From: Alan McGowen <alanm@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Date: 11 Oct 92 03:53 PDT
Subject: Nature's Rights and Muddled Dietz
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1466601799:000:12539
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Oct 11 03:53:00 1992



>** Written 12:30 pm  Oct 10, 1992 by dietz@cs.rochester.edu in cdp:sci.environmen **
>In article <1466601793@igc.apc.org> alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen) writes:
>
>> Presumably Dietz would not approve of a different application of
>> his "argument": whites (or gentiles) are whites (or gentiles) and
>> non-whites (or jews) are not. If his argument is a good reason for
>> withholding rights, so are these.
>>
>> It seems almost ridiculous to have to make such an obvious point,
>> but alas...
>
>Entirely ridiculous, actually, as well as a reprehensible debating
>tactic, that equates jews with rocks or animals.  We agree that
>antisemitism, or racism, or sexism, are bad, because the targets
>of these -isms can complain -- their rights are expressed by
>interaction in a social setting.

The less-than-sophomoric reasoning of Dietz' prior post is 
continued here. "We agree" is just what we do *not* agree. For 
one thing the ability to "complain" is not even a sound reason 
for denying legal protection to humans. Many humans are placed in 
situations where they cannot complain about abuses and yet we 
still hold the abuses to be reprehensible: this is a central 
issue in the area of domestic violence, for example. The right to 
protection is not dependent upon an ability to "complain". But 
this is a special case of Dietz' more general error.

The assumption which Dietz makes, that "rights" are dependent on 
"interaction in a social setting" was the main error I addressed 
in the basenote ("Rights for Rocks!). This is the granting of 
rights based on a "reciprocal social bargain" which I spoke of 
there. Some may recognize this as a social contract theory of the 
origin of "rights". Dietz simply assumes this whole philosophical 
baggage as if it were something self-evident. Probably he is not 
even aware of his intellectual indebtedness here, to judge from 
the quality of his reasoning on the subject in his last post: 

>In article <1b48teINNcd4@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bl713@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Lev Tarasov) writes:
>
> > You have forgotten what I feel is the strongest right's argument,
> > Occam's razor. Whatever non-religious parameter you take to 
> > differentiate humans and non-humans, you will always find some
> > humans (brain-dead, severely mentally handicapped,...) who will
> > be beat out by some non-human such as a chimpanzee. Should we
> > allow experimentation on those humans who "flunk"?.>

Dietz:
>
>You forgot the most obvious difference:  humans are humans, and
>non-humans are not.  Why should this criterion be any less valid
>than another?  Does it have to be justified in terms of other
>criteria (and do those have to be justified, ad infinitum?)

As I pointed out, any southern slaveowner of the 19th century 
could (and did) employ the same reasoning: whites are whites, and 
blacks are not: that is enough reason to withhold rights. Dietz's 
only reply to this is demagogic irrationalism ala David Duke: 
"how *dare* you compare whites (or jews) to animals!"

Clearly most people will not be moved by such blatant 
irrationalism, even if it comes from an engineer teaching at a 
university. Unlike Dietz, they will think that arbitrary criteria 
for rights - "humans are humans"-  are not quite enough. They will 
want some sort of reason for denying rights, and this is exactly 
what Dietz says that we do not need to provide. 

But then he backpedals a bit. Since he evidently isn't able to 
think of any reasons for himself, he quotes a philosopher, 
Kristen Shrader-Frechette, to provide some. Why he thinks this is 
necessary is beyond me, since he has been arguing that reasons 
are unimportant -- just being human is enough to justify being a 
conqueror and lord over nature, according to him. But somehow he 
seems to feel that some clever words are needed to justify such 
supremacism, and being quite unable to find them in himself, he 
turns to Kristin. It will be amusing to see whether he is capable 
of continuing her argument himself.

Please recall that I have *not* been arguing for extending rights 
to animals on the animal liberationist grounds that they have an 
approximation to human sentience. I am arguing for extending 
protection to ecosystems and their constituent species and 
nonbiological components (including rocks). My position overlaps 
that of an anthropocentric, since our own human welfare depends 
upon such protection, so there is actually room for common ground 
on specifics about legislation. 

But I believe that ecosystems deserve protection in their own 
right, apart from their utility to our species. In large part, 
that is because we are extremely ignorant of what their full 
"utility" -- and our full dependence on them -- may be. But the 
attitude, which Dietz clearly upholds, that the productions of 
deep evolutionary time, with their vast quantity of irreplaceable 
coadapted genetic information, should have no fundamental moral 
respect from humans beyond what utility we are able to see in 
them with our present limited understanding, is the extreme of 
hubris, and this is what I reject. We have to respect even what 
we do not yet understand.      

Dietz:

>There are other good reasons for doubting the "ecocentric" position.
>From Kristin Shrader-Frechette, "Environmental Ethics and Global
>Imperatives"  (this article accepts the argument that to inflict
>suffering on animals but not because they are moral persons.)


Kristin Shrader-Frechette:

>
>  Yet another problem with the expanded-rights position, insofar
>  as it calls for recognition of the alleged rights of nonsentient
>  beings, is that it fails to take into account that all values 
are>
>  necessarily values for us; there is no such thing as a value in
>  and of itself, without a valuer.  [PFD: I would go further and say
>  there is no such thing as a value without a social context in
>  which we hold that value.]  

