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Nuclear waste, obligations to the future, and social choice.
The bus example.
very long journey.
Suppose we consider a bus which, hopefully, is to make a
Early in the journey of the bus someone consigns on it,
to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explo
sive gas.
This is packaged in a thin container, which as the consigner well
knows may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is con
signed, and certainly will not do so if the bus should strike any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very hot,
if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort commonly found
on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some passenger should interfere
deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or perhaps try to steal some of the
freight.
If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably
kill at least some of the people on the bus, while others could be maimed or
contract serious diseases.
Most of us would condemn such an action.
parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner of the
He might say that it is not certain that the
gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the bus or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however would
normally be seen as ludicrous.
Suppose he says that it is his own pressing needs which justify his action.
The firm he owns, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
straits, and couldn't afford to produce a better container (even if it knew how to
make one).
If the firm goes broke, he and his family will suffer, his employees
will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole village, through
loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor of the village whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
suffer especially.
Few people would accept this story even if correct, as justification.
Even
where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is
concerned one is usually thought not to be entitled to simply transfer the burden
of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
from one’s own chosen life style and the transfer of costs creates a risk of
serious harm to others (the transfer principle).
�2.
The nuclear comparison.
One of the major problems arising from the use of nuclear
power is the disposal of highly radioactive wastes which
must be segregated from the biosphere for periods on the
order of a million years (Ringwood 78, p.l).
The wastes are highly toxic and will be spread around the world if large-scale
nuclear development goes ahead as planned.
Yet there is no method of packaging
them whose safety has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt and which we can
be confident will be generally used.
Despite recent ’new strategies for safe
disposal of nuclear waste’, it remains true^ that
there is at present no generally accepted means by which
high level waste can be permanently isolated from the
environment and remain safe for very long periods. (Fox Report, p.110).
It was presumably largely for this sort of reason that the Fox Report endorsed
the conclusion of the British (Flowers) Report ’with respect to nuclear waste’
namely:-
There should be no commitment to a large programme of
nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated
beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure
the safe containment of long-lived radioactive waste for
the indefinite future (Fox Report, p.189; our italics).
- a reliable method, the Report should have added, whose commercial viability and
use is assured.
example.
The need for these further conditions can be seen from the bus
The consigner can hardly justify his action as regards the people on
the bus, the people of the future, by saying that a better container is too
expensive, or that he does have a strategy for producing or theory which will
enable him to produce a superior container if he has failed to use the method.
It is thus a non sequitur to argue as Ringwood does on the basis of his
proposed strategy for the safe disposal of radwastes (i.e. high-level nuclear
wastes) that the radwaste problem is no reasonable ground upon which to curtail
use of nuclear power:
The principle conclusion of this book is that the problem
of isolating high level nuclear wastes from the biosphere
can be solved. Although there may be other objections to
the use of nuclear power, the radwaste problem cannot reasonably
be cited in justification of policies to abandon its use
(78, Ringwood’s italics).
Even if the premiss that the problem can be solved had been established — it
hasn’t
at all^ - the no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion in no way follows.
There is a large gap between the theoretical possibility of a method of safe
storage (hardly an important issue in the nuclear debate) and the availability of
a commercial containment method whose reliability has been demonstrated beyond
�3.
reasonable doubt and whose general use can be reasonably assumed.
It is the
latter that is required for Ringwood’s no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion;
but of the latter Ringwood’s strategy gives no assurance.
There is in fact
little reason to believe that nuclear pollution will be treated in a different
fashion from other forms of pollution, where the availability of more satisfactory
methods of control is by no means sufficient to guarantee their effective employ
ment, especially if they are expensive.
It is methodologically unsound to ignore
social, ethical and political factors and to regard the radwaste problem as a
purely technological one which can be classed as solved should a theoretical
solution with practical application possibilities be reached.
The practical
likelihood, even given (what we lack) a disposal method proven safe beyond
reasonable doubt, remains — that nuclear wastes will not be adequately contained,
with the result that nuclear power will impose serious costs and risks on future
people who do not benefit.
For nuclear fission generates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years,
but even with the breeder reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only
150 years.
Thus 30,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear
significant risks,'without any corresponding benefits, resulting from the provision
of the extravagant energy use of only 5 generations or so.
Like the consigner in
the bus example, contemporary industrial society proposes, in extricating itself
from a mess arising from its own life style - the creation of economies dependent
on an abundance of non-renewable energy which is limited in physical supply - to
pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
energy benefits.
The solution may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable
changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just
as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties.
For these reasons the nuclear energy option is, like the consigner’s
action morally unacceptable.
What makes matters worse is that present industrial
society has clear alternatives to its nuclear choice, which is made essentially
to avoid changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to protect the interests
of those who profit from them.
Obligations to the future.
One way of trying to escape the conclusion that
present large-scale nuclear development involves serious injustice with respect
to people of the distant future is to deny, as the occasional philosopher has,
that there are moral obligations to remotely future people.
But the view that
there are no such obligations, that we are free to do as we like with respect
to future people, is a very difficult one to sustain.
Would scientists, for
example, in the course of conducting an experiment, be entitled to do something,
say release a disease-carrying organism with a very long incubation period, which
�4.
while not affecting the present, could cause death and disease for many future
people, for example?
Most people would say they certainly are not.
Nevertheless
’The future can take case of itself;
why should we worry about it, we have enough
problems’ is also a common attitude.
But it is not as if in the nuclear case we
are simp1y leaving the future alone to take care of itself.
We are causally
influencing it and in doing so acquire moral responsibilities with respect to
future people, namely the obligation to take account of people affected and their
interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the
probability of our actions causing harm, and to see that we do not act so as to
rob future people of the chance of a good life — and a satisfactory environment.
That there are obligations to the distant future, which follows logically from
examples, such as that of scientists who act wrongly in deliberately or carelessly
damaging people displaced in time, may be argued, more generally, on the basis of
the spatial analogy (that the temporal dimension is like spatial dimensions and
remoteness in space does not eliminate, or substantially diminish, obligation),
or on the basis of ethical theories, and general principles common to such theories.
The main modern theories of obligation, e.g. utilitarian, contractual, intuitionistic,
when properly applied, converge to show that there are moral obligations to people
in the distant future of the same sort that there are to present people.
(Thus
the rejection of nuclear development as morally unacceptable does not depend on a
particular ethical theory, but uses only ground common to the main theories.)
The convergence of theories may be accounted for in terms of conditions of adequacy
an ethical theory should meet.
The principles of obligation of such a theory
should be universalisable or lawlike in that they do not make exceptions for
particular times or places or peoples (such as those of contemporary industrial
society):
to make exceptions would be to accept unfairness, and so injustice.
Thus the temporal position of a person cannot affect that person’s entitlement to
just and fair treatment;
these are the same sorts of general obligations to future
people as to present.
Engineering and economic comparisons and assessments of different energy options
are usually inadequate because they neglect these general features of obligation.
Just as the fact that the consigner and his immediate environment will benefit
from sending the parcel does not show it is morally acceptable, so arguments for
nuclear power based on alleged economic benefits for the present, or a favourable
benefit-risk analysis, do not even begin to show that it is morally acceptable.
Economics and engineering must (like law) operate within the framework of moral
constraints, not determine those constraints.
�5.
Uncertainty arguments*
Elements of uncertainty or indeterminacy in a situation
(especially in our knowledge of the situation) provide no exemptions from general
obligations, any more than they upset or modify the operation of general physical
laws.
It is commonly argued, however that we cannot really be expected to take
account of the interests of future people, because the damage to the future from
nuclear waste is by no means certain, we cannot be sure that future people will
not develop a way of coping with the problem or will care about the risk anyway.
Aren’t we being asked to forego tangible benefits for the present for the sake of
avoiding a merely speculative risk of harm to people we do not even know will exist?
This sort of argument may seem initially plausible, but a little reflection on
examples, such as the bus example, shows that it is mistaken.
It is like the
consigner saying that there is nothing wrong in his sending his parcel, since it
is not certain the gas will escape, or that there will be anybody on the bus when
it does, or that the people on the bus may think of a way of coping with the problem,
or may not care anyway.
Can he really be expected to forego tangible benefits for
himself and his family just to avoid speculative harm to the possibly non-existent
passengers?
The answer of course is yes.
The damage to the passengers does not
have to be certain or even probable - it is enough that a significant risk of
serious harm is imposed on the unconsenting and uninvolved passengers.
In the nuclear case it is clear that a significant risk will be imposed on
the future.
The circumstances in which nuclear waste disposal could be improper
or ineffective are only too easy to envisage, and must be considered real risks
with a real evidential basis, not merely idle speculation or science-fiction
possibility.
And uncertainty about the future is not so great as this line of
argument likes to make out - there is uncertainty about many details of little moral
consequence concerning the future, such as which girls’ names will be used commonly
in 100 years, but we do have good reason to believe, especially if we consider
3000 years of history, that future people will have basic needs and desires rather
like our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life, and that
their lives will not be improved by an increased incidence of disease and cancer
from increased radiation.
written off in this way:
Moral conflict arguments.
The legitimate interests of future people cannot be
These uncertainty arguments are moral cop-outs.
The alternative to disputing obligations to the future
is to appeal to overriding obligations involving the present (which induce
situations where obligations conflict).
According to moral conflict arguments,
nuclear development does have its morally undesirable aspects, but the only
practical alternatives to nuclear development are morally even worse.
Observe
that such arguments are only satisfactory provided the options presented are
�6.
genuine and exhaustive, all practicable alternatives being considered and shown
to be worse than the option under consideration:
this necessary condition is not satisfied.)
in the nuclear development case
Moral conflict arguments are commonly
advanced in favour of nuclear development, some alleging competing and overriding
duties to future people, and some analogous duties to present people.
The main (and representative) argument of the last class, laying stress on
duties to present people, is the Poverty Argument, according to which there is an
overriding obligation to the poor, both of the third world and the industrialized
countries who, according to the argument, will suffer or be denied the opportunity
to reach affluence if nuclear development does not proceed.
In neither case does
the argument stand up to examination.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor
provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and
engineers, and creates negligible employment.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change
in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem something which may help explain why it is attractive to many of the military
governing elites of these countries.
The poverty argument then — like many modern economic arguments for development
which appeal to the way in which development will, allegedly, assist the poor - is
a fraud.
Nuclear energy will not be used, except incidentally, to help the poor.
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known
energy conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy
sources, alternatives which are morally acceptable and socially preferable to
nuclear development, and which have far better prospects for helping the poor.
The other, major, moral conflict argument appeals to a set of supposedly
overriding and competing obligations to present and future people.
We have, it is
said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our
culture has developed.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power,
without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible,
the lights of our civilization will go out, our valuable institutions and traditions
will fall into decay or be swept away.
Future people also will be the losers.
�The assumptions upon which this Lights-going-out Argument is based are
untenable.
It appears to assume that existing high-energy consumption society
is uniformly and uniquely valuable and that it cannot be directed towards energy
conservation or alternative energy sources without utter collapse.
But no enormou:
reduction in energy use, and perhaps little in real welfare, is needed to obviate
the need for nuclear power in the shorter term, and alternative energy strategies
to nuclear will have, in any case, to be adopted for the longer term anyway.
High
rates of energy use may be necessary to maintain the political and economic status
quo, but they are scarcely necessary to maintain what is really valuable in our
society, much of which we inherited from a past with a vastly lower energy con
sumption, and much of which might well be better fostered in lower (energy) con
sumption society with less concentration of political and economic power.
Not
only are the extravagant levels of energy consumption upon which the "need" for
nuclear power is premissed unnecessary to maintain what is valuable, but there is
some reason to believe they are positively inimical to doing so.
Nuclear develop
ment may help in passing on to future generations some of the worse aspects of
our society, the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature and latent authori
tarianism, while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and
those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost
or diminished.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society,
presumably, that we have an obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible
enhance.
Both moral conflict escape routes are closed then, because the arguments
depend on false contrasts, ignore practicable alternatives which are not morally
worse than nuclear power, and in painting their picture of inevitability, vastly
understate the extent of available social choice.
It is like the consigner of
the parcel arguing that if he does not send his parcel his family and the village
will starve, when in fact there appear to be viable, but perhaps less profitable,
alternatives he has not troubled to consider or investigate seriously
Alternative energy options.
The future energy option that is most frequently
contrasted with nuclear, that based on coal, is not without ethical problems.
Certainly there is no radioactive waste disposal problem, and other important
grounds for moral and political concern over extensive reliance on nuclear energy
are removed, namely problems arising from the real possibilities of proliferation
of nuclear weapons, of deliberate release or threat of release of radioactive
materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion, and of catastrophic releases
of radiation or of radioactive fuel or waste into the environment following an
�accident such as reactor melt-down, and from security measures adopted to reduce
such eventualities.
But the coal-based option carries nonetheless serious
costs and risks both to the environment and to health — because of the likelihood
of severe pollution and associated damaging phenomena such as acid rain and
atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip
mining, all of which will result from use of coal in meeting very high projected
consumption figures.
Such an option would also fail, it seems, to satisfy the
transfer principle, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries
for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some contemporary
users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
These are the conventional options and a third is often added which emphasizes
soft or benign technologies, such as those of solar energy.
However the fundamental
choice, such options usually neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
both the restructuring of production, and change of consumption, away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.^ It is not just a matter of deciding in which way
to meet unexamined goals but also a matter of examining the goals and underlying
values.
That is, we are not just faced with the question of comparing different
technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of
nonsumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than
hard technologies;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining
those alleged needs and the cost of society that creates them.
It is not just
a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived
of us inevitable and unchangeable.
There are solar ways of producing unnecessary
trivia no one really wants and of squandering energy, as well as nuclear ways.
This is not to deny that softer options may be superior to the ethically unacceptable
features of the others.
But it is doubtful that any technology however benign in principle will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for future people if it is expected to meet
limitless and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology may well be used in ways which create costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being transmitted
to them.
Consider, to take one important example, the effect on the world’s
forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of
methonal or of electricity by woodchipping, as already planned by forest authorities
in California and contemplated by many other energy organisations.
Few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, but the un
restricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar
energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands would have a very damaging
effect on the world’s already hard pressed natural forests.
Some of us do not
�9.
want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on
- to the future a world largely
devoid of natural forests and accordingly much impoverished in fauna and flora,
any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by
coal products.
In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important
though this is - without any more basic structural and social changes is inadequate.
Social options.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to
change a social structure which promotes consumerism and an economic structure
which encourages the use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.
This
involves, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are
fortunate enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine
over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant
or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to
obtain the reward of consumer goods and services.
A society in which social rewards
are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather
than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is
bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A
production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created
and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The social change option is a hard option, but it seems the only way to avoid
passing on serious costs and risks to the future5
and there are not only ethical
grounds, but ecological reasons for choosing it.
Conventional technology-oriented
discussions of energy options and of how to meet future energy "needs” obscures
the social change option, in part because the option questions values underlying
current social arrangements.
The conventional discussion proceeds by taking
alleged demand (often restated as wants or needs) as unchallengeable,
and the
issue to be one which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and
demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces
the needs is similarly taken as unchallengable and unchangeable.
The social
changes that the option requires will be strongly resisted because they mean
changes in current social organisation and power structure, and to the extent that
the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic
arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds
g
by misrepresenting and often obscuring it.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
2.
Some leading proponents of nuclear development admit the absence of
satisfactory storage and disposal methods;
others do not.
Some
of the newer strategies for waste disposal, e.g. that promoted by
Cohen 77 fail, conspicuously, to meet conditions of adequacy on
disposal (see Routley and Routley 78, footnote 1).
Ringwood’s
new strategy, in 78, was immediately rejected by some of the
pronuclear establishment both as too expensive (even allowing
Ringwood’s optimistic costguestimates) and as unnecessary, which
does not augur well for its use.
Yet Ringwood cast serious doubt
on the adequacy of alternative disposal strategies, notably
immobilisation of wastes in glass and in supercalcine.
All Ringwood has shown conclusively is that he can
create an artificial equivalent of a uranium one-body
(Hallam 79)
What Ringwood’s ’strategy for radwaste disposal’ amounts to is a
further possible method of treating radwaste, with significant gaps
in the argument, a considerable lack of experimental and practical
support, no commercial feasibility studies, etc: see Martin 78 and
Hallam 79.
3.
It depends on several processes whose large-scale commercial viability
has very definitely not been shown beyond reasonable doubt, including
reprocessing (Fox Report, p.29).
It appears to be far too expensive
for the nuclear industry, and certainly for poorer nations that have
embarked on nuclear power projects.
There are moreover reasons for
thinking that governments may not want or favour permanent irretrievable
disposal methods; they may want to keep open their options for
employing waste components either for military purposes or for use in
breeder reactors or elsewhere.
4.
On alternative technology and softer energy options, see especially
Lovins 77; also Lovins 76.
For criticism of Lovins’ comparative
neglect of social alternatives, see Martin 77 (and Lovins’ reply
thereto).
5.
The already very serious situation of the world’s forests, especially
the wet tropical forests, is not sufficiently widely appreciated.
It is a commonplace reflection, however, among rainforest botanists
and ecologists that nearly all tropical lowland rainforest and much
highlevel rainforest will have been cut over by about the year 2000.
Moreover such forests cannot at present be utilised on a sustained
yield basis or as a renewable resource (see, e.g. p.219 of Prance and
Elias 77).
Worse, there are now few forestry operations anywhere in
the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the
sense of the renewal of all their values.
In many temperate regions
too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been
exceeded.
The addition of a major further demand source - that for
energy, whether advertised as part of a ’’soft” energy path or otherwise and especially one which shows every sign of being not readily limitable,
on top of the present sources is a development which anyone with a
realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations, who is also
properly concerned about the longterm integrity of the forests and
remaining natural communities, must regard with considerable alarm.
�6.
The transmission principle, that one should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it, is a
corollary of the transfer principle - applied in the bus example and
suggested as a necessary condition on energy options - that to be
morally acceptable
a course of action should not involve the transfer
of significant cost and risks onto uninvolved parties who are not
beneficiaries.
For if we violated the transmission principle, there
would be a significant transfer of costs, contradicting the transfer
principle.
The transmission principle can be independently argued for,
e.g. on the basis of contract (and other) theories of obligation.
7.
Thus it is argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co.,
that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... and
that it would be authoritarian to stop them satisfying these wants.
The
argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs
and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of many
such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework
level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as
individual choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social
framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices and
to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
commercial and political advantage.
8.
This paper draws on material from Routley and Routley 78 and 79 where
fuller discussion of many of the topics covered, especially the question
of obligations to the future and uncertainty arguments, may be found.
�REFERENCES
B.L. Cohen, ’The disposal of radioactive wastes from fission reactors’,
Scientific American 236 (June 1977) 22-31.
Flowers Report: Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of
the British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, London, 1976.
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
J.R. Hallam, ’Synroc or Cinroc? *, (Wn tetion 4 (2-3) (1979)
4-5.
A. Lovins, ’Energy strategy: the road not taken:’, Foreign Affairs
55 (1) (October 1976) 65-96.
A. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1977.
B. Martin, ’Is alternative technology enough?’, Chain Reaction
3 (2) (1977) 17-21.
B. Martin, ’Call for research into Synroc’, The Canberra Times,
December 6, 1978, p.15.
G.T. Prance and T.S. Elias (editors), Extinction is Forever, New York
Botanic Garden, 1977.
A.E. Ringwood, Safe Disposal of High Level Nuclear Reactor Wastes:
A New strategy, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978.
R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’,
Inquiry 21 (1978) 133-179.
R. and V. Routley, ’Some ethical aspects of energy options’, in
Energy and People: Social Implications of Different Energy Futures,
edited by M. Diesendorf, Society for Social Responsibility in Science
(A.C.T.), Canberra, 1979.
�
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Nuclear waste, obligations to the future, and social choice.
The bus example.
very long journey.
Suppose we consider a bus which, hopefully, is to make a
Early in the journey of the bus someone consigns on it,
to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explo
sive gas.
This is packaged in a thin container, which as the consigner well
knows may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is con
signed, and certainly will not do so if the bus should strike any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very hot,
if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort commonly found
on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some passenger should interfere
deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or perhaps try to steal some of the
freight.
If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably
kill at least some of the people on the bus, while others could be maimed or
contract serious diseases.
