Social Economics 35: 512–20. Currie, William S. 2011. “Units of Nature or Processes across Scales? The Ecosystem Concept at Age 75.” New Phytologist 190 (1): 21–34. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03646.x. Daston, Lorraine. 1992. “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective.” Social Studies of Science 22 (4): 597–618. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books. Davies, J. 2016. The Birth of the Anthropocene. Berkeley: University of California Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 292

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

293

Davis, Don E., Everett L. Worthington, Jr., and Joshua N. Hook. 2010. “Humility: Review of Measurement Strategies and Conceptualization as Personality Judgment.” The Journal of Positive Psychology 5 (4): 243– 52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439761003791672. Dawson, Carrie. 1998. “Never Cry Fraud: Remembering Grey Owl, Rethinking Imposture.” Essays on Canadian Writing (65): 120–40. Dayton, Paul K. 1971. “Competition, Disturbance, and Community Organization: The Provision and Subsequent Utilization of Space in a Rocky Intertidal Community.” Ecological Monographs 41 (4): 351–89. https://doi.org/10.2307/1948498. De Bono, Edward. 1969. The Mechanism of Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Debucquoy-Dodley, Dominique. 2016. “Utah ‘Pure’ Bison Herd may be Key to Conserving Species.” CN N . Wed 6 July. http://www.cnn.com/ 2016/07/06/us/utah-bison-herd/index.html. Dedyna, Katherine. 2016. “Clayoquot Island Old Growth Donated to Nature Conservancy of Canada.” www.timescolonist.com. Accessed 26 June. https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/clayoquot-island-oldgrowth-donated-to-nature-conservancy-of-canada-1.2187071. Delancey, Craig S. 2004. “Teleofunctions and Oncomice: The Case for Revising Varner’s Value Theory.” Environmental Ethics 26 (2): 171–88. – 2006. “Ontology and Teleofunctions: A Defense and Revision of the Systematic Account of Teleological Explanation.” Synthese 150 (1): 69–98. Descartes, Rene. 1998. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Translated by John Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Desjardins, Eric, Gillian Barker, Zoe Lindo, Catherine Dieleman, and Antoine C. Dussault. 2015. “Promoting Resilience.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 90 (2): 147–65. Dewar K.C. 2004. “Laurentian Thesis.” In The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, edited by G. Hallowell, 348–9. Don Mills: Oxford University Press. Dial, Roman, and Jonathan Roughgarden. 1998. “Theory of Marine Communities: The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis.” Ecology 79 (4): 1412–24. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(1998)079[1412:] 2.0.CO;2. Diamond, Jared M. 1984. “‘Normal’ Extinctions of Isolated Populations.” In Extinctions, edited by M.H. Nitecki, 191–246. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 293

2019-05-03 12:52:16

294 References

– 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking. Dias, Paula C. 1996. “Sources and Sinks in Population Biology.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 11 (8): 326–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/01695347(96)10037-9. Dickson, Lovat. 1999. Wilderness Man: The Amazing True Story of Grey Owl. Toronto: Macmillan Canada. Dirzo, Rodolfo, Hillary S. Young, Mauro Galetti, Gerardo Ceballos, Nick J.B. Isaac, and Ben Collen. 2014. “Defaunation in the Anthropocene.” Science 345 (6195): 401–6. Dobson, Andrew. 1999. “Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice.” Citizenship and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dowsley, Martha. 2009. “Community Clusters in Wildlife and Environmental Management: Using TEK and Community Involvement to Improve Co-Management in an Era of Rapid Environmental Change.” Polar Research 28: 43–55. Drenthen, Martin. 2013. “New Nature Narratives: Landscape Hermeneutics and Environmental Ethics.” In Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics, edited by Forrest Clingerman, Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen, and David Utsler, 225–41. New York: Fordham University Press. Dreyfus, Hubert, and Stuart Dreyfus. 1986. “Why Computers May Never Think Like People.” In Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, edited by David M. Kaplan. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Duhem, Pierre. 1985. Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dunbar, M.J. 1960. “The Evolution of Stability in Marine Environments Natural Selection at the Level of the Ecosystem.” American Naturalist 94 (875): 129–36. Dupré, John. 1993. The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for Disunity in Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dupré, John, and Maureen A. O’Malley. 2009. “Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism.” Philosophy & Theory in Biology 1: 1–25. Dussault, Antoine C. 2018. In review. “Welfare, Health, and the Moral Considerability of Non-Sentient Biological Entities.” Ateliers de l’éthique/The Ethics Forum 13(1): 184–209. Dworkin, Ronald. 1981. “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare.” Philosophy & Public Affairs: 185–246.

30761_DesRoches.indd 294

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

295

– 1981. “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources.” Philosophy & Public Affairs: 283–345. Edgecomb, Misty. 2003. “Two Canada Lynx-Bobcat Hybrids Confirmed in Maine.” Bangor Daily News, 28 August. http://archive.bangordaily​ news.com/2003/08/28/two-canada-lynx-bobcat-hybrids-confirmedin-maine/. Edmonton, City of. 2012. “Urban Forest Management Plan.” http://www. edmonton.ca/residential_neighbourhoods/PDF/Urban_Forest_ Management_Plan.pdf. Eliot, Christopher H. 2007. “Method and Metaphysics in Clements’s and Gleason’s Ecological Explanations.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 38 (1): 85–109. – “The Legend of Order and Chaos.” In Philosophy of Ecology, edited by Kevin DeLaplante, Bryson Brown, and Kent A. Peacock, 49–107. Oxford: Elsevier. Ellis, B. 2002. The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Emmet, Dorothy. 1992. The Passage of Nature. Hong Kong: Macmillan. Erickson, R. 1994. “On Environmental Virtue Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 16: 334–6. F A O (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 2015. Status of the World’s Soil Resources. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5199e.pdf. Fagan, Brian. 2010. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Fellows, Jennifer Jill. 2013. “Downstream of the Experts: Trust-Building and the Case of M PAs.” Social Epistemology 28 (2): 1–21. – 2017. “Trust Without Shared Belief: Pluralist Realism and Polar Bear Conservation.” Perspectives on Science 25 (1): 36–66. Feyerabend, Paul. 1975. Against Method. London: Verso Books. Fisheries and Oceans Canada. 2014. Recovery Strategy for White Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) in Canada [Final]. Ottawa. https://www.­ registrelep-sararegistry.gc.ca/virtual_sara/files/plans/rs_esturgeon_blc_ wh_sturgeon_0314a_e.pdf. Foot, P. 2001. Natural Goodness. New York: Oxford University Press. Ford, James, et al. 2007. “Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Arctic: The Case of Nunavut, Canada.” Arctic 60 (2): 150–66. Forkey, N.S. 2012. Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Fox, Warwick. 1995. Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism. Albany, NY : State University of New York Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 295

2019-05-03 12:52:16

296 References

Francis (pope). 2015. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Rome: Vatican Press. Frankham, R., J. Ballou, and D. Briscoe. 2010. Introduction to Conservation Genetics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Franzen, Axel, and Dominikus Vogl. 2013. “Two Decades of Measuring Environmental Attitudes: A Comparative Analysis of 33 Countries.” Global Environmental Change 23 (5): 1001–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.gloenvcha.2013.03.009. Frasz, Geoffrey. 1993. “Environmental Virtue Ethics: A New Direction for Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 15: 279–84. – 2001. “What Is Environmental Virtue Ethics That We Should Be Mindful of It?” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8: 5–14. – 2012. “Benevolence as an Environmental Virtue.” In Environmental Ethics for Canadians, edited by Byron Williston, 260–67. Don Mills, O N: Oxford University Press Canada. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Funkenstein, Amos. 1986. Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gardiner, S. 2011. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Global Warming. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gare, A. 1995. Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis. London: Routledge. Gearhead, Shari, and Jamal Shirley. 2007. “Challenges in Community Research Relationships: Learning From Natural Science and Nunavut.” Arctic 60 (1): 62–74. Gese, Eric M., and Patricia A. Terletzky. 2015. “Using the “Placeholder” Concept to Reduce Genetic Introgression of an Endangered Carnivore.” Biological Conservation 192: 11–19. Gibbard, A. 1984. “Utilitarianism and Human Rights.” Social Philosophy and Policy 1 (2): 92–102. Gilbert, Scott F., Jan Sapp, and Alfred I. Tauber. 2012. “A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 87 (4): 325–41. https://doi.org/10.1086/668166. Gilens, M., and B.I. Page. 2014. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12: 564–81. Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 1994. “A Modern History Theory of Functions.” Noûs 28 (3): 344–62.

30761_DesRoches.indd 296

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

297

Goodpaster, Kenneth E. 1978. “On Being Morally Considerable.” The Journal of Philosophy 75 (6): 308–25. Gordon, Irene Ternier. 2004. Grey Owl: The Curious Life of Archie Belaney. Canmore, AB: Altitude. Gough, Joseph. 2007. Managing Canada’s Fisheries: From Early Days to The Year 2000. Sillery: Septentrion Press. Gould, Stephen Jay, and Richard C. Lewontin. 1979. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 205 (1161): 581–98. Green, Rayna. 1988. “The Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe.” Folklore 99 (1): 30–55. Grey Owl. 1931. “Comments on Mr. Godsell’s Article.” Canadian Forest and Outdoors 27 (4): 343–4. – 1932. “Unto the Least of These.” Canadian Forest and Outdoors 28 (3): 89–91, 94. – 1975. Tales of an Empty Cabin. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada. – 1999. The Collected Works of Grey Owl: The Men of the Last Frontier, Pilgrims of the Wild, and Sajo and the Beaver People. Toronto: Chapters Publishing. Groenfeldt, David. 2013. Water Ethics: A Values Approach to Solving the Water Crisis. New York: Earthscan. Guarner, Francisco, and Juan-R. Malagelada. 2003. “Gut Flora in Health and Disease.” The Lancet 361 (9356): 512–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(03)12489-0. Gunderson, Lance H. 2000. “Ecological Resilience: In Theory and Application.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics: 425–39. Haberl, H., K.H. Erb, F. Krausmann, V. Gaube, A. Bondeau, C. Plutzar, S. Gingrich, W. Lucht, and M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2007. “Quantifying and Mapping the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production in Earth’s Terrestrial Ecosystems.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (31): 12942–7. Hacking, Ian. 1996. “The Disunities of the Sciences.” In The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power, edited by Peter Louis Galison and David J. Stump, 37–74. Stanford: Stanford University Press. – 2004. “Making Up People.” In Historical Ontology, 99–114. Cambridge, MA : Oxford University Press. Hagen, Joel B. 1992. An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology. New Brunswick, N J: Rutgers University Press. – 2014. “Eugene Odum and the Homeostatic Ecosystem: The Resilience of an Idea.” In Traditions of Systems Theory: Major Figures and

