From: allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism,alt.activism.d,talk.environment
Subject: Re: Environmentalism is not Anti-Individualism
Date: 13 Oct 92 06:12:47 GMT
 <1992Oct11.235932.19887@yang.earlham.edu> <1992Oct12.144530.10735@vexcel.com>
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

In article <1992Oct12.144530.10735@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
> In article <1992Oct11.235932.19887@yang.earlham.edu> allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct11.172626.18947@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>>> In article <1992Oct9.194117.19852@yang.earlham.edu> allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith) writes:
>>> quite different.  I do believe certain limitations apply and they are
>>> similar to yours, though I imagine we might define harm differently.
>>> Pollution-induced health impacts are hard to prove, they have long
>>> latency periods.  Is it appropriate to limit the use of private land
>>> when the use _might_ cause cancer, but we don't know?  If so, how
>>> much proof is needed.  What if there is damage to the biosphere is ways
>>> that do not directly harm humans but _do_ harm natural _services_.
>>> For example, if you own private beach land and want to build but that
>>> building will end the buffering function which that land serves to
>>> protect others from storms?  Many wetlands serve the purpose of
>>> filtering water and preventing salt intrusion to farmlands and aquifers.
>>> Are people who destroy such wetlands responsible for the enormous costs
>>> entailed in manmade solutions for these problems?
>>
>>	It's an interesting question at what point one starts harming 
>>other intelligent beings enough for government (or others) to be justified 
>>in coercively stopping one. The problem in going too far is that one 
>>starts saying things such as that one can't open up a competing business 
>>because it harms an already existing business.
> 
> Can you offer a suggestion for what the limit might be?  Its easier to
> condemn the extreme than to suggest solutions.

	My personal way for determining such things looks upon liberties 
(or the ability to choose, another way of looking at it) as being in 
conflict. Sure, you've got the right to shoot that gun. But someone else's 
rights are kind of violated (choices are limited) when they die by the 
bullet. Take the parties involved. See on each possible outcome whose 
liberties are violated the most (whose choices are limited the most). 
Select the outcome as best as the one in which that party's (the 
most-choice-limited) liberties are violated the least.
	Admittedly, this contains a considerable amount of subjectivism 
and possible debate over extent of violation, etc. But all government has 
that problem. And I'm not willing to trust human beings enough to let them 
be without a government; anarchism is utopianism, and "utopia is not an 
option". I favor limiting that government so as to limit the wrong that 
can be done with it.
> 
>>	My point on environmentalism and libertarianism being opposed 
>>frequently (at least traditional environmentalism, as opposed to people 
>>such as the Nature Conservatacy) is that environmentalists are, as far as 
>>I can tell, frequently more concerned with non-intelligent beings than 
>>with humans and other intelligent beings.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I personally find your attitude towards less/non-intelligent things
>>>>> to be abhorrent but I recognize that it is a value judgement.  It has
>>>>> been debated in depth in these groups and I don't really have anything
>>>>> to add to it.
>>>>
>>>>	As long as you don't try, say, to stop me from eating meat 
>>>>(including veal) whenever I wish and have the cash, feel free to have your 
>>>>viewpoint. It only becomes wrong when you try to enforce it on others.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The problem comes when the majority do agree on a moral cause and force
>>> it on the minority.  Based on this principle, and not on its specific
>>> application, how would you have responded to slave owners who might say
>>> to an abolitionist: `fine, you don't have to own any slaves'?
>>> 
>>> I am not trying to force my ecocentric posistions on anyone.  You can keep
>>> eating your meat (I am not a vegetarian, anyway).  If the ecocentric
>>> position one day is a majority position, it will likely be imposed.
>>> I don't have an easy answer for justifying when this becomes 
>>> acceptable.  I can say I believe that it was acceptable not to pay
>>> slave owners.
>>
>>	Certainly; I agree on the slave owners. Slaves were obviously 
>>intelligent, no matter how much some (even some calling themselves 
>>"scientists") tried to claim otherwise. Slave owners were harming others, 
>>and should be at the minimum prevented from doing so further. 
>>Unfortunately, the political situation at the time did not allow for 
>>further punishment of the former slave owners.
>>	I don't really care whether the majority wants something or not. 
>>I'm interested in making sure that individual rights aren't trampled upon.
>>
> This parallels the discussion between Dietz and McGowen.  I think it is easy
> _today_ to claim a qualitative difference between the morality involved in
> slave ownership and the treatment of non-sentients but I would claim
> that this is merely an artifact of the moral development of humans.
> If we replaced the word "intelligent" in slave-owner arguments with
> "sentient", the arguments, moral and economic, would be virtually
> identical.

	Uh-huh. Right. The difference between an animal and a true 
individual (I do not limit true individuals to humans; in order to be safe 
and not leave out any, I include chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins, and 
whales) is that the individual can make choices without those choices 
being dictated by instinct and impulse; it can decide to do something and 
know the consequences of its actions.
	I would also point out that I, for instance, happen to like cats 
very much. I would emotionally love it if anyone who harmed a cat was put 
to death. But I have to admit that cats aren't intelligent (unfortunately) 
and thus aren't true individuals with rights.
	There's also the difference that slave-owners had a lot of BS 
about that slaves weren't sentient, and tried to back it up with 
pseudoscience. The science this time around, insofar as we can judge 
intelligence, is on the side of the humanists (indeed, many would say that 
including whales, for instance, on the true individual list is incorrect; 
I include them so as to not leave out any true possibilities).
	-Allen
Xref: sparky alt.individualism:5713 talk.politics.theory:4475