The Self as Inseparable Separation: Deepening the Starting Position for Our Relation with the Environment (original) (raw)
Related papers
2 Nature for Real: Is Nature a Social Construct?
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, 2020
Six words are especially significant in our world-view; they model the world we view: (1) 'Nature'; (2) 'Environment'; (3) 'Wilderness'; (4) 'Science'; (5) 'Earth' and (6) 'Value' as found in nature. But how far are these words for real? Have they extensions to which their intensions successfully refer? "The world' is variously 'constituted' by diverse cultures, as we are lately reminded, and there is much doubt about what, if anything, is 'privileged' about the prevailing Western concepts. All words have been made up historically by people in their multifarious coping strategies; these six now have a modernist colour to them, and the make-up of the words colours up what we see. More radically, all human knowing colours whatever people see, through our percepts and concepts. Trees are not really green after we have learned about electromagnetic radiation and the optics of our eyes, though we all view the world that way. Indeed, the scepticism runs deeper. Many question whether humans know nature at all, in any ultimate or objective sense (the pejorative word here is 'absolute' comparable to 'privileged' as revealing our bias in 'right' or 'true'). Rather we know nature only provisionally or operationally ('pragmatically' is the favoured word). We will first look in overview at the tangle of problems in which these words are caught up, then turn to each word in more detail. Natural science seems a primary place where humans know nature for real; that couples the first and the fourth of these signifying words, with epistemic success. No, some reply, humans know nature through socially-constructed science. Catherine Larrère claims that nature per se 'does not exist.. . Nature is only the name given to a certain contemporary state of science.' 1 Science exists-no one doubts that-but science knows nature conditionally, perhaps phenomenally; science is an interaction activity between humans and a nature out there that we know only through the lenses, NATURE FOR REAL 39 theories and equipment that we humans have constructed. Science does not know an unconditioned nature objectively, or noumenally, certainly not absolutely. Alexander Wilson claims: 'We should by no means exempt science from social discussions of nature. .. In fact, the whole idea of nature as something separate from human existence is a lie. Humans and nature construct one another.' 2 Turn then to the more modest word 'environment'. Surely humans know a local external environment; that, after all, is what environmentalists are trying to save. Be careful, though, warns Arnold Berleant: I do not ordinarily speak of 'the' environment. While this is the usual locution, it embodies a hidden meaning that is the source of much of our difficulty. For 'the' environment objectifies environment; it turns it into an entity that we can think of and deal with as if it were outside and independent of ourselves. .. 'The' environment [is] one of the last survivors of the mind-body dualism ... For there is no outside world. There is no outside. .. Person and environment are continuous. 3 Environments are horizons that we carry about and reconstitute as we move here and there. Objectively, there are no horizons in nature. Try again. 'A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.' 4 That seems to take people out of the picture. Alas, once more-so the selfconscious humanists will protest-we are still very much in the picture. Roderick Nash, tracing the history of Wilderness and the American Mind, reaches a startling conclusion: 'Wilderness does not exist. It never has. It is a feeling about a place ... Wilderness is a state of mind.' 5 That seems extreme; still, wilderness does have to be designated, as it has been by the US, Congress. A society has to decide what wilderness means and where they will have it. Wilderness is another one of Berleant's human environments, even though one about which we have made atypical designations, resolving to leave such areas untrammelled. 'Wilderness' is a foil we have constituted in contrast to late twentieth-century, Western, technological culture. Nash concludes: 'Civilization created wilderness.' 6 Apparently, then, we are going to have to look all over the world, the Earth, to find nature for real. No, the search is impossible-the objectors continue-because the problem is not what we are looking at, some world-Earth, it is what we are looking with, a world-view: our reason, our culture and its words. We must not think, warns Richard Rorty, that 'Reason' offers 'a transcultural human ability to correspond to reality'; the best that reason can do is ask 'about what self-image society should have of itself.' 