30761_DesRoches.indd 297

2019-05-03 12:52:16

298 References

Contemporary Developments, edited by Darrell P. Arnold, 179–93. New York: Routledge. Haig, Susan M., Thomas D. Mullins, Eric D. Forsman, Pepper W. Trail, and Liv Wennerberg. 2004. “Genetic Identification of Spotted Owls, Barred Owls, and Their Hybrids: Legal Implications of Hybrid Identity.” Conservation Biology 18 (5): 1347–57. Hansen, J. Sato M., et al. 2016. “Ice-Melt, Sea-Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling and Observations that 2°C Global Warming Could be Dangerous.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (March). https://doi.org/ 10.5194/acp-163761-2016. Harari, Yuval Noah. 2014. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Toronto: Penguin Random House. Hardin, G. 1960. “The Competitive Exclusion Principle.” Science 131 (3409): 1292–7. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.131.3409.1292. Harding, Sandra. 2002. “Must the Advance of Science Advance Global Inequality?” International Studies Review 4 (2): 87–105. – 2015. Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Haught, P. 2010. “Hume’s Knave and Nonanthropocentric Virtues.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (1–2): 129–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9188-z. Hayden A. 2014. When Green Growth is not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Hedrick, Philip W. 2013. “Adaptive Introgression in Animals: Examples and Comparison to New Mutation and Standing variation as Sources of Adaptive Variation.” Molecular Ecology 22: 4606–18. Heinberg R. 2015. Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels. Gabriola Island, B C: New Society Publishers. Heller, Rasmus, Peter Frandsen, Eline D. Lorenzen, and Hans R. Siegismund. 2013. “Are There Really Twice as Many Bovid Species as We Thought?” Systematic Biology 62 (3): 490–3. Hengeveld, Rob, and G. Hugh Walter. 1999. “The Two Coexisting Ecological Paradigms.” Acta Biotheoretica 47 (2): 141–70. Herstein, Ori J. “The Identity and (Legal) Rights of Future Generations.” Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 77 (2008): 1173. Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 1983. “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments.” Environmental Ethics 5: 211–24. – 2012. “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments.” In Environmental Ethics for Canadians, edited by

30761_DesRoches.indd 298

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

299

Byron Williston, 249–57. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada. Hoegh-Guldberg, O., L. Hughes, S. McIntyre, D.B. Lindenmayer, C. Parmesan, H.P. Possingham, and C.D. Thomas. 2008. “Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change.” Science 321 (5887): 345–46. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1157897. Hoffmann, Banesh, and Helen Dukas. 1972. Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. New York: Viking Press. Holechek, Jerry L., Hilton Gomes, Francisco Molinar, Dee Galt, and Raul Valdez. 2000. “Short-Duration Grazing: The Facts in 1999.” Rangelands: 18–22. Holechek, Jerry L., Rex D. Pieper, and Carlton H. Herbel. 2001. Range Management: Principles and Practices. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Holling, Crawford S. 1973. “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics: 1–23. Holling, Crawford S., and Gary K. Meffe. 1996. “Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management.” Conservation Biology 10 (2): 328–37. Holm, Sune H. 2012. “Biological Interests, Normative Functions, and Synthetic Biology.” Philosophy and Technology 25 (4): 525–41. Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. 2001. The Ingenuity Gap. Toronto: Vintage Canada. Horbulyk, Theodore M. 2007. “Liquid Gold: Water Markets in Canada.” In Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water, edited by Karen Bakker, 205–18. Vancouver: U BC Press. Howard, Albert, and Frances Widdowson. 1996. “Traditional Knowledge Threatens Environmental Assessment.” Policy Options (November): 34–6. Huelsenbeck, Matthew. 2012. “Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High C O 2 World.” Oceana. http://oceana.org/sites/default/files/ reports/Ocean-Based_Food_Security_Threatened_in_a_High_CO2_ World.pdf. Hull, R. 2005. “All About EVE: A Report on Environmental Virtue Ethics Today.” Ethics & The Environment 10 (1): 89–110. https://doi. org/10.1353/een.2005.0014. Hurka, T. 1983. “Value and Population Size.” Ethics 93: 496–507. Hursthouse, R. 1999. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – 2007. “Environmental Virtue Ethics.” In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, edited by R.L. Walker and P.J. Ivanhoe, 155–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 299

2019-05-03 12:52:16

300 References

Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Hutchinson, G. Evelyn. 1957. “Concluding Remarks.” Cold Springs Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 22: 415–27. Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPC C ). 2016. “IPC C Fifth Assessment Report.” Accessed 13 July. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/. International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE). 2016. “Environmental Ethics in Canada.” Accessed 5 December 2016. https:// enviroethics.org/canada/. Isaac, Nick, James B. Mallet, and Georgina M. Mace. 2004. “Taxonomic Inflation: Its Influence on Macroecology and Conservation.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19: 464–9. Jablonski, D., K. Roy, J.W. Valentine, R.M. Price, and P.S. Anderson. 2003. “The Impact of the Pull of the Recent on the History of Marine Diversity.” Science 300: 1133–5. Jaccard M., M. Hein, and T. Vass. 2016. “Is Win-Win Possible: Can Canada’s Government Achieve its Paris Commitment … and get Re-Elected?” School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University. http://rem-main.rem.sfu.ca/papers/jaccard/ Jaccard-Hein-Vass%20CdnClimatePol%20EMRG-REM-SFU%20 Sep%2020%202016.pdf. Jackiw, Raeya N., Ghada Mandil, and Heather A. Hager. 2015. “A Framework to Guide the Conservation of Species Hybrids based on Ethical and Ecological Considerations.” Conservation Biology 29 (4): 1040–51. Jacobs, Michael. 1999. “Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept.” In Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, edited by A. Dobson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jamieson, D. 2014. Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed and What it Means for our Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Janis, Irving L. 1982. Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Johnson, Lawrence E. 1991. A Morally Deep World: An Essay on Moral Significance and Environmental Ethics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 300

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

301

– 1992. “Toward the Moral Considerability of Species and Ecosystems.” Environmental Ethics 14 (2): 145–57. Jones C. 1999. “Patriotism, Morality and Global Justice.” In Global Justice, edited by I. Shapiro and L. Brilmayer, 125–70. New York: New York University Press. Jones, Clive G., and John H. Lawton, eds. 1995. Linking Species & Ecosystems. New York: Chapman & Hall. Jones, David C. 1987. Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1987. Critique of Judgment. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis, I N : Hackett Publishing Co. Kareiva, Peter, and Michelle Marvier. 2012. “What is Conservation Science?” BioScience 62 (11): 962–9. Kaufmann, Stuart A. 2016. Humanity in a Creative Universe. New York: Oxford University Press. Keddy, Paul A. 1982. “Population Ecology on an Environmental Gradient: Cakile Edentula on a Sand Dune.” Oecologia 52 (3): 348–55. https:// doi.org/10.1007/BF00367958. Kellert, Stephen H., Helen E. Longino, and C. Kenneth Waters. 2006. “The Pluralist Stance.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science: vii–xxix. Kelly, C. 2003. A Theory of the Good. PhD thesis. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. – 2014. “Value Monism, Richness, and Environmental Ethics.” Les ­ateliers de l’éthique/The Ethics Forum 9: 110–29. Kenny, Anthony. 2004. Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kindemba, Vicky. 2009. “The Impact of Neonicotinoid Insecticides on Bumblebees, Honey Bees and Other Non-Target Invertebrates.” https:// scholar.google.ca/scholar?start=10&q=bee+protection+ban+neonicotino ids&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1. King, Anthony W. 1993. “Considerations of Scale and Hierarchy.” In Ecological Integrity and the Management of Ecosystems, edited by Stephen J. Woodley, James Kay, and George R. Francis, 19–45. Delray Beach, FL: St. Lucie Press. Kingsland, Sharon E. 1995. Modeling Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kiran, Asle H., and Peter-Paul Verbeek. 2010. “Trusting Our Selves to Technology.” Know. Techn. Pol. 23: 409–27. Kitcher, Philip. 1990. “The Division of Cognitive Labor.” The Journal of Philosophy 87 (1): 5–22.

30761_DesRoches.indd 301

2019-05-03 12:52:16

302 References

Kitto, H.D.F. 1956. The Greeks. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Toronto: Knopf Canada. Knapp, Corinne Noel, and Maria E. Fernandez-Gimenez. 2009. “Knowledge in Practice: Documenting Rancher Local Knowledge in Northwest Colorado.” Rangeland Ecology & Management 62 (6): 500–9. Knight, Rolf. 1974. “Grey Owl’s Return: Cultural Ecology and Canadian Indigenous Peoples.” Reviews in Anthropology 1 (3): 349–59. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00988157.1974.9977095. Koena, Erin L., Jeff Bowman, Jillian L. Lalorc, and Paul J. Wilson. 2014. “Continental-scale Assessment of the Hybrid zone between Bobcat and Canada Lynx.” Biological Conservation 78: 107–15. Kolbert, Elizabeth. 2014. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Henry Holt. Korosi J.B, C.A. Cook, et al. 2016. “In-situ Bitumen Extraction Associated with Increased Petrogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds in Lake Sediments from the Cold Lake Heavy Oil Fields (Alberta, Canada).” Environmental Pollution (August). https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.envpol. 2016.08.032 Koskinen, Inkeri. 2014. “Critical Subjects: Participatory Research Needs to Make Room for Debate.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (6): 733–51. Kowalsky, Nathan. 2007. “Wilderness, Wasteland, and Homeland: Comments on Drenthen.” Ethical Perspectives 14 (4): 457–78. Kowalsky, Nathan, and Randolph Haluza-DeLay. 2015. “‘This is Oil Country’: The Alberta Tar Sands and Jacques Ellul’s Theory of Technology.” Environmental Ethics 37 (1) (Spring): 75–97. Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Kulchyski, Peter. 1996. “Bush Culture for a Bush Country: An Unfinished Manifesto.” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 31 (3): 192–6. – 2014. “Bush Manifesto.” Presented 24 June. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/ hemi/en/enc14-5-minute-manifestos/item/2606-enc14-5min-kulchyski. Kunstler, James Howard. 1994. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kymlicka W., and K. Walker. 2012. “Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World.” In Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World, edited by W. Kymlicka and K. Walker, 1–27. Vancouver: UB C Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 302

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

303

Lackey, Jennifer, and Ernest Sosa. 2006. The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lascelles, Tony, and Grey Owl. 1931. “A Philosophy of the Wild.” Canadian Forest and Outdoors 12 (December): 15–17. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge MA : Harvard University Press. – 2013. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Laxer, G. 2015. After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians. Madeira Park, BC: Douglas and MacIntyre. Leadley, Paul. 2010. Biodiversity Scenarios: Projections of 21st Century Change in Biodiversity, and Associated Ecosystem Services : A Technical Report for the Global Biodiversity Outlook 3. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. http://www.deslibris.ca/ID/242846. Leclair, Anne. 2014. “Outrage over Contaminated Soil Dump in Verdun.” Global News. 22 April. http://globalnews.ca/news/1285153/%EF%BB% BFoutrage-over-contaminated-soil-dump-in-verdun/. Leiserowitz, A.A., R.W. Kates, and T.M. Parris. 2005. “Do Global Attitudes and Behaviors Support Sustainable Development?” Environment 47 (9): 23–38. Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York, N Y: Oxford University Press. – 1953. Round River. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – 1966. A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River. New York: Ballantine Books. – 1986. A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River. New York: Ballantine Books. Levin, Donald A. 2002. “Hybridization and Extinction: In Protecting Rare Species, Conservationists Should Consider the Dangers of Interbreeding, Which Compound the More Well-known Threats to Wildlife.” American Scientist 90 (3): 254–61. Levin, Donald A., Javier Francisco-Ortega, and Robert K.J Jansen. 1996. “Hybridization and the Extinction of Rare Plant Species.” Conservation Biology 10: 10–16. Levin, Simon A. 1998. “Ecosystems and the Biosphere as Complex Adaptive Systems.” Ecosystems 1 (5): 431–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s100219900037. – 2005. “Self-Organization and the Emergence of Complexity in Ecological Systems.” Bioscience 55 (12): 1075–9. Lewontin, Richard C. 1969. “The Meaning of Stability.” Brookhaven Symposia in Biology 22: 13.

