Environmental Ethics

Blog Reflection:
Where do your environmental ethics lie? Anthropocentric? Biocentric? Ecocentric?

I have taken many philosophy classes and one that I enjoyed a lot was the Ethics of the Environment. That class was a huge mental journey for me and my initial feelings (which were anthropocentric) are now quite different...and I'd like to share a bit of that journey with you.

Anthropocentrism as defined in class was "seeing human beings as central (essential and most significant) on Earth." In my ethics class this was taken even further, meaning only humans have moral standing. When something has moral status it means they deserve the protection of "moral norms," has rights, can be morally wronged, and has intrinsic value (has value in and of itself, and it not to be valued simply for its uses). It was hard for me to break this belief within myself because, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, I was raised a Catholic...and one of the key teachings if that humans are above all the other animals because they alone have a soul, which grants only humans moral status and intrinsic value. But when I really started to think about it...I really and truly believe that animals and plants have intrinsic value too, not just instrumental value (the value of an object lies not in the object itself, but in the uses to which that object can be put). Right now I am not so sure about the "soul" part. But I am definitely not anthropocentric.

Biocentrism ascribes all life with ethical standing. I feel that there is a problem with it. This theory seems to give each individual life form moral status. But how could we survive if we were to give every tree and animal the same moral status as us? Are we not allowed to chop down a tree to build a house, or eat a cow or plant because it would be considered murder? This doesn't seem practical at all, or even similar to how nature works. In nature every organism within it takes and gives, in a balanced way.

Ecocentrism gives moral standing to the whole ecological system. Basically this means that individual members can be treated as resources as long as the community itself is respected. This holistic viewpoint makes much more sense to me. With ecocentrism I view humans as just another animal in the food web. We can take what we need, just as all the other animals and plants and organisms do. But the well-being of the entire system must be respected and taken care of.

I really feel that ecocentrism/deep ecology is becoming my new religion! I love philosophy because you get to take a critical look at why you believe what you believe...and often times there isn't a good basis for it, or that there is a better thing to believe in that you didn't know about, or you find out that what you believed in was having negative impacts you didn't realize. The hardest and bravest thing to do when you discover what you thought you knew was "wrong" is to embrace change; embrace a better way even if some people think you are crazy and your parents think you're going to Hell. The more people start to think the way you do, the less crazy you will be...and I'm proud to be some of the first.



Reference:
Desjardins, Joseph. Environmental Ethics (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning,
2006)