Human sociality is not the only sociality in the living world. 
Why should the "social context" of humans be more important than 
that of other social animals? But more deeply, it is a mistake to 
think that having a value is the same thing as being able to 
represent that value symbolically -- to be able to "complain" 
about its violation, as Dietz naively put it: that is only one 
specific social adaptation for managing values. 

A value is simply a goal of life, and all organisms have values. 
The niche of an organism defines its values: the conditions under 
which it flourishes, and which it seeks if it has any adaptations 
for seeking. Humans have very sophisticated versions of values, 
but that is because our evolution has added neural machinery for 
linguistics to the other organs of the vertebrate brain. To a 
large extent, humans give voice to the concerns which any 
vertebrates have. Our brains are not extremely unique.

Perhaps our views about "values" are those which any brain with a 
limbic system would express if it had our fancy verbal output 
devices to express it with. The commonality of brain 
architecture among mammals is striking, and it is difficult to 
believe that this does not map onto some commonality of 
experiences. But the ability to have mammalian experiences 
should not be the defining condition of moral worth: that is the 
animal liberationist fallacy.

In a weaker sense, ecosystems also have values, in that they 
"seek" a coevolutionary stable state, in which their constituent 
species are all well coadapted and energy is utilized with 
maximum efficiency. This sort of goal, or "value" is not as well 
developed as those of organisms because ecosystems are not as 
tightly integrated as organisms, but they are integrated enough 
to have functions which all life depends upon, and which have 
persisted throughout the history of life. The achievements 
of particular ecosystems are great enough that they should be 
recognized and protected. 

In an important sense, the niche "values" of organisms are 
evolutionary products of the requirements of ecosystem 
functioning. Species cannot exist without ecosystems, as cells 
cannot exist without organisms. Species are not generally as tightly 
coordinated to each other as the cells of a metazoan organism, 
but they are extremely far from independent. We must begin to 
recognize this fact in our outlook about who we are, since we 
also evolved within a ecosystem -- the African Savanna. Many 
facts about our values may be a result of our specific evolution. 
Certainly our emphasis on verbal assertion of status as the key 
to hierarchic position -- which Dietz blindly echoes -- is a 
possible example of a specifically human version of primate 
sociality.          

Kristin:

> If nonsentient beings cannot have values,
>  what would it mean to assert their value?  How can one visit good
>  or evil on something that has no thoughts or feelings, even in a
>  potential sense, as does a human zygote or comatose person? ...
>  The problem is their position provides no conceptual or nontheological
>  rationale for extending the range of human relevance, short of question-
>  begging appeals to inherent value.

This is based on the mistaken idea that having "values" depends 
on the ability to represent "values" -- self-awareness, and 
"thoughts", in human terms, depend on specifically human 
adaptations. While I can't address what the philosophers Kristin 
is opposing have been arguing, I think that much more than 
"question-begging appeals to inherent value" are involved. The 
inherent value of species and ecosystems is a product of deep 
time, coevolution, and extraordinary improbability and 
irreplaceability. I think that neither Dietz nor Kristin has 
grasped that. It may be that Kristin's philosophical opponents 
have also not grasped that. 

>  ... The ecosystemic versions of environmental ethics fall victim to
>  the same sorts of problems as the expanded-rights position.  According
>  to proponents of holistic environmental ethics, recent industrial
>  history is a biotic hemorrhage, to be remedied by judging all human
>  action in terms of their effects on all ecosystems of the planet.

Excuse me, but the extinction crisis or "biotic hemorrhage" of the 
Earth is an observed fact, not just a weird philosophical idea. 
The fact is that "recent industrial history" has contributed to 
this hemorrhage in major ways -- and continues to do so, for 
example in logging in rainforests. To judge these "human actions" 
in terms of their real effects on the planet is an extremely 
legitimate function of science. 

> According to this view, whatever promotes ecosystemic well-being
>  is said to be good and right, whatever jeopardizes is to be bad and
>  wrong. 

A very stupid and probably politicized understanding of the 
point. All life is a result of ecosystem functioning, and human 
interests are intermingled with those of all other species, so 
there is not really a distinction to be drawn between 
"anthropocentric" interests -- provided these are not ignorant 
-- and "ecosystemic well-being.". It is precisely because there 
is no such distinction to be drawn that we ecocentrics advance 
the "rights" -- or at least legal protection -- of ecosystems. We 
do not see this as disconnected from protecting humans, because 
humans are not disconnected from ecosystems. 

I know that Dietz thinks otherwise, but he confuses imaginary 
possibilities with reality, and relies heavily on the idea that 
ignorance of dependence on ecosystems is the same thing as 
independence. But then, as we have seen, reasoning is not his 
strong point.  
>

> A basic problem arises, however: why consider a whole that is
>  not a conscious, sentient being?  What reasons are there, apart from
>  human well-being, for ascribing moral worth to some ecosystemic whole?
>

Maybe because human well-being, the well-being of a conscious, 
sentient being, is one expression of the ecosystemic whole? Every 
one of our qualities which human-supremacists like Dietz, or more 
intelligently like Kristin, advance, are specific adaptations, as 
unlikely as those of any leaf-imitating insect in the Amazon. 
Dietz and co., are just the latest chapter in the religionists 
against science. This is just another form of creationism, the 
engineer's form: we are so clever and can change so much that we 
must be an Exception -- we are the Moral Species, because we can 
Build Cities and we can Pass Laws. Everything else better watch 
out: the Humans are coming!     

------------
Alan McGowen

Newsgroups: sci.environment