Most of us would condemn such an action.
parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner of the
He might say that it is not certain that the
gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the bus or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however would
normally be seen as ludicrous.
Suppose he says that it is his own pressing needs which justify his action.
The firm he owns, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
straits, and couldn't afford to produce a better container (even if it knew how to
make one).
If the firm goes broke, he and his family will suffer, his employees
will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole village, through
loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor of the village whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
suffer especially.
Few people would accept this story even if correct, as justification.
Even
where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is
concerned one is usually thought not to be entitled to simply transfer the burden
of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
from one’s own chosen life style and the transfer of costs creates a risk of
serious harm to others (the transfer principle).
2.
The nuclear comparison.
One of the major problems arising from the use of nuclear
power is the disposal of highly radioactive wastes which
must be segregated from the biosphere for periods on the
order of a million years (Ringwood 78, p.l).
The wastes are highly toxic and will be spread around the world if large-scale
nuclear development goes ahead as planned.
Yet there is no method of packaging
them whose safety has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt and which we can
be confident will be generally used.
Despite recent ’new strategies for safe
disposal of nuclear waste’, it remains true^ that
there is at present no generally accepted means by which
high level waste can be permanently isolated from the
environment and remain safe for very long periods. (Fox Report, p.110).
It was presumably largely for this sort of reason that the Fox Report endorsed
the conclusion of the British (Flowers) Report ’with respect to nuclear waste’
namely:-
There should be no commitment to a large programme of
nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated
beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure
the safe containment of long-lived radioactive waste for
the indefinite future (Fox Report, p.189; our italics).
- a reliable method, the Report should have added, whose commercial viability and
use is assured.
example.
The need for these further conditions can be seen from the bus
The consigner can hardly justify his action as regards the people on
the bus, the people of the future, by saying that a better container is too
expensive, or that he does have a strategy for producing or theory which will
enable him to produce a superior container if he has failed to use the method.
It is thus a non sequitur to argue as Ringwood does on the basis of his
proposed strategy for the safe disposal of radwastes (i.e. high-level nuclear
wastes) that the radwaste problem is no reasonable ground upon which to curtail
use of nuclear power:
The principle conclusion of this book is that the problem
of isolating high level nuclear wastes from the biosphere
can be solved. Although there may be other objections to
the use of nuclear power, the radwaste problem cannot reasonably
be cited in justification of policies to abandon its use
(78, Ringwood’s italics).
Even if the premiss that the problem can be solved had been established — it
hasn’t
at all^ - the no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion in no way follows.
There is a large gap between the theoretical possibility of a method of safe
storage (hardly an important issue in the nuclear debate) and the availability of
a commercial containment method whose reliability has been demonstrated beyond
3.
reasonable doubt and whose general use can be reasonably assumed.
It is the
latter that is required for Ringwood’s no-abandonment-of-nuclear-power conclusion;
but of the latter Ringwood’s strategy gives no assurance.
There is in fact
little reason to believe that nuclear pollution will be treated in a different
fashion from other forms of pollution, where the availability of more satisfactory
methods of control is by no means sufficient to guarantee their effective employ
ment, especially if they are expensive.
It is methodologically unsound to ignore
social, ethical and political factors and to regard the radwaste problem as a
purely technological one which can be classed as solved should a theoretical
solution with practical application possibilities be reached.
The practical
likelihood, even given (what we lack) a disposal method proven safe beyond
reasonable doubt, remains — that nuclear wastes will not be adequately contained,
with the result that nuclear power will impose serious costs and risks on future
people who do not benefit.
For nuclear fission generates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years,
but even with the breeder reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only
150 years.
Thus 30,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear
significant risks,'without any corresponding benefits, resulting from the provision
of the extravagant energy use of only 5 generations or so.
Like the consigner in
the bus example, contemporary industrial society proposes, in extricating itself
from a mess arising from its own life style - the creation of economies dependent
on an abundance of non-renewable energy which is limited in physical supply - to
pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
energy benefits.
The solution may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable
changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just
as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties.
For these reasons the nuclear energy option is, like the consigner’s
action morally unacceptable.
What makes matters worse is that present industrial
society has clear alternatives to its nuclear choice, which is made essentially
to avoid changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to protect the interests
of those who profit from them.
Obligations to the future.
One way of trying to escape the conclusion that
present large-scale nuclear development involves serious injustice with respect
to people of the distant future is to deny, as the occasional philosopher has,
that there are moral obligations to remotely future people.
But the view that
there are no such obligations, that we are free to do as we like with respect
to future people, is a very difficult one to sustain.
Would scientists, for
example, in the course of conducting an experiment, be entitled to do something,
say release a disease-carrying organism with a very long incubation period, which
4.
while not affecting the present, could cause death and disease for many future
people, for example?
Most people would say they certainly are not.
Nevertheless
’The future can take case of itself;
why should we worry about it, we have enough
problems’ is also a common attitude.
But it is not as if in the nuclear case we
are simp1y leaving the future alone to take care of itself.
We are causally
influencing it and in doing so acquire moral responsibilities with respect to
future people, namely the obligation to take account of people affected and their
interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the
probability of our actions causing harm, and to see that we do not act so as to
rob future people of the chance of a good life — and a satisfactory environment.
That there are obligations to the distant future, which follows logically from
examples, such as that of scientists who act wrongly in deliberately or carelessly
damaging people displaced in time, may be argued, more generally, on the basis of
the spatial analogy (that the temporal dimension is like spatial dimensions and
remoteness in space does not eliminate, or substantially diminish, obligation),
or on the basis of ethical theories, and general principles common to such theories.
The main modern theories of obligation, e.g. utilitarian, contractual, intuitionistic,
when properly applied, converge to show that there are moral obligations to people
in the distant future of the same sort that there are to present people.
(Thus
the rejection of nuclear development as morally unacceptable does not depend on a
particular ethical theory, but uses only ground common to the main theories.)
The convergence of theories may be accounted for in terms of conditions of adequacy
an ethical theory should meet.
The principles of obligation of such a theory
should be universalisable or lawlike in that they do not make exceptions for
particular times or places or peoples (such as those of contemporary industrial
society):
to make exceptions would be to accept unfairness, and so injustice.
Thus the temporal position of a person cannot affect that person’s entitlement to
just and fair treatment;
these are the same sorts of general obligations to future
people as to present.
Engineering and economic comparisons and assessments of different energy options
are usually inadequate because they neglect these general features of obligation.
Just as the fact that the consigner and his immediate environment will benefit
from sending the parcel does not show it is morally acceptable, so arguments for
nuclear power based on alleged economic benefits for the present, or a favourable
benefit-risk analysis, do not even begin to show that it is morally acceptable.
Economics and engineering must (like law) operate within the framework of moral
constraints, not determine those constraints.
5.
Uncertainty arguments*
Elements of uncertainty or indeterminacy in a situation
(especially in our knowledge of the situation) provide no exemptions from general
obligations, any more than they upset or modify the operation of general physical
laws.
It is commonly argued, however that we cannot really be expected to take
account of the interests of future people, because the damage to the future from
nuclear waste is by no means certain, we cannot be sure that future people will
not develop a way of coping with the problem or will care about the risk anyway.
Aren’t we being asked to forego tangible benefits for the present for the sake of
avoiding a merely speculative risk of harm to people we do not even know will exist?
This sort of argument may seem initially plausible, but a little reflection on
examples, such as the bus example, shows that it is mistaken.
It is like the
consigner saying that there is nothing wrong in his sending his parcel, since it
is not certain the gas will escape, or that there will be anybody on the bus when
it does, or that the people on the bus may think of a way of coping with the problem,
or may not care anyway.
Can he really be expected to forego tangible benefits for
himself and his family just to avoid speculative harm to the possibly non-existent
passengers?
The answer of course is yes.
The damage to the passengers does not
have to be certain or even probable - it is enough that a significant risk of
serious harm is imposed on the unconsenting and uninvolved passengers.
In the nuclear case it is clear that a significant risk will be imposed on
the future.
The circumstances in which nuclear waste disposal could be improper
or ineffective are only too easy to envisage, and must be considered real risks
with a real evidential basis, not merely idle speculation or science-fiction
possibility.
And uncertainty about the future is not so great as this line of
argument likes to make out - there is uncertainty about many details of little moral
consequence concerning the future, such as which girls’ names will be used commonly
in 100 years, but we do have good reason to believe, especially if we consider
3000 years of history, that future people will have basic needs and desires rather
like our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life, and that
their lives will not be improved by an increased incidence of disease and cancer
from increased radiation.
written off in this way:
Moral conflict arguments.
The legitimate interests of future people cannot be
These uncertainty arguments are moral cop-outs.
The alternative to disputing obligations to the future
is to appeal to overriding obligations involving the present (which induce
situations where obligations conflict).
According to moral conflict arguments,
nuclear development does have its morally undesirable aspects, but the only
practical alternatives to nuclear development are morally even worse.
Observe
that such arguments are only satisfactory provided the options presented are
6.
genuine and exhaustive, all practicable alternatives being considered and shown
to be worse than the option under consideration:
this necessary condition is not satisfied.)
in the nuclear development case
Moral conflict arguments are commonly
advanced in favour of nuclear development, some alleging competing and overriding
duties to future people, and some analogous duties to present people.
The main (and representative) argument of the last class, laying stress on
duties to present people, is the Poverty Argument, according to which there is an
overriding obligation to the poor, both of the third world and the industrialized
countries who, according to the argument, will suffer or be denied the opportunity
to reach affluence if nuclear development does not proceed.
In neither case does
the argument stand up to examination.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor
provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and
engineers, and creates negligible employment.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change
in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem something which may help explain why it is attractive to many of the military
governing elites of these countries.
The poverty argument then — like many modern economic arguments for development
which appeal to the way in which development will, allegedly, assist the poor - is
a fraud.
Nuclear energy will not be used, except incidentally, to help the poor.
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known
energy conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy
sources, alternatives which are morally acceptable and socially preferable to
nuclear development, and which have far better prospects for helping the poor.
The other, major, moral conflict argument appeals to a set of supposedly
overriding and competing obligations to present and future people.
We have, it is
said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our
culture has developed.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power,
without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible,
the lights of our civilization will go out, our valuable institutions and traditions
will fall into decay or be swept away.
Future people also will be the losers.
The assumptions upon which this Lights-going-out Argument is based are
untenable.
It appears to assume that existing high-energy consumption society
is uniformly and uniquely valuable and that it cannot be directed towards energy
conservation or alternative energy sources without utter collapse.
But no enormou:
reduction in energy use, and perhaps little in real welfare, is needed to obviate
the need for nuclear power in the shorter term, and alternative energy strategies
to nuclear will have, in any case, to be adopted for the longer term anyway.
High
rates of energy use may be necessary to maintain the political and economic status
quo, but they are scarcely necessary to maintain what is really valuable in our
society, much of which we inherited from a past with a vastly lower energy con
sumption, and much of which might well be better fostered in lower (energy) con
sumption society with less concentration of political and economic power.
Not
only are the extravagant levels of energy consumption upon which the "need" for
nuclear power is premissed unnecessary to maintain what is valuable, but there is
some reason to believe they are positively inimical to doing so.
Nuclear develop
ment may help in passing on to future generations some of the worse aspects of
our society, the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature and latent authori
tarianism, while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and
those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost
or diminished.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society,
presumably, that we have an obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible
enhance.
Both moral conflict escape routes are closed then, because the arguments
depend on false contrasts, ignore practicable alternatives which are not morally
worse than nuclear power, and in painting their picture of inevitability, vastly
understate the extent of available social choice.
It is like the consigner of
the parcel arguing that if he does not send his parcel his family and the village
will starve, when in fact there appear to be viable, but perhaps less profitable,
alternatives he has not troubled to consider or investigate seriously
Alternative energy options.
The future energy option that is most frequently
contrasted with nuclear, that based on coal, is not without ethical problems.
Certainly there is no radioactive waste disposal problem, and other important
grounds for moral and political concern over extensive reliance on nuclear energy
are removed, namely problems arising from the real possibilities of proliferation
of nuclear weapons, of deliberate release or threat of release of radioactive
materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion, and of catastrophic releases
of radiation or of radioactive fuel or waste into the environment following an
accident such as reactor melt-down, and from security measures adopted to reduce
such eventualities.
But the coal-based option carries nonetheless serious
costs and risks both to the environment and to health — because of the likelihood
of severe pollution and associated damaging phenomena such as acid rain and
atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip
mining, all of which will result from use of coal in meeting very high projected
consumption figures.
Such an option would also fail, it seems, to satisfy the
transfer principle, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries
for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some contemporary
users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
These are the conventional options and a third is often added which emphasizes
soft or benign technologies, such as those of solar energy.
However the fundamental
choice, such options usually neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
both the restructuring of production, and change of consumption, away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.^ It is not just a matter of deciding in which way
to meet unexamined goals but also a matter of examining the goals and underlying
values.
That is, we are not just faced with the question of comparing different
technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of
nonsumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than
hard technologies;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining
those alleged needs and the cost of society that creates them.
It is not just
a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived
of us inevitable and unchangeable.
There are solar ways of producing unnecessary
trivia no one really wants and of squandering energy, as well as nuclear ways.
This is not to deny that softer options may be superior to the ethically unacceptable
features of the others.
But it is doubtful that any technology however benign in principle will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for future people if it is expected to meet
limitless and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology may well be used in ways which create costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being transmitted
to them.
Consider, to take one important example, the effect on the world’s
forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of
methonal or of electricity by woodchipping, as already planned by forest authorities
in California and contemplated by many other energy organisations.
Few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, but the un
restricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar
energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands would have a very damaging
effect on the world’s already hard pressed natural forests.
Some of us do not
9.
want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on
- to the future a world largely
devoid of natural forests and accordingly much impoverished in fauna and flora,
any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by
coal products.
In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important
though this is - without any more basic structural and social changes is inadequate.
Social options.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to
change a social structure which promotes consumerism and an economic structure
which encourages the use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.
This
involves, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are
fortunate enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine
over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant
or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to
obtain the reward of consumer goods and services.
A society in which social rewards
are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather
than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is
bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A
production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created
and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The social change option is a hard option, but it seems the only way to avoid
passing on serious costs and risks to the future5
and there are not only ethical
grounds, but ecological reasons for choosing it.
Conventional technology-oriented
discussions of energy options and of how to meet future energy "needs” obscures
the social change option, in part because the option questions values underlying
current social arrangements.
The conventional discussion proceeds by taking
alleged demand (often restated as wants or needs) as unchallengeable,
and the
issue to be one which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and
demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces
the needs is similarly taken as unchallengable and unchangeable.
The social
changes that the option requires will be strongly resisted because they mean
changes in current social organisation and power structure, and to the extent that
the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic
arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds
g
by misrepresenting and often obscuring it.
FOOTNOTES
1.
2.
Some leading proponents of nuclear development admit the absence of
satisfactory storage and disposal methods;
others do not.
Some
of the newer strategies for waste disposal, e.g. that promoted by
Cohen 77 fail, conspicuously, to meet conditions of adequacy on
disposal (see Routley and Routley 78, footnote 1).
Ringwood’s
new strategy, in 78, was immediately rejected by some of the
pronuclear establishment both as too expensive (even allowing
Ringwood’s optimistic costguestimates) and as unnecessary, which
does not augur well for its use.
Yet Ringwood cast serious doubt
on the adequacy of alternative disposal strategies, notably
immobilisation of wastes in glass and in supercalcine.
All Ringwood has shown conclusively is that he can
create an artificial equivalent of a uranium one-body
(Hallam 79)
What Ringwood’s ’strategy for radwaste disposal’ amounts to is a
further possible method of treating radwaste, with significant gaps
in the argument, a considerable lack of experimental and practical
support, no commercial feasibility studies, etc: see Martin 78 and
Hallam 79.
3.
It depends on several processes whose large-scale commercial viability
has very definitely not been shown beyond reasonable doubt, including
reprocessing (Fox Report, p.29).
It appears to be far too expensive
for the nuclear industry, and certainly for poorer nations that have
embarked on nuclear power projects.
There are moreover reasons for
thinking that governments may not want or favour permanent irretrievable
disposal methods; they may want to keep open their options for
employing waste components either for military purposes or for use in
breeder reactors or elsewhere.
4.
On alternative technology and softer energy options, see especially
Lovins 77; also Lovins 76.
For criticism of Lovins’ comparative
neglect of social alternatives, see Martin 77 (and Lovins’ reply
thereto).
5.
The already very serious situation of the world’s forests, especially
the wet tropical forests, is not sufficiently widely appreciated.
It is a commonplace reflection, however, among rainforest botanists
and ecologists that nearly all tropical lowland rainforest and much
highlevel rainforest will have been cut over by about the year 2000.
Moreover such forests cannot at present be utilised on a sustained
yield basis or as a renewable resource (see, e.g. p.219 of Prance and
Elias 77).
Worse, there are now few forestry operations anywhere in
the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the
sense of the renewal of all their values.
In many temperate regions
too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been
exceeded.
The addition of a major further demand source - that for
energy, whether advertised as part of a ’’soft” energy path or otherwise and especially one which shows every sign of being not readily limitable,
on top of the present sources is a development which anyone with a
realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations, who is also
properly concerned about the longterm integrity of the forests and
remaining natural communities, must regard with considerable alarm.
6.
The transmission principle, that one should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it, is a
corollary of the transfer principle - applied in the bus example and
suggested as a necessary condition on energy options - that to be
morally acceptable
a course of action should not involve the transfer
of significant cost and risks onto uninvolved parties who are not
beneficiaries.
For if we violated the transmission principle, there
would be a significant transfer of costs, contradicting the transfer
principle.
The transmission principle can be independently argued for,
e.g. on the basis of contract (and other) theories of obligation.
7.
Thus it is argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co.,
that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... and
that it would be authoritarian to stop them satisfying these wants.
The
argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs
and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of many
such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework
level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as
individual choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social
framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices and
to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
commercial and political advantage.
8.
This paper draws on material from Routley and Routley 78 and 79 where
fuller discussion of many of the topics covered, especially the question
of obligations to the future and uncertainty arguments, may be found.
REFERENCES
B.L. Cohen, ’The disposal of radioactive wastes from fission reactors’,
Scientific American 236 (June 1977) 22-31.
Flowers Report: Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of
the British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, London, 1976.
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
J.R. Hallam, ’Synroc or Cinroc? *, (Wn tetion 4 (2-3) (1979)
4-5.
A. Lovins, ’Energy strategy: the road not taken:’, Foreign Affairs
55 (1) (October 1976) 65-96.
A. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1977.
B. Martin, ’Is alternative technology enough?’, Chain Reaction
3 (2) (1977) 17-21.
B. Martin, ’Call for research into Synroc’, The Canberra Times,
December 6, 1978, p.15.
G.T. Prance and T.S. Elias (editors), Extinction is Forever, New York
Botanic Garden, 1977.
A.E. Ringwood, Safe Disposal of High Level Nuclear Reactor Wastes:
A New strategy, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978.
R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’,
Inquiry 21 (1978) 133-179.
R. and V. Routley, ’Some ethical aspects of energy options’, in
Energy and People: Social Implications of Different Energy Futures,
edited by M. Diesendorf, Society for Social Responsibility in Science
(A.C.T.), Canberra, 1979.
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Box 102, Item 1: Working of draft of Culture and the roots of political divergence: a South Pacific perspective with emphasis on the Australian/American contrast
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Working of draft of Culture and the roots of political divergence: a South Pacific perspective with emphasis on the Australian/American contrast
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Letter redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
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<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 102, Item 1
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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[117] leaves + 1 letter. 272.58 MB.
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:3a82e56">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:3a82e56</a>
Box 102: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/ff145ea0bd7ac945bc30e5341ef74f59.pdf
aa9eea53b0b11981694c3b49a406c07f
PDF Text
Text
THE 'FIGHT FOR THE FORESTS' AFFAIR
Authors:
Richard & Val Routley.
R. Routley has been since 1971
Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Research School of
Social Sciences, A.N.U.;
the position is tenured with a 5 year
bar, at that time passed more or less automatically. V. Routley
is author of a number of published papers both on philosophy and
on environmental subjects.