30761_DesRoches.indd 303

2019-05-03 12:52:16

304 References

– 1982. Organism & Environment, Learning, Development, Culture. Edited by Henry Plotkin, 151–70. New York: John Wiley. – 1983a. “The Organism as the Subject and Object of Evolution.” Scientia 118: 65–82. – 1983b. “Gene: Organism & Environment.” In Evolution: From Molecules to Man, edited by D.S. Bendall. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. – 2001. “Gene: Organism and Environment.” In Cycles of Contingency, edited by S. Oyama et al, 59–66. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press. Lewontin, Richard C., and Richard Levins. 1997. “Organism and Environment.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 8: 95–8. Locke, John. (1689) 1980. Second Treatise of Government. Cambridge: Hackett. Lokken, Nils, 2015. Attitudes, Trust, and Wildlife Co-Management in Igluligaarjuk, Qamani’tauaaq and Tikirarjuaq, Nunavut, Canada. MA  thesis. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan. Loreau, Michel. 2010. From Populations to Ecosystems: Theoretical Foundations for a New Ecological Synthesis (MPB -46). Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Loreau, Michel, and Nicolas Mouquet. 1999. “Immigration and the Maintenance of Local Species Diversity.” The American Naturalist 154 (4): 427–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/303252. Lorenzini, Rita, Rita Fanelli, Goffredo Grifoni, Francesco Scholl, and Rosario Fico. 2014. “Wolf-dog Crossbreeding: ‘Smelling’ a Hybrid May Not Be Easy.” Mammalian Biology 79 (2): 149–56. Lovelock, J. 2006. The Revenge of Gaia. London: Allen Lane. Lowery, Robert K., Gabriel Uribe, Eric B. Jimenez, Mark A. Weiss, Kristian J. Herrera, Maria Regueiro, Rene J. Herrera. 2013. “Neanderthal and Denisova Genetic Affinities with Contemporary Humans: Introgression Versus Common Ancestral Polymorphisms.” Gene 530 (1): 83–94. L P I (Living Planet Index). 2016. Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and Resilience in a New Era. Zoological Society of London and World Wildlife Fund. http://www.livingplanetindex.org/home/index. Lucas, Adam Robert. 2005. “Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe.” Technology and Culture 46: 1–30. Lundquist, Carolyn J., and Elise F. Granek. 2005. “Strategies for Successful Marine Conservation: Integrating Socioeconomic, Political and Scientific Factors.” Conservation Biology 19 (6): 1771–8.

30761_DesRoches.indd 304

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

305

Macklin, R. 1981. “Can Future Generations Be Said To Have Rights?” In Responsibilities to Future Generations, edited by Ernest Partridge. New York: Prometheus Books. Mallet, James. 2005. “Hybridization as an Invasion of the Genome.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20 (5): 229–37. Malthus, T.R. 1992. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marean, Curtis W. 2015. “The Most Invasive Species of All.” Scientific American 313 (2): 32–9. Margulis, Lynn. 1991. “Symbiogenesis and Symbionticism.” In Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis, edited by René Fester and Lynn Margulis, 1–14. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Marris, Emma. 2009. “Conservation: The Genome of the American West.” Nature 457 (February): 950–2. – 2011. Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. New York: Bloomsbury. Marshall, George. 2014. Don’t Even Think About It: Why our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. New York: Bloomsbury. Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co. Mayr, Ernst. 1942. Systematics and the Origin of Species, from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. – 1961. “Cause and Effect in Biology.” Science 134 (3489): 1501–6. – 1988. “The Multiple Meanings of Teleological.” In Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist, 38–66. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. McFadden, Jamie E., Tim L. Hiller, and Andrew J. Tyre. 2011. “Evaluating the Efficacy of Adaptive Management Approaches: Is There a Formula for Success?” Journal of Environmental Management 92 (5): 1354–9. McGlade, C., and P. Ekins. 2015. “The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Fuels Unused When Limiting Global Warming to 2°C.” Nature 517: 187–90. McIntosh, Robert P. 1998. “The Myth of Community as Organism.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 14 (3): 426–38. McLaghlan, Jason S., Jessica J. Hellmann, and Mark W. Schwartz. 2007. “A Framework for Debate of Assisted Migration in an Era of Climate Change.” Conservation Biology 21 (2): 297–302. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00676.x.

30761_DesRoches.indd 305

2019-05-03 12:52:16

306 References

McLaughlin, Peter. 2001. What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy of Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 2002. “On Having a Function and Having a Good.” Analyse and Kritik 24: 130–43. McNeill, William H. 1976. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY : Anchor Press. McShane, Katie. 2004. “Ecosystem Health.” Environmental Ethics 26 (3). – 2014. “Individualist Biocentrism vs. Holism Revisited.” Ateliers de l’éthique/The Ethics Forum 9 (1): 130–48. Mech M. 2011. A Comprehensive Guide to the Alberta Oil Sands. Green Party of Canada. https://www.greenparty.ca/sites/default/files/a_​ comprehensive_guide_to_the_alberta_oil_sands_-_may_2011_-_last_ revised_march_2012.pdf Merchant, Carolyn. 1983. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers. Meyer, R. 2015. “How Solar and Wind Got So Cheap, So Fast.” The Atlantic. 2 December. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/ 2015/12/how-solar-and-wind-got-so-cheap-so-fast/418257/. Migratory Birds Regulations (C.R.C., c. 1035). 2016 (last amended). Ottawa: Government of Canada. http://laws.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C.R.C.,_ c._1035.pdf. Mikkelson, Gregory M. 2011. “Weighing Species.” Environmental Ethics 33 (2): 185–96. – 2011a. “Diversity and the Good.” In Philosophy of Ecology, edited by K. DeLaplante, B. Brown, and K.A. Peacock, 399–415. Waltham, MA : Elsevier. – 2011b. “Weighing Species.” Environmental Ethics 33: 185–96. – 2014. “Richness Theory: From Value to Action.” Les Ateliers de l’Éthique/The Ethics Forum 9: 99–109. – 2017. “Environmental Values, Human Nature, and Economic Democracy.” Human Ecology 45: 131–4. Mikkelson, Gregory M., and C.A. Chapman. 2014. “Individualistic Environmental Ethics: A reductio ad exstinctum?” Environmental Ethics 36: 333–8. Milchunas, Daniel G., and William K. Lauenroth. 1993. “Quantitative Effects of Grazing on Vegetation and Soils over a Global Range of Environments.” Ecological Monographs 63 (4): 327–66. Miller, David. 1976. Social Justice. Oxford: Clarendon. Miller, Peter. 1981. “Is Health an Anthropocentric Virtue?” Nature and System 3: 193–207.

30761_DesRoches.indd 306

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

307

– 1982. “Value as Richness: Toward a Value Theory for an Expanded Naturalism in Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 4: 101–14. – 1983. “Axiology: A Metaphysical Theme in Ethics.” Journal of Value Inquiry 17: 3–16. – 1995. “Integrity, Sustainability, Biodiversity, and Forestry.” In Perspectives on Ecological Integrity, edited by L. Westra and J. Lemons, 218–38. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Millikan, Ruth G. 1989. “In Defense of Proper Functions.” Philosophy of Science 56 (June): 288–302. Millstein, Roberta L. 2018. “Is Aldo Leopold’s ‘Land Community’ an Individual?” In Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices, edited by Otávio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda B. Fagan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 279–302. Misak, C. 2005. “Pragmatism and Pluralism.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 41 (1): 129–35. Mitcham, Allison. 1981. Grey Owl’s Favorite Wilderness. Newcastle, ON: Penumbra Press. Mitchell, Sandra. 2003. Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 2004. “Why Integrative Pluralism?” Emergence Publications: 81–91. Montgomery, David R. 2007. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. Berkeley, C A : University of California Press. Moodie, S. 2007. Roughing it in the Bush. Toronto: W.W. Norton. Moore, A.D. 1969. Invention, Discovery, and Creativity. Garden City, NY : Doubleday Anchor Books. Moreno, Alvaro, and Matteo Mossio. 2015. The Autonomy of Living Systems: A Philosophical Enquiry into Biological Organization. Dordrecht: Springer. Moss, Lenny. 2011. “Is the Philosophy of Mechanism Philosophy Enough?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43: 164–72. Mossio, Matteo, Cristian Saborido, and Alvaro Moreno. 2009. “An Organizational Account of Biological Functions.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (4): 813–41. Mossio, Matteo, and Leonardo Bich. 2014. “La circularité biologique: Concepts et modèles.” In Modéliser & simuler. Épistémologies et pratiques de la modélisation et de la simulation, Tome 2, edited by Franck Varenne, Sébastien Dutreuil, Philippe Huneman, and Marc Silberstein, 137–70. Paris: Éditions Matériologiques.

30761_DesRoches.indd 307

2019-05-03 12:52:16

308 References

Motesharrei, Safa, Jorge Rivas, and Eugenia Kalnay. 2014. “Human and Nature Dynamics (HAN DY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies.” Ecological Economics 101 (May): 90–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.02.014. Mouquet, Nicolas, and Michel Loreau. 2003. “Community Patterns in Source-Sink Metacommunities.” The American Naturalist 162 (5): 544– 57. https://doi.org/10.1086/378857. Mumford, Lewis. 1962. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. Mutch, Robert W. 1970. “Wildland Fires and Ecosystems–A Hypothesis.” Ecology 51 (6): 1046–51. Nadasdy, Paul. 1993. “Re-evaluating the Co-management Success Story.” Arctic 56 (4): 367–80. – 2003. Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge and Aboriginal State Relations in the Southwest Yukon. Vancouver: UB C Press. Naess, Arne. 1979. “Self-realization in Mixed Communities of Humans, Bears, Sheep, and Wolves.” Inquiry 22: 231–41. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00201747908601874. Nagel, Ernest. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Natural Resources Canada. 2017. “10 Key Facts on Canada’s Natural Resources.” https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/files/ pdf/10_key_facts_nrcan_2017_en.pdf. Accessed 24 January 2018. Naylor, D.K. 2005. “Pinchot, Gifford 1865–1946.” In Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited by B. Taylor, 1280–1. New York: Continuum. Naylor, Rosamond L., Rebecca J. Goldburg, Jurgenne H. Primavera, Nils Kautsky, Malcolm C.M. Beveridge, Jason Clay, Carl Folke, Jane Lubchenco, Harold Mooney, and Max Troell. 2000. “Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies.” Nature 405 (6790): 1017–24. Neander, Karen. 1991. “The Teleological Notion of ‘Function.’” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (4): 454–68. Nelson, Michael P. 2010. “Teaching Holism in Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 32 (1): 33–49. Nerman, Danielle. 2016. “Nature Conservancy of Canada Completes Conservation of Alberta’s Waldron Grasslands with King Ranch.” CBC News. 13 April. Accessed 27 June. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/­ calgary/waldron-king-ranch-alberta-conservation-1.3533700. Neubauer, Philipp, Olaf P. Jensen, Jeffrey A. Hutchings, and Julia K. Baum. 2013. “Resilience and Recovery of Overexploited Marine Populations.” Science 340 (6130): 347–9.

30761_DesRoches.indd 308

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

309

Neurath, Otto. (1936) 1983. “Individual Sciences, Unified Science, Pseudorationalism.” In Philosophical Papers 1913–1946, 132–8. Netherlands: Springer. Newton, L. 2002. Ethics and Sustainability: Sustainable Development and the Moral Life. Upper Saddle River, N J : Prentice Hall. Nicholson, Daniel J. 2011. “The Concept of Mechanism in Biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43: 152–63. – 2013. “The Concept of Mechanism in Biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44: 669–78. Nixon R. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge M A: Harvard University Press. Nolt, John. 2009. “The Move from Is to Good in Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 31 (2): 135–54. – 2015. Environmental Ethics for the Long Term: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. Norton, B.E. 1998. “The Application of Grazing Management to Increase Sustainable Livestock Production.” Animal Production in Australia 22: 15–26. Norton, Bryan G. 1994. Toward Unity among Environmentalists. New York: Oxford University Press. – 1996. “Change, Constancy, and Creativity: The New Ecology and Some Old Problems.” Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum 7 (1): 49–70. – 2006. Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. – 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Nunes-Neto, Nei, Alvaro Moreno, and Charbel N. El-Hani. 2014. “Function in Ecology: An Organizational Approach.” Biology and Philosophy 29 (1): 123–41. Nussbaum, M. 2003. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Hara, Ann M., and Fergus Shanahan. 2006. “The Gut Flora as a Forgotten Organ.” EMBO Reports 7 (7): 688–93. https://doi.org/10.1038/ sj.embor.7400731. O’Neill, John. 1992. “The Varieties of Intrinsic Value.” Monist 75: 119–37. – 2001. “Meta-Ethics.” In A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, edited by Dale Jamieson. Hoboken, N J : Blackwell Publishers.

