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Open Dissertation - Svoboda - Final The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts DUTIES REGARDING NATURE: A KANTIAN APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS A Dissertation in Philosophy by Toby Svoboda © 2012 Toby Svoboda Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2012 ii The dissertation of Toby Svoboda was reviewed and approved* by the following: John Christman Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women’s Studies Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Nancy Tuana DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor of Philosophy Director of the Rock Ethics Institute Jennifer Mensch Assistant Professor of Philosophy Daniel Purdy Associate Professor of German and Slavic Languages and Literatures Shannon Sullivan Professor of Philosophy, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies Head of the Department of Philosophy *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT This dissertation develops a Kantian approach to environmental ethics. After critically examining traditional approaches in environmental ethics that recognize direct duties to non- human nature, I argue instead that human beings have indirect duties regarding non-human nature. Specifically, I contend that humans have a duty to abstain from causing unnecessary harm to non-human organisms, because doing so erodes one’s virtuous dispositions. In the Doctrine of Virtue, Immanuel Kant holds that human beings have duties “regarding” flora and non-human animals. These duties regarding nature arise from a direct duty a human being has to herself, namely the duty to increase her own moral perfection. I argue that such moral perfection is constituted by possessing traditionally recognized virtues, such as benevolence. Kant mentions animal cruelty and wanton destruction of flora as examples of actions that diminish one’s moral perfection and hence violate one’s duty to moral perfection. I argue that one ought to abstain from such actions because they cause unnecessary harm to organisms, a kind of action that erodes one’s virtuous dispositions and hence violates one’s duty to moral perfection. Moreover, benefiting a non-human organism can increase one’s moral perfection, because such beneficence is a way of cultivating virtues and hence fulfilling one’s duty to increase one’s own moral perfection. Kant’s account of organisms, primarily presented in the Critique of Judgment, provides a basis for understanding what it means to harm and benefit non-human organisms. According to this account, human investigators are warranted in taking organisms to be natural purposes, or entities that are natural yet also exhibit teleological features of design. In particular, Kant holds that to judge an organism as purposive is to judge it as an entity that ought to be a particular way. I use the term “natural goods” to refer to those states and functions that are constitutive of what iv an entity ought to be as a natural purpose. I argue that judgments about the natural goods of a given kind of organism are best exemplified by the assessment of relevant experts. This conception of natural goods helps ground duties regarding non-human organisms: since organisms have natural goods, it is possible to harm and benefit them by inhibiting or promoting the achievement of their natural goods. These considerations ground a robust, virtue-oriented environmental ethic that has significant advantages over traditional approaches to environmental ethics. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………….vi Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………vii Introduction: Kant and Environmental Ethics……………………………………....………….....1 Chapter 1: Traditional Approaches to Environmental Ethics………………………….….……..11 Chapter 2: Kantian Approaches to Animal Ethics and Environmental Ethics…………………..51 Chapter 3: Moral Perfection and Duties Regarding Nature…………………………...…………97 Chapter 4: Non-Human Organisms and Natural Goods………………………………………..140 Chapter 5: Developing a Kantian Environmental Ethic………………...………….…………..207 Conclusion: Advantages of the Kantian Environmental Virtue Ethic……………………….…251 Bibliography…….…….……………..…..………….…….......…………...…………….……..262 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 5.1………………………………………………………………………………….……220 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee—John Christman, Jennifer Mensch, Nancy Tuana, and Daniel Purdy—for their support and feedback during the various stages of this project. I would also like to thank David Agler, Joe Balay, Daniel Brunson, Marcus Dracos, Ryan Pollock, Kate Woodford, an anonymous reviewer for Ethics & the Environment, and audiences at Colby College, Fairfield University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of North Florida for comments and advice on various aspects of the research comprising this work. Finally, I am grateful both to the journal Ethics & the Environment and Indiana University Press for permission to include portions of a previously published paper in chapter one of this dissertation. Introduction: Kant and Environmental Ethics I have set out in this work to develop a Kantian approach to environmental ethics. This task immediately raises a question: why should we want an environmental ethic at all, much less a Kantian one? In this introduction, I briefly address both this question regarding the motivation of my project and a question regarding its methodology. I suggest both that an environmental ethic is needed in order to think through the difficult environmental problems we currently face and that a Kantian approach, although often neglected in the sub-discipline of environmental ethics, is promising for several reasons. Second, I briefly discuss the method of reflective equilibrium that I use in making the case for a Kantian approach to environmental ethics, suggesting that it is preferable to foundationalist approaches. Why Environmental Ethics? Human beings face serious environmental problems, such as those associated with climate change, loss of biodiversity, and air pollution.1 Moreover, it seems clear that these problems have various ethical dimensions, given that they threaten to increase human mortality rates, cause substantial harm to present and future generations, and exacerbate social and economic injustice.2 Moreover, the impact of human activities on the environment (e.g., ocean 1 See IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Osvaldo E. Sala et al., “Global Biodiversity Scenarios for the Year 2100,” Science 287, no. 5459 (2000); C. Arden Pope, Majid Ezzati, and Douglas W. Dockery, “Fine-Particulate Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in the United States,” New England Journal of Medicine 360, no. 4 (2009). 2 See John Broome, “The Ethics of Climate Change,” Scientific American 298, no. 6 (2008); Beate Ritz et al., “Ambient Air Pollution and Risk of Birth Defects in Southern California,” American Journal of Epidemiology 155, no. 1 (2002); Susan L. Cutter, “Race, Class and Environmental Justice,” Progress in Human Geography 19, no. 1 (1995); R. Stein, New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 2 acidification due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases) threatens to cause substantial harm and even extinction to some non-human entities.3 Yet it is often not immediately obvious either how we ought to address these environmental problems or how we ought to address disagreement regarding proposed responses to these problems. In particular, individuals might disagree on the nature of our moral obligations regarding non-human nature, including whether non-human entities count morally at all. In the most general sense, an environmental ethic provides a framework for thinking through our moral obligations vis-à-vis the natural environment. Such a framework seems desirable, given both the above-mentioned environmental problems and uncertainty regarding how to address them. Potentially, a well-crafted environmental ethic can assist us in answering difficult questions, such as who bears responsibility for certain kinds of environmental wrongs, whether we have duties to non-human entities, what weight such duties have compared to duties to human beings, and so on. Such an ethic could guide us in both policy-making and living ethical lives. That is, careful considerations about our obligations vis-à-vis the environment could help us both craft environmental policies and make individual choices that are ethically conscious. For example, it is a pressing question what policies ought to be adopted for dealing with climate change, but we may also ask whether it is morally permissible to clear cut a woodland on one’s property. An environmental ethic provides a way to think through such questions. There are many different forms an environmental ethic could take, of course. One controversial issue is whether an adequate environmental ethic can be grounded on traditional 3 O. Hoegh-Guldberg et al., “Coral Reefs under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification,” Science 318, no. 5857 (2007). 3 ethical theories or whether (as Richard Routley argues) a radically new approach is needed.4 I address this and other such issue throughout this work. Nonetheless, whatever a satisfactory environmental ethic turns out to be, such an ethic clearly seems to be worth having, given that we need to think through the difficult and ethically charged environmental problems human beings currently face. One important
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