Title & Contents:
'The Fight for the Forests' (1st edition 1973,
290 pages) looked at the situation of Australian forests, especially
proposed and progressing industrial development of the forests such
as in pine and woodchip schemes;
it discussed economic, ecological
and social aspects of these schemes and of the planning which
underlay and justified them, as well as associated issues in the
foundations of economics and environmental decision-making.
Qualifications to write the book: These were of a reasonable
generalist kind. As philosophers we were well acquainted with the
theory of scientific methodology~ probability and decision theory,
as environmentalists and keen amateur naturalists we had a reasonable
general knowledge of the biological and ecological aspects involved.
The foundations of economics is also an area of academic research
and interest.
The local forestry literature is .neither very copious
nor very specialised, so that it is fairly easy · to become more or
less completely acquainted with it. Most of it is fairly easily
understood by people with~ut professional forestry training.
'The
Fight for the Forests' laid major emphasis on reasoning and on
methodological considerations in planning and prediction, and on \,
bringing outunderlying or hidden assumptions - especially value
assumptions - in these areas.
This is an area in which we were
well qualified to w.~ite. Given the very large range of areas involved
in discussing forestry as a social phenomenon, rangi n g from scientific
methodology and decision theory through sociology, social science,
economics and many areas of biology and ecology, our own special
areas of academic interest and in-depth knowledge were at least as
generally relevant to the issues concerned as most of those involved
in a conventional forestry training.
Care was taken to provide
full references to background work in cases where specialist areas
of knowledge were involved, so that no one had to rely simply on
our authority for claims made.
The book attempted then to present
an integrated picture of the forestry situation in Australia on
the basis of detailed knowledge of some areas relevant to the field,
as the work of foresters themselves often does,* and much of i.t
consisted of what is now known as 'applied philosophy'.
* These points should help dispel the professionalist myth, propagated
commonly by foresters, that only people with professional forestry
training are qualified to write about the forests.
Often such
foresters also advocate a closed decision-making system in which
they; as the 'relevant professionals' have sole rights of decision .
However, forestry issues raise many questions of social values which
are of general concern and shou d be widely discussed.
As well, as
noted, a very wide range of discipline areas are involved, and some
of the most important for the fate of the forests lie right outside
(continued on next page)
�2.
Character of Book: . 'The Fight for the Forests' was not a very
radical book politically but apparently offended mainly because it
attac~ed cherished programs and because of its strong emphasis on
the control of forests by the large forest industries, the close
connections of these industries with state forest services who were
allegedly employed in the public interest, and the role of professional
foresters in promoting ecologically destructive forestry developments
which were in the interests of industry. At that time the forestry
profession was a sacred cow, virtually beyond criticism, and the
book, rather predictably, was the object of intense hostility from
professional foresters (including academic foresters).
Its main
specific contentions, concerning the excessive nature of the pine
program and overestimation in planning for this program, the destructive environmental effects and uneconomic nature for the public of
pine and woodchip schemes in public forests, were at the time
controversial but have been subsequently vindicated by events and
by a number of later studies by others. The book tended to receive
unfavourable reviews from foresters, but received many favourable,
often highly favourable, reviews from non-foresters.
What happened:
Funds for printing the book were obtained, more or
less by chance, from RSSS, which at that time had a substantial
end-of-triennium surplus, without going through any refereeing system.
After final typing for photo-offset printing WfiS completed and just
a few weeks before the book was due to go to the printer, professional
foresters and sympathisers within the university appear to have got
wind of its likely contents.
(An article on pines published the
previous year, in Australian Quarterly 1972, had a substantial impact*·* l
and provided a good idea of the book's general stance). The then
Vice Chancellor, Professor R.M. Williams, suggested that printlng
should not proceed unless the book was given to the head of the
Forestry School at A.N.U., to be revised in ~ccordance with his
comments.
(Given the attitudes, beliefs, and connections of
professionals in general and this head of Department in particular,
this would almost certainly have crippled or destroyed the book.)
Footnote p.l
continued
conventional forestry training. For example, the major and most
influential papers underlying the original planning for the pine
program in the late sixties (papers which were heavily criticised
in our work) were the product of a botanist, Dr. M.R. Jacobs,
although they were primarily concerned ~ith qti~stions of planning
and decision.
But forconsidering these questions (e.g. the popular
planning methodology of overestimating future demand
and population
to 'play safe'), it is more helpful to understand, say, methodology
and decision theory than it is to understand, say, the patterns
of seeding of various eucalypts.
No one complained about Dr. Jacobs
going outside his 'area of competence', nor was his work suppressed
or subjected to censorship on this ground, because he was covered
by the professional umbrella.
There are many similar cases, which
reveal the arbitrariness with which field restrictions are commonly
applied to restrict inquiry.
** 1
After the article appeared there was for the first time parliamentary
questioning of the pine p ogram, with some strong speeches against
it,
and an increasingly critical attitude was
taken in the press.
�3.
Fortunately, the acting-Director of RSSS at the time was Professor
G. Sawer, who resisted this suggestion, and also kindly read
through the manuscript to check on liability to legal action;
(in the fuss preceding publication it had been suggested also that
publication should not proceed because of possible liability to
such legal action). He suggested a few minor changes of a few lines
at one or two points to safeguard against this.
Publication proceeded. The first edition of the book in 1973
sold out within a few months, and two further editions, revised and
updated, (1974, 1975) also sold out shortly after printing, making
it one of the best selling books ever distributed by A.N.U. Press.
Harassment from irate professionals and their sympathisers
within the university was not over however. We were left in no doubt
that the book had been 'an embarrassment to the university'.
In 1974
the author with library rights was prevented on order from the acting
head of the Forestry School, Professor Carron, from using the
Forestry School library.
As this contains.most forestry publications
and material, this constituted a direct attempt to block further work.
This ban was later overturned as a result of intervention from the
Biological Sciences Library Committee.
Later, RSSS, apparently in response to criticism of certain
school publications, set up a committee to review publications
procedure.
Shortly afterwards we were informed that there would be
no funding available for a further edition o f the book or f o r a
a reprint o f the book. No reasons were given. We were not informed
that the book was the subj e ct of a revi e w (as t he re were at that
time no proposals by us for a further edition) . We were given no
opportunity to nominate referees, to supply relevant information,
or to influence the outcome of the review in any way. Subs e quently
the school adopted a different procedural system in which the
departments and authors concerned nominate suitable referees. There
is little doubt that, had we been given the opportunity to follow
the regular system, suitable referees could have been found to provide
favourable reports.
Meanwhile, orders ~or the now out-of-print book
continue to arrive, and it continues to be favourably reviewed and
mentioned, both in Australia and overseas.
There is little doubt
that a further edition or reprint could have been sold. Attempts to
prevent publication were, therefore, ult.Lmately successful.
As a sequel, the production
publications by School presses one - was a major ground used by
take over the School presses and
For the time being, this attempt
of certain unspecified 'controversial'
of which our book was, reportedl½
ANU Press in its recent attempt to
gain central control over publication.
has failed.
General comments:
The situation in the forestry profession showed,
at the time we were working in the area at least, a very high degree
of suppression and professional cohesiveness, and an exceptional
degree of conformity and absence of critical .voices. This probably
is so pronounced because of the great control and influence exerted
by a highly restricted body of employers, namely, a few large forest
industries and the state forest services. For the same reasons perhaps,
there was a high degree of secrecy and control of information.
�4.
We encountered many severe cases of suppression in the forest~y
profession (applyi·n g in a·cademic, research, bureaucratic and state
forest service areas) and in related biological areas. This
included action by state forest services to terminate the research
projects (in state forests) of those who made public statements
unfavourable to them, or who supplied information or were associa.t~d
with those who did, and many other .- adverse effects on the careers
or prospects of potentially critical professionals. The influence
of state forest services reached within the university (ANU).
Suppression was so regular and pronounced that we believe it is
probably true that no one inside the profession or discipline
could have, at that time, written a book similar to 'The Fight
for the Forests'.
Such criticism could only appear where it slipped
past :· the usual professional c9ntrol and suppression mechanisms,
as our book did.
The general suppression mechanism illustrated by this case
then appears to be:
a combination of indoctrination and intimidation,
plus well-developed professional loyalty, ensures that significant
criticism does not originate from inside the profession or
discipline itself, or does so only in a rare, muted and easily
ov~rlooked form;
at the same time the professionalism mystique
and the discipline system is invoked, as it was in our case, to
ensure that no one outside the profession _can make such criticism
in a way which needs to be treated seriously (e.g. through publication
in a university series), and even to ensure that such criticism ~Y
potentially dangerous outsiders is silenced altogether. The
fragmentation of knowledge, like the fragmentation of work, is
thus used as a method of control.
It's a neat system, which nicely
protects a particular set of doctrines and interests.
R. & V. Routley
Research School of so c ial Sciences
Australian National University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Draft Papers
Description
An account of the resource
Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
THE 'FIGHT FOR THE FORESTS' AFFAIR
Authors:
Richard & Val Routley.
R. Routley has been since 1971
Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Research School of
Social Sciences, A.N.U.;
the position is tenured with a 5 year
bar, at that time passed more or less automatically. V. Routley
is author of a number of published papers both on philosophy and
on environmental subjects.
Title & Contents:
'The Fight for the Forests' (1st edition 1973,
290 pages) looked at the situation of Australian forests, especially
proposed and progressing industrial development of the forests such
as in pine and woodchip schemes;
it discussed economic, ecological
and social aspects of these schemes and of the planning which
underlay and justified them, as well as associated issues in the
foundations of economics and environmental decision-making.
Qualifications to write the book: These were of a reasonable
generalist kind. As philosophers we were well acquainted with the
theory of scientific methodology~ probability and decision theory,
as environmentalists and keen amateur naturalists we had a reasonable
general knowledge of the biological and ecological aspects involved.
The foundations of economics is also an area of academic research
and interest.
The local forestry literature is .neither very copious
nor very specialised, so that it is fairly easy · to become more or
less completely acquainted with it. Most of it is fairly easily
understood by people with~ut professional forestry training.
'The
Fight for the Forests' laid major emphasis on reasoning and on
methodological considerations in planning and prediction, and on \,
bringing outunderlying or hidden assumptions - especially value
assumptions - in these areas.
This is an area in which we were
well qualified to w.~ite. Given the very large range of areas involved
in discussing forestry as a social phenomenon, rangi n g from scientific
methodology and decision theory through sociology, social science,
economics and many areas of biology and ecology, our own special
areas of academic interest and in-depth knowledge were at least as
generally relevant to the issues concerned as most of those involved
in a conventional forestry training.
Care was taken to provide
full references to background work in cases where specialist areas
of knowledge were involved, so that no one had to rely simply on
our authority for claims made.
The book attempted then to present
an integrated picture of the forestry situation in Australia on
the basis of detailed knowledge of some areas relevant to the field,
as the work of foresters themselves often does,* and much of i.t
consisted of what is now known as 'applied philosophy'.
* These points should help dispel the professionalist myth, propagated
commonly by foresters, that only people with professional forestry
training are qualified to write about the forests.
Often such
foresters also advocate a closed decision-making system in which
they; as the 'relevant professionals' have sole rights of decision .
However, forestry issues raise many questions of social values which
are of general concern and shou d be widely discussed.
As well, as
noted, a very wide range of discipline areas are involved, and some
of the most important for the fate of the forests lie right outside
(continued on next page)
2.
Character of Book: . 'The Fight for the Forests' was not a very
radical book politically but apparently offended mainly because it
attac~ed cherished programs and because of its strong emphasis on
the control of forests by the large forest industries, the close
connections of these industries with state forest services who were
allegedly employed in the public interest, and the role of professional
foresters in promoting ecologically destructive forestry developments
which were in the interests of industry. At that time the forestry
profession was a sacred cow, virtually beyond criticism, and the
book, rather predictably, was the object of intense hostility from
professional foresters (including academic foresters).
Its main
specific contentions, concerning the excessive nature of the pine
program and overestimation in planning for this program, the destructive environmental effects and uneconomic nature for the public of
pine and woodchip schemes in public forests, were at the time
controversial but have been subsequently vindicated by events and
by a number of later studies by others. The book tended to receive
unfavourable reviews from foresters, but received many favourable,
often highly favourable, reviews from non-foresters.
What happened:
Funds for printing the book were obtained, more or
less by chance, from RSSS, which at that time had a substantial
end-of-triennium surplus, without going through any refereeing system.
After final typing for photo-offset printing WfiS completed and just
a few weeks before the book was due to go to the printer, professional
foresters and sympathisers within the university appear to have got
wind of its likely contents.
(An article on pines published the
previous year, in Australian Quarterly 1972, had a substantial impact*·* l
and provided a good idea of the book's general stance). The then
Vice Chancellor, Professor R.M. Williams, suggested that printlng
should not proceed unless the book was given to the head of the
Forestry School at A.N.U., to be revised in ~ccordance with his
comments.
(Given the attitudes, beliefs, and connections of
professionals in general and this head of Department in particular,
this would almost certainly have crippled or destroyed the book.)
Footnote p.l
continued
conventional forestry training. For example, the major and most
influential papers underlying the original planning for the pine
program in the late sixties (papers which were heavily criticised
in our work) were the product of a botanist, Dr. M.R. Jacobs,
although they were primarily concerned ~ith qti~stions of planning
and decision.
But forconsidering these questions (e.g. the popular
planning methodology of overestimating future demand
and population
to 'play safe'), it is more helpful to understand, say, methodology
and decision theory than it is to understand, say, the patterns
of seeding of various eucalypts.
No one complained about Dr. Jacobs
going outside his 'area of competence', nor was his work suppressed
or subjected to censorship on this ground, because he was covered
by the professional umbrella.
There are many similar cases, which
reveal the arbitrariness with which field restrictions are commonly
applied to restrict inquiry.
** 1
After the article appeared there was for the first time parliamentary
questioning of the pine p ogram, with some strong speeches against
it,
and an increasingly critical attitude was
taken in the press.
3.
Fortunately, the acting-Director of RSSS at the time was Professor
G. Sawer, who resisted this suggestion, and also kindly read
through the manuscript to check on liability to legal action;
(in the fuss preceding publication it had been suggested also that
publication should not proceed because of possible liability to
such legal action). He suggested a few minor changes of a few lines
at one or two points to safeguard against this.
Publication proceeded. The first edition of the book in 1973
sold out within a few months, and two further editions, revised and
updated, (1974, 1975) also sold out shortly after printing, making
it one of the best selling books ever distributed by A.N.U. Press.
Harassment from irate professionals and their sympathisers
within the university was not over however. We were left in no doubt
that the book had been 'an embarrassment to the university'.
In 1974
the author with library rights was prevented on order from the acting
head of the Forestry School, Professor Carron, from using the
Forestry School library.
As this contains.most forestry publications
and material, this constituted a direct attempt to block further work.
This ban was later overturned as a result of intervention from the
Biological Sciences Library Committee.
Later, RSSS, apparently in response to criticism of certain
school publications, set up a committee to review publications
procedure.
Shortly afterwards we were informed that there would be
no funding available for a further edition o f the book or f o r a
a reprint o f the book. No reasons were given. We were not informed
that the book was the subj e ct of a revi e w (as t he re were at that
time no proposals by us for a further edition) . We were given no
opportunity to nominate referees, to supply relevant information,
or to influence the outcome of the review in any way. Subs e quently
the school adopted a different procedural system in which the
departments and authors concerned nominate suitable referees. There
is little doubt that, had we been given the opportunity to follow
the regular system, suitable referees could have been found to provide
favourable reports.
Meanwhile, orders ~or the now out-of-print book
continue to arrive, and it continues to be favourably reviewed and
mentioned, both in Australia and overseas.
There is little doubt
that a further edition or reprint could have been sold. Attempts to
prevent publication were, therefore, ult.Lmately successful.
As a sequel, the production
publications by School presses one - was a major ground used by
take over the School presses and
For the time being, this attempt
of certain unspecified 'controversial'
of which our book was, reportedl½
ANU Press in its recent attempt to
gain central control over publication.
has failed.
General comments:
The situation in the forestry profession showed,
at the time we were working in the area at least, a very high degree
of suppression and professional cohesiveness, and an exceptional
degree of conformity and absence of critical .voices. This probably
is so pronounced because of the great control and influence exerted
by a highly restricted body of employers, namely, a few large forest
industries and the state forest services. For the same reasons perhaps,
there was a high degree of secrecy and control of information.
4.
We encountered many severe cases of suppression in the forest~y
profession (applyi·n g in a·cademic, research, bureaucratic and state
forest service areas) and in related biological areas. This
included action by state forest services to terminate the research
projects (in state forests) of those who made public statements
unfavourable to them, or who supplied information or were associa.t~d
with those who did, and many other .- adverse effects on the careers
or prospects of potentially critical professionals. The influence
of state forest services reached within the university (ANU).
Suppression was so regular and pronounced that we believe it is
probably true that no one inside the profession or discipline
could have, at that time, written a book similar to 'The Fight
for the Forests'.
Such criticism could only appear where it slipped
past :· the usual professional c9ntrol and suppression mechanisms,
as our book did.
The general suppression mechanism illustrated by this case
then appears to be:
a combination of indoctrination and intimidation,
plus well-developed professional loyalty, ensures that significant
criticism does not originate from inside the profession or
discipline itself, or does so only in a rare, muted and easily
ov~rlooked form;
at the same time the professionalism mystique
and the discipline system is invoked, as it was in our case, to
ensure that no one outside the profession _can make such criticism
in a way which needs to be treated seriously (e.g. through publication
in a university series), and even to ensure that such criticism ~Y
potentially dangerous outsiders is silenced altogether. The
fragmentation of knowledge, like the fragmentation of work, is
thus used as a method of control.
It's a neat system, which nicely
protects a particular set of doctrines and interests.
R. & V. Routley
Research School of so c ial Sciences
Australian National University
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Box 70, Item 1: Draft of The 'fight for the forests' affair
Subject
The topic of the resource
Printout of draft, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Plumwood V (1986), 'The "Fight for the Forests" affair', in Martin B, Baker CMA, Manwell C and Pugh C (eds) Intellectual suppression: Australian case histories, analysis and responses, Angus and Robertson, Sydney.
Description
An account of the resource
Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 70 Item 1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
Format
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[4] leaves. 702.07 KB.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Manuscript
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:ae0c908">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:ae0c908</a>
Box 59: Nuclear
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/62dfb49e2e6b38d58a9ab61536132136.pdf
a12a16b6a5d108e89c5accfaec970ea1
PDF Text
Text
�28
undiluted anarchism); holistic and tribal means (as, obversely, utterly individualistic ones) are
anarchistically admissible.
The connections can be made in this way:- If there is no head, top or centre, how are
political affairs structured? A standard anarchist response-not essential for mathematical
structure, but incorporated in the modem definition of anarchism-is organisation (of course)
by acceptable means, by noncoercive, nonauthoritarian organisation, what is typically expanded
to voluntary and cooperative organisation. Features of this response will be elaborated in what
follows (starting in the next chapter).
~
5. With in anarkism: green and deep-green anarkism.
~
/\-
1¥ short, a green position or theory is one that reflects sufficient commitment to
environmental causes, with that commitment shown in relevant positive action. Even more
briefly, what is required for such greenness (gre-eenness) is this: environmental commitment
manifested in suitable action. 28
A deep-green theory, is a green theory, that is one reflecting sufficient commitment to
environmental causes, which exhibits depth, roughly some items, notably natural items, that do
not answer back to human interests are valuable in themselves and human interests do not
always predominate. 29 A deep-green political theory is a political theory of this deep-green
sort.
Deep green agents do not have to attempt anything in an explicitly political direction, even
though they have to attempt something for environmental causes. They can live as part of a
minority, as many do, watching what they value degraded or destroyed. They are committed,
in principle (only), to reform. There is no commitment to radicalism. But if such greens wish
to retain enough of what they value, they will have, sooner or later, to become involved in
-------
political issues, in more than merely reformist ways.
!J..,+ 0
..ilfvl
j\ is a m11fatter of completeness, deep-green theory~is bound to touc~/ at leastj; upon
r::'"'
-::i:;,
/./ow,t,-.J~
polit ical issues. B:a.t,\deep-green theory does not, itsel~ force a particular form of political
theory, certainly not anarchoid forms. Rather such forms present appealing options, especially
given the deep-green inadequacy of mere small and marginal variations upon prevailing
unjustified state arrangements. While some, important changes may be achieved in reformist
ways, they are unlikely to do enough. They are for more likely to be, what virtually all
•• idence, suggests: too little, too late.