7 The big mistake is 'to think that the point of language is to represent a hidden reality which lies outside us.' 8 Jacques Derrida's remark, 'There is no outsidethe-text,' by this account, forbids any correspondence theory of truth. 9 We can hardly have descriptions, much less valuations, of nature as it lies outside of us. That is 'the world well lost'. 10 40 HOLMES ROLSTON III Philosophers have perennially found themselves in an epistemic prison, as every freshman discovers early in the introductory course. There is no human knowing that is not looking out from where we are, using our senses and our brains, from an anthropocentric perspective. That is the lesson of Plato's myth of the cave from ancient Greece, or the tale of the blind men and the elephant from India. These fables, all over again (so they say), enshrine the deepest truth of all: all knowledge is relative; there is no 'mirror of nature'. 11 Viewing one's world, the realist hopes 'to detach oneself from any particular community and look down at it from a, more universal standpoint.' 12 This can't be done. Hilary Putnam explains to us 'why there isn't a ready-made world.' 13 Yes, but at least there are those magnificent pictures of Earth taken from space, and the conviction returns that we humans can look over the globe at least, and find a world that had 'already made' itself. We ourselves are part of its making, whatever making up we do after we arrive and turn to view it. Using our 'reason', somewhat trans culturally it would seem, 14 perhaps we can couple the question what self-image our society wishes to make of itself with what to make of this planet we find on our hands, imaged in those photographs. So there is an epistemic crisis in our philosophical culture, which, on some readings, can seem to have reached consummate sophistication and, the next moment, can reveal debilitating failure of nerve. We need to ask, in theory, whether nature is for real to know, in practice, whether and how we ought to conserve it. Mirrors or not, the self-image question is entwined with the image of nature. Environmental ethics is said to be 'applied philosophy' (sometimes with a bit of condescension), yet it often probes important theoretical issues about nature, which (we add with matching condescension) has been rather mistreated in twentieth-century philosophy, overmuch concerned with the human self-image. Is environmental philosophy another of those para-professional 'philosophy and. .. ' spinoffs, not really philosophy per se, only philosophy 'ad hoc'? Yes, but philosophy is always philosophy of X: and if the object, X, is 'nature' described and evaluated, is not such enquiry axial philosophy, right at the centre? Now we reach the sixth, and most loaded, of our appraisal words. Surely, comes the retort 'value' is something we humans impose on the world. Nature may be objects there without us. There may be a ready-made world, but human values are not found ready-made in it. We make up our values. But not so fast: perhaps we humans do find some non-human values, or some of our values already made up, in the evolutionary history of our Earth, or our ecology. We ought not to beg that question. After all, the less we really know about nature, the less we can or ought to save nature for what it is in itself, intrinsically. Indeed, if we know that little, it may be hard properly to value nature even instrumentally. We cannot correctly value what we do not to some degree correctly know. Even if we somehow manage to value wild nature per se without making any utilitarian use of it, perhaps this valuing project will prove to be a human interactive construction. Such value will have been projected onto nature, constituted by us and our set of social forces; other peoples in other cultures might not
Rethinking the Relations of Nature, Culture and Agency
Environmental Values, 1992
Beginning with a critique of the Enlightenment human/nature dualism, this essay argues for a new conception of human agency based on culturopoeia and an application of an ecofeminist dialogic method for analysing human-nature relationships, with the idea of volitional interdependence replacing ideas of free will and determinism. Further, it posits that we need to replace the alienational model of otherness based on a psychoanalytic model with a relational model of anotherness based on an ecological model, and concludes by encouraging attention to developing bioregional natured cultures in place of nation states and multinational corporations.