30761_DesRoches.indd 309

2019-05-03 12:52:16

310 References

Odenbaugh, Jay. 2001. “Ecological Stability, Model Building, and Environmental Policy: A Reply to Some of the Pessimism.” Philosophy of Science 68 (S1): S493–505. – 2010. “On the Very Idea of an Ecosystem.” In New Waves in Metaphysics, edited by Allan Hazlett, 240–58. Basingstoke, NY : Palgrave Macmillan. – 2016. “Protecting Biodiversity and Moral Psychology; or Why Philosophers Are Asking the Wrong Questions.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity, edited by Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski, and Sahotra Sarkar, 193–211. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Oosthoek, Sharon. 2013. “Looking for Love as the Climate Heats Up.” The Daily Climate. 14 Feb. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/ looking-for-love-as-the-climate-heats-up-15606. Ostrom, Elinor. 2007. “A Diagnostic Approach for Going Beyond Panaceas.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (39): 15181–7. – 2009. “A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of SocialEcological Systems.” Science 325 (5939): 419–22. Paine, Robert T. 1979. “Disaster, Catastrophe, and Local Persistence of the Sea Palm Postelsia Palmaeformis.” Science 205 (4407): 685–7. https:// doi.org/10.1126/science.205.4407.685. – 1988. “Habitat Suitability and Local Population Persistence of the Sea Palm Postelsia Palmaeformis.” Ecology 69 (6): 1787–94. https://doi. org/10.2307/1941157. Pais, Abraham. 1982. “Subtle Is the Lord …”: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Palmer, C. 2014. “Contested Frameworks in Environmental Ethics.” In Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action, edited by R. Rozzi et al., 191–206. New York: Springer. Partridge, Ernest. 2000. “Reconstructing Ecology.” In Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health, edited by David Pimentel, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss, 79–97. Washington, DC : Island Press. – 2005. “‘Disequilibrium Ecology’ – Much Ado About Nothing.” Presented at the Group Meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics (Pacific Division Meeting, American Philosophical Association), San Francisco. http://gadfly.igc.org/papers/much-ado.htm. Pauly, Daniel, and Dirk Zeller. 2016. “Catch Reconstructions Reveal That Global Marine Fisheries Catches Are Higher than Reported and Declining.” Nature Communications 7 (January): 10244. https://doi. org/10.1038/ncomms10244.

30761_DesRoches.indd 310

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

311

Peacock, Kent A. 1999a. “Staying out of the Lifeboat: Sustainability, Culture, and the Thermodynamics of Symbiosis.” Ecosystem Health 5 (2): 91–103. – 1999b. “Symbiosis and the Ecological Role of Philosophy.” Dialogue 38 (4): 699–717. – 2008. The Quantum Revolution: A Historical Perspective. Westport, C T : Greenwood Press. – 2011. “Symbiosis in Ecology and Evolution.” In Philosophy of Ecology, edited by K. DeLaplante, B. Brown, and K.A. Peacock, 219–50. Waltham, M A: Elsevier. – 2017. “Energy, Complexity, and the Singularity.” In The Singularity Hypothesis: Managing the Journey, edited by V. Callaghan, J. Miller, R. Yampolskiy, and S. Armstrong, 153–65. Berlin: Springer. Perlin, John. 1989. A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization. New York & London: W.W. Norton. Peterson, Garry. D. 2005. “Ecological Management: Control, Uncertainty, and Understanding.” In Ecological Paradigms Lost: Routes of Theory Change, edited by Beatrix Beisner and Kim Cuddington, 371–96. Burlington: Elsevier Academic Press. Pettit, P. 1988. “The Consequentialist Can Recognize Rights.” The Philosophical Quarterly 38 (150): 42–55. Pezzey, John. 1989. Definitions of Sustainability. UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development. – 1992. “Sustainability: An Interdisciplinary Guide.” Environmental Values: 321–62. Piaget, Jean. 1967. Biologie et connaissance. Paris: Gallimard. Pickett, Steward T., and Peter S. White. 1985. The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Pickett, Steward T., V.T. Parker, and P. Fiedler. 1992. “The New Paradigm in Ecology: Implications for Conservation Biology above the Species Level.” In Conservation Biology: The Theory and Practice of Nature Conservation, Preservation and Management, 65–88. New York: Chapman & Hall. Pickett, Steward T., and Richard S. Ostfeld. 1995. “The Shifting Paradigm in Ecology.” In A New Century for Natural Resources Management, edited by Richard L. Knight and Sarah F. Bates. Washington, DC : Island Press. Pickett, Steward T., Jianguo Wu, and M.L. Cadenasso. 1999. “Patch Dynamics and the Ecology of Disturbed Ground: A Framework for Synthesis.” In Ecosystems of Disturbed Ground, edited by Lawrence R. Walker, 707–22. New York: Elsevier.

30761_DesRoches.indd 311

2019-05-03 12:52:16

312 References

Pickett, Steward T., J. Kolasa, and Clive G. Jones, eds. 2007. Ecological Understanding: The Nature of Theory and the Theory of Nature. Boston: Elsevier/Academic Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10225042. Piett, Sarah, Heather Hager, and Chelsey Gerrard. 2015. “Characteristics for Evaluating the Conservation Value of Species Hybrids.” Biodiversity Conservation 24: 1931–55. Pinchot, G. (1947) 1998. Breaking New Ground. Washington, DC : Island Press. Plato. 1951. Symposium. Translated by Walter Hamilton. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. – 1961. The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including Letters. Edited by Edith Hamilton and H. Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press. – 1992. The Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Revised by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis, I N : Hackett. Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge. Pogge, Thomas W. 1992. “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty.” Ethics 103: 48–75. – 2002. “Moral Universalism and Global Economic Justice.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics I: 29–58. – 2008. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge, UK : Polity. Postman, Neil. 1993. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage. – 2005. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books. Pulliam, H. Ronald. 1988. “Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation.” The American Naturalist 132 (5): 652–61. Purdy, J. 2015. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Putnam, H. 1975. “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” In Mind, Language and Reality, 215–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pynn, Larry. 2014. “Glimmer of Hope for B.C.’s Endangered Owls.” Vancouver Sun. 20 May. http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Gli mmer+hope+endangered+owls/9860860/story.html. Quammen, David. 2016. “Living With the Wild.” National Geographic 229 (5): 132–45. Radin, Margaret J. 1996. Contested Commodities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 1973. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA : Harvard, Belknap.

30761_DesRoches.indd 312

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

313

Regan, Tom. 1992. “Animal Rights: What’s in a Name?” In Animal Welfare and the Environment, edited by Richard D. Ryder, 49–61. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. – 2004. The Case for Animal Rights. 2nd ed. Berkeley, C A : University of California Press. Rhymer, Judith M., and Daniel Simberloff. 1996. “Extinction by Hybridization and Introgression.” Annual Review of Ecological Systems 27: 83–109. Ricklefs, Robert E. 1976. The Economy of Nature: A Textbook in Basic Ecology. Portland, OR: Chiron Press. Ridge, M. 2014. “Moral Non-naturalism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E.N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2014/entries/moral-non-naturalism/. Ridley, Mark. 2004. Evolution. 3rd ed. Malden, MA : Blackwell. Rioux, Catherine. 2014. “L’approche organisationnelle des fonctions estelle trop restrictive ?” Phares 14: 31–52. Risse, Mathias. 2014. “The Human Right to Water and Common Ownership of the Earth.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 22: 178–203. Roche, L.M., B.B. Cutts, J.D. Derner, M.N. Lubell, and K.W. Tate. 2015. “On-Ranch Grazing Strategies: Context For The Rotational Grazing Dilemma.” Rangeland Ecology & Management 68 (3): 248–56. Rockström, J., and M. Klum. 2015. Big World, Small Planet: Abundance within Planetary Boundaries. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rockström J., W. Steffen, et al. 2009a. “A Safe Operating Pace for Humanity.” Nature 461: 472–5. – 2009b. “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Ecology and Society 14 (2): 32. Rodman, John. 1977. “The Liberation of Nature?” Inquiry 20 (1–4): 83–131. Rolston, H., III. 1988. Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University. Rose, George A., and Sherrylynn Rowe. 2015. “Northern Cod Comeback.” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 72 (12): 1789–98. Rose, Philip. 2002. “Nicholas of Cusa: Human Nature and the Image of God.” The Dalhousie Review 82: 127–51. – 2011. “Spatio-Temporal Facticity and the Dissymmetry of Nature: A Peircean-Based Defense of Some Essential Distinctions of Nature.” Environmental Philosophy 8 (2): 115–40.

30761_DesRoches.indd 313

2019-05-03 12:52:16

314 References

– 2012. “Another Guess at the Riddle: More Ado About Nothing.” Analecta Hermeneutica 4: 1–17. Rose, Philip. 2016. “C.S. Peirce’s Cosmogonic Philosophy of Emergent Evolution: Deriving Something from Nothing.” SCIO – Revista de Filosofía 12: 123–42. Rose, Philip, and Jeff Noonan. 2009. “Environmental Philosophy and its Onto-Ethical Problems: Ancient, Medieval and Contemporary WorldViews.” Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems 3. Rosenberg, Eugene, Omry Koren, Leah Reshef, Rotem Efrony, and Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg. 2007. “The Role of Microorganisms in Coral Health, Disease and Evolution.” Nature Reviews Microbiology 5 (5): 355–62. Roth, G., and U. Dicke. 2005. Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9: 250–7. Rothbard Murray, N. 1982. “The Ethics of Liberty.” Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. Rothenberg, David. 1995. Hand’s End: Technology and the Limits of Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press. – 2011. Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Ruffo, Armand Garnet. 1996. Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney. Regina: Coteau Books. Sagoff, Mark. 1985. “Fact and Value in Ecological Science.” Environmental Ethics 7 (101). – 1997. “Muddle or Muddle Through? Taking Jurisprudence Meets the Endangered Species Act.” William & Mary Law Review 38 (3): 825. Salthe, Stanley N., and Barbara M. Salthe. 1989. “Ecosystem Moral Considerability: A Reply to Cahen.” Environmental Ethics 11 (4): 355–61. Sambursky, S. 1956. The Physical World of the Greeks. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Samuels, Richard. 2012. “Science and Human Nature.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 70 (July): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1358246112000021. Samuelson, Peter L., Matthew J. Jarvinen, Thomas B. Paulus, Ian M. Church, Sam A. Hardy, and Justin L. Barrett. 2015. “Implicit Theories of Intellectual Virtues and Vices: A Focus on Intellectual Humility.” The Journal of Positive Psychology 10 (5): 389–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 17439760.2014.967802. Sandel, Michael J. 2012. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits to Markets. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

30761_DesRoches.indd 314

2019-05-03 12:52:16

References

315

Sandler, R. 2003. “The External Goods Approach to Environmental Virtue Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 25: 279–93. – 2005. “Introduction: Environmental Virtue Ethics.” In Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by R. Sandler and P. Cafaro, 1–12. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. – 2007. Character and Environment: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press. – 2013. “Environmental Virtue Ethics.” In International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ 10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee090/abstract. Sandler, R., and P. Cafaro, eds. 2005. Environmental Virtue Ethics. Lanham, M D: Rowman & Littlefield. Satz, D. 2010. Why Some Things Should Not be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saul, John Ralston. 1997. Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Penguin Canada. – 2005. The Unconscious Civilization. 2nd ed. The C B C Massey Lecture Series. Toronto: Anansi. Sayre, Kenneth M. 1976. Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind. Atlantic Highlands, N J: Humanities Press. Schadewalt, Wolfgang. 1979. “The Greek Concepts of ‘Nature’ and ‘Technique.’” In Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition – An Anthology, 2nd ed., edited by Robert Scharff and Val Dusek. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. Schelling, F.W.J. 1988. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheman, Naomi, 2011. “Epistemology Resuscitated: Objectivity as Trustworthiness.” In Shifting Ground: Knowledge and Reality, Transgression and Trustworthiness, 207–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schuster, John, and Richard R. Yeo. 1986. The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method: Historical Studies. Netherlands: Springer Science & Business Media. Schwilk, Dylan W., and David D. Ackerly. 2001. “Flammability and Serotiny as Strategies: Correlated Evolution in Pines.” Oikos 94 (2): 326–36. Sefton MacDowell, L. 2012. An Environmental History of Canada. Vancouver: U BC Press. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.

