From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: The Criterion for Ecocentrism
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 05:51:57 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <149180127@hpindda.cup.hp.com> alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com writes:

 > "Hierarchy of levels of organization":
 >  
 >    biosphere
 >    ecosystems
 >    populations
 >    organisms
 >    organs
 >    tissues
 >    cells
 >    organelles
 >    molecules
 >    atoms
 >    quarks and leptons
 >    superstrings ???
 > Clearer?

The clarity of your hierarchy has never been in question, merely your
reasons for wanting to build/pursue it. What for?

 > I mean that each level is made out of the stuff of the level below it:
 > it is *constituted* of the stuff of that level. That is not necessarily
 > the same thing as *explanatory* reducibility, which would hold if every
 > *property* at level n could be explained entirely in terms of properties
 > at level n-1. This fails to hold in the biological levels at least because
 > some of the properties are "emergent" properties -- products of history 
 > which are *allowed* by, but in no way *required* by, the lower levels. 
 > [Physical scientists: think of boundary conditions.]

Sure, but to what end do you pursue such meaning?

 > You mean you can't tell what to think of what I write unless you know "who 
 > I am"? Welcome to American-style democracy: I'm just another citizen with 
 > a mouth. That's the only requirement to post here. Don't forget that this
 > network is a tax-subsidized public forum in the U.S. I help to pay for it, 
 > and I damn well intend to use it -- and have my say in what it should be
 > used *for*.

Well, Alan, this end of the network is a tax-subsidised forum in
Australia which I similarly help to pay for, named in fact the
Australian Academic and Research Network, to which your posts are
being fed via a link between California and Melbourne, Victoria.

Welcome to Australian-style democracy, old scrotum: I'm just another
citizen trying as patiently and politely as I can to make sense of
what you have to say since your material is being posted here to
AARNet. I would have anticipated that you might have something of
relevance and interest to us here, but if you just want to open your
mouth and chatter because that's all that the US requires of you,
perhaps all the US requires is monkeys.

Big deal.

               When I first began posting in sci.environment, it seemed that
 > the only subject which was being discussed was nuclear power. There were 
 > almost no posts with any biological content. I wrote one wondering where
 > all the frogs are going and why more people weren't concerned about it. I
 > got e-mail saying, in effect, "well, that's just gee-whiz stuff, nuclear 
 > power (or chemical fertilizers, etc.) is where the Big Issues are at, so 
 > naturally that's what we discuss here." Right then I realized I had an 
 > ecocitizenly duty and some moderately grungy work to do. I'm still doing it. 

OK. This type of information on what you are endeavouring to achieve
is all I asked of you to start with. I have no problem with whatever
local political campaign you wish to engage, only that on a specialist
science forum you might simply do some homework, and make some effort
to adduce comprehensible evidence in support of your thesis.

 > After all, *somebody* here has to stick up for frogs -- and as nobody
 > else appears able and willing, evidently it has to be me. My duty calls 
 > me in a resounding "ribbet, ribbet!"

RIBBET! RIBBET!

 > The "central" in "ecocentric" and "anthropocentric" refers to position 
 > in a *value* system: some values are more "central" -- more deeply held
 > and defended -- than others. I believe the social psychologists have a
 > lot to say about this sort of thing. Cognitive dissonance theory or some 
 > such stuff. I strongly suspect that deeply held values arise at least 
 > in part from heritable traits of the limbic system, and are not exclusively
 > aqcuired characters, but that is another subject. 

Indeed, as do ethnologists whose work involves systematic comparison of
one value system with another. If that is what you are in fact engaged
in yourself here, it strikes me that you have a rather eccentric way of
going about pursuing the discipline.

Why don't you do a little homework, or do you think all the disappearing
frogs are going to actually thank you for obfuscating their fate within
your borrowed "cognitive dissonance theory or some such stuff".

 > Their metapopulations can maintain adaptedness if there are enough local
 > populations. Local extinctions are balanced on average by the formation 
 > of new populations -- otherwise the species would become extinct. 
 > Specific microenvironments occur in more than one place and can be colonized
 > or recolonized as conditions permit -- the species one finds in short-lived 
 > habitats are typically expert dispersers. Of course there are also species 
 > endemic to just one cave, etc.  Those *places* must have been pretty stable, 
 > or else those species wouldn't still exist.  

Ah, I understand now that what your refer to as populations I would
perhaps refer to as local communities. Given that I have no problems
with this paragraph of yours here.

 > >I trust
 > >you are aware also that the vast majority of mutations are very much
 > >maladaptive, leaving risks associated with unplanned human intervention
 > >lacking expert consultation extremely high indeed.
 >  
 > The vast majority of mutations are silent or selectively neutral. Those that
 > are neither are usually deleterious and are rapidly removed from the
 > population. I'm not sure what "human interventions" Gil has in mind as
 > potentially increasing the mutation rate. Toxins, radioactive waste and
 > ozone depletion come to mind, and I can't imagine what "expert consultants"
 > one would consult about their proper use to increase mutation rates 
 > deliberately. Former EPA director Anne Gorsuch? Former Interior Secretary 
 > James Watt? Do they offer such consulting services?

This paragraph is wholly unbecoming, I expect triggering the tangent
you wander away along below. That you are unable to adhere to a topic
or answer questions put to you reflects the level of discipline you
have adopted in pursuit of your studies . . .

        [ verbiage on mutations followed ]


--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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Newsgroups: sci.environment