On Sat, 4 Feb 1995, Jonathan M Poppele wrote:
> > For what it's worth, I am an ecologist, and I walk around in the woods a
> > lot studying nature.
>
> For what it's worth, I am an ecologist also. This is not, however, how
> you learn about these things.
It would seem that the first speaker (James?) is working out of an
empiricist assumption that we can somehow perceive what is "out there"
without importing our own cognitive construction of the world into the
observation process. I would disagree with this and would argue that our
process of "observation" is very much shaped by our expectations...
> > I have no problems, moral
> > or otherwise, with what animals do to each other. We are talking moral
> > issues, and only humans are moral agents (at least until other animals or
> > plants tell us about their morality in no uncertain terms).
>
> Ah!! So what your saying is we are not animals. We are "above" that. We
> and we alone have the sacred ability to be moral.
I *think* James(?) is placing people in a different category on the basis
of our capacity for "meaning creation" -- i.e., giving moral meaning to
our actions and activities. This is a process of cognition, about which
we know very little. We certainly don't *know* whether other animals
engage in this same kind of activity. We *assume* that they do not
because we assume that language (the manipulation of symbols) is an
important component of this process. But, I would say that with as
little knowledge as we have about how WE create meaning, we should
probably withhold judgement about whether other animals engage in similar
processes. Certainly, Brian correctly points out that animals do engage
in work (with and for humans) and even rescue people in peril. What this
*means* to them we don't know.
> A moral code which does not come from nature is a creation of the human
> imagination. This is where "ivory towers" come into it. You basically
> supported my thesis (if not my choice of words) when you said that
> "cruelty" and "respect" were human constructs. I would say that is where
> we differ. The concepts you use may well be human constructs. The
> concepts I try (key word) to use are ones I have learned from nature, not
> ones I have imposed on it.
I would only point out that I think that Jon has also fallen into an
empiricist assumption about observation. Neil Evernden (The Social
Construction of Nature) and others would argue that the very concept of
"nature" is a human construct and not something we can simply "observe".
Furthermore, such constructs are not created only in "ivory towers" -- we
all engage in their construction simply because we are human. In ivory
towers we just "dress our constructs up" in fancy terminology (like
empiricism :-)....
Jayne