28
A full account of greenness is easily accessible in GE. So the many elaborating details are not spelt out
here. An overlapping detail also offered in GI.
29
Again these features have been explained in detail elsewhere, esp OOE, also GE.
,/4 11:
�t~ ~ ~ rJjPhc.J.\:r l~~ e,J, k
1 -tt:fo()'l'l,,tiYP...
f
~ 0us foc1'J.e..t4), t'.sf-s,
- - · ·-
29
sees
1
----- - - - l;.11n3 .,.,,t.
p1~11a -;_/,;,,
A popular illusion Jla5 Are political structures as satisfactory, the problem ~ the players
who occupy critical niches, a problem that can be solved by rendering these players suitably
green. 30 Hence the call for greener politicians, and extensive efforts to green up''those that are
~o/
there. This assumes that the players are independant of the niches they occupy, instead of that
the players are partially shaped by the niches they occupy.
(Persons can be seen as
constitlf.[ted, in important part, by the roles they occupy). Rather to obtain virtuous green
policy makers and controllers, changes in political structures into which they ~,,,.- appear
/ slut
necessary. In these terms, present structures are inadequate; significant structural change is part
of what is required, again going further than straightforward reform.
It may already be evident that the fuzzy reformist/radical divide does not correspond to the
shallower/deep distlic tion of green positions and actors. As it happens, leading deep ecologists
;;..
e'i
,,;-shMtJ'
who tend not to be enyironmentally deep, are political radical, and in~l~ding Bila committed to
I
o.l• q)
"eco-anarchism" (' 13's "munipal liberterianism"). By contrast some deep-green theorists
(myself included) aim both for environmental depth and political radicalness. However deep<le-f,;,i~\,
(>,S~c~ l
green theory represents a plurallism, of which political radicalism
,.. is,\not an-~··· feature. In any
case, radicalism does not exclude judicious reformist activity of support of reformist measures
(and it is remotely possible that some regions ~ ould just get very 1i ckm:g in reforms). So too
~
while anarchical investigations are politically radical, a good deal of P1at is this ....... may be of
relevance to reformist green theory, both theory and methods.
Like most political theory, green theory spans a range from practical, getting things done
within prevailing arrangements, to highly theoretical, such as envisaging superior organisation
(postponing questions as to how to get from here to there). The present investigations
(parallelling my interests) lie in the more theoretical end, partly because (from where I am)
prevailing arrangements look, not to overstate things, environmentally hopeless.
Whether or not a deep-green approach is limited to reformist practice or not, it is bound to
be revolutionary in theoretical impact. For by yirtue of what is meant by deep-green, any such
dcw,,E.'~ ro~
approach is bound to reject assumptionsi ntegral to modem political theory.
dt\,,;... ... J
Political theory ... address the question of which politically variable institutions
are normatively satisfactory: in particularly, normatively satisfactory from the
point of view of some constituency ... . Modem political theory, at least in the
Western tradition, makes two assumptions in giving further specification to the
enterprise. The first is the ...
[humanist] assumption, that the relevant constituency is human beings, usually
the [individual] human beings who are to live under the institutions ... . And the
30
Thus such despairing c\~lls as the following:
The environmental movement is exhausted by campaigning on so many fronts; what is needed now is for
the decision makers to change their loyalties and priorities-don't just wear the green, think green and act
green!
I
a..
·tQ
1-e
�30
second is the
[local egalitarian] assumption, that the arrangements should be normatively
satisfactory from the point of view equally, of all relevant individuals ... .
These assumptions are almost constituive of Western political thought ....31
Like hi:i;~inent predecessors, Pettit does not offer much argument for these large assumptions,
, Jk
and what is on offer is quite inadequate. The second assumption, his "universalism" ,whic~ takes
as less controversial, obtains only an invalid one-liner: 'If persons are all that matter [a first of
various transformations of the humanist assump~o~ ], they surely matter equally, so universialism
ton
is hard to resist' .32 To emphasis the invalidity, consider a few substitutions: if possessions
(species, assumptions, ... ) are all that matter, they matter equally. What is more, when the first
assumption is duly broken, the second assumption is commonly abandoned. That when other
items than humans do matter, for some other creatures, humans matter more than those others
r-
(this sort of assumption in fact typifies intermediate, opposed to deep, positions). An easy
egalitarianism (which shelves merit distribution issues) tends to become increasingly
controversial, and implausible, as constitf e~ es are further varied and widened; witness the
bf spheric egalitarianism of deep
ecology.33
It is the first assumption, then that deep-green approaches are bound to reject. pettit passes
.-
upon discussion of the 'challenging' 'objection': 'It is that if political arrangements are devised
with a view just to the interests of human beings [note the further transformation] then they are
quite likely to be damaging to the rest of nature' (to grossly understate the problematic
situation). 34 He cannot resist the observation that as 'the interests of human beings are tied up in
great part with those of non-human nature, ... we may hope that in approaching political matters
from a personalist standpoint we will not be insensitive to the needs of non-human species and of
31
Thus Pettit, pp 286-7, who provides some selective docmentation for these claims and that these
assumptions are made. Pettit, dubiously equating persons with humans, calls the first assumption 'the
w sonalist assumption'; but really the l~ ger assumption is that political theory conforms to human
chauvinism (for a critical rejection of which see the final section of EE). He calls the second assumption
'the • iversalist assumption', though it is far from universal, as r.
ds either temporal or spatial
dimensions; for example, states invariably tr~ t foreigners or aliens differently from citizens or
constituents, in ways supported by prevailing theory. It is abandonment of the second assumption, which
Pettit does not discuss, that distinguishes ancient and nonWestern theory. For slaves, members of lesser
castes and tribes and so on, withinf the state were not treated equally (whether they regarded this as
satisfactory or not).
32
Pettit. p.287.
33
34
Pettit p.287.
Jo
~c
f
�31
~~
the bitat that we share with those species' .35 While we share this pious and regularly frustrated
.
)ha.
hope, the feebleness of the observation should not pass unremarked. Evidently there are many
types of interrelations where (limited) interests of a dominant party are no reliable assurance of
~
satisfactory treatment of dominated or lesser relatf master-servant, land-self, and so on. While
some parties may have treated their slaves and animals well and appropriately, many did not.
Nature and its creatures and features are hardly looked after well by present cohorts of humans:
insen~ vity dominates. Many humans, especially substantiaii;;lf-interested humans, are not to
be trusted; so a majority or like consituency of humans can hardly prove satisfactory. The
humanist assumption, part of a pervasive human chauvinism, should be abandoned.
It is very doubtful that the two assumptions i ettit p~ ents are anywhere near consitutive of
J~ )~
modem Western political thought. Further major assumptions concern the role of the state and the
position of individual rights; it is the former that does not enter decisively in tribal and like
socie~ ies, and the latter distinctively modem issue that is downplayed or neglected in nonWestem theory.
Under present political arrangements, the world is divided up, virtually ex~umiativ ly, into
) h.o..us..t/
a set of exclusive states. None of these states should be accounted green, though there are now
very ~ e green tinges to so~
of them. While none exhibit any depth of greenness, there is no
reason, theoretical or pgi\tical why some should not. M~ er deep-green arrangements can, in
principle, be ensured by political structures that are unacceptable on other grounds. More
IV/~
/,
technically, deep-greenness, however necessary, does not supply full conditions of adequacy for
satisfactory political arrangements, environmental and otherwise: for eucracy.
For any
arrangements where political control, a ~riing class for instance, proves suitably disposed can
ensure greenness of depth. Thus such, independently objectionable, arrangements as: green
v
~
(benev,ient) dictatorships, green guardit nships (in the style of an eco-Platonic Green Republic),
green foundations, and caste systems even eco-f~p cisms and eco-totalitarianisms. Many such
arrangements fall down
fnbroadly liberatarian grounds: that they do not allow agents and
creatures to govern their own lives and affairs freely. Other arrangements fail on broadly
egalitarian grounds, that they undul_y privil~ge some classes or agents at the expense of others. ';
-
<Arrangements that meet conditions of adequacy, that is that do not so fail yet are deepgreen, are called eucratic. Eucracy means satisfactory political organisation.
Green anarkism and, still more, deep-green anarkism offer important fresh political
directions and alternatives for sustained green activity, and for the wide green movement more
35
Pettit p.287.
Jo
�32
generally. They are alternatives very compatible with green ideas and broad ideology, as well as
alternatives often implicitly adopted, and certainly heavily borrowed from, by greenr.· There is
0
already a symbi\ tiin relation of sorts. Green and anarchist movements can not only complement
each other substantially; in important ways they need each other, and mutual dependence.
Anarkism stands in need of a significant driving force, an active directed constituency, which the
green movement can apply (or still better, a green movement allied with other alternative forces,
such as peace and feminist movements). Conversely, green succesfD slowing or stopping
#
massive degradation of the Earth, requires very different political directions from those of the
present, or of red (state socialist) or blue (liberal capitalist) colour variations on offer, anarchoidal
directions, so it can plausible be argued. That isl can be argued, persua\ ively if inconclusively
f /s
so far, that a genuinely green future cannot be obtained under present political arrangements; for
S1.1h.sfa"'helA.:1
l<n~s'tr-C1 ,'ht?J..
example this can be argued, in several ways, from the inbuilt commitment to fairly connectional~
economic growth. Accordingly political structures n\ ed to be changed, but so that important
J~
social desiderata that have been more or less achieved over a long and often dark human history
are not lost, in particular personal liberty, democra~c procedur~, just practice; Certain types of
4Q 12:.IJU-Qf~ t
~
,\
green anarchism meet these requirements,36 A··· types, other optiorJdo not satisfactorily.
sre~,i
i:,
Arguments from genuine soerees to • dical change assume the following sort of form:
• Human impact on the Earth, on very many of its ecosystems and habitats, is excessive.
•
Impact will not be significantly reduced under prevailing dominant socio-political
arrangements, under what is called the dominant social paradigm. To the contrary, these
arrangements obligate growth, which is likely to increase, even if now with some shallow
sustainability constraints. 37
Therefore,
• Arrangements slwuld be changed
® There are more and less far-reaching ways of attempting to achieve such changes of
arrangements, from zero, conservative, through reformist, to radical,c.ulminating in total change.
® There are also more and less authoritarian and coercive ways of endeavouring to achieve such
arrangements. (At the more authoritarii n fnd thes~~i~clude green dictatorship, ecofascism, etc.)
The further detail Jargument is that these way should be anarchoid. Briefly, ~
matives to
anarchoid ways not only infringe basic social and environmental desiderata (including, for
instance, noninterfering freedom of choice of individual creatures), but they utterly lack rational
0
~
36
Th#se types encouraging relevant organisation, regulation and control-features 8f which certain sorts of
traditional anarchism stand opposed.
37
While this is substantial thesis, we shall not stop off to argue for it here. The thesis is argued elsewhere,
e.g. GE, GEF.
().II ~uc,'af~ / s
�33
justification.
The detailed argument for anarchoid directions for radical .green change reveals features of
importance concerning the required character of resulting arrangements. For example, what
emerges cannot be a free-for-all for some classes of agents, such as developers. Regulation and
planning will have to be tighter, while different in character, than what now prevails in most
regions.
Accordingly a green anarkism like that to be elaborated differs in ma·or respects from most
of what has hitherto passed as anarchism. Salient differences tum around the following matters
and em~
/ h
, among others
o
regulation of social and environmental kinds.
o
social organisation and political structure, with both bottom-up and also top-down linkages and
constraints.
o
rational organisational and decision practices, including preparation and planning, to ensure
adequate outcomes.
o
reasonable objectives and planning targets, pitched at adequacy, not optimality (or other
maximizing goals).
o
pluralism of arrangements, indeed a plural pluralism, with space for a plurality of cultures and
subcultures within various of an appropriate plurality of political structures.
Such a plurality could well include structures that did not conform to matters emphasized,
not merely inadequate arrangements but adequate ones. For example, with creatures different
from the present run of humans, environmental regulation could prove substantially otiose. To be
sure, it would be hoped, though certainly not required, that arrangements were uniformly benign;
for example that, environmental circumstances permitting, they were evironmentally benign.
Correspondingly, socially, it would be hoped that arrangements aimed to conform to fairly basic
standards of ethical decency, such as
o
basic social (as well as environmental) provision.
Satisfactory arrangements would supply a subsistence floor, meeting the principle: to each
accou~ ing to basic needs. This modified comm unal principle is not confined in scope to
fr-d
~
resident humans, but includes other inhabitants.
o
a presumption of nonviolence, with violence at least not perpt trated against innocent or
/e..
uninvolved parties (including again nonhumans).
REFERENCES
\
J. Burnheim, 'Democracy, nation states and the world system', in NFD pp.218-239.
D. Held, and C. Pollitt, New Forms of Democracy, Sage, London 1986; referred to as NFD.
_
J.W. Gough, The Social Contract: a critical study of its development, Oxford, Claredon Press,
1936.
'O
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�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
Cutting, The Economist (19 November 1988) ‘Business bribes’, The Economist, 21-24. (4
pages (2 leaves))
Journal, Raise the stakes: the Planet Drum review, no 7 S2, Spring 1983.
�
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
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28
undiluted anarchism); holistic and tribal means (as, obversely, utterly individualistic ones) are
anarchistically admissible.
The connections can be made in this way:- If there is no head, top or centre, how are
political affairs structured? A standard anarchist response-not essential for mathematical
structure, but incorporated in the modem definition of anarchism-is organisation (of course)
by acceptable means, by noncoercive, nonauthoritarian organisation, what is typically expanded
to voluntary and cooperative organisation. Features of this response will be elaborated in what
follows (starting in the next chapter).
~
5. With in anarkism: green and deep-green anarkism.
~
/\-
1¥ short, a green position or theory is one that reflects sufficient commitment to
environmental causes, with that commitment shown in relevant positive action. Even more
briefly, what is required for such greenness (gre-eenness) is this: environmental commitment
manifested in suitable action. 28
A deep-green theory, is a green theory, that is one reflecting sufficient commitment to
environmental causes, which exhibits depth, roughly some items, notably natural items, that do
not answer back to human interests are valuable in themselves and human interests do not
always predominate. 29 A deep-green political theory is a political theory of this deep-green
sort.
Deep green agents do not have to attempt anything in an explicitly political direction, even
though they have to attempt something for environmental causes. They can live as part of a
minority, as many do, watching what they value degraded or destroyed. They are committed,
in principle (only), to reform. There is no commitment to radicalism. But if such greens wish
to retain enough of what they value, they will have, sooner or later, to become involved in
-------
political issues, in more than merely reformist ways.
!J..,+ 0
..ilfvl
j\ is a m11fatter of completeness, deep-green theory~is bound to touc~/ at leastj; upon
r::'"'
-::i:;,
/./ow,t,-.J~
polit ical issues. B:a.t,\deep-green theory does not, itsel~ force a particular form of political
theory, certainly not anarchoid forms. Rather such forms present appealing options, especially
given the deep-green inadequacy of mere small and marginal variations upon prevailing
unjustified state arrangements. While some, important changes may be achieved in reformist
ways, they are unlikely to do enough. They are for more likely to be, what virtually all
•• idence, suggests: too little, too late.
28
A full account of greenness is easily accessible in GE. So the many elaborating details are not spelt out
here. An overlapping detail also offered in GI.
29
Again these features have been explained in detail elsewhere, esp OOE, also GE.
,/4 11:
t~ ~ ~ rJjPhc.J.\:r l~~ e,J, k
1 -tt:fo()'l'l,,tiYP...
f
~ 0us foc1'J.e..t4), t'.sf-s,
- - · ·-
29
sees
1
----- - - - l;.11n3 .,.,,t.
p1~11a -;_/,;,,
A popular illusion Jla5 Are political structures as satisfactory, the problem ~ the players
who occupy critical niches, a problem that can be solved by rendering these players suitably
green. 30 Hence the call for greener politicians, and extensive efforts to green up''those that are
~o/
there. This assumes that the players are independant of the niches they occupy, instead of that
the players are partially shaped by the niches they occupy.
(Persons can be seen as
constitlf.[ted, in important part, by the roles they occupy). Rather to obtain virtuous green
policy makers and controllers, changes in political structures into which they ~,,,.- appear
/ slut
necessary. In these terms, present structures are inadequate; significant structural change is part
of what is required, again going further than straightforward reform.
It may already be evident that the fuzzy reformist/radical divide does not correspond to the
shallower/deep distlic tion of green positions and actors. As it happens, leading deep ecologists
;;..
e'i
,,;-shMtJ'
who tend not to be enyironmentally deep, are political radical, and in~l~ding Bila committed to
I
o.l• q)
"eco-anarchism" (' 13's "munipal liberterianism"). By contrast some deep-green theorists
(myself included) aim both for environmental depth and political radicalness. However deep<le-f,;,i~\,
(>,S~c~ l
green theory represents a plurallism, of which political radicalism
,.. is,\not an-~··· feature. In any
case, radicalism does not exclude judicious reformist activity of support of reformist measures
(and it is remotely possible that some regions ~ ould just get very 1i ckm:g in reforms). So too
~
while anarchical investigations are politically radical, a good deal of P1at is this ....... may be of
relevance to reformist green theory, both theory and methods.
Like most political theory, green theory spans a range from practical, getting things done
within prevailing arrangements, to highly theoretical, such as envisaging superior organisation
(postponing questions as to how to get from here to there). The present investigations
(parallelling my interests) lie in the more theoretical end, partly because (from where I am)
prevailing arrangements look, not to overstate things, environmentally hopeless.
Whether or not a deep-green approach is limited to reformist practice or not, it is bound to
be revolutionary in theoretical impact. For by yirtue of what is meant by deep-green, any such
dcw,,E.'~ ro~
approach is bound to reject assumptionsi ntegral to modem political theory.
dt\,,;... ... J
Political theory ... address the question of which politically variable institutions
are normatively satisfactory: in particularly, normatively satisfactory from the
point of view of some constituency ... . Modem political theory, at least in the
Western tradition, makes two assumptions in giving further specification to the
enterprise. The first is the ...
[humanist] assumption, that the relevant constituency is human beings, usually
the [individual] human beings who are to live under the institutions ... . And the
30
Thus such despairing c\~lls as the following:
The environmental movement is exhausted by campaigning on so many fronts; what is needed now is for
the decision makers to change their loyalties and priorities-don't just wear the green, think green and act
green!
I
a..
·tQ
1-e
30
second is the
[local egalitarian] assumption, that the arrangements should be normatively
satisfactory from the point of view equally, of all relevant individuals ... .
These assumptions are almost constituive of Western political thought ....31
Like hi:i;~inent predecessors, Pettit does not offer much argument for these large assumptions,
, Jk
and what is on offer is quite inadequate. The second assumption, his "universalism" ,whic~ takes
as less controversial, obtains only an invalid one-liner: 'If persons are all that matter [a first of
various transformations of the humanist assump~o~ ], they surely matter equally, so universialism
ton
is hard to resist' .32 To emphasis the invalidity, consider a few substitutions: if possessions
(species, assumptions, ... ) are all that matter, they matter equally. What is more, when the first
assumption is duly broken, the second assumption is commonly abandoned. That when other
items than humans do matter, for some other creatures, humans matter more than those others
r-
(this sort of assumption in fact typifies intermediate, opposed to deep, positions). An easy
egalitarianism (which shelves merit distribution issues) tends to become increasingly
controversial, and implausible, as constitf e~ es are further varied and widened; witness the
bf spheric egalitarianism of deep
ecology.33
It is the first assumption, then that deep-green approaches are bound to reject. pettit passes
.-
upon discussion of the 'challenging' 'objection': 'It is that if political arrangements are devised
with a view just to the interests of human beings [note the further transformation] then they are
quite likely to be damaging to the rest of nature' (to grossly understate the problematic
situation). 34 He cannot resist the observation that as 'the interests of human beings are tied up in
great part with those of non-human nature, ... we may hope that in approaching political matters
from a personalist standpoint we will not be insensitive to the needs of non-human species and of
31
Thus Pettit, pp 286-7, who provides some selective docmentation for these claims and that these
assumptions are made. Pettit, dubiously equating persons with humans, calls the first assumption 'the
w sonalist assumption'; but really the l~ ger assumption is that political theory conforms to human
chauvinism (for a critical rejection of which see the final section of EE). He calls the second assumption
'the • iversalist assumption', though it is far from universal, as r.
ds either temporal or spatial
dimensions; for example, states invariably tr~ t foreigners or aliens differently from citizens or
constituents, in ways supported by prevailing theory. It is abandonment of the second assumption, which
Pettit does not discuss, that distinguishes ancient and nonWestern theory. For slaves, members of lesser
castes and tribes and so on, withinf the state were not treated equally (whether they regarded this as
satisfactory or not).