30761_DesRoches.indd 315

2019-05-03 12:52:17

316 References

Sender, Ron, Shai Fuchs, and Ron Milo. 2016. “Are We Really Vastly Outnumbered? Revisiting the Ratio of Bacterial to Host Cells in Humans.” Cell 164 (3): 337–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016. 01.013. Shaw, B. 1997. “A Virtue Ethics Approach to Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.” Environmental Ethics 19: 53–67. Shaw, Jamie. 2016. “Pluralism, Pragmatism and Functional Explanations.” Kairos Journal of Philosophy & Science 15 (1): 1–18. Shellenberger, Michael, and Ted Nordhaus. 2011. “Evolve: The Case for Modernization as the Road to Salvation.” In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, 8–16. Oakland, C A : Breakthrough Institute. Shelton, Peter A., and M. Joanne Morgan. 2014. “Impact of Maximum Sustainable Yield-Based Fisheries Management Frameworks on Rebuilding North Atlantic Cod Stocks.” Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science 46: 15–25. Shrader-Frechette, K.S. 1989. “Ecological Theories and Ethical Imperatives: Can Ecology Provide a Scientific Justification for the Ethics of Environmental Protection.” In Scientists and Their Responsibility, edited by William R. Shea and Beat Sitter-Liver, 73–104. Watson Publishing International. Shue, H. 2014. Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. New York: New York Review. – 1979. Practical Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. – 1990. Animal Liberation. 2nd ed. New York: New York Review of Books. – 1993. Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slater, Matthew H. 2014. “Natural Kindness.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (April): axt033. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/ axt033. Smead, Rory, and Patrick Forber. 2016. “The Coevolution of Recognition and Social Behavior.” Scientific Reports 6 (May): 25813. https://doi.org/ 10.1038/srep25813. Smith, Adam. (1776) 1976. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, Donald B. 1990. From the Land of Shadows: The Making of Grey Owl. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books.

30761_DesRoches.indd 316

2019-05-03 12:52:17

References

317

Smolin, Lee. 2006. The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Boston & NY : Houghton Mifflin. Snow, N. 1991. “Compassion.” American Philosophical Quarterly 28 (3): 195–205. Sober, Elliott. 1980. “Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism.” Philosophy of Science 47 (3): 350–83. – 1986. “Philosophical Problems for Environmentalism.” In The Preservation of Species: The Value of Biological Diversity, edited by Bryan G. Norton, 173–94. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Sousa, Wayne P. 1985. “Disturbance and Patch Dynamics on Rocky Intertidal Shores.” In The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics, edited by S.T.A. Pickett and P.S. White, 101–24. San Diego: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-554520-4.50012-5. – 2001. “Natural Disturbance and the Dynamics of Marine Benthic Communities.” In Marine Community Ecology, edited by Mark D. Bertness, Steven D. Gaines, and Mark E. Hay, 85–130. Sunderland, MA : Sinauer Associates. Statistics Canada. 2011a. “Population, Urban and Rural, by Province and Territory.” 2011 Census. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sumsom/l01/cst01/demo62a-eng.htm. – 2011b. “Population and Dwelling Count Highlight Tables.” 2011 Census. http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/hltfst/pd-pl/Table-Tableau.cfm?LANG=Eng&T=101&SR=1&S=10&O=A. – 2014. “Snapshot of Canadian Agriculture.” Last modified 24 March. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/ca-ra2006/articles/snapshot-portrait-eng.htm. Steffen, W., K. Richardson et al. 2014. “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development on a Changing Planet.” In Review, Science (December). Steffen, W., W. Broadgate et al. 2015. “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration.” The Anthropocene Review 2 (I): 81–98. Stenseke, Marie, 2009. “Local Participation in Cultural Landscape Maintenance: Lessons from Sweden.” Land Use Policy 26: 214–23. Sterelny, Kim. 2014. “Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (September): axu024. https://doi. org/10.1093/bjps/axu024. Steward, Helen. 2015. “Moral Responsibility and the Concept of Agency.” In Philosophy of Action: An Anthology, edited by J. Dancy and C. Sandis. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.

30761_DesRoches.indd 317

2019-05-03 12:52:17

318 References

Stringer, Lindsay C., Andrew J. Dougill, Evan Fraser, Klaus Hubacek, Christina Prell, and Mark S. Reed. 2006. “Unpacking “Participation” in the Adaptive Management of Social–Ecological Systems: A Critical Review.” Ecology and Society 11 (2): 39. Stronen, Astrid Vik, and Paquet, Paul C. 2013. “Perspectives on the Conservation of Wild Hybrids.”  Biological Conservation 167: 390–5. Sutherland, John P. 1974. “Multiple Stable Points in Natural Communities.” American Naturalist 108 (964): 859–73. Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tainter, Joseph A. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. New Studies in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tan, K.C. 2012. “Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism.” In Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World, edited by Kymlicka and Walker, 31–46. – 2004. Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tansley, A.G. 1935. “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms.” Ecology 16 (3): 284–307. Taylor, Paul W. 1981. “The Ethics of Respect for Nature.” Environmental Ethics 3: 197–218. – 1986. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press. Teague, Richard, Fred Provenza, Urs Kreuter, Tim Steffens, and Matt Barnes. 2013. “Multi-Paddock Grazing on Rangelands: Why the Perceptual Dichotomy Between Research Results and Rancher Experience?” Journal of Environmental Management 128: 699–717. Teague, Richard. 2014. “Deficiencies in the Briske et al. Rebuttal of the Savory Method.” Rangelands 36 (1): 37–8. Theberge, J.B. 1991. “Ecological Classification Status and Management of the Gray Wolf Canis Lupus in Canada.” Canadian Field-Naturalist 105 (4): 459–63. Thompson, A. 2012. “The Virtue of Responsibility for the Global Climate.” In Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change, edited by A. Thompson and Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, 203–22. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Thornton, P.K. 2010. “Livestock Production: Recent Trends, Future Prospects.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 365: 2853–67. Throop, Bill, and Ned Hettinger. 1999. “Refocusing Ecocentrism: De-Emphasizing Stability and Defending Wildness.” Environmental Ethics 21 (1): 3–21.

30761_DesRoches.indd 318

2019-05-03 12:52:17

References

319

Toulmin, Stephen. 1990. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trepl, Ludwig, and Annette Voigt. 2011. “The Classical HolismReductionism Debate in Ecology.” In Ecology Revisited, 45–83. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9744-6_5. U.S. Congress. 1964. Wilderness Act. Public Law 88-577 (16 U.S. C. 11311136). 88th Cong., 2d sess. Section 2.c. United States Fish and Wildlife Service. 2013. 50 C FR Part 21. “Migratory Bird Permits; Definition of ‘Hybrid’ Migratory Bird.” Federal Register 78 (212): 65576–8. https://www.fws.gov/policy/ library/2013/2013-26069.pdf. Vallentyne, Peter. 2000. Left-libertarianism: A Primer. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Vallentyne, Peter, and Hillel Steiner. 2000. The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan. Vallinder, Aron, and Erik J. Olsson. 2013. “Trust and the Value of Overconfidence: A Bayesian Perspective on Social Network Communication.” Synthese 191 (9): 1991–2007. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11229-013-0375-0. Van Dongen, P.A.M. 1998. “Brain Size in Vertebrates.” In The Central Nervous System of Vertebrates, edited by Nieuwenhuys, R., H.J. ten Donkelaar, and C. Nicholson, 2099–134. New York, NY . Van Valen, Leigh. 1976. “Ecological Species, Multispecies, and Oaks.” Taxon 25 (2/3): 233–9. Van Wensveen, L. 2001. “Ecosystem Sustainability as a Criterion for Genuine Virtue.” Environmental Ethics 23: 227–41. Varela, Francisco J. 1979. Principles of Biological Autonomy. New York: North Holland. Varela, Francisco J., Humberto R. Maturana, and Ricardo Uribe. 1974. “Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems, Its Characterization and a Model.” Biosystems 5 (4): 187–96. https://doi. org/10.1016/0303-2647(74)90031-8. Varner, Gary E. 1990. “Biological Functions and Biological Interests.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 251–70. – 1998. In Nature’s Interests?: Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics. Oxford University Press. – 2001. “Sentientism.” In A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, edited by D. Jamieson, 192–203. Malden, MA : Routledge; Wiley-Blackwell.

30761_DesRoches.indd 319

2019-05-03 12:52:17

320 References

Veigha da Cunha, Luis. 2009. “Water: A Human Right or an Economic Resource?” In Water Ethics: Marcelino Botin Water Forum 2007, edited by M. Ramon Llamas, Luis Martinez-Cortina, and Aditi Mukherji, 97–114. London: CRC Press. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2009. “Moralizing Technology: On the Morality of Technological Artifacts and Their Design.” In Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, edited by D.M. Kaplan. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Visser, Marcel E., Christiaan Both, and Marcel M. Lambrechts. 2004. “Global Climate Change Leads to Mistimed Avian Reproduction.” In Advances in Ecological Research, 35: 89–110. Birds and Climate Change. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0065-2504(04)35005-1. Vlastos, Gregory. 1991. Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press. Voisin, André. 1957. Grass Productivity. Washington D.C.: Island Press. Vucetich, J.A., M.P. Nelson, and R.O. Peterson. 2012. “Should Isle Royale Wolves be Reintroduced? A Case Study on Wilderness Management in a Changing World.” The George Wright Forum 29: 126–47. Wagner, G., and M.L. Weitzman, 2015. Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Walker, Brian, and David Salt, 2006. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington DC : Island Press. Walker, John W., Rodney K. Heitschmidt, and Steve L. Dowhower. 1989. “Some Effects of a Rotational Grazing Treatment on Cattle Preference for Plant Communities.” Journal of Range Management: 143–8. Wall, J.D., M.A. Yang, F. Jay, S.K. Kim, E.Y. Durand, L.S. Stevison, C. Gignoux, A. Woerner, M.F. Hammer, and M. Slatkin. 2013. “Higher Levels of Neanderthal Ancestry in East Asians than in Europeans.” Genetics 194: 199–209. Walzer, M. 1983. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books. Wang, S., J. Lachance, S.A. Tishkoff, J. Hey, and J. Xing. 2013. “Apparent Variation in Neanderthal Admixture Among African Populations is Consistent with Gene flow from Non-African Populations.” Genome Biology and Evolution 5: 2075–81. Warren, Mary Anne. 2000. Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Oxford University Press. http://www.

