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Experimental Philosophy: On the Pathology of Environmental Crisis

Y. S. Lo, A. A. Brennan (Philosophy, La Trobe University)Julian C. L. Lai (Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong)WORK IN PROGRESSS© Y. S. Lo, Andrew Brennan, Julian C. L. Lai

1. Introduction

This paper analyzes a problem in environmental studies, suggests a way of approaching it, and outlines a way of using social science methods to tackle some of the empirical issues revealed by the analysis. The result is a program for interdisciplinary work that focuses on three things: (i) environmental philosophy, (ii) environmentalsociology, and (iii) experimental philosophy, a new area at the borders of philosophy and the sciences whether natural or social. Our approach is a plea for bringing more sophistication into the third area by using methodsthat are well established throughout the social sciences in particular.

2. The Problem

Since its inception more than 30 years ago, environmental philosophy has become established as a legitimate branch of applied philosophy. A number of major theories about the origins of the contemporary environmentalcrises have been developed and are now regularly woven into a web of further ethical and cultural theorizing.Central to these philosophical theories, we argue, are a number of empirical claims which are tacitly assumed to be true. Remarkably, little attention within the subject has been paid to whether or not these claims can be tested,let alone whether they stand up to such testing. To remedy this deficiency, we argue that those theories should besubjected to systematic investigation in a philosophically and scientifically rigorous way, ensuring that factualinformation that bears on philosophical theorizing is taken properly into account.

3. The Lynn White Thesis

Beyond the field of environmental philosophy, the best known of those major theories on the origins of environmental crisis is Lynn White’s thesis that Christianity, and more generally Judæo-Christian monotheism, isthe source of the present-day environmental extremities. Central to the rationale for White’s thesis were theworks of the Church Fathers and

The Bible

itself, which, he argues, prescribe anthropocentrism, the view thathumans are the only things that matter on Earth. Consequently, humans may utilize and consume everything elseto their advantage without any injustice. For example,

Genesis

1:27-8 states that “God created man in his ownimage, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and Godsaid unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Likewise, ThomasAquinas (

Summa Contra Gentiles

, Bk. 3, Pt 2, Ch 112) argued that nonhuman animals are “ordered to man’suse”.According to White, the Judæo-Christian idea that humans are created in the image of the transcendentsupernatural God, who is radically separate from nature, also by extension radically separates humansthemselves from nature. This ideology further opened the way for untrammeled exploitation of nature. ModernWestern science itself, White argues, was “cast in the matrix of Christian theology” so that it too inherited the“orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature” (White jr. 1967, 1207). At the heart of White’s philosophical cumcultural-historical analysis was a straight-forward structure:W1.Christianity leads to anthropocentrism.W2.Anthropocentrism is very harmful to the environment.W3.Christianity is the (intellectual) origin of environmental crisis. (Lynn White thesis, from W1 & W2)Clearly, without technology and science, the environmental extremes to which we are now exposed would probably not be realized. White’s thesis, however, is that given the modern form of science and technology,1

Judæo-Christianity itself provides the original deep-seated drive to unlimited exploitation of nature.

4. Four Theories and One Structure

The second premise of White’s argument also has a central place in many rival theories in the field. Indeed, thestructure of many major theories diagnosing the roots of environmental crisis is regularly of this sort: (1) X leadsto anthropocentrism, (2) anthropocentrism is very harmful to the environment; therefore (3) X is the origin of environmental crisis. Three other well-known cases are: the