32
Pettit. p.287.
33
34
Pettit p.287.
Jo
~c
f
31
~~
the bitat that we share with those species' .35 While we share this pious and regularly frustrated
.
)ha.
hope, the feebleness of the observation should not pass unremarked. Evidently there are many
types of interrelations where (limited) interests of a dominant party are no reliable assurance of
~
satisfactory treatment of dominated or lesser relatf master-servant, land-self, and so on. While
some parties may have treated their slaves and animals well and appropriately, many did not.
Nature and its creatures and features are hardly looked after well by present cohorts of humans:
insen~ vity dominates. Many humans, especially substantiaii;;lf-interested humans, are not to
be trusted; so a majority or like consituency of humans can hardly prove satisfactory. The
humanist assumption, part of a pervasive human chauvinism, should be abandoned.
It is very doubtful that the two assumptions i ettit p~ ents are anywhere near consitutive of
J~ )~
modem Western political thought. Further major assumptions concern the role of the state and the
position of individual rights; it is the former that does not enter decisively in tribal and like
socie~ ies, and the latter distinctively modem issue that is downplayed or neglected in nonWestem theory.
Under present political arrangements, the world is divided up, virtually ex~umiativ ly, into
) h.o..us..t/
a set of exclusive states. None of these states should be accounted green, though there are now
very ~ e green tinges to so~
of them. While none exhibit any depth of greenness, there is no
reason, theoretical or pgi\tical why some should not. M~ er deep-green arrangements can, in
principle, be ensured by political structures that are unacceptable on other grounds. More
IV/~
/,
technically, deep-greenness, however necessary, does not supply full conditions of adequacy for
satisfactory political arrangements, environmental and otherwise: for eucracy.
For any
arrangements where political control, a ~riing class for instance, proves suitably disposed can
ensure greenness of depth. Thus such, independently objectionable, arrangements as: green
v
~
(benev,ient) dictatorships, green guardit nships (in the style of an eco-Platonic Green Republic),
green foundations, and caste systems even eco-f~p cisms and eco-totalitarianisms. Many such
arrangements fall down
fnbroadly liberatarian grounds: that they do not allow agents and
creatures to govern their own lives and affairs freely. Other arrangements fail on broadly
egalitarian grounds, that they undul_y privil~ge some classes or agents at the expense of others. ';
-
<Arrangements that meet conditions of adequacy, that is that do not so fail yet are deepgreen, are called eucratic. Eucracy means satisfactory political organisation.
Green anarkism and, still more, deep-green anarkism offer important fresh political
directions and alternatives for sustained green activity, and for the wide green movement more
35
Pettit p.287.
Jo
32
generally. They are alternatives very compatible with green ideas and broad ideology, as well as
alternatives often implicitly adopted, and certainly heavily borrowed from, by greenr.· There is
0
already a symbi\ tiin relation of sorts. Green and anarchist movements can not only complement
each other substantially; in important ways they need each other, and mutual dependence.
Anarkism stands in need of a significant driving force, an active directed constituency, which the
green movement can apply (or still better, a green movement allied with other alternative forces,
such as peace and feminist movements). Conversely, green succesfD slowing or stopping
#
massive degradation of the Earth, requires very different political directions from those of the
present, or of red (state socialist) or blue (liberal capitalist) colour variations on offer, anarchoidal
directions, so it can plausible be argued. That isl can be argued, persua\ ively if inconclusively
f /s
so far, that a genuinely green future cannot be obtained under present political arrangements; for
S1.1h.sfa"'helA.:1
l<n~s'tr-C1 ,'ht?J..
example this can be argued, in several ways, from the inbuilt commitment to fairly connectional~
economic growth. Accordingly political structures n\ ed to be changed, but so that important
J~
social desiderata that have been more or less achieved over a long and often dark human history
are not lost, in particular personal liberty, democra~c procedur~, just practice; Certain types of
4Q 12:.IJU-Qf~ t
~
,\
green anarchism meet these requirements,36 A··· types, other optiorJdo not satisfactorily.
sre~,i
i:,
Arguments from genuine soerees to • dical change assume the following sort of form:
• Human impact on the Earth, on very many of its ecosystems and habitats, is excessive.
•
Impact will not be significantly reduced under prevailing dominant socio-political
arrangements, under what is called the dominant social paradigm. To the contrary, these
arrangements obligate growth, which is likely to increase, even if now with some shallow
sustainability constraints. 37
Therefore,
• Arrangements slwuld be changed
® There are more and less far-reaching ways of attempting to achieve such changes of
arrangements, from zero, conservative, through reformist, to radical,c.ulminating in total change.
® There are also more and less authoritarian and coercive ways of endeavouring to achieve such
arrangements. (At the more authoritarii n fnd thes~~i~clude green dictatorship, ecofascism, etc.)
The further detail Jargument is that these way should be anarchoid. Briefly, ~
matives to
anarchoid ways not only infringe basic social and environmental desiderata (including, for
instance, noninterfering freedom of choice of individual creatures), but they utterly lack rational
0
~
36
Th#se types encouraging relevant organisation, regulation and control-features 8f which certain sorts of
traditional anarchism stand opposed.
37
While this is substantial thesis, we shall not stop off to argue for it here. The thesis is argued elsewhere,
e.g. GE, GEF.
().II ~uc,'af~ / s
33
justification.
The detailed argument for anarchoid directions for radical .green change reveals features of
importance concerning the required character of resulting arrangements. For example, what
emerges cannot be a free-for-all for some classes of agents, such as developers. Regulation and
planning will have to be tighter, while different in character, than what now prevails in most
regions.
Accordingly a green anarkism like that to be elaborated differs in ma·or respects from most
of what has hitherto passed as anarchism. Salient differences tum around the following matters
and em~
/ h
, among others
o
regulation of social and environmental kinds.
o
social organisation and political structure, with both bottom-up and also top-down linkages and
constraints.
o
rational organisational and decision practices, including preparation and planning, to ensure
adequate outcomes.
o
reasonable objectives and planning targets, pitched at adequacy, not optimality (or other
maximizing goals).
o
pluralism of arrangements, indeed a plural pluralism, with space for a plurality of cultures and
subcultures within various of an appropriate plurality of political structures.
Such a plurality could well include structures that did not conform to matters emphasized,
not merely inadequate arrangements but adequate ones. For example, with creatures different
from the present run of humans, environmental regulation could prove substantially otiose. To be
sure, it would be hoped, though certainly not required, that arrangements were uniformly benign;
for example that, environmental circumstances permitting, they were evironmentally benign.
Correspondingly, socially, it would be hoped that arrangements aimed to conform to fairly basic
standards of ethical decency, such as
o
basic social (as well as environmental) provision.
Satisfactory arrangements would supply a subsistence floor, meeting the principle: to each
accou~ ing to basic needs. This modified comm unal principle is not confined in scope to
fr-d
~
resident humans, but includes other inhabitants.
o
a presumption of nonviolence, with violence at least not perpt trated against innocent or
/e..
uninvolved parties (including again nonhumans).
REFERENCES
\
J. Burnheim, 'Democracy, nation states and the world system', in NFD pp.218-239.
D. Held, and C. Pollitt, New Forms of Democracy, Sage, London 1986; referred to as NFD.
_
J.W. Gough, The Social Contract: a critical study of its development, Oxford, Claredon Press,
1936.
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The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
Cutting, The Economist (19 November 1988) ‘Business bribes’, The Economist, 21-24. (4
pages (2 leaves))
Journal, Raise the stakes: the Planet Drum review, no 7 S2, Spring 1983.
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Lake George - Floor - Pile 7
Box 13: Green Projects in Progress
Lake George House
Lake George House > Floor > Pile 7
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Box 17, Item 1265: Draft of Anarchism
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
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Australian National University - Bookcase - 1st on Right - 3rd Shelf Down - First Pile
Australian National University Office
Australian National University Office > Bookcase > 1st on Right > 3rd Shelf Down > First Pile
Box 17: Green Projects in Progress
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/8e7daae9baa6742dce79f815f186d6ff.pdf
3cfac978365f5707e5deea901d316501
PDF Text
Text
������������������������������������The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), title page and two pages (158-159) from Snell B (1953) The discovery of the
mind: the Greek origins of European thought (Rosenmeyer TG trans), Blackwell, Oxford. (3 pages (2
leaves))
���������The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), 8 pages (476-483) from Jamieson D (1991) ‘Method and moral theory’, in
Singer P (ed) A companion to ethic, Blackwell, Oxford. (8 pages (4 leaves)
����The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), 14 pages (268-285) from Broad CD (1967) Five types of ethical theory,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. (14 pages (7 leaves)
����������������The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter (typescript), ? to Richard, 20 Jan 1989 re feedback on draft paper. (1 leaf)
��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Typescript, Questions for interview with Richard Routley. (2 pages)
������
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
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In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), title page and two pages (158-159) from Snell B (1953) The discovery of the
mind: the Greek origins of European thought (Rosenmeyer TG trans), Blackwell, Oxford. (3 pages (2
leaves))
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), 8 pages (476-483) from Jamieson D (1991) ‘Method and moral theory’, in
Singer P (ed) A companion to ethic, Blackwell, Oxford. (8 pages (4 leaves)
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), 14 pages (268-285) from Broad CD (1967) Five types of ethical theory,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. (14 pages (7 leaves)
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter (typescript), ? to Richard, 20 Jan 1989 re feedback on draft paper. (1 leaf)
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Typescript, Questions for interview with Richard Routley. (2 pages)
Dublin Core
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Box 19, Item 772: Notes and early drafts of Deep-green ethics
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Handwritten, typescript and printout notes and early drafts of paper, undated. Includes cuttings.
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Title in collection finding aid: Ring Binder - Foundations Ethics. RS: Deep Green Ethics - Contents - Ts + ms. RS: Many pages of notes - occasional connected passages. Verso of scrap papers not digitised.
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
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<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 19, Item 772
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:55c3bc1">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:55c3bc1</a>
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Como - Shelves - Bottom - Pile 2
Box 19: More Green
Como House
Como House > Shelves > Bottom > Pile 2
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/9f9cd664a357631422c0407999af2f49.pdf
f27e006c59271d6af13259b01440ea8f
PDF Text
Text
THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and non~ecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fencesitting position.
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State
and produce
a case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin; is that of State and Church.
This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
�2
2.
THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED: THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear ·. future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forestdestructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argument, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self ma~aged welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
�3
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally he required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are _concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
securitt.y, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of
3
the State's propping up of gross inequalities. A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
grossinequalitiesin the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable 'to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argument for anarchism.
The argument has
however been challenged, both by historical
�4
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
4
furnish.
In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others'
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed.
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.
5
Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1
Strategies
s
S (ilence)
C(onfess)
-1, -1
-8, 0
Prisoner 2
C
o,
-8
-4, -4
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which wou:ld have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent ..
�5
4.
FOILING THE PRISONERS" DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
6
Of course
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma.sis
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests -are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited. 7
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would
undoubtedly be much higher. 8 The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that
- unreliable and devious , many State arrangements involved in
providing public goods would not succeed either).
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first,suppose the priso~ers have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
�6
is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human _operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through. advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence.
And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a . small community
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilennna situations that appear to count in favour of the State-. 9
5.
WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED. What the Dilemma-based case
for .the State has to show - what never has been shown·- is that there are
outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention,
and only so (optimally) resolved. Finally it has to be shown that in the
course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those
that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot
be satisfied, of they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question
begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is
important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an
example of such: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of family violence or feuds) which
are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilennna games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of · such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a superg~e.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
. h pure 1 y egoistic
.
. interests.
.
, lO For wh at sequentia
. 1
separa t e d payers
wit
1
games permit that isolated games exclude, is th.at players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
�7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate. 11
Informational input may also. be important, e.g. news that each prisone_r has
J_to agreements
a good record of adherin~h or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control. 1 2 But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
13 ·
.
·
.
h as very extensive
e ff ects, -many
o f t h em negative,
soth at t h e gains
ma d e,
any, in so resolving Dilemma
1· f
situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as i ri the cas e of the
prisone rs,br differently with the State as a further player (since the State .
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
�8
6.
THE SECOND WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE.
The solution
by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to
solve, including new Dilemmas.
Suppose, for instance, the secular State ·really
were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed
to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop
up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no
Super-State to resolve by coercion.
Suppose, as the myth has it, the State
really were introduced in _the interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages,
with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the
emergence of modern secular States. 14
7.
THE THIRD WAY: THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER.
Having ceded a monopoly on power to
the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the power of the
State?
A Super-State.
And its power?
There is a
vicious infinite regress
if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further
15
The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
controller".
lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these
controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly
established, those of the society or group of communities it controls.
implies democratic methods of some kind.
This
Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which
16
we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.
In this event, control has mostly failed.
Democracy is extremely attenuated,
even in those states that claim to practice it.
The exercise of power in modern
"democratid' states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives,
power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the
attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is
often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term' 17 In any case, indirect democratic and other
institutional checks are tenuous in as much as
they depend ultimately on the
toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State.
Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are
broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared
�9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
checks which operate only insofar as a
system
But institutional
acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those "checked~' are not really checks at all.
The problem of controlling the power of the State, and preventing
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8.
THE FOURTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking · responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
h;such
what to do on eac~A occasion oneself, not acting simply on direction from outside,but
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else.
It implies, that is, moral autonomy.
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles ~ is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
personhood implies, i f t he argument is sound , anarchism. 18
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism o
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
�10
9.
THE FIFTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
The replacement
argument enables construction of a model · of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
arrangements within the State structure. 20
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism - according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation-is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends.
The sort of anarchist society
which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
connnunities, for otherwise such arrangements as connnunity replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilennnas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Connnunities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
connnunity there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic property and power.
community wilt be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
cennnunally owned or not owned at all.
A ·
�11
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer
no detailed blueprint.
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY: THE FOREST SUCCESSION
MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE.
The main strategy, emerging.
from the First Way, is that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist
social order proceeds by replacement or aooption of the more satisfactory State
organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more
anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change
and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such
a model is in turn very suggestive.
To make the model more definite, and
to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical
rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society.
There is certainly a marked change in structure,
typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact
closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and
a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms.
A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structura J arrangement and interdependence,
not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects,
seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure
include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and
bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced
evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is
clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest.
(Strictly,
there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary
and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the
standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be
very slow by human time scale~ may require some (management) practices, else
evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue.
For example, seeds
for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been
stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion,
in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas,
methods, arrangements, etc.).
And rainforest evolution may not be able to
�12
continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by State officers, in
which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning
(suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance
perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by intro-
ducing seeds, or planting rainforest trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e.
setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt overstorey,
or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there
will be much for anarchist management to do.
As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest,
the forest begins to change structurally.
Younger eucalypt poles die, and
their replacement by eucalypts is generally precluded owing to low light
intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way conditions for
capitalist entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist
society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts
emerge through the canopy, and in time these fall to the forest floor, to
rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest is subject to
catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone.
Catastrophic methods, such as clearfalling the eucalypt forest, replanting
with rainforest, protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth,
are much more problematic.
To be applied they require either a large workforce
or much mechanical power (so it is with violent revolutions which require
a large support basis not available in advanced capitalist and state socialist
countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to
that of the State).
There are often similar requirements for success;
otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly growing weeds or the rainforest
plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer eucalypt stage
recur.
Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey sometimes affords good conditions
for rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, occasional
frosts, and drying winds, better moisture retention conditions,and so on.
(_Similarly anarchist organisations can sometimes use the environment afforded
by the State to get started.) But under some conditions, such as excessive
interference (as happens to alternative arrangements in highly repressive
States where local conditions also commonly favour revolutionary succession),
there may be little or no alternative t o clearfelling practices.
But just as
clearfelling the eucalypt forest can create favourable conditions for weeds,
so violent revolutions can only too easily create the conditions for a new
(State) elite, controlling the concentrated power generated for the overthrow
of the older regime.
�13
12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL.
How to apply the model is
not difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details
have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how
allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to
alternative social arrangements and life-styles built on self-management
and mutual aid.~
The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted,
anarchist (nonStatist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by
democratization of present institutions and development of nonStatist
and noncapitalist . alternatives.
Some of the practices are familiar:
anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
are slightly less familiar:
Others
avoidance of State influence by arrangements
beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges
of goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from
State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and
ultimately, to decentralized local communities.
In this sort of way
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively
transferred from the State, and returned to the community and to people
more directly involved.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973,
especially p. 139.
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity~ there is only a
(relative:1-y small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can tfke are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin_'s Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism, (reprint of
Nomos _ XIx),New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this typ.e are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor,
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum"
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
�2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1980.
5.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation into
smaller communities.
The figures
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social
Theories, Self Management, and
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The SelfManaging Environment, Allison & · Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
9.
Cf.
the discus$ion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
�3
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modern economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition)
in Taylor.
For a
further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism: one escapes
one's social roles
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
regions.
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127.
The ~vershoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State•, 'upon which'
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' (p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 (1978)., 199-217: seep. 209 and p. 21l.
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York., 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
argument, for example,is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
Wolff's
�4
19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions,
New York, 1974.
20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of _self-management and
alternative lifestyles are many and significant.
And these
alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and
experience to support
operates.
their superiority over the present way society
The obstacles to self-management and alternative life
styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to
change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979,
p. 6.
21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley,
p. 284 ff.
�Richard Routley lives and works. in the NSW forest.
He is sponsored
in pursuit of his research interests - in arguments and theories especially by the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (a
state-supported and state-supporting institution, holding 20,000 shares in the
uranium industry).
His main published work is in metaphysics and alternative
logics and in forestry and environmental philosophy.
preparation of this article by Val Routley.
He was helped in
�The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy) Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social
alternatives, 2(3): 23-29. (7 leaves)
�
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THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and non~ecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fencesitting position.
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State
and produce
a case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin; is that of State and Church.
This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
2
2.
THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED: THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear ·. future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forestdestructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argument, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self ma~aged welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
3
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally he required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are _concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
securitt.y, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of
3
the State's propping up of gross inequalities. A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
grossinequalitiesin the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable 'to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argument for anarchism.
The argument has
however been challenged, both by historical
4
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
4
furnish.
In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others'
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed.
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.
5
Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1
Strategies
s
S (ilence)
C(onfess)
-1, -1
-8, 0
Prisoner 2
C
o,
-8
-4, -4
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which wou:ld have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent ..
5
4.
FOILING THE PRISONERS" DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
6
Of course
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma.sis
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests -are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited. 7
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would
undoubtedly be much higher. 8 The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that
- unreliable and devious , many State arrangements involved in
providing public goods would not succeed either).
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first,suppose the priso~ers have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
6
is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human _operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through. advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence.
And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a . small community
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilennna situations that appear to count in favour of the State-. 9
5.
WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED. What the Dilemma-based case
for .the State has to show - what never has been shown·- is that there are
outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention,
and only so (optimally) resolved. Finally it has to be shown that in the
course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those
that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot
be satisfied, of they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question
begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is
important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an
example of such: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of family violence or feuds) which
are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilennna games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of · such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a superg~e.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
. h pure 1 y egoistic
.
. interests.
.
, lO For wh at sequentia
. 1
separa t e d payers
wit
1
games permit that isolated games exclude, is th.at players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate. 11
Informational input may also. be important, e.g. news that each prisone_r has
J_to agreements
a good record of adherin~h or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control. 1 2 But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
13 ·
.
·
.
h as very extensive
e ff ects, -many
o f t h em negative,
soth at t h e gains
ma d e,
any, in so resolving Dilemma
1· f
situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as i ri the cas e of the
prisone rs,br differently with the State as a further player (since the State .
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
8
6.