30761_DesRoches.indd 320

2019-05-03 12:52:17

References

321

oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198250401. 001.0001/acprof-9780198250401. Washington, Haydn. 2015. Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Real Solutions. Abingdon: Routledge. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. 2015. The Right to be Cold. Toronto: Penguin Random-House. Way, Jonathan G. 2013. “Taxonomic Implications of Morphological and Genetic Differences in Northeastern Coyotes (Coywolves) (Canis latrans × C. lycaon), Western Coyotes (C. latrans), and Eastern Wolves (C. ­lycaon or C. lupus lycaon).” The Canadian Field-Naturalist 127 (1): 1–16. WC E D , U N . 1987. “Our Common Future.” World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford University Press. Weisberg, Michael, and Ryan Muldoon. 2009. “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor.” Philosophy of Science 76 (2): 225–52. https://doi.org/10.1086/644786. Welch, Craig. 2009. “The Spotted Owl’s New Nemesis.” Smithsonian Magazine. January. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ the-spotted-owls-new-nemesis-131610387/. Welchman, J. 1999. “The Virtues of Stewardship.” Environmental Ethics 21: 411–23. Wenar, Leif. 2015. “Rights.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/ entries/rights/. Westra, Laura. 1997. “Terrorism at Oka: Environmental Racism and the First Nations of Canada.” In Canadian Issues in Environmental Ethics, edited by Wesley Cragg, Allan Greenbaum, and Alex Wellington, 274– 91. Peterborough: Broadview Press. White, L. Jr. 1967. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (3767): 1203–7. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203. White, Peter S. 2006. “Disturbance, the Flux of Nature, and Environmental Ethics at the Multipatch Scale.” In Religion and the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World in Flux, edited by David M. Lodge and Christopher Hamlin, 176–98. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. White, Peter S., J. Harrod, W. Romme, and J. Betancourt. 1999. “The Role of Disturbance and Temporal Dynamics.” In Ecological Stewardship: A Common Reference for Ecosystem Management, Vol 2, edited by Robert C. Szaro, N.C. Johnson, W.T. Sexton, and A.J. Malk, 281–312. Oxford: Elsevier Science.

30761_DesRoches.indd 321

2019-05-03 12:52:17

322 References

Whittaker, Robert H. 1975. Communities and Ecosystems. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, Collier. Whyte, Kyle Powys. 2014. “Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, and Collective Action.” Hypatia 29 (3): 599–616. Wilkins, John S. 2009. Species: A History of the Idea, Species and Systematics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilkinson, R.G., and K.E. Pickett. 2009. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. New York: Penguin. Williams, George C. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Williston, B. 2013. “Moral Progress and Canada’s Climate Failure.” In Global Ethics on Climate Change: The Planetary Crisis and Philosophical Alternatives, edited by Martin Schönfeld, 21–32. London: Routledge. – 2015a. The Anthropocene Project: Virtue in the Age of Climate Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – 2015b. Environmental Ethics for Canadians. 2nd ed. Don Mills: Oxford University Press. – 2016. “The Sublime Anthropocene.” Environmental Philosophy 13 (2): 155–74. – 2017. “The Question Concerning Geoengineering.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 21 (2–3): 100–221. Wilson, E.O. 2002. The Future of Life. New York: Vintage Books. – 2016. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. New York: W.W. Norton. Wilson, Robert A., Matthew J. Barker, and Ingo Brigandt. 2007. “When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Topics 35 (1–2): 189–215. Wimsatt, William. 2007. Re-Engineering Philosophy of Limited Beings: Piecemeal Approximations to Reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. WWF . 2016. Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and Resilience in a New Era. WW F International. Gland, Switzerland. Worster, Donald. 1990. “The Ecology of Order and Chaos.” Environmental History Review 14 (1/2): 1. Wright, Larry. 1973. “Functions.” Philosophical Review 82 (2): 139–68. Wright, Ronald. 2004. A Short History of Progress. Toronto: Anansi Press. Xenophon. 1897. Symposium. Translated by H.G. Dakyns. Macmillan and Co. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/x/xenophon/x5sy/index.html.

30761_DesRoches.indd 322

2019-05-03 12:52:17

References

323

Xu, Y., and V. Ramanathan. 2017. “Well Below 2 °C: Mitigation Strategies for Avoiding Dangerous to Catastrophic Climate Changes.” Proc. Nat Acad. Sci. 114 (39): 10315–23. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas. 1618481114. York, T., and C. Becker. 2012. “Cultivating an Ethic of Environmental Sustainability: Integrating Insights From Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and Pragmatist Cognitive Development Theory.” Journal of College and Character 13 (4): 2–12. Zachos, Frank E., Marco Apollonio, Eva V. Bärmann, Marco FestaBianchet, Ursula Gölich, Jan Christian Habel, Elisabeth Haring, Luise Kruckenhauser, Sandro Lovari, Allan D. McDevitt, Cino Pertoldi, Gertrud E. Rössner, Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra, Massimo Scandura, and Franz Suchentrunk. 2013. “Species Inflation and Taxonomic Artefacts – A Critical Comment on Recent Trends in Mammalian Classification.” Mammalian Biology 78: 1–6. Zeebe, Richard E., Andy Ridgwell, and James C. Zachos. 2016. “Anthropogenic Carbon Release Rate Unprecedented during the Past 66 Million Years.” Nature Geoscience 9 (4): 325–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo 2681. Zulu, Leo. 2013. “Bringing People Back into Protected Forests in Developing Countries: Insights from Co-Management in Malawi.” Sustainability 5: 1917–43.

30761_DesRoches.indd 323

2019-05-03 12:52:17

30761_DesRoches.indd 324

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index

actual, metaphysics of the, 35–6 adaptationist programme, 49 adaptive management (AM ), 245–6, 253 Agar, Nicholas, 59, 80 agricultural land, 145 Alroy, J., 87 American environmental imaginary, 166, 169, 173 American frontier, 152–3 Anderson, Benedict, 164 Anderson, Elizabeth, 221, 222 Anderson, Kevin, 188–9 Anderson, Terry L., 226 Anthropocene: beginning of the era of, 51, 159–60, 170, 181; central focus of politics in, 174; as cultural project, 154; metaphysics of, 151, 152, 154, 155; as object of study, 12–13 Anthropocene culture, 153 Anthropocene Working Group (A WG), 159 Apology, The (Plato), 181, 192 aquaculture, 249 Arctic. See Canadian Arctic arête: relation to telos, 184; translation for, 182. See also virtue

30761_DesRoches.indd 325

Aristotle: on four causes of being, 24; on method of induction, 28; on phusis vs. techne, 23, 24 asbestos exploration, 170–1 attachments: local vs. cosmopolitan, 161–2; to physical places, 165 Atwood, Margaret, 3, 4, 137, 143, 144, 148 authoritarian regimes, 191, 197n9 autopoiesis, concept of, 10, 57, 71 autopoiesis account of biological interests, 70–1, 77, 81n26 axiological analysis, 261 Bacon, Francis, 29 Bacon, Roger, 28 Barker, Gillian, 14 Barker, Matthew, 11 Barlow, Maude, 14, 218, 229, 230 Barry, Brian, 41, 42, 43, 47, 54 beauty, notion of, 182 being: -as-other, 36; ground of, 36, 39; metaphysical principle of, 35; -through-construction, 39 beneficiary, notion of, 57, 58 Benhabib, S., 162 biocentrism, 61, 92

2019-05-03 12:52:17

326 Index

biodiversity, 87–8 biological entities, 57, 60, 80n8 biological interests, 60, 66, 70, 80n9. See also selected effect account of biological interests biological species, concept of, 200, 203 biological systems, 235 biological teleology, 10, 56, 57 biosphere, 87, 175 biotic factors, 74, 76 bison, as hybrid species, 209, 210 Bono, Edward de, 187 Bradley, Ben, 88 Braz, Albert, 124 Breuilly, John, 179 Briske, David D., 251, 253, 254 burin (Paleolithic utility knife), 187 bush: Canada’s war with, 153; danger of, 149; definition of, 146; description of, 147–8; experience of living in, 148–9; geography of, 146, 147; as limit of conquistador culture, 154; south of Grande Prairie, photograph of, 148; as space of qualitative difference, 149; spirit of, 154–5; vs. wilderness, 146, 149–50 bush culture, 153 Bzovy, Justin, 14 Cahen, Harley, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 70, 81n20 Callicott, J. Baird, 11, 61–3, 65, 71, 83, 86–7, 96 Canada: agricultural land, 145; ­climate policy, 176–8, 179; commitment to development index (C D I ), 6; early exploration of, 169; environmental

30761_DesRoches.indd 326

responsibilities, 6–7; as God given land, 173; migratory birds’ regulations, 213n5; national parks, 147; resource-based economy of, 3–4, 134, 176; risk of forest fire, 131; as unknown space, 3 Canada’s Endangered Species Act, 208 Canada’s Fisheries Act, 247, 261 Canada’s Species at Risk Act, 208 Canadian Arctic, 14, 165, 266–7 Canadian culture, 153 Canadian ecological nationalism, 179 Canadian environmental philosophy, 5, 7–8, 9 Canadian identity, 155n1 Canadian Issues in Environmental Ethics (Wellington et al.), 5 Canadian perspective, definition of, 138 Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, 247 Canadian Society for Environmental Philosophy/Société Canadienne de philosophie environnementale (C SEP/SC PE), 15 carbon pollution, 174, 177–8, 188, 266–7 Cartier, Jacques, 169 Chang, Hasok, 261; Is Water H2O?, 258 character diversity, 113, 115–16, 118 climate change, 178, 266, 275, 281 cluster kinds, 111, 112, 113, 119 coastal cities: problem of preservation of, 179 Code, Lorraine, 277

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index cod fishing: collapse of Atlantic, 237; creation of offshore zone for, 238; evolution of, 237–8; government control of, 238; management approach to, 236, 237, 241–2, 262; moratorium on, 236, 241, 262 cod population: recovery of, 246–7, 250, 262; unpredictability of, 237 Collingwood, R.G., 27 co-management: in the Canadian Arctic, 265, 267; and climate policy, 266; definition of, 266; inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in, 267–8; notion of success of, 265; stakeholders of, 279; studies of, 265; trust building and, 265–6, 267 community ecology, 242 compassion, 103, 106, 108–9 Conference of the Parties in Paris, 176 consequentialism, 231–2n8 conservationism, 131, 167 Constitution Question, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 118 contractualism, 53–4 cosmopolitanism, 160–1, 162. See also rooted cosmopolitanism coyote-wolf hybrids, 207, 210 Cragg, Wesley, 5, 8 creation, medieval idea of, 25 creativity, 186, 187 Cro-Magnon peoples, 185–6 Crosbie, John, 241 Crutzen, Paul, 151 Darwin, Charles, 200 Daston, Lorraine, 268, 269, 276

