"What were your general reactions to Berry's claims about necessity (p 148)? What kind of variables should be considered when asking the question 'what is necessary for the best human life'?"As my response was rather long (it relates to some other things I've been working on, so I fleshed it out perhaps more than was necessary), I'm opting to publish it as a full post. If this causes any problems, I can easily relegate it to the comments section. To the point:
The word necessity in relation to discussion of animals and our environment
tends to evince a utilitarian sort of thinking. By asking “what is
necessary for an animal to live?” we ask what an animal needs, and such needs are often quickly subordinated underneath those we perceive (correctly or not) as our own. Necessity enters the conversation as a technical term used towards utilitarian-technological ends. All animals need food and water, and
a sort of stretched notion of shelter (a place to live and roam); all animals need
a sort of community (even the solitary ones, elsewise the species would go
extinct pretty quickly). This is what is necessary for an animal to survive, in
the meagre, brute sense of the word, and by this definition of what is
necessary, the cows on factory farms arguably have what they need. Up, of
course, to the point where they are killed, processes, and packaged. Their needs are provided or, and so our ours. This kind
of thinking is what Berry calls "technological heroism," but his use of the word necessity allows us to pose different questions regarding our interactions with animals and our environment.
Berry links the notion of what is
necessary to an organism to what it is like to be that organism, though he phrases this in slightly different terms. What
is necessary for an owl is determined by what it is like for an owl to exist in
and perceive the world as an owl-centric place. Any given owl has his or her own subjectivity. In calling attention to this, Berry changes the
kinds of questions we ask to determine what’s best for us: instead of asking
simply what is necessary for an animal to live or survive, we must ask what is
necessary for each creature to do “on
its own behalf” and in its “own domus,
or home” in order to live. The animal is wrapped up in his or her own intentional responses to his or her environment. While our perspective must be privileged (elsewise we set ourselves
up for own diminishment, if not destruction), we still must, in order to preserve the
wildness and wilderness that are themselves necessary for human life, be
mindful of other animals’ needs, which are met through active doings and which are particular to the place where they live.
But can we know what it’s like to
live as an owl?[1]
The project of stewardship (and of conservation, for that matter) depends on
our ability to adequately answer this. Considering how Berry accurately, I
think, embeds us within nature, our capability (or lack thereof) to know what is
necessary for any number of animals complicates our attempts to conserve and
cultivate the wild environments we need in order for us to live the best human
life possible. Berry encourages us to phrase questions of necessity for humans
and other animals in a manner that disrupts a primarily technological ideology,
forcing us to view animals as having their own perspectives and dependencies upon
the environment which we share. But Berry unfortunately does not give us a full
account of how we might balance our own considerations with those of our animal
counterparts, or even a an account of how we might come to know their
perspectives, both of which will be needed if we are to develop an ethical system.
[1]
I’m pretty taken (though not unreservedly) by an essay by Thomas Nagel, titled
“What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, part of which argues (to put it briefly and in
broad terms) that the internal mental states of other animals are utterly
inaccessible to us, and that we cannot know what it is like to be another animal. To illustrate this
point: imagine perceiving the world through echolocation.
Here is a pdf of Nagel's famous paper if anyone is interested. Its fairly short so I definitely recommend checking it out.
ReplyDeletehttp://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1000/Nagel.pdf
Michael, thanks for taking the time to respond. As someone who is also somewhat sympathetic to Nagel's argument in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", I think I see what you are getting at. Please correct me if I have mischaracterized your view.
ReplyDeleteYour main point seems to be: If Nagel's argument is correct, then we are incapable of building the kind of ethical system Berry hints at. We are incapable because we cannot ask what is necessary for each creature to do “on its own behalf” and in its “own domus, or home” in order to live.... This initially seems to leave us in an unfortunate position for establishing an environmentally conscious ethics. However, even if we accept Nagel's claims in their entirety (that we cannot know what it is like to be another species), I do not think this prevents us from creating an environmental ethics. Although, I do think it may prove a difficulty for Berry's suggested approach. I propose that instead of trying to figure out what the good life is for each species, we try to maximize (1) the internal coherency of an ecosystem and (2) its coherency with the global network of ecosystems. (I do not intend to suggest one is more important than another at this time.) By coherency, I do not mean that we should maximize stability, diversity, or some other ideal that many environmentalists propose in all cases. I cannot remember the exact author expressed this idea, but we must recognize that the extinction of all life is as natural as the flourishing of some life. I think it is fundamental to the survival of our race that we recognize that nature changes. What this means for 'coherency' is that it is not our understanding of what is "original" or "native" in a place that makes it coherent, but the relations and interactions that take place in it and with other ecosystems. Instead of focusing on identifying the needs of many species, this proposed approach would focus on the ecosystem as an open, unfinished system.
However, it may be argued that I am not solving the issue and only moving it to a different level of organization.
What are other's opinions on the effect of Nagel's argument on Berry's suggestions? Does shifting our concern to the level of ecosystems aid us?