THE SECOND WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE.
The solution
by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to
solve, including new Dilemmas.
Suppose, for instance, the secular State ·really
were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed
to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop
up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no
Super-State to resolve by coercion.
Suppose, as the myth has it, the State
really were introduced in _the interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages,
with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the
emergence of modern secular States. 14
7.
THE THIRD WAY: THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER.
Having ceded a monopoly on power to
the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the power of the
State?
A Super-State.
And its power?
There is a
vicious infinite regress
if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further
15
The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
controller".
lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these
controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly
established, those of the society or group of communities it controls.
implies democratic methods of some kind.
This
Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which
16
we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.
In this event, control has mostly failed.
Democracy is extremely attenuated,
even in those states that claim to practice it.
The exercise of power in modern
"democratid' states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives,
power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the
attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is
often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term' 17 In any case, indirect democratic and other
institutional checks are tenuous in as much as
they depend ultimately on the
toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State.
Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are
broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared
9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
checks which operate only insofar as a
system
But institutional
acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those "checked~' are not really checks at all.
The problem of controlling the power of the State, and preventing
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8.
THE FOURTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking · responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
h;such
what to do on eac~A occasion oneself, not acting simply on direction from outside,but
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else.
It implies, that is, moral autonomy.
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles ~ is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
personhood implies, i f t he argument is sound , anarchism. 18
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism o
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
10
9.
THE FIFTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
The replacement
argument enables construction of a model · of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
arrangements within the State structure. 20
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism - according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation-is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends.
The sort of anarchist society
which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
connnunities, for otherwise such arrangements as connnunity replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilennnas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Connnunities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
connnunity there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic property and power.
community wilt be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
cennnunally owned or not owned at all.
A ·
11
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer
no detailed blueprint.
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY: THE FOREST SUCCESSION
MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE.
The main strategy, emerging.
from the First Way, is that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist
social order proceeds by replacement or aooption of the more satisfactory State
organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more
anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change
and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such
a model is in turn very suggestive.
To make the model more definite, and
to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical
rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society.
There is certainly a marked change in structure,
typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact
closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and
a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms.
A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structura J arrangement and interdependence,
not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects,
seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure
include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and
bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced
evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is
clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest.
(Strictly,
there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary
and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the
standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be
very slow by human time scale~ may require some (management) practices, else
evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue.
For example, seeds
for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been
stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion,
in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas,
methods, arrangements, etc.).
And rainforest evolution may not be able to
12
continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by State officers, in
which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning
(suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance
perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by intro-
ducing seeds, or planting rainforest trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e.
setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt overstorey,
or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there
will be much for anarchist management to do.
As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest,
the forest begins to change structurally.
Younger eucalypt poles die, and
their replacement by eucalypts is generally precluded owing to low light
intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way conditions for
capitalist entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist
society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts
emerge through the canopy, and in time these fall to the forest floor, to
rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest is subject to
catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone.
Catastrophic methods, such as clearfalling the eucalypt forest, replanting
with rainforest, protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth,
are much more problematic.
To be applied they require either a large workforce
or much mechanical power (so it is with violent revolutions which require
a large support basis not available in advanced capitalist and state socialist
countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to
that of the State).
There are often similar requirements for success;
otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly growing weeds or the rainforest
plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer eucalypt stage
recur.
Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey sometimes affords good conditions
for rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, occasional
frosts, and drying winds, better moisture retention conditions,and so on.
(_Similarly anarchist organisations can sometimes use the environment afforded
by the State to get started.) But under some conditions, such as excessive
interference (as happens to alternative arrangements in highly repressive
States where local conditions also commonly favour revolutionary succession),
there may be little or no alternative t o clearfelling practices.
But just as
clearfelling the eucalypt forest can create favourable conditions for weeds,
so violent revolutions can only too easily create the conditions for a new
(State) elite, controlling the concentrated power generated for the overthrow
of the older regime.
13
12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL.
How to apply the model is
not difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details
have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how
allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to
alternative social arrangements and life-styles built on self-management
and mutual aid.~
The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted,
anarchist (nonStatist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by
democratization of present institutions and development of nonStatist
and noncapitalist . alternatives.
Some of the practices are familiar:
anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
are slightly less familiar:
Others
avoidance of State influence by arrangements
beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges
of goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from
State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and
ultimately, to decentralized local communities.
In this sort of way
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively
transferred from the State, and returned to the community and to people
more directly involved.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973,
especially p. 139.
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity~ there is only a
(relative:1-y small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can tfke are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin_'s Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism, (reprint of
Nomos _ XIx),New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this typ.e are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor,
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum"
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1980.
5.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation into
smaller communities.
The figures
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social
Theories, Self Management, and
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The SelfManaging Environment, Allison & · Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
9.
Cf.
the discus$ion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
3
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modern economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition)
in Taylor.
For a
further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism: one escapes
one's social roles
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
regions.
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127.
The ~vershoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State•, 'upon which'
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' (p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 (1978)., 199-217: seep. 209 and p. 21l.
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York., 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
argument, for example,is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
Wolff's
4
19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions,
New York, 1974.
20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of _self-management and
alternative lifestyles are many and significant.
And these
alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and
experience to support
operates.
their superiority over the present way society
The obstacles to self-management and alternative life
styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to
change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979,
p. 6.
21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley,
p. 284 ff.
Richard Routley lives and works. in the NSW forest.
He is sponsored
in pursuit of his research interests - in arguments and theories especially by the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (a
state-supported and state-supporting institution, holding 20,000 shares in the
uranium industry).
His main published work is in metaphysics and alternative
logics and in forestry and environmental philosophy.
preparation of this article by Val Routley.
He was helped in
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HORKING DRAFT
CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE:
a South Pacific perspective
with emphasis on the Australian/American contrast
A ma.ior function of culture is to regulate and control change,1
Political
in the South Pacific,
change
North,
industrial
can,
in
and political
principle then,
the
be grounded in and
powered
by
One organising theme, a corollary of
features of local and regional.culture.
the
from
divergence
argument, facilitates the transition from principle to
practice:- It
is
that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality
is
South Pacific region (and Australia
the
for
there,
in
particular)
to
proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and
USA in particular).
th"
from
American arrangements,
Given the radical
unsatisfactoriness of the
2
in many frequently exposed respects , such a different
direction is worth taking - if it can be.
serious problem in the way of
a
But
arrangements,
from outside or from above.
change is imposition of
And,
political
since imposition shades into
this is
only one of the obstacles impeding change in the
South Pacific and elsewhere.
Another^forcing more and more peoples, no longer
political pressure,
sheltered
into the same type
of
socio-political
is supposed to derive from human nature itself.
Free people are
by geographical isolation,
arrangements
economic people,
in pretty much the American mould,
so it
is
claimed.
By
this route, economic imperialism can replace political imperialism.
1.
Nature,
theory
- one
culture,
to
which
A supposedly key question in political
and control.
we are said to have no satisfactory
answer
in
the
absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is this:-
1.
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30.
2.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
1
�To
extent does human nature alloM for alternative political
Mhat
arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:-
in
virtue
of
nature
the
of
much-promoted
6nglo-6merican
Enl ightenment,
is
oMn
gain
or
(including
technical knoM-hoM),
from
6
the
taboos
(and
Mill
(properly) concerned Mi th
information
3
free people are basically economic people.
but for their
shortage
of
that is to replace one ideology by another.
ideology is no longer so
Enlightenment
of
range
descended
directly
are essentially
people
that is,
interests;
6 s ought noM to be evident,
the
answer ,
self-centred individuals,
become)
broad
that once freed from systems of myths,
superstition,
from
the
"nature" reduce the organisationa! options?
HoM does that
controls,
on
humans
What restrictions are imposed
evident:
Mhat
But
recommends
it?
Under pressure of this sort, the 6nglo-6merican answer gets transformed to the
that the economic picture of human nature is superior,
theme
and fitting
of
That 'self-appointed West European superiority'' has in
4
the
Romantics.
Fortunately,
turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and
rational
creatures.
hoMever, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided.
For all these questions and ansMers presuppose, to begin
Mi th, a certain
misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human
beings,
Mhich
exactly
separates humans from other
creatures,
suitably constant and invariant
5
necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are
specify
such
an
essence,
attempts
to
given
by
and
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. 611 men are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of
pain]. These drives mill operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives Mas that toMards self-preservation - Hol bach,
for instance, stipulates:
Me shall call nature in man the collection of properties and
quali t i es Mhich constitute him Mhat he is, Mhich are inherent to
his species, Mhich distinguish him from other animal species or
every man feels, thinks,
Mhich he has in common Mi th them
3^
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not
strictly equivalent) descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive individuals,
possessive individuals.
2
�acts and seeks his oMn Mell-being at all times;
these are
qualities and properties that constitute human nature ... 6.
But this attempt at essentialist definition of human nature fails,
Fts it stands, the definition is inadequate;
characteristic May.
humans seek just their OMn Mell-being alMays;
hut f?
yoMtc df-e,
other commitments.^
L
to
egoism,
by
HoMever,
replacing
(
'Mell-being'
(such as human vegetables,
definition,
replacing
'every
definition is again inadequate;
example,
in a quite
for not all
some are altruistic,
some have
Ct '
suppose Me avoid such familiar counterinstances
rendering such internal egoism analytic.
examples
the
by
say
'broad
Mell-being',
thus
&nd suppose to avoid other counter-
morons and the like),
man' by 'every normal human'.
Me normalise
the
then
the
But
for it fails to distinguish humans from, for
It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter,
dolphins.
to qori11 a nature.
Of
4.
course
the
definition can again be patched,
by
appealing
to
the
(From previous page) See Berry, p.30ff., from Mhom the quote is taken,
It
is Morth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and
disagreement Mi th Herder. Hhat is applauded is
1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature
as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but not.
XI.
Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be
treated on its OMn merits and not judged by some faulty perspective such
_
In the
as la belle_____
nature
' (p.3U), or from any other perspective.
pluralistic framework of the text (Mhich presupposes PPP), a good many
cross-cultural judgements are made and defended.
X2.
Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment
of it in cu1ture; for example, 'it is through language that human nature
Hi th
can be seen to be specifical1y embodied in cu1ture' <p.32).
bu t
relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point;
Mhile failing in this role, cultural nature is open to many of the same
Nor can language bear the Meigh t
sorts of objections as human nature.
Herder loads upon it.
Herder's human chauvisism: '... it is speech and Mi th that reason
X3.
I1an can choose, man is king'
and freedom, that differentiates man.
Hild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve puzzles,
(p.36).
carry
out elementary reasoning;
in these respects they surpass
and
and
many
other
humans.
Furthermore,
X3 gets Herder into serious
chi 1dren
not
to
say
inconsistency,
Mi
th
1.
trouble,
5.
6.
Abraham, draMing on Hittgenstein,
essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17.
presents just these conditions for an
Berry supplies several other similar examples.
3
�cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or
anatomical
biological specification of homo sapiens.
the
to
normalised
But the resulting
definition,
Mi th its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological
definitions
of
human:
it does not supply a nature,
does
it
deliver
not
superbiological
features of political relevance. The notion of human nature
-a/"!
thus fragments: into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and
an
superbiological (or sociobiological)
unsatisfactory
nature or essence.
addition;
What is this further, problematic, nature?
that
of
The Romantics
can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture,
only local nature (Herder's term) Mhich coincides Mith culture.
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves,
cultural
off
Peeling
like
Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing.
The notion of human nature is a theoretical item,
amid cultural variability,
stability
a constant bulMark against
but designed as Mell to justify (as natural or, failing that,
of
type
particular
political
provide
introduced to
economy and legislature, and
relativism,
as superior)
its
a
imposition
7
fashion,
fact
and
that
the
is not so easily dissolved,
notion
by one illustration.
is Mritten large in much
political
but is defective,
illustration reveals,
such
a
HoMever the
theory,
does not shoM that it or the embedding theory is sound.
received,
not,
This resilient notion has been Midely applied in
else.
everyMhere
and
is
f)nd it is
and in its socio-political selectivity it is,
as the
virtually of a piece Mith human chauvinism (Mhich Mould
assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological
scheme
of things).
In
under
7.
fact
the superbiological notion of human nature begins
any attempt to set it doMn,
in much the May that
attempts
to
dissolve
supporting
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture
everyMhere, later emphasised by Bentham.
The Legislator, knoMing that
human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have different
catalogues of pleasure and pain), can reform the laMS and even transplant
them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
�doMn something ethically
chauvinism
3
disintegrate.
The notion of human nature - a nature
human
there
stable or constant social
some
are
features
humans
about
(some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
humans
that
special
- presupposes
holding
for
across different cultures, Mhich are furthermore distinctive!/ human
peop!es,
features.
The
presupposition fails,
because once cultural variation between
shared
peoples
characteristics
remain ,
Mhich
furthermore
are
shared
various
by
animal
cu1tures, such as those of primates.
Consider ,
books,
or
first,
such
products or tools of more literary cultures as
Since
of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers.
cultures
lacked
such items,
their
possession
most
distribution
or
obviously cannot figure as part of Mhat marks out human nature. Consider next,
Mhat are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain
then,
basic human needs,
such as food and shelter.
These requirements are far from
free of cultural and environmental determinants.
as required in the May of shelter,
place to place.
Mays,
common
under
For look at Mhat is regarded
and hoM it varies from cu1ture to culture,
(&nd even Mhat is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad
Mays.)
though acceptably in some cultures only in a feM fixed
The
denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort
more extreme conditions - a requirement also of Mombats.
The situation
This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the
claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the text. For
.................................
'
t nature, 1 ike
the alleged social-arrangement-dictating
features of' human
determinism,
are
alleged
features
of
economic
or
technological
simi1 ar
insofar
as
they
to
be
removed
especially
rather major obstacles
supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of future
societies - than the main business of the present enterprise.
For tunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human
nature is a defective theoretical one Mhich dissolves, is defended
elseMhere: not only,
,, in effect, in Mork of Romantics from Herder on, but
also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read
as saying that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment Mhich
dissolves: ''his much discussed ... dissolution of man is nothing more, or
less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a
scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and
italics added).
�food,
Mith
and
sex,
so on,
considerably from race to race,
by
flourish.
Again
the somewhat
conditions,
trivial
lowest
or
more
loosely
Mhere
common
tribal
denominator
Nor are attempts to mark out
by some more complex list of jointly necessary
nature
vary
requirements
Europeans for example being very inefficient
applies also to various groups of animals.
human
Dietary
tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily
many
people
is hardly better.
by a cluster of natural
and
features,
the
sufficient
much
more
successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what
is culturally at issue - values. In any case, such vague and general lists as
10
emerge
impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
Accordingly,
nature
as such is not. an
important
constraint
on
or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours
11
work out a political philosophy or political directions .
The reason is
political
to
human
theory,
the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would
like
not
impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
12
failure.
Like the meaning of life , the good life fails to demarcate a
single
thing;
there
are many styles of good lives.
So too there
is
human
*9^
The
converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight
on European diets, At another level, consider the Haori attitude to, and
underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
10.
For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see
Nilson, p.22. As it happens, Nilson does not make anything much of this
list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a
parallel list for insect societies - a list which does considerable
damage to more traditional claims about human nature - and then proceeds
in effect to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate
humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies (e.g.
p.39).
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human
nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2.
11.
Nhich is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and
unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its
variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the
possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures.
12.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
6
�and human nature,
nature
depending on the culture or social paradigm and
on
Nature, both human and not, varies uith culture and environment.
the setting.
Because of this tuo-uay dependence,
there is no unique stable superbiological
human nature.
notion of human
is
nature
the
picture of nature as given, as a
stable
across races and tribes,
notion
uith culture as a variable
There is no such culturally invariant division:
The picture is flaued in much the same uay,
as
perception,
top.
on
culture affects local nature.
as the familiar picture of
then,
stable
consisting of given uninterpreted sense data,
across
(normal) perceivers, uith interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to
find real human features or basic nature
to
speak,
Certainly,
underneath.
be destroyed; however uhat results from removal by destruction of
not something closer to real people,
but people uith a destroyed
it is also uith attempts like Hobbes or Rauls to peel
organisation
off
the the top,
in order to locate in a
political
quasi-analytical
or
quasi-historical uay, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised
state
or
other,
derived from mistaken
flaued picture,
questionable
or
presuppositions, is assumed.
Hhat uill be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it
is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the vieu to be developed uith the
explai ned
and
the
culture's
riqht values very fortunately in-built.
is
privileged
image
status quo -
position of some
of itself,
and
elements of the
as uell
dominant
as
a
be
serves
for
economic man,
social
hardly surprisingly, that
for Enlightenment man,
7
dominant
Northern
fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model,
uhich
to
or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements
paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be,
of
Given that uhat
for
the
that is,
"rational
�etc.)
person",
myths,
to
The myth of unique human nature functions,
perpetuate
other
like many
or instil particular social arrangements
and
special
pr ivi1ege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths,
myths
the
of
predominantly
self-interested
- to
rational)
(normal)
al 1
bring
humans
maximizer s
no firm starting point in human nature,
myths.
of
myths.
None
aboriginal
peoples
comprised
their
least
and
as
insofar
as
they
are
Mith
the
image
of
up
As there is no underlying hard ground,
so there is none in these
repeated
the
Melanesians,
associated
Polynesians
or
Australian
maximizers;
strongly communal lifestyles and
after
especially,
and
(at
individuals
The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these
associated
indeed
aggressive
some of the myths bound
in
urban-industrial humans.
contemporary
as
preparedness
a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached,
source of criticism from the
European cultures
Mork
stop,
to
Mas a major
that
came
to
dominate the region.
forms and types of
Even
aggressiveness,
and approaches to
Mar,
often
taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary Mi th
13
both
parameters .
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose
huge
constraints
on political
arrangements.
But there is little substance to the
claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural
setting.
The most that appears
clear is that circumstances can be
through croMding or provocation or cultural
arranged,
for
instance
TEh
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the
differences betMeen savannah dMelling and forest dMelling tribes of
baboons.
For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to Mar
(like Mar conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption.
Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a Mhole clan, might decline to
take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen, and such an
action Mould be approved of (p.15).
There are several, apparently
reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in Mar supplying the opposition Mith
equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort
to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed
proper 1y.
relocation,
Mhere
�of
peoples
cultures Mill become aggressive
familiar
more
people of other cultures Mill not,
in the face of immense brutality.
depends
Once
types.
Certainly some arrangements are required to
but these can be of a Mide range of
shortsightedly
again,
Mhat is normally
as fixed:
see
certainly,
such
Mhich
components
nature
human
accounted
varies Mith culture and environment,
and
upon
perhaps
as people often do
but Mill just give up,
cope Mith or suitably isolate aggression,
alternative
- and
often
people
as
selfishness,
cooperativeness, individuality do.
Hhat
is
presently much more important than either culture or nature
determining social arrangements is another factor:
imposition.
social
Whatever
one
from
Mithout,
through
region
and neM arrangements imposed,
Hith long-standing arrangements,
May or another.
invariably
namely, outside control or
arrangements have evolved in a
local nature and culture can be overridden,
imposition
is
and the changes in arrangements typically
especially,
the South Pacific has,
in
almost
involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both.
last tMO hundred years,
in
In the
like much of the
been drastically so affected, in a complex May. ^nd the changes,
neMer Morld
still floMing strongly from the North, continue.
He
are
in the last days of the destruction of
old
and
cultures,
economic
destruction is noM to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural,
and
technological
Outside
direct
control can be exercised,
economic sanctions,
film
and
television (i.e.
earlier
times.
in many Mays less blatant
than
such as through introduction
of
etc.,
as
monetary and loan policies,
as through exchange and training programs,
magazines,
14.
or occur,
intervention of one sort or another,
neM technologies,
Mell
means than the cruder methods of slightly
the
textbooks,
through physical
advertising
and
exemplifications of
Hi Ison's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an
invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men Mhen 'taken out of
their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British colonial army
(p.100)!
^s Mell, Hilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of
innateness, and a loM redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of
mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.9?-100).