30761_DesRoches.indd 327

327

Descartes, René, 29–30, 31 Desjardins, Eric, 14 DesRoches, C. Tyler, 14 Diamond, Jared, 197n10, 199 distribution, principle of, 54–5 distributive justice, 41, 43, 54. See also justice Dobson, Andrew, 164 Dowsley, Martha, 267 Drenthen, Martin, 149 Dussault, Antoine, 10 Earth resources: collective ownership of, 220 Earth systems, 234–6, 263 Easter Island (Rapa Nui), 191, 193, 197n10 ecocentrism, 57, 78, 78n1 ecological citizenship, 164–5 ecological disturbances, 73–4 ecological environmentalism, 168 ecological nationalism, 13, 160, 164, 165, 179 ecological wholes, 56 ecology, 34, 35, 72–3 ecosystems: alternative dynamic equilibria of, 245; as autopoietic, 71; bromeliad, 72; characteristic openness of, 73, 74, 77; complexity of, 256; concepts of ­communities and, 79–80n3; ­contingency of, 242; critique of, 76–7; ecological disturbances of, 73–4; external constraints for maintenance, 73; goodness of, 62–3; maintenance of many, 76; moral considerability of, 57, 76, 77; multiscale interactions of, 242; organic unity of, 73, 76; organizational theory of

2019-05-03 12:52:17

328 Index

functions and, 71–2; source-sink dynamics effect of, 74–5, 76; stability of, 61; as units of natural selection, 61; valuing attitudes towards, 62 Einstein, Albert, 189, 190, 192–3 elegance, 187, 194–5 Elger, Frank, 256, 257 El-Hani, Charbel, 57, 71 Emmet, Dorothy, 22 Empedocles, 184 energy supplies, importance of, 188 entitlement to the Earth: divine origin of, 44; Western view of, 44–5 environment: construction of, 12; definitions, 121n3; degradation of, 4; diversity of, 116–17; human attachment to, 9; humility toward, 117; moon as part of, 51; phases of history of, 169–70; relationship between organism and, 49–50; sense of justice for, 118 environmental apocalypse, 199 environmental ethics, 83 environmentalism, 118, 170, 173 environmental management, 14, 256, 262–3 environmental philosophy, 5, 8–9, 125. See also Canadian environmental philosophy environmental policy: formulation of, 174 environmental racism, 131 environmental virtue ethics (EVE), 11, 99, 100 environment-regarding compassion, 119–20 epistemic subjects, 266, 269, 276, 277, 278–9, 280

30761_DesRoches.indd 328

eudaimonia, concept of, 102 evolutionary theory, 49, 200 excellence: of humans, 183–4, 185; in relation to telos, 184 extinction by hybridization, 13, 199–200, 204, 212n1 extrinsic value, 85 Fagan, Brian, 185 Fellows, Jennifer Jill, 14 Filmer, Robert, 44 Firstness, category of, 38 Fisheries Science: How and Why it Works for Marine Fisheries, 238 fishery management: ecosystembased, 247; equilibrium perspective on, 238, 239, 242, 243; geofunctions perspective in, 260; integrative approaches to, 236; polycentric, 246; precautionary framework in, 247, 250; rules of, 239; scientific approach to, 237, 239–41; tolerant pluralism in, 260 fish farming industry: impact on wild species, 249 fishing: catch rate, 239, 241; government control of, 238, 243; models and theories of, 238–9; notion of “optimal,” 238–9; precautionary approach to, 247, 248, 249; recreational vs. commercial, 261; stock status, 248, 249; total catch value, 239, 241 flourishing, 119, 121n5 flourishing human, 108, 109, 114 Flourishing Valley metaphor, 107–13 flying squirrels: hybridization in, 206

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index Foot, Philippa, 104, 105, 119 Ford, James, 266 forest ecosystems, 81–2n28 Fox, Warwick, 67, 69, 70, 71 Francis, Pope, 137 free markets: consequentialist vs. conventionalist view of, 221–2, 223, 224; moral limits of, 221–3, 230 frontier ideal, 165, 166–7 frontierism as practice, 169 Funkenstein, Amos, 27, 39 future people: debate on rights of, 52–3 Galison, Peter, 268, 269, 276 Gearheard, Shari, 279 generations: distribution between, 41–42; problem of planetary entitlement of, 42–4 genetic introgression, 204 geofunctions perspective (G FP), 235, 254, 255, 256, 258, 261 global warming, 188–9, 196n7 Goldsmith, A.N., 186 good of non-sentient entities, 58, 59–60, 61, 66, 80n6, 80n7, 80n10 Goodpaster, Kenneth, 57, 58, 61 goods: social meanings of, 222–3 Gordon, Scott, 238 Gould, Stephen, 49 Grass Productivity (Voisin), 252 grazing: continuous vs. rotational, 251–3 Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 146–7 Greenbaum, Allan, 5, 8 greenhouse gas emission, 163 Grey Owl: animal ethics of, 125–7, 128, 129, 131; on Canadian

30761_DesRoches.indd 329

329

North, 132; criticism of extractivist economy by, 134–5; environmental philosophy of, 125, 126, 128, 131–2, 133–5; on ethics of hunting and trapping, 129– 31, 133; ethnocultural identity of, 123, 124; The Men of the Last Frontier, 132; on moral status of animals, 129; opposition to “environmental racism,” 131; photograph of, 127; public image of, 124; reputation of, 123; revelation of true ancestry of, 124; story of life of, 123; Tales of an Empty Cabin, 128, 132; “The Tree,” 133; on threat of mass transportation, 133; wife of, 124; on wilderness and civilization, 132–3; works of, 12, 123, 125, 126 “grolar” bear (grizzly–polar bear hybrid), 205 ground: metaphysical idea of, 36 Habib, Allen, 10 Hackett, Dave, 5 Hacking, Ian, 276, 282n2 Hansen, James, 173 Harding, Sandra, 266, 268, 270, 271, 278 harm, notion of, 53, 94, 108 harmony, 115 health: as form of richness, 91; intrinsic value of, 91–2 heresy: human capacity for, 13, 185, 191–2 heritage preservation, 210–11 Herstein, Ori J., 52, 54 Holechek, Jerry L., 252 holism, 35

2019-05-03 12:52:17

330 Index

holistic management: basic idea of, 250–1; criticism of, 236, 251, 253, 254; discovery of, 250; effects on biodiversity, 254–5; employment of, 251; as form of adaptive management, 253–4; geofunctions perspective and, 255; interactive pluralism and, 261; knowledge of, 260; popularity of, 251; vs. rotational ­grazing, 253; testable hypotheses about, 264n17; testimonial evidence about, 255–6; vs. traditional approaches, 253 holistic management research ­program, 255, 264n15 Holling, C.S., 245 Holm, Sune, 63, 70, 81n26 holobionts, 65, 66 Holocene, 159 Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 189 homosexuality: cultural perception of, 282n2 Howard, Albert, 268, 270, 272 human diversity, 116–17 human excellence, 185, 191–92 human flourishing, 100, 102, 103, 104–5, 108–9, 111–13, 118 humanity: balance of nature and, 95, 95–6 human right to water, 14, 218, 224, 229, 230 humans: bacterial cells to outnumber host cells ratio in, 81n18; capacity for heresy, 13, 185, 191–2; connection to nature, 115; diversity of, 116–17; ecological challenges of, 181; as ­ecosystems, 65; excellency of, 183–4; expectations of, 110; as

30761_DesRoches.indd 330

hybrid species, 209, 213n7; ­ingenuity of, 185, 186–7; interpersonal virtues of, 110; reciprocation of, 110; relations with the environment, 110–11 humility, 101 Hursthouse, Rosalind, 104, 119 hybrid animals, 202, 203–4, 205, 206–7, 208, 210, 212n4, 212n5 hybridization: danger of, 203, 205; definition of, 199; discovery of intergenus, 204; as form of anthropogenic threat, 208; prevention of, 210; as reproductive mistake, 200 hybrid swarms: ecological benefits of, 210 “hyper-coherence,” concept of, 174–5 hyperprosociality, 196n6 imagination: vs. knowledge, 189 imagine communities, 164 Indigenous knowledge: about the Arctic, 279–80; critique of, 266, 272; problem of recognition of, 271, 273, 280, 283; as science, 272, 273, 275; vs. scientific knowledge, 270, 271; spiritually based, 268, 283; Western perception of, 278, 280 Indigenous knowledge-claims, 267, 268, 279, 280 individualism, 92–3 induction, method of, 28, 29 information: ecology and, 35 information technologies, 33–4 ingenuity, 13, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 194–5. See also social ingenuity; women’s ingenuity

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index Innis, Harold: The Fur Trade in Canada, 169 innovations, 190–1, 194 instant organisms, 80n15 integration: three kinds of, 264n12 interactions, 259, 262 intergenerational equality, principle of, 47 intergenerational justice, 10 intermediate disturbance hypothesis, 74 International Migratory Bird Treaty, 207 interpersonal extensionism: ­arguments for, 105–6; definition of, 101; necessity demand for, 111; neo-Aristotelianism of, 116, 118, 121n4, 121n6; non-­ anthropocentric and anthropocentric elements of, 103; philosophical question of, 100; virtue criteria of, 102, 103 interpersonal virtues, 101, 102, 103, 106 interspecies hybrids. See hybrid animals intrinsic value, 78–79n1, 89, 90–1, 95 intuitions of environmentalists, 61–2 Is Water H2O? (Chang), 258–9 Jankunis, Frank, 12 Johnson, W.E., 22, 67, 70, 81n28 Jonas, Charles, 162 justice: contractualist theory of, 53, 54; demands for global, 175–6; distributive, 41, 43, 54; exclusion of non-human from, 53; intergenerational, 42, 54, 175–6

30761_DesRoches.indd 331

331

justificational anthropocentrism, 103 Kant, Immanuel: notion of living organisms of, 68 Kareiva, Peter, 152 Kaufmann, Stuart, 37 Kelly, Christopher, 88, 90 Keystone X L pipeline, 6 kinds: traditional vs. cluster, 111– 12, 112, 113, 119 Kiran, Asle H., 21 Kitto, H.D.F., 183 Klein, Naomi, 135 Kluane First Nation, 273–4, 275 knowledge: in Cartesian tradition, 29; claims, 282n3; contemplative model of, 27–8, 29; cultural baggage of the term, 274; effectiveness of, 190; ergetic model of, 26, 28, 39; highly contingent, 260; Indigenous and scientific, 267; intrinsic values of, 89–90; intuitive character of, 29–30; philosophical justification of, 190; in Platonist tradition, 26, 28; spiritually based, 268; traditional ecological, 271; validation of, 197n8; values and acquisition of, 269; as way of life, 281–2n1 knowledge-making practices, 272 knowledge-through-construction, 39 Koskinen, Inkeri, 280 Kowalsky, Nathan, 12 Kulchyski, Peter, 146, 153, 154 Kyoto Protocol, 6 land ethics, 243, 244 land pyramid, 244

2019-05-03 12:52:17

332 Index

Latour, Bruno, 36, 159 law of diminishing returns in progress, 96 Laxer, Gordon, 176 Leal, Donald R., 226 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 31 Leopold, Aldo: on ecological wholes, 79n3; essays of, 243; on humannature relations, 245; idea of land pyramid, 244; ideas about land management, 243; land ­ethics of, 164, 243, 244; law of diminishing returns in progress, 84, 94–5, 95, 96; notion of “land health,” 71; story of the Spessart Mountain, 244; “thing is right” maxim of, 62 Levin, Donald, 204 Levins, Richard, 49 Lewontin, Richard, 10, 49, 50 liberal nationalism, 162 libertarian property theory, 46 limitation, principle of, 37 Limits to Growth, The (report), 4 living entities, 67, 68, 69–70 Living in the Environment: First Canadian Edition (Miller and Hackett), 5 Locke, John: on individual appropriation of resources, 220; on property right, 44, 45, 219; proviso on acquisitions, 224–5, 226, 227, 228, 232n10; Two Treatises of Government, 219 logistic growth model, 238, 240 Lokken, Nils, 267 love, 89–90 Lovelock, J., 175 lynx-cats (Canada lynx-bobcat hybrids), 206