Culture and Nature: The Roots of Ecopoetics
Women's Studies, 2018
The study of "ecology" deals with the relationships of organisms with their environment or home. I want to talk a little about the three homes we each have, our body, our culture, and our planet. Primarily I want to talk about how hard it is for us to live now, how difficult it is for us to be human now, caught as we are between an ancient human loyalty to nature and our planet, and our more immediate and necessary loyalties to Western culture. I want to begin with a little story that illustrates something of our relationship with our three homes. I was recently invited to give a poetry workshop to some school children in a wildlife park. The children and I went on a tour of all the animals in their big cages. We came to an enclosure full of cute little black monkeys, called Siamang Gibbons who normally live in Thailand, but are now almost extinct because the gibbons' natural habitat is being destroyed for farmers to grow palm oil. Standing there beside the caged monkeys, I wanted to know more about palm oil, so I looked up on my mobile phone all the things it is used for. Bread, cookies, biscuits, chocolate, pizza dough, noodles, ice-cream, and also shampoo, lipstick, soap, and washing powder. Then the children and I went back to the room where we were going to do our poetry workshop, and the children got out their lunchboxes, and in each one was bread, cookies, biscuits, and chocolate. The very things that are killing the gibbons. And this is how we live; our daily Western activities are destroying our own planet and its species. We all are living in a triangle between endangered nature, Western culture, and selfhood. How can we stay emotionally well and "happy," how can we thrive and flourish as individuals when we have to constantly live with the tragedies and ironies of our time? I live in a permanent state of ecological concern. An anxiety not just for the survival of the wild creatures, but for the very survival of nature herself, and indeed of human beings. The British scientist Stephen Hawking has said that humanity has 100 years left on planet Earth before we ourselves face extinction. The main issues we face are climate change and overpopulation of humans, which may increase our chances of becoming more warlike as we run out of oil, water, and other resources. And the great extinction of species that is currently happening, which puts the whole planetary ecosystem at risk. I am thinking here about the CONTACT Grace Wells
Disentangling Human Nature: Environment, Evolution and Our Existential Predicament
Nature Anthropology , 2024
Throughout our entire evolutionary history, the physical environment has played a significant role in shaping humans' subsistence adaptations. As early humans began to colonise novel biomes and construct ecological niches, their behavioural flexibility appeared as an unquestionable fact. During the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition, the shift from foraging to farming radically altered ecosystem services, resulting in increased exposure to zoonotic pathogens and the emergence of structural inequalities that pervade our current human condition in the Anthropocene epoch. The article seeks to use an anthropological biosocial analysis to explore the diverse evolutionary paths humans have taken, which in turn shape their relationships with the natural world. Given the enigmatic nature of human behavior, it is essential to examine it holistically to understand how different subsistence patterns (e.g., intensive agriculture, foraging, and horticulture) have influenced resilience and adaptation to environmental challenges.
AN ECOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF HUMAN NATURE
Currently, there is significant divergence in scholarly opinion as to whether or not human nature exists. In my PhD thesis, I argue for the existence of human nature. In so doing, I critique rival views on human nature and orthodox entry points into the issue. I also offer a partial explanation as to why such a strong divergence of expert opinion may exist, and argue that accuracy on the issue is important with respect to individual and collective problem solving. The view of human nature I defend is what I call ‘ecological.’ This construct aligns with the fact that biological systems exist at multiple levels of organization and relative to varying ecologies, developmental stages, frames of reference, and viable systems of orientation. Given this, I contend human nature is not something that ‘inheres’ and projects out from the organism; rather, human nature is diffuse and exists at simultaneous levels of biological organization, and at the intersection of genetic and epigenetic factors, past and present, and scientific truth and pragmatism.
Where the wild things are: environmental preservation and human nature
Biology & Philosophy, 2007
Environmental philosophers spend considerable time drawing the divide between humans and the rest of nature. Some argue that humans and our actions are unnatural. Others allow that humans are natural, but maintain that humans are nevertheless distinct. The motivation for distinguishing humans from the rest of nature is the desire to determine what aspects of the environment should be preserved. The standard view is that we should preserve those aspects of the environment outside of humans and our influence. This paper examines the standard view by asking two questions. First, are the suggested grounds for distinguishing humans from the rest of the environment viable? Second, is such a distinction even needed for determining what to preserve? The paper concludes that debates over whether humans are natural and whether humans are unique are unhelpful when deciding what to preserve.
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Ed. by H. Callan. Wiley., 2020
This entry begins by reviewing the definitions of “human”, “environment,” and “dichotomy”, consequently turning to the debates concerning the human–environment relationship. Synthesizing various studies, it supposes that advanced tool use, language, hypersociality, advanced cognition, morality, civilization, technology, and free will are distinctly human. However, other studies describe how nonhuman organisms share these same abilities. The biophysical or natural environment is often associated with all living and nonliving things that occur naturally. The environment also refers to ecosystems or habitats, including all living organisms or species. The concepts of the biophysical or natural environment are often opposed to the concepts of built or modified environment, which is artificial, that is, constructed or influenced by humans. The built or modified environment typically refers to structures or spaces from gardens to car parks. Today, one of the central questions in regard to human–environment dichotomies centers around the concept of sustainability.