�of
process of cultural conversion and erosion;
this quieter
are
unwittingly, part
European peoples in the South Pacific are often
culture).
rather than,
victims as well as,
now
but many of
perpetrators (cf.
us
and
Crough
Wheelwright).
Human
communities
have been - and many still are
- as
insensitive
to
other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans
and their allies in Vietnam).
or
beyond redemption.
pushed
of
creation
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed,
This is
disaster
areas proceeds
Yet
the
blatant cases
15
by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence.
There is
typically
political
furthermore,
where
apace
is possible at all,
recovery
a
sometimes of the order of human generations.
perhaps
well-known.
sufficiently
production
of
imperialism,
these politically
e.g.
USA
in
contaminated
Central America,
- in
recovery
long
period,
Yet there is increasing
regions,
Israel in
especially
Lebanon,
through
Russia
in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc.
In the South Pacific, there are many quieter Northern influences at work,
but
the
strongest now is unquestionably the
businessmen,
films
can
academics,
American.
American
companies,
tourists and warships, their technology and patents,
and television programs,
There
are the most evident and
be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the
newer
behind endeavours such as the American to
16
Granted it
everywhere.
"free
enterprise"
philosophy
and
practice
their
17
business
and
American
to
American
economic
supremacy,
mostly contributes to
and
economic imperialism,
15.
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those
by communicable disease,
but from continuing disruptive,
interference.
infected
outside
What is said about American cultural and politic al imperial ism applies,
with adaption, in a lesser way, to imperialism and col onial ism by other
nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia. USA has no
monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism in the third wor1 dis in part
documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
17.
Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry
has indicated.
10
�the transfer of substantial regional wealth and surplus value to the
to
But
national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons such
are
pursued;
apart
t^at many
from the side-issue of integrity,
USA.
policies
Americans
really do believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion
other
of
arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological
reasons as wel1.
imperialistic
The
that
assumption
for
nature,
be
underpinned
all human nature is at bottom really
political
(a
technological
means.
can
instance highly economically oriented.
distortions
economic)
endeavours
means,
way:
they
by
like
Thus,
descriptive
a
American
human
but for political
analogue of economic externalities)
and
lack
and
other peoples would choose the American (political
simply have not really been given the
For many peoples this is simply not true;
of
opportunity
or
for most other cultures let
us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as well, a more
arrogant
prescriptive assumption may be at work,
that all human nature ought
best, because America not only has the best
18
way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things
, but has
to be like American nature at its
a
special
hold
on rationality.
The free-enterprise
system
(perhaps
representative democracy American-style tacked on) is the rational
18.
with
enterprise
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural
spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best
in the world;
similarly for environmental
protection,
forestry,
technology, university education, and so on.
But since they are the
best, it is evident that these American ways should be exported, isn't
it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to
neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and
secondly because these ways may interfere with other significant features
of regional life or culture.
It' has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in
USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e.g. some of the
best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a lower standard of
1 i f e and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially
resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30 X
To be sure, economic apologetics
of world energy) from other regions.
proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious
constructions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic
actors collectively locked into economically determined arrangements,
substantially independent of the resource base.
11
�Certainly the system is sometimes peddled,
embodied.
the
American May,
it.
Mhich Mas often
Mith the same evangelism as Christianity,
and presented as the rational religion,
seen
by genuine believers in
at least before science got
at
science hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the
Hell,
noM has a social division heavily devoted to its justification and
19
furtherance.
HoMever some philosophy has got at the system, sufficiently to
contrary
that it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there is none such
reveal
but
a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances.
is
irrational if local goals are to preserve local
especially
Thus,
it
environments
is
and
cultures, as much experience helps attest.
is aspects of the false descriptive assumption,
It
Mith
emerge
rejection,that are a main focus in Mhat folloMS (though various
its
the reasons for rejecting the prescriptive assumption
recorded).
broader
and Mhat can
important
An
basic
nor
in
substan t i al 1y
of
Mill also emerge or get
underlying theme Mill continue to be
that
nei ther
varies
human
Mays that are highly political relevant - relevant
to
the
frameMork a society adopts. In
imposed
upon from outside or above, the variation can be
through
cultural
variation
alternative
assumptions,
is part of "nature",
again
"human nature"
variations;
(Mhich
but
in
turn
depends
on
environment,etc)
are then, those of cultural pluralism, that
shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once
can be pared back and back to try to
in this May Mhat are taken to be
important
remove
cultural
superbiological
features of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g.
that
The
make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out one May
features
rather
than another).
19.
In elaborating on hoM modern societies control their citizens, Foucault
has explained various extensive types of social control exercised and
licensed through received social sciences, by May of approved standards
of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: see Philp,
p. 15.
12
��Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements,
so in
a larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different
directions.
political
Where
do
requisite differences
not
occur,
because
incongruous arrangements have been imposed, cultural differences can be a
"A
powerful force for change. Likewise developing elements of cultural difference
can
a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed
be
(especially) in communities where other more orthodox
as economic incentives or penalties,
have
change
bases for change,
become inoperative or
-
such
failed,
or
used,
but
are not available.
Culture is however a double-edged instrument,
resisted.
example,
For
though
not only to be
indigenous
leading
features of
Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some
these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination),
features
Features of culture are thus
modern Western cu1tures.
of
along with
and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources
resist
many
used
to
culture;
of
excessive consumerism, persuasive
such as, inequitable political arrangements,
advertising
media and loaded news systems,
structures,
etc.
for
sol id foundation - but also
This
reasons
is as true for American culture as Antipodean.
Mhy
job
forth,
is
to
antagonistic
One
of
the
so
mainstream American culture
so
encouraging
prime sources of
up resistance against,
and
culture.
alienating
It is important not only to build and design alternatives -
which elements of
di sman tie,
chief
holloa suburbia,
that
movements
offering
or
and
alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations
the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
2
The
Why
work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—society
regional and environmental orientation.'
in defence of themes
concerning
1*'
'yV
4"
cultural variation and their force for change,
contrast
US
it would no doubt be easier to
culture with some other culture which diverges
13
more
strikingly
�Mith some Pacific society poised for revolutionary change, such as perhaps the
Then there are conspicuous differences,
Philippines.
as the following
table
begins to reveal:-
SOME WESTERN CULTURAL THEMES CONTRASTED HITH THIRD HORLD
Fi1i pi no [Melanesian J
North American [AustralianJ
Individual autonomy encouraged;
Mithin paradigm, individual should
individualize, solve oMn problems,
develop OMn opinions
Dependence encouraged; point of
reference is authority, older kin folk
Competition [aJ primarymethod
of motivation
Community reduces or excludes incentive
to excel over others
Relations Mith others informal
and direct
Relations Mith others more formal;
social interactions more structured
Clear distinction betMeen public
and private property
Public property divertable unguililty
into private [Much "property", e.g.
1 and, is communal J
Materialism a dominant value
Spiritual, religious things matter as
much or more than material.
Evident trouble
culture
Mith
the choice of Australia as contrast is that
is not only much influenced (like all
Australian
accessible cultures) by
parts
of American culture, but is very similar in many respects, including evolution
and
comparative
stability.
similarities are often sought,
to
that
in broad outline,
explanations
of
the
and it is debated Mhether the similarities are
by imitation or through similar evolution.
explained
debate is,
is so similar
It
simple:
namely,
The ansMer
to
the
as Mill appear, both types of
mechanism have played a role.
There are,
as
a
main
contentions
so
hoMever,
contrasting
several reasons for Morking Mith Australian culture
case Mith American.
A lesser one is
that
if
regarding differences can be made good in =uch a case it Mill
much the easier Mhere more conspicuous differences occur.
But the aim
the
be
is
not to make a difficult argumentative task more difficult. Rather it is to try
207
This table, adapted from AMa
more discussion is given.
p.30,
14
is draMn from SteMart,
Mhere
much
�to
clear the May for a different philosophy and different political positions
in
Australia,
and
Pacific,
more comprehensively in the South
than
those
slavishly adopted from the North, to clear the May for political arrangements,
grounded in the elements of local culture, Mhich are more benign, both to
the
environment and to other cultures, than those imported from the North.
in several respects,
Australia is,
named from Europe the
Antipodes,
a
(bordered
the north by the Hallace line).
There is some prospect that this region
21
a meaningful sense.
That in turn encourages the
Mill become nuclear-free,in
or be induced in the
faint hope that other socio-political changes may occur,
- a
region
notably
moving
aMay from the dangerous and
nuclear
poMer
and nuclear Meapons.
independence comes from the USA.
Antipodean
exploitative
main
The
damaging pattern,
(and
significant
and
perhaps
this
The USA Mould impose significant
generally it aims to include the region under its
that
to
opposition
components of its Mar system, including nuclear Meapons,
more
attitudes
so Mell exemplified in technological things nuclear,
of the North,
practices
If
includes
Mhich
biological and geophysical region of the South Pacific
distinctive
in
region
inexact
rather
the most important component of that
capitalist
is
already Mell established,
the main) resistance
upon the region; and
to
broken,
be
eventually
must
hegemony.
come
from
Australia.
countries
Smaller
have
resisted
Marships;
first Vanuatu and recently,
genuinely
nuclear-free
suit.
And
politically
21.
if
and
the
the imposition
environmentally
American
initiative is
deeper,
to
Australia
broaden
tied to a more
nuclear
NeM Zealand. If a
more significantly,
South Pacific is to emerge,
nuclear-free
of
must
into
profound
folloM
something
regional
This is just one reason Mhy the recent fashion of trying to count
Australia as part of Asia, Mhich it is not, or as Mithin the (excessively
large) Asian-Pacific region, Mhich it analytically is, should be
resisted.
No doubt looking at the larger region is convenient for
economic and some defence purposes, for trade and aid;
but it is narroM
economically-focussed,
nation-state thinking,
Mhich discounts huge
geographical, biological and cultural differences.
15
�independence
and
then
militarism,
leaders.
Australia
the
Hence
free
self-reliance,
from
of
components
the
must not merely follow,
but be there
interest in American/Australian
cultural
American
Mith
the
differences,
especially those relevant to socio-political divergence.
The
main
cultural groupings of the Antipodean region can
be
developed
from the following diagram:
Aboriginal peoples
Australian
Polynesian
Melanesi an
Anglophi1e
Main
Colonial
Powers
/////
Francophi1e
poli tical1y
entirely
dominated
Poli tical1y
subordinate
Largely
independent
politically*
The independence struggle continues in NeM Caledonia Cohere it Mill
probably succeed soon) and in West Papua (Mhere there appears little
prospect of success against the Javanese without outside support).
The
situation in Fiji is complicated as a result of the colonially-organised
immigration of East Indians (so typical a legacy of British control).
%
Apart from the Indonesian intrusion, there is American penetration
Samoa, and the French remain, most notably in Society Islands.
There
are
Antipodes,
Zealand).
tMO
essentially
major
independent
Melanesian and Anglo-Australasian (i.e. White
in
the
Australian and
NeM
groupings
The latter is the important group from the point of vieM of present
for the usual politico-economic reasons: comparative
change in the Antipodes,
numbers, poMer, influence, Meal th, resources, etc.
cultural features matter,
be
cultural
in
obtained
significantly,
in
such
a
It is Mi th this group that
and Mill make a difference, assuming difference can
May.
For
Melanesian
culture
for the most part in the right sorts of Mays,
American culture.
16
already
differs,
from mainstream
�Though
culture.
already
features
distinctive
language suggests).
with
in
Antipodean
origins and attitudes can be enhanced,
varying
carefully
and
from
and extended to change
away
can
(like
continuing
those of sweet
powerful
Northern
Perhaps
by
directions
of
insensitivity.
intellectual and educational factors,
evolution
influenced,
away
Perhaps that movement
Northern barbarism and socio-environmental
cultural
observable
European
Cultural evolution is proceeding, perhaps with considerable pace (as
situation
European
from
are
there
stock,
the
the peoples of Australasia now consist predominantly of
pea
the
evolution)
forces,
now
suitably
be
predominantly
and multinationalisation, not merely resisted but turned to
22
advantaoe.
Among the questions which immediately arise, but which
Americanisation
local
remain insufficiently
investigated,
life.
are those concerning the interaction
How do
intellectual
cultural
and
culture?
Conversely, what impact do the cultural shifts
intellectual
elements
of
influence
- whatever they are,
a fundamental matter * have on intellectual life, especially in areas that lie
23
at the heart of such life, namely ideological orientation and philosophy?
A
special case,
from which this exercise began, is that where the philosophy is
environmental philosophy,
and
to
the
environment.
where the orientation concerns attitudes to
An
initial question resulting
differential effect of Antipodean culture,
or of the
is:
what
nature
is
the
distinctive elements in
22.
Often these Northern forces are presented as those of internationalism,
which is taken to be desirable. But ask what African, or Latin American,
or even Russian components these forces reflect, and what centres these
forces emanate from, and the extent of internationalism and mix of
nations and companies involved, will become clearer. Certainly there are
desirable qualities in internationalism, but these seem to be displayed
on the faces of internationalism least often observed or paraded.
23.
It is difficult to gauge how much philosophical and speculative concerns
matter to more ordinary people.
In a direct way, not very much, one is
inclined to say; yet ideological themes, like technological changes
deriving from the advance of science, heavily influence them and even perhaps
control the main structure of their lives.
As Keynes wrote in a much
quoted passage, 'Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt
from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct
economist' - or more likely philosopher or shaman (for the fuller quotation,
see Heilbroner, p.12).
17
�24
it, upon attitudes and approach to the environment?
Answers
relations
Mill
be prised out by contrasting differences in attitudes
so far as they can be
to the environment,
Antipodeans Mith those of Northerners.
of attitudes,
set
still
a
discerned,
clearly
even among dominant cultural groups,
in the North.
After
there
Asia,
contrast in attitudes to the natural Morld betMeen
marked
of
there is not a uniform
firstly,
in the usual May the immense complication of
aside
setting
But,
and
the
is
Old
Horld and the NeM Horld. In the Old Horld there Mas and still is comparatively
and practically none for
little feel for the natural environment,
or the need for it or the desirability of it.
Milderness
Unsurprisingly, these attitudes
are ideologically underpinned, in particular by ancient chauvinistic themes as
to
the locus of all value in humans (and,
by more modern,
equally defective,
formerly,
in Mhat they image) and
themes forged in the Enlightenment,
that
superiority is manifested through independence of the natural Morld,
cultural
especially independence of the vagaries of climate and natural plant
25
groMth.
It is not that Europe, by contrast Mith the Antipodes, is entirely
and
devoid
of natural environment,
that there is no natural environment left
in
USSR, say, but that most of it is remote and that the culturally dominant part
of
the
primarily
Soviet
in
community does not live anyMhere near,
the
vicinity
of HoscoM,
environment as of any value for itself,
The
elements
and
does
not
but in
the
cities,
regard
the
natural
but only as a means,
of deeper ecological approaches,
instrumentally.
like the hazards
of
tobacco
smoking and industrial pollution, are not Mell knoMn or Midely advertised in
26
USSR
or the Eastern European block generally - though Eastern European
countries contain much of the least ecologically disturbed of European lands.
24.
And the converse is equally important:
the impact of local environments
on the cultures?
Approaches to the environment are an important
component of culture, more so than such obvious manifestations of culture
as literature (see beloM).
25.
For details of such Enlightenment tests of cultural
intimately
bound
to
the overarching
ideals
Perfectibility, see Berry p.14.
18
superiority, tests
of
Progress
and
�Of course the Old Horld cannot,
environmentally.
European-based
some
Environmental
IUCN
environmentalism.
And
be entirely set
organisations
(such
aside
as
the
and the British National Trust) have been operating
for
time,
considerable
and could never,
and
movements
and
have
influence
an
had
on
Australasian
people in Europe concerned
there have long been
Mi th
happenings in the NeMer Horld, especially the nearest part of it, Africa. But
27
for
the
most part the spirit of European culture
remains
antienvironmental:
there Mas,
and for the most part still is (though things
changing Mi th green movements and parties),
for,
the
natural
environment,
as
little interest in,
gardening
and
more recently plantation forestry.
cultures''
other
exploitation,
such
and
opposed to the managed
environment in Mhich the Mealthier took an interest,
they
e.g.
little
through
for
feel
manipulated
landscape
As for other places'
fit
are
and
plunder
and
at least Mas the dominant attitude and the practice
(and
environments,
Mell
the practice persists at best thinly disguised,
Mere
though no longer uncontested:
Japanese enterprise in the Pacific).
So in Mhat folloMs Old Norld,
28
European approaches
are mostly left out of vieM: the spotlight shifts to the
consider
neMer-fangled North American attitudes, Mhich are hoMever intertMined Mi th Old
Norld sentiments.
The
most
substantial,
most
articulate,
and still
by
far
the
best
26.
(From previous page) In the period folloMing the Russian revolution until
the rise of Stalin, there Mas considerable, if shalloM, concern among
Russian scientists as to the environment (see Neiner). Like much else in
Russian society this rather elitist concern Mas actively discouraged. At
a more popular level environmental concern noM loses out to elements of
economism.
''In a country Mhere the glory of technology and the glitter
of economic groMth still radiate so seductively, radical environmental
protection does not have much of a chance even Mi th the best of
intentions'' (Haren-Grisebach, quoted in Capra and Spretnak, p.78).
27.
Exceptions such as Hill's life-style, for one, represents are exceptions,
and very conspicuous as a result.
28.
These approaches form, of course, the main stock of the disastrous
environmental heritage that Mas sloMly adapted and is still being adapted
in the NeM Morld. The stronger environmental components emerged from the
Northern
European heritage,
not the Latin or Southern
European
inheritance. This is evident too from the Meakness of environmentalism in
Latin America.
19
�documented
past and
And it is uith the situation in North America,
America.
environment
contrast
America
movements are those,
environmental
there
the
adopted,
This is a further major
the other end of the cultural contrast being
as
North
the attitudes to the
that ue best look for contrasts,
Antipodean scene.
of
present,
ue
that
reason
for
developed,
best
taking
and
as
select representative of the industrial North.
ue dig doun to the details of the cultural differences that
Before
to
differing
attitudes in the Antipodes - difference that could
accentuated - there are,
should
come first,
and then junked,
determinism.
rubbish).
are those that some uill think
since they could render much of uhat follous
the issues surrounding determinism,
be
differences
have been brought out (issues uhich can then be throun out uith the
Among the issues postponed,
readily
preliminary issues to be dealt uith, and
as aluays,
issues to be postponed until the substantive cultural
other
yet
lead
of technological,
irrelevant:
economic, and cultural
for example, uere correct,
If Marx's technological determinism,
multitude of productive forces accessible to men determines the
29
nature of society',
then there uould be little scope for a distinct culture
'the
that
or distinctive attitudes to the environment in
the
Antipodes,
the productive forces accessible are supplied from the
can only remain,
of
as it mainly is,
North.
since most of
The Antipodes
predominantly derivative. But the evidence
cultural divergence from the North assembled in uhat follous uill afford a
base on uhich to argue that such deterministic themes are false, that cultural
30
divergence is occurring (and could be accelerated).
And this is happening
though
much,
the economic life by uhich such cultural things are supported is
too
much,
under the influence of the North;
though (under present governments) the
prospects
indeed it is
very
happening
of economic and much higher
cultural independence are bleak (unless, e.g., nuclear disaster befalls us).
2?.
Seiected Horks 1:
31 d.
20
�In
free
some parts of intellectual life,
it is comparatively easy
the heavy influence of the North,
of
for regional intellectual life to
One of these areas is philosophy, especially more narrowly
prosper.
(the
philosophy
sort
break
to
of thing that tends to go
in
on
somewhat
academic
insulated
academies). Academic philosophy is easy, because a few people can do that. For
cultural differentiation, by contrast, ideas have to affect whole communities,
Philosophical ideas can be
to be absorbed and acted upon and in accord with.
like
bubbles
one
community life.
and
positions
with in an office
plays
In any case,
on-going
or
cell,
not
affecting
wider
there undoubtedly are distinctive philosophical
philosophical research projects
in
Australia
(see
For other academic areas, especially those with an empirical base
Prospects).
relying on high technology,
it is more difficult to obtain such independence.
For different reasons, there is also, as with high technology, little prospect
of
This
attaining a full distinctive or independent high culture in the Antipodes.
is partly because the human
people,
deal
at less than 20
million
is (fortunately) too small and widely distributed to support a
in
comprises.