disenchantment of nature

theory

(Horkheimer andAdorno 1969, see also Vogel 1996, Soper 1995),

ecological feminism

(Warren 1990, Plumwood 1993), and

deepecological relationalism

(Næss 1973, Fox 1984 and 1990).The disenchantment theory argues that the rejection of animism (the idea that personalized souls arefound in animals, plants, and other material objects) leads to anthropocentrism and is thus the origin of environmental crisis. In a disenchanted world, there is no meaningful order in natural things or events, and thereis no source of mystery, sacredness or dread of the sort felt by those who regard the natural world as peopled bydivinities or demons (Stone 2006). When a forest is no longer sacred, there are no spirits to be placated and nomysterious risks associated with clear-felling it. A disenchanted nature commands no respect, reverence, or love.It is nothing but a giant machine, the most inner secrets and operations of which to be revealed and manipulated by human science and technology.Ecological feminism argues that the origin of the problem is a different factor – patriarchy and its radicalseparation of male and female into two evaluatively opposite spheres. Patriachalism leads both to androcentrismand anthropocentrism by associating the male with the rational, active, creative human mind, and civilized,orderly, transcendent culture, and the female with the emotional, passive, determined animal body, and primitive,disorderly, immanent nature. It assigns superiority to everything on the male side but inferiority to everything onthe female side. Such a patriarchal mode of thinking, according to the ecological feminist, sustains all forms of oppressions in the world, including, the human exploitation of the natural environment.Deep ecological relationalism (or holism) blames atomistic individualism as the origin of environmentally harmful attitudes and behaviours. The metaphysics of the atomistic individual, the deepecologists say, radically separates the human self from the rest of the natural world, leading directly to human-centred (anthropocentric) values and human selfishness towards nature. To counter this form of egoism at thespecies level, the deep ecologists argue, people need to adopt an alternative “relational” (or “holistic”)metaphysics of the self. According to relationalism, the identity of a living thing is constituted by its relations toother things in the world, especially its ecological relations with other living things. An individual human beingis therefore essentially connected to other things in nature, part of a larger ecological Self, which is, in its turn, adefining part of the human individual. If people so conceptualize themselves and the world, the deep ecologistsargue, then they will take better care of nature and the world in general. But many feminists disagree. They arguethat the idea of nature as part of oneself will justify continuing exploitation of nature, since one is more entitledto treat oneself in whatever ways one likes than to treat another independent agent in whatever ways one likes.The idea of the other as part of oneself, they argue, only serves to excuse and further one’s domination of theother (Warren 1999).

5. Evaluative versus Behavioural Theses of Non-anthropocentrism

The four theories described above all have one view in common: that anthropocentrism is at the heart of the problem of environmental destructiveness. If anthropocentrism is the problem then perhaps non-anthropocentrism is the solution. Non-anthropocentrism, we argue, takes two forms, which are rarelydistinguished in the environmental philosophy literature.The

evaluative thesis

(of non-anthropocentrism) is the claim that natural nonhuman things haveintrinsic value, i.e., value in their own right independent of any use they have for humans.The

psycho-behavioural thesis

(of non-anthropocentrism) is the claim that people who believe inanthropocentrism are more likely to be environmentally damaging, whereas people who rejectanthropocentrism are more likely to be environmentally protective.2

Much of the last three decades of environmental ethics has been spent analysing, clarifying, examining the manydifferent arguments for, and generally defending, the evaluative thesis, which has now achieved a nearlycanonical status within the discipline (see e.g., Rolston 1988, Brennan 1984, Callicott 1989, Mathews 1991,Elliot 1997, Light 2002, and for dissent from the majority line, see Norton 1991, Grey 1993).By contrast, the psycho-behavioural thesis is seldom discussed, but is part of the tacit background of environmental ethics. When the thesis does get explicit mention this is often in the introductions or prefaces of books, or in reference works – for example, when it is said that deep ecology’s “greatest influence … may bethrough the diverse forms of environmental activism that it inspires” (Taylor and Zimmerman 2005, compareRolston 1988, xii, Sessions 1995, xx-xxi, and Sylvan and Bennett 1994, 4-5). If the psycho-behavioural thesis istrue, then it is important in two ways: (i) providing a rationale for both the diagnosis and solution of environmental problems, and (ii) giving practical justification to environmental philosophy itself (conceived asthe mission to secure converts to non-anthropocentrism). Conversely, if the psycho-behavioural thesis turns outto be false, then not only the discipline itself, but also the four major diagnostic theories of the origin of theenvironmental predicament outlined above will be seriously undermined. The psycho-behavioural thesis, as wehave seen, is the common second premise in all four theories. Put in a provocative way: to question the psycho- behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism is tantamount to questioning the discipline of environmental philosophy.

