Mary Simmmons, Thanks for your thoughtful response to my post on
nature/culture. I appreciate your intent there to give some sort of moral
standing to at least some things other than humans. On this we agree. But
I continue to have grave doubts whether your statements about choice and
natural laws are going to effectively support that intent. In fact, I have
to stand by my original caution... for several reasons, all of which derive
from either your original language or your last reply.
First, humans do have choice. On that we agree (tho of course much
clarification of that statement could be sought, I don't see that any of it
matters here). Do only humans have choice? I think not. Dolphins, whales,
chimps, great apes are all fairly plausible candidates. Does having choice
require having culture? Perhaps so, but not necessarily "human" culture
(unless we want to entirely beg the relevant questions). Do dolphins have a
culture of some sort, a language of some sort? I don't know, but the work
of John Lilly and others suggest they may.
Do rocks have choice? I don't think so either; I don't see any reason to
posit that they do; I don't agree with Aristotle that material objects have
inbuilt dispositions "to go down."
So "choice" doesn't seem to me to make for such a clear demarcation between
nature and culture. (Nor do I want one or think seeking one is advisable for
ecofeminists)
In your reply you said you only put "choice" on the side of humans, but I
don't understand how there can be freedom without choice, or rights without
choice, and I'm not sure what privilege without choice could mean. So it
seems to me that along with putting choice on the side of humans you also
get freedom and rights (and maybe privilege) only on that side. Now some of
that may be ok. We perhaps agree that non-humans may have moral standing
without having rights or freedom or choice. Indeed my intent in using that
term was precisely not to invoke rights (notwithstanding Al's broadside).
I think there may be important weaker senses of moral standing than "rights"
that might help to sort out our responsibilities to nature, e.g. natural
things may be morally respectable without having "righs."
This analysis of choice (if that's what it is) only illustrates my original
concern, which was prompted more by your remarks about natural laws. Here
again is the relevant section of your original post:
-snip-
> I thought some last night about this difference
> between nature and culture. I think its really a matter of intent, and
> CHOICE. "Nature", in whatever process we are talking about (geology,
> biology, meteorology,etc), there are NO choices...physical laws
> constrain all earth processes.
> HUMANS have choice. Culture is choice--no physical laws dictate how a
> group of humans must organize itself.
>
> So maybe culture and nature really have not much that is inherently in
> common--unless of course the human group CHOOSES to organize itself in
> harmony with nature.
-snip-
Now my concern here is not at all to ignor scientific information or
evidence. As it happens I teach in a residential science school and work
constantly with current scientific information on environmental (and other)
issues. But the way you put the matter originally and in your last post
seems to me to be much much stronger than simply asking environmentalists to
be scientifically literate and informed. "Physical laws constrain",
"physical laws dictate", and the more recent "what runs the natural world",
all seem to me to invoke a principle of the exclusivity of scientific claims
to truth. The question, in other words, is not whether science can provide
some information about nature, but whether only science can do this, whether
it's claims to truth (the real "laws of nature" are scientific) have
hegemony over all others. The latter is what you seem to have inadvertently
endorsed, and I submit is a very dangerous presupposition at the more or less
foundational level of this conversation (we're not here arguing public
policy for general consumption, I assume, again notwithstanding Al's
confusion over the differences).
Why do I doubt that scientific information may always be the best there is?
This calls for a long answer, but some pieces are ready at hand in Diamond
and Orenstein's Reweaving the World: particularly the pieces by Griffin and
Swimme, as well as the previously mentioned one by Ynestra King.
Simplistically, my concern is that experience seems to give me alot of
information that science systemmatically ignores, in the name of
methodology, abstractions, supposedly known "laws", etc. If I didn't pay
good attention to that "othered" information, I wouldn't be writing here,
now I'm sure.
Sorry if this is more philosophy that you really wanted to hear or do, but I
think there are deep philosophical aspects of our shared ecofeminist
problems that are of great practical import for the future. I very much
want to hear more about how you grapple with the above; and I very much want
this list to pay some attention to ecofeminist philosophical problems. If
you or others feel this amounts to buying too deeply "into the culture of
philosophy", do let me know. But please, please, let me know why you think
this if you do! (:-)
philosophically yours,
ps
Philip T. Shepard, Professor
Lyman Briggs School
Michigan State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