30.
population base,
the
way
of such artifice as parts of
high
It is also because such high culture is,
culture
and
great
substantially
remains,
primarily
(From previous page) Determinism may be pushed into one or other of these
forms: i) it asserts some sort of necessity. Then it is falsified by the
real possibility of alternative technological choices, for instance. Or
ii) it is only contingently true. Then the phenomena of sub-cultures and
rival social cultures refutes it: see Cotgrove.
Technological determinism neglects major causative factors in change,
such as environmental factors. The land or resource base is almost as
important as the technology available, in lower technology societies more
important, so land determinism is at least as plausible as technological
determinism - which helps to show that neither are plausible. But both
can be combined into a broader economic determinism, which is much more
difficult to refute. However even if economics is very broadly construed,
such determinism is false. Economics operates within a framework of moral
and legal and other constraints; many choices - moral, legal and other which affect change significantly fall outside that framework.
Technological determinism and other forms of determinism are important in
bolstering the uniformity of human nature and culture assumptions, or at
least the theme of the convergence of culture with the spread of Hestern
technology and mainstream economics. So its falsity is also important.
21
�31
a European product.
attitudes to the environment, though definitely an important -feature of a
are not part of high culture. Nor do they fit easily into
culture,
but
culture":
"loiter
the
most
been
part,
HoMever
differentiation.
of
the
Mhere attitudes to the environment have not,
for
again is largely because the
that
cultures is a European one,
as
regarded
Mherever
a
significant
division
feature
of
cultural
such attitudes fit - it Mill probably
harm to see them as part of a broader loMer culture,
little
so-called
and at the
same
time help to erode the erroneous idea that interest in natural environment
an
elitist class concern - they tie directly Mith elements of culture at
do
is
the
loMer end.
At the loMer cultural level there are very distinctive features - some of
admittedly
them
features
are
can
gambling,
common
found in many colonies,
and
just
perhaps
be
in the different attitudes of Antipodeans to the
included such things - and attitudes
environment.
- as
them
these
religion,
time, service, etc. Nearer the grass-roots level there is a
Momen,
culture
to
colonial
Some of
- Mhich separate Australasian from Northern culture.
reflected
Here
those
in
Australia
snd
NeM
Zealand
Mith
distinctive
feature^
reflected in folk lore, folksong and myth (not all of them admirable, e.g. the
treatment
of indigenous people,
organised
sports.
Yet
Antipodean cultures,
authoritarianism,
that
there
and of Momen),
are also differences betMeen
differences in pace,
these
tMo
main
religious orientation, ethnic mix,
conservatism, political organisation, values
are sometimes hard to pin doMn precisely.
all-important fact that part of Australia,
31.
and in the mania for similar
There is,
- differences
for instance,
by contrast Mith NeM Zealand
the
(but
It can be argued that philosophy and other intellectual enterprises are
also. This is not so. Philosophy in Asia - from Mhere indigenous
Antipodean people apparently originated - predates that in the Nest.
There are, moreover, grounds for suspecting that the roots of
philosophy Mere imported into the Nest, to Ancient Greece, from India.
AnyMay, every full culture includes an ideology and some rudiments at
least of philosophy.
22
�in Eastern USA),
places
like
Mas settled as a penal
appear to colour many of the differential features of the
origins
culture.
On
the
other
Islanders
is
noM
introducing Polynesian
language,
concepts and attitudes) into NeM Zealand culture,
quite
The
colony.
corresponds
in
side,
increasing presence of
the
strands
Though
Australia.
Australian
Maori
and
elements
of
the
(especially
convict
to Mhich nothing
concentrates
Mhat. folloMS
on
mainstream Australian culture and its contrast Mith American,
much of Mhat is
observed for Australia can be seen to extend to NeM Zealand.
But not all
more conspicuous differences at least Mill be remarked.
any means:
One major difference,
rest
the
of
by
Antipodes,
in
Australia,
hard to miss,
concerns
Mhich separates Australia from
of
the nature
the
environment
itself.
contrast Mith the islands of the remainder of
striking
the
the
Antipodes, is in the first place, vast - approximately the size of continental
USA
or
again
paradigmatically
of
Europe
(including
contrasted Northern
Eastern
Europe),
i.e.
It is also,
regions.
not a geologically neMer mountainous country.
flat land,
from the eastern seaboard and a feM other favoured areas,
of
the
main
an old Morn-doMn
And it
apart
is,
a dry to arid land,
predominantly treeless, a Mide red and grey land, Mith unusual inhabitants. It
is
still seen by Northerners as a harsh and difficult land,
alien and
often
ugly (formerly it Mas also an incomplete and Godless land); and this is hoM it
is
frequently vieMed also by NeM Zealanders.
landscape
and
is,
much
more
to superficial appearance,
congenial
to
from
people
NeM
The much modified
Zealand
much more like the European North,
the
North.
Correlatively,
population of NeM Zealand tends to look
32
more to the North, to England in particular, than that of Australia.
established
European-descended
Australians are often imagined to partake of the land,
earthiness.
promoted
32^
Certainly
image
of the
the
much
its harshness and
corresponding features have been assigned to the muchAustralian-Man-of-the-Land,
Thus, for example, the
ansMers back to London.
tough,
legal appeal frameMorks in NeM
23
tall
and
slim,
Zealand
still
�bronzed, sun and time lined, a stockman or at least a horseman. But so far the
is not so different from that of the Texan (if they spoke,
image
Nor of course is this image of the people at all accurate.
distinguish them).
are mainly (almost 90X) suburban,
Australians
would
that
them 1iving
more than half of
in one of the two huge urban conglomerates , centred on Sydney and Melbourne,
33
The men are often soft, if brown in summer,
on the milder east coast.
increasingly resemble counterparts
in
Hhile there are certainly important features
of
and they
the western American cities.
convergence
technological-economic
for
of
features
the
land
here
determinism
and
pattern,
Thus,
is of some importance in helping
the history
of
its
the
also
network.
communication
and
transport
i t has much 1 ess relevance for
the convergence;
there is
deriving from a similar or common settlement
and
framework
economic
North America to bring out,
from
divergence
(
and Mi th little experience of the
from excess beer consumption,
overweight
account
divergence,
settlement
where
land-based
(a
determinism, so to misleadingly say) are much more important.
overlapping history,
An
part
of
especially of California and the
south-eastern
transforms
(regions which can easily be seen as ecological
of
one
in the convergence:
another),
analogous
frontier
experience,
only
there is not
but there are the miners who
came
in
the
from
there are
major differences:-
of
from
the
Australasia had no Spanish experience,
and the conf 1ic ts
American settlers with the natives were very different
the
compar i son
hostilities
in
Australia or
wars
in
New
Zealand.
character
in
Still,
the
with California avoids complicating features of US history with no
substan ti al analogue in Australia, e.g. the puritanical religious settlements,
the
slave experience and the civil war.
33.
In New Zealand the compact countryside is much more densely settled than
most of Australia, but the population is again mostly suburban (a perfect
target for television) and small town, and is (at about 86X) more urban
than USA.
24
However California is
not
entirely
�but often regarded even in America as something of an anomaly
typical of USA,
(and certainly as much more experimental, cult-ridden, etc., than say the more
conformist Midwest or South).
there are significant cultural differences between
While
especially eastern USA,
USA,
there are also, then,
Australia
and
powerful forces at work
eroding those differences. The differences are already such that extrapolation
Australia of US experience and experiments in socio-political areas can be
to
unreliable, and is strictly illegitimate. For it is evident enough that, where
cultures differ sufficiently, transfer or extrapolation from one to the
may
be
unjustified.
conveniently ignored,
cultural respects.
been
seen
with
What
often
has
not
been
so that damaging
clarity,
have not
agricultural
forestry
to
cutting,
control
Australia.
Examples
burning,
differences
in the people,
have been simply
(clear
and intensive agricultural methods
(heavy
extensive use of herbicides,
machinery,
its
practices
are intensive
etc.)
and
North America with
generally better soils and more favourable rainfall regimes,
imported
been
has
even in the land,
which can be got away with more easily in
practices,
else
is that America and Australia do differ considerably in
Surprisingly the differences,
any
or
seen,
other
forestry
So it is even more with
etc.).
the
which are perhaps harder to see than those in the
1 and.
The differences carry over to differences in social and political theory,
and
differences
significant
unlikely
includes
directions
to
minarchism
arrangements;
Whitehead's
related
generally
in
in American
philosophy and ideology.
34
philosophy , for example,
obtain responsive chords or much following
individualistic,
as
more
(or
right-leaning
competitive
libertarianism),
anti-social
and
in
for
There
are
which
are
Australia.
which
Australian
This
too
is
social
but it also includes religious-based organic philosophies, such
later philosophy (which is scarcely known in
transcendental philosophies of nature,
25
Australia)
which are much too
and
religious
�for secular Australian culture.
3.
Grimy details of the cultural contrast
problem
it
that
hard
is
There is of course the inevitable
that
to say much about culture
qualified and even then still subject to counterexamples.
is
Also it is hard
test hypotheses, and confirm observations, of the type involved.
much
point
in
heavily
not
even such impressionistic accounts and theory as
to
Yet there is
follows, in
particular for the intended social and political applications.
main
The
socioloqy.
method
Though
it
adopted
is
is
what
might
be
marshmallow sociology,
called
like
impression i st i c
marshmallow
it
has
substance. And it is different from and an improvement upon pop sociology. For
firstly
it backed and cross-checked,
tighter data;
anecdotal,
and,
where it can be,
other
secondly, it is assembled into a theory. It is not merely
then, in two major respects. However, it does not pretend to offer
better than tendency or trend statements;
(atypical)
by surveys and
exceptions.
But
to any generalisation there will be
that's alright.
That is the stuff
of
improved
common knowledge. The aim of course is to fit these trend generalisations into
a better story,
To
avoid
contrasts
strictly
such
into a theoretical structure,
repeated
and tiresome qualification
which can then be put to work.
of
claims,
comparisons
are however stated in bolder form than the evidence or their
bases
Often a qualifying functor should be taken as implicit
in
Even then there is constant danger of lapsing into naivety
or
warrant.
claims.
and
mere caricature in this wide and difficult sociological landscape.
34.
(From previous page) Perhaps the more original directions in an imperial
culture not exactly distinguished by its intellectual originality (as
opposed to its technological genius), especially given its resources. For
unless times have changed since the Second Horld Har, there are no
American philosophers of really great stature. Whatever one may think of
Santayana and Hhitehead, they were not really American philosophers, much
of their work being done within a European setting and a good deal in
Europe. Emerson was not strictly a philosopher. James, though clever and
entertaining, was a lightweight (by Greek standards), so presumably was
Dewey. Perhaps the erratic and eccentric Peirce affords the exception
that
proves the rule.
But the salient point is that
American
civilization, like Roman civilization with which it invites comparison,
has
not attained the intellectual heights that might have
been
anticipated, given the colossal material base.
24
�present
The
rests there,
focus
unexpected
in
to
and
these
out
bring
have to go doMn
other
differences
trying
Although
contrast
upon features of environmental
differences,
socio-political
inter 1aced
preferably
some
of
between environmentalism in Australia and North America.
contrasts
one
investigation greM from the discovery
Mel1,
as
and
first,
of environmentalism in Australia by comparison even Mith North
America.
But
at points of deep ideological difference, ue soon and
by beginning elsewhere,
easily diverge into many other - sometimes relevant, sometimes more trifling features of the broader cultures, before returning at the end to environmental
contrasts.
the resulting investigation Manders through and over a Mi de and
Although
no kind of completeness is sought;
varied cultural landscape,
grander
edifices of the built cultural 1andscape
1ibraries,
35
outside.
the
larger
obiiquely,
- art
many
galleries,
of
the
museums,
and so on - are not entered or even glanced at from the
theatres,
as these structures of higher culture are typically clustered
only touch attitudes to
they
cities,
by contrast Mith religion,
Mhich,
the
natural
in
environment
Mhatever main Western form
it
assumes, has tended to dictate and enforce a shalloM human chauvinism.
a.
The influence
and decline of,
religion. There is considerable basis for
the all-important theme that "Australia [is] best understood as a (the
post-Christian
(O"Farrell,
society,
p.3).
in
Although
Mhich religion [is] barely relevant
theme
this
requires
first)
culturally"
qualification,
virtually any cultural generalisation (and gets qualified in its
source),
like
it
is not far from the mark. Australian
religions
suspicious of the Mider culture - and both to a more intense degree
than elseMhere" (p.7).
35.
On the historical place of some of these edifices in Australian culture,
see issues of Australian Cultural History.
27
�Though 'there is much evidence for thinking that Australian
is becoming more secular in character',
The
phenomenon.
decline
Christianity
the weakness of religion is not a new
from a comparatively low level
began
of
popular
commitment;
'Australian churches have never been able to claim the allegiance
36
of more than a minority of the people.
In
basis)
Australia
religious
declined
has
August 3).
Nationwide,
from
attendance (on more than
33Xtol8-19Xover
the
a
merely
past
feu
to Australians
Sundays
religious
USA,
the
in
(a
resident
receding
gospel).
tending
sometimes
(ABC,
feature
The religious
to straight nuttiness,
not only in sizeable
in USA,
of Australian
presence on television (e.g.
10 channels have a
years
In Europe religious attendance is much?higher, 50X or
more, and in North America higher still, sometimes put at 60X.
fervour
occasional
life),
church
is evident
turn-outs
on
but especially in the
in a not atypical major city 3 out of
heavy religious component,
substantial portions of it hot
The born-again Christian movement - a major (and dangerous) movement
in USA involving not merely a shift back to older Christian values but also to
the
far political right - has had comparatively little flow-on in
This
religious
publicity,
these
revivals,
have
Australia.
emphasized
old
36.
The quotations are from Inglis, p.72 and p.73 respectively. The second
quote reports the only thorough study of early religious practice in
Australi a.
37.
figures from William Grey.
Such figures
are
very
Unconfirmed
Part
of
this
is
due
to
'the
reluctance
of
people
to
be
con troversi al
the
census
form,
about
their
indifference
or
hostility
to
candid, on
In
one
study
less
than
SOX
of
those
claiming
affiliation
religion'.
'could give any details at all of what takes place at Church' (Inglis,
Actual fiqures for religious behaviour (e.g. saying
p.45 and p.46).
grace, reading bible, etc.) in Australia are also 'extremely low'.
Regularly, however, there is news of a religious revival in Austra la.
But it like frequent news of the rise in value of the Australian dollar.
Having fallen not so long ago from an exchange value of US$1.12 to, on
occasions, less than $0.60, it has now risen from 63 cents to 65 cents.
'Revivalism ... has been a normal part of Protestant evangelism here for
more than a century: but there has never been any solid evidence that it
shifted for long the boundary between the Church and the world (Inglis,
p.74)
28
�contradictions.
There are serious tensions, to say the least, in the American
(characteristically
religious commitment
combine
Jewish) Mith acquisitive individualism and its trappings.
peaples have Mitnessed the incompatibility (cf.
Melanesi an
Lini).
that conspicuous
at tenders do not have a serious or very deep religious
redistribution
Christian
dedicated minority.
is
the
commitment,
and the like being undertaken only by a very
smal1
But an alternative suggestion Mhich also has some backing
there is a cultural schizophrenia:
that
of
resolution takes the line that most
obvious
or
and
Many colonised
missionised
An
Christian
there are
separate
salvations,
religious and acquisitive economic.
The
religious
differences
between
USA
Australia
and
originate
in
important differences in the May the tMO colonies Mere first settled, the type
their backgrounds and their commitments,
of people,
more
conversion
But there is
The differences have been enhanced Mith the mass 20th
to it than that.
century
and so on.
to
in
science,
Australia
a
doMn-to-earth,
very
naturalistic, evolutionary science, incompatible Mith spiritual elements.
resistance to religion in Austral a is a resistance to
The
general 1y
spirituality
The only religion that has had or made
(including idealism).
much
impact is Christianity (its more recent role being due in considerable part to
practices).
immigration
That
impact moreover is slight compared Mith
North
America: the reborn Christian movement did not roll through Australia, leaving
converts
everyMhere.
Attitudes
to
religion
and
spirituality
Australian society not only from North American but also from
separate
the, in certain
respects more conservative, NeM Zealand society.
Attitudes to spirituality are directly reflected in Australian philosophy
and
in
attitudes to the environment.
A predominant
position
and
research
program, in Australian philosophy is materialism, in a strongly reductionistic
form.
The
that nature.
natural Morld studied by physical science is all;
In fact man is but an advanced
2?
man is part
of
sort of computing system, and so
�at
Hind is effectively identified Mith
bottom a naturally-evolved "machine".
brain,
mental
of
product
Australian
states
being brain states (of
sophisticated
"Miring" and programming.
materialism is opposed,
religiously
or
some
sort),
Even Mhere
crude
this
rival minority positions are
spiritually involved;
a
consciousness
mostly
Mhile they are rather more opposed
not
to
reductionism, they are mostly secular.
dominant materialist reductionist
The
philosophy reflects
touches
and
in
other
several
the
broader sense, and a certain earthiness: the Australian male is a man from and
of
secondari1y.
famous
tie
so to speak,
the earth,
Attitudes to,
and,
in the North (though someMhat unjustly,
only
as Mill become apparent),
the environment.
by
traditional
Western religions;
fortunate
so the
do
chauvinism
human
For
and male chauvinism are analogous phenomena Mith similar sources;
38
They are
attitudes and patterns of domination go Mith them.
supported
figure
for Mhich Australia is
and oppression of Momen,
more directly to attitudes to
Momen
as in much mythology,
similarly
decline
of
is of paramount importance in their demise.
The
direc tion
most important for
more
5"/
environmental
thinking has
taken.
A
contrast
main
American environmental thought is in the
the
betMeen
religious/spiritual
componen t of the latter, but not the former. Deeper environmental positions in
USA
are much
more inclined to find
39
things,
to make room for the sacred,
Buddh i sm
and
spiritual
to
consider
Certainly
other
dimensions
in
natural
sympathetically
Zen
things
not
these
are
absent from the Australian scene, especially from parts of the North
40
scene , but they lack the prominence in Australian
environmentalism
33.
that they attain in North America;
As ecofeminism has stressed.
Earlier cu1tures in the Antipodes, e.g.
Polynesian, also display conspicuous chauvinism, Once again culture is to
be resisted as Mell as used.
30
�regarded as essential.
then,
In many respects,
been
ideas,
and
often
that
is,
Mi th class chauvinisms.
outsiders,
partial
characteristically linked Mith sets of false
have
religions
damaging
the decline of religion is to be Melcomed.
Mi th
For
very
and
nonsubscribers
marked intolerance for
But the decline can
leave
or
a
a place
vacuum,
imported science;
and i t has in Australia.
The vacuum is hardly being filled
in a satisfactory May, as
The
for
areligious
character of Australian life has important
culture and change.
For it means that one of the main
implications
institutions
of
induction (namely church, family, and school), Mhich normally inculcate social
cultural values and Morld vieM,
norms,
many
in
the
of
influence
are largely untouched
Church and religion.
by
the
critical
historically
really
But the situation is
or
missing
seriously
Meakened.
There is no longer
respected elders - except in isolated and specialised areas,
even
such as
that technical or professional field - and
emphasis
on
youth tells against much deference or many concessions to
of
the
sort
made in more traditional or
Coupled Mi th this is the decline of the family,
39.
Third
the
heavy
Horld
of
experts
or
people
more
frameMork
a
this
in
is,
and disturbing. For other traditional components of induction are
remarkable,
also
society
That
is substantially missing.
cultural
older
communities.
Mhich has certainly lost much
(From previous page) Thus, for example, virtually all the books Nash
mentions (in 82) as "defining the emerging field" of environmental
ethics, if not overtly religious, have a heavy religious bias: indeed
Nash mentions "the
tendency to emphasize the religious nature of
man-environment relations".
deep ecology is spiritual in its every essence"; so say, accurately
enough, Capra and Spretnak (p.53) , in the course of reporting on "the
spiri tual aspects of [German] green politics " and continuing their
(pp.53-6)
German
German-Amer i can
this account
comparisons.
On
religiosity
of
American
environmentalism.
environmental ism shares the
40.
(From previous page) Or from Patrick Hhite"s approach.
But he is
inclined to bring God in Mays that leave many thinking Australians
uncomfortable. Hhat there