6. Reason and Action

Central to the psycho-behavioural thesis is the problematic assumption of rational agency, the idea that if peoplerationally or intellectually believe that they have a duty to do something, then they will actually do it (or at leastdo it more often than not). The psycho-behavioural thesis is just a particular case of this more general thesis – one that is an empirical claim about human cognition and behaviour, the truth or falsity of which cannot bedecided by purely a priori philosophical reasoning. In fact, the four major philosophical theses just given on theorigin of environmental crisis (and their many counter-theses) are also empirical claims about social and culturalreality. To be credible, then, they must be able to stand up to empirical testing. If we believe we have a duty torespect nature, for example, or believe that natural things are intrinsically valuable, then will we in fact worryabout environmental destruction, or act in ways that are eco-friendly? This question about the relation of belief to action, looks no different in kind from the sorts of questions that social scientists regularly ask.Of the above theses, Lynn White’s is the only one to have been empirically tested by sociologists andother social scientists. The net result of these studies so far has been “inconclusive”, especially when education,sex, age and social class are also factored in (Shaiko 1987, Greeley 1993, Woodrum 1994, Eckberg and Blocker 1996, Boyd 1999). Moreover, like their philosophical counterparts, environmental sociologists often take the psycho-behavioural thesis of non-anthropocentrism for granted. Some of the best-known and most widely usedsurvey instruments in the field (for example, the NEP scale by Dunlap and van Liere 1978, and the Revised NEPscale by Dunlap et al. 2000) explicitly use indicators of anthropocentrism to measure presence of un-environmental attitudes, thus assuming in advance that anthropocentric beliefs are harmful to the environment. Itseems plain that we can define anthropocentrism without using the concept of environmental destructiveness. Soif we show that anthropocentric beliefs have no clear positive correlation to environmentally harmful behavioursor to other attitudes strongly associated with such behaviours, then it will challenge many of the standard ideasabout anthropocentrism in relation to “environmental protectiveness” and “environmental harmfulness”.In White’s argument the three central claims can be read as empirical claims about the association between (A) Christian beliefs, (B) anthropocentric beliefs and (C) environmental harm. Read in this way, theargument is not deductively valid, on two counts. First, a strong association between factors A and B (e.g., 70%)together with a strong association between factors B and C (e.g., 70%) are not enough to guarantee a strongassociation between A and C. Second, factor A might have a strong association with some other factor D whichhas a strong association with not-C. In other words, A might not be an internally coherent factor. Lack of deductive validity is not a problem for White’s argument, so long as it was intended as a non-deductive argumentin the first place. The argument would be cogent so long as its premises have relatively high chance of beingtrue, and their being true makes the conclusion more likely to be true than false. So, in order to test the cogencyof his argument, we need to separately test all of the three claims involved. Oddly enough, as far as we canascertain, no previous studies on White’s theory have taken this holistic and comprehensive approach.Finally and most importantly, the suspicion that deep-seated worldviews and belief systems might havesignificant influence on attitudes and behaviour towards the environment should not be limited to the religiousones, but extended to cover both philosophical and cultural belief systems. We have already indicated a striking3

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Worldviews, environmental crisis and values

Theories of environmental damage blame Christianity, patriarchy, or other worldviews and attitudes for the harm done to the environment. This new research tries to test through... (More)

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Category:	School Work > Essays & Theses
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Upload Date:	03/05/2009
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Tags:	values Christianity nep surveys Paradigms worldviews environmental ethics (more tags) values Christianity nep surveys Paradigms worldviews environmental ethics environmental crisis environmntal philosophy lynn white new environmental paradigm Draft Research (fewer)