30761_DesRoches.indd 332

MacDowell, Sefton, 169, 170 “Making Up People” (Hacking), 276–7 Malthus, Thomas, 182 Marangudakis, Manussos, 140 Marean, Curtis W., 196n6 markets: noxious, 221–2. See also free markets Marris, Emma, 152 Martin, Paul S., 152 Marvier, Michelle, 152 mathematics, 30–1 Maturana, Humberto, 57, 67 maximum sustainable yield (MSY ) model, 239, 241, 254 Mayan culture, 193 Mayr, Ernst, 200, 201 McKenna, Catherine, 176 McNeill, William, 187 McShane, Katie, 63, 64 mechanism: epistemic sense of, 20; idea of end of, 19–20, 38 mechanistic systems, 23 mental illness: cultural perception of, 282n2 metaecosystem, 75, 76 metaphysics of emergent evolution, 37–8 metaphysics of substance, 36 Métis settlement, 148 Meyer, Philip: The Son, 166–7 Mikkelson, Gregory, 11 Miller, Peter, 11, 83, 84, 85, 96 Miller, Tyler, 5 “Mr Nowhere” conception, 269, 270 Mitchell, Sandra, 258 moment to moment, idea of, 22 monists, 259, 264n13 moral considerability, 57, 58, 59, 62

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index moral motivation, problem of, 161 Moreno, Alvaro, 68, 69, 71 Mossio, Matteo, 68, 69 motivational non-anthropocentrism, 103 Muir, John, 125, 167 mulberry trees, interbreeding of, 201–2 myth of superabundance, 169, 170, 172, 173, 180 Nadasdy, Paul, 265, 267, 271, 273, 274 nationalism, 164 natural conditions: vs. artificial conditions, 24–5 natural resources: conception of ownership of, 46–7; equal claim on, 54; extraction of, 134, 135 natural selection, 60, 61, 184 nature: in agrarian societies, view of, 144; as artefact, 25; balance of humanity and, 95–6; Canadian perspective on, 29, 30, 138; as closed system, 21–2; debates on value of, 83; distinction between culture and, 138, 151; experience of, 12; as God’s creation, 25; idea of construction and, 38–9; idea of dead, 150, 151; interdependence and novelty within, 35; limits of human control over, 144–5; as machine, idea of, 19, 20, 21, 31; managerial approach to, 167; mechanical model of, 10, 30, 31–3, 38; Platonic image of, 24–5; ­radical contingency of, 25–6; repoliticization of, 168; shift from organic model of, 22; in a state of change, 152; truth and, 27

30761_DesRoches.indd 333

333

nature Romanticism, 166, 167 Neanderthals, 185–6 necessity claim, 104, 105 neo-Aristotelianism, 102, 104, 118, 121n4, 122n9 Neurath, Otto, 249, 257, 258 Newton, Isaac, 31 Nicholson, Daniel J., 20, 38 Nixon, Rob, 172 Nolt, John, 91 non-identity problem, 52–3 non-sentient entities, 58, 67 Nordhaus, Ted, 152 “no relevant moral difference,” notion of, 121n6 Nozick, Robert, 46, 85, 219, 224, 225, 228 Nunes-Neto, Nei, 71, 72, 76 objectivity: community-created ­ideals of, 277; concept of, 269, 271–2, 276; as feature of knowledge, 277–8; history of, 268; reconceptualization of, 271, 272, 275, 281; science and, 273; ­trustworthiness and, 272–3 Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research (Harding), 268 ontological interdependence, 35 optimal sustainable yield (OSY ) model, 239 organisms: biological interests of, 65; category of, 52; conservation strategy of, 64; interdependence between environment and, 49–50; non-sentient, 56; in a rapidly changing environment, 63–4; selected effect functions of, 65; symbiotic micro-, 65;

2019-05-03 12:52:17

334 Index

synthetic, 63, 80n15; as units of natural selection, 57 organizational theory of function, 56, 57, 58, 68, 69, 81n27 Ostfeld, Richard S., 73 Ostrom, Elinor, 258 owls: interbreeding of spotted and barred, 206–7 pain: negative intrinsic value of, 85 parasitism of elites, 191 Peacock, Kent, 13, 96 Peirce, Charles S., 10, 37, 38 Peripatetic tradition, 30–1 personhood: categories of, 276, 277, 278 Pettit, Philip, 232n8 photosynthesis, 96n2 phusis, 23–24 Pickett, Steward T., 73 Pinchot, Gifford, 87, 167 planetary boundaries: concept of, 174, 175 planetary entitlement: extension of, 53; grounds of, 44, 47, 48; intergenerational, 10; limits of, 51, 52, 55; philosophical debates on, 45; problem of, 42–4; search for alternative ground of, 48–51; terrestrial relationship and, 48–49 Plato: on exclusion of women from government, 193; on fear of innovation, 194; on ideal of knowledge, 26–7, 28; on origin of nature, 24–5 Pleistocene overkill hypothesis, 152 pluralism: advocacy of, 257; axiological, 236; epistemic, 236, 256, 258, 261; interactive, 237, 259, 261; philosophical development

30761_DesRoches.indd 334

of, 262; pragmatism and, 257; tolerant, 237, 259, 260, 261, 264n15; types of, 236–7; value, 256–57 Pogge, Thomas W., 163 polycentric governance, 246 possible: call for ontologically real, 37; existence of, 39; subset of, 36–7 poverty: causes of, 270 progress trap, notion of, 188 property rights, 45, 46, 47, 219–20 Proulx, Annie, 166 providentialism, 166, 168–9, 172 Purdy, Jedediah, 166, 167, 168, 169 Radin, Margaret, 221, 222 ranching practices, 236 range management, 254 Rapa Nui. See Easter Island Rawls, John, 41 reality: natural vs. artefactual, 24–5 Regan, Tom, 126 “relative significance,” idea of, 264n11 Republic (Plato), 184, 193 resilience thinking, 245, 250, 263n3 richness: definition of, 84–5 richness theory (R T): critique of, 83–4, 86, 96; explanation of intrinsic value by, 85–6, 89, 90–1, 96; formulation of, 83, 84; vs. individualistic theories, 92; mathematical model of, 88; scholarly debates on, 11, 88; on well-being of species, 93–4 Rioux, Catherine, 81n27 Risse, Mathias, 219 Roosevelt, Theodore, 167

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index rooted cosmopolitanism, 160–5, 174 Rose, Philip, 9, 10 Rothbard, Murray, N., 46 Rothenberg, David, 194 rural environment: in Alberta, photograph of, 144; Canadian vs. German, 142, 143; comparative aerial views of, 143, 156n3; experience of living in, 142, 144–5, 150; openness of, 145 Saborido, Cristian, 69 Salthe, Barbara, 81n20 Salthe, Stanley, 81n20 Sandel, Michael, 221, 222 Sandler, Ron, 105, 121n4, 122n10 satisfaction, 89–90 Satz, Debra, 221, 222, 223 Saul, John Ralston, 192, 198n12 Savory, Allan, 236, 250, 251, 256 Sayre, Kenneth, 67 Scheman, Naomi, 265, 272, 273 science: as attribute of culture, 272; as epistemologically fruitful way of life, 278, 281; as exercise of colonial power, 273; Inuit perception of, 280; perceptions of, 266; in Peripatetic tradition, 30; problem solving and, 280–1; and society, 269; spiritual basis of, 270–1 sea level rising, problem of, 179 sea palms (Postelsia palmaeformis), 73–4 sea rocket (Cakile edentula), 74–5 Secondness, category of, 38 secularism, 269 selected effect account of biological interests, 63, 65, 70, 77

30761_DesRoches.indd 335

335

selected effect theory of function, 56, 59–60, 66 sentience, definition of, 89 sentient entities, 58–9 settler motif, 144 sewing needle: elegance of, 187, 194; invention of, 185–6, 189 Shaw, Jamie, 14 Shellenberger, Michael, 152 Shirley, Jamal, 279 Shue, Henry, 163 Singer, Peter, 92 slow violence, 172 Smith, Adam, 217 Snow, Nancy, 106 Snyder, Pamela S., 226 social collapse, 191 social-ecological systems (SES s), 258 social ingenuity, 189, 194 Socrates, 182, 183, 184, 192, 198n12 source-sink dynamics, 73, 74 Spash, Clive, 174 species: biological concept of, 200– 1; conservation policies, 207–8; delineate, 200; diversity of, 90; genetic and phylogenetic concepts of, 202; genetic inheritance of, 202; migration of, 205; ­protection of distinct, 203 species at risk, 203, 205, 211 Spessart Mountain, 244–5 “standard account” of human action, 32 Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SA GD) technology, 171, 172 Steward, Helen, 32 Survival (Atwood), 3, 4 sustainability, 40, 41

2019-05-03 12:52:17

336 Index

systems: natural vs. artificial, 24–5 Tainter, Joseph, 188, 191 Tan, K.C., 163 tar sands mining, 171–2 taxonomic inflation, 203 taxonomy of integrations, 258 Taylor, Paul, 61, 92 Teague, Richard, 264n17 techne, 24 technologies, 20–1, 194 teleology, 59, 80n5 telos, 184 testimony: in epistemology, 255; in policy formulation, 261 theory of function. See organizational theory of function; selected effect account of ­biological interests Thirdness, category of, 38 Thoreau, Henry, 125 total-individualism, 92–3 transeunt causation, 22 “Tree, The” (Grey Owl), 133 truth of the counterfactual, 119 Two Treatises of Government (Locke), 44 United Nation Fish Stock Agreement (U N FS A), 247 United States Endangered Species Act, 208 universal: in relation to particular, 161–2 urban environment: in Belgium, 139–40, 141; buildings in, 140– 1; characteristics of, 140–1; edges of, 141–2; population of, 138; sounds of, 139; yards in, 138–9

30761_DesRoches.indd 336

urban forest, 139, 140 utilitarian conservationism, 166, 167 utilitarianism, 92 Vallentyne, Peter, 46 value: contributory, 88; and progress, 94 Varela, Francisco, 57, 67 Varner, Gary, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 70, 80n9 Verbeek, Peter-Paul, 21 virtue: concept of citizenly, 183; definition of, 106; environmentregarding aspects of, 110, 118, 121n7; exemplars of, 183; Greek conception of, 181, 182, 183; moral, 183; neo-Aristotelian theory of, 121n9; Socratic view of, 181–2; Thomas Malthus on, 182 virtue ethics, 121n4 Voisin, André: Grass Productivity, 252 Walzer, Michael, 221, 222 water: appropriation of, 225; as commodity, 224, 226–7, 229–30, 232n9; on free market, distribution of, 226–7, 228, 232n13; as human right, 218; in-kind compensation for, 228, 232n12, 232n14; price system, 228–9; treatment of, 230–1, 232n9; ­usefulness of, 217 water markets: benefits of, 217–18; in Canada, 217; Lockean proviso on acquisitions and, 227, 228–9, 231n7; moral limits to, 224, 229, 231; during natural catastrophes, 227; valuation of, 230–1

2019-05-03 12:52:17

Index Watt-Cloutier, Sheila, 266, 275, 281 Welchman, Jennifer, 13 well-being, notion of, 93–4 Wellington, Alex, 5, 8 Whitehead, Alfred North, 10, 37 Whyte, Kyle Powys, 266, 275 Widdowson, Frances, 268, 270, 272 wilderness: American approach to, 137–8, 150; vs. bush, 149–50

30761_DesRoches.indd 337

337

wildlife species: conservation ­practices of, 210–11, 212 Williams, George, 61 Williston, Byron, 13, 83 Wilson, E.O., 96 Winner, Langdon, 151 women’s ingenuity, 193 Wright, Ronald, 188

2019-05-03 12:52:17

30761_DesRoches.indd 338

2019-05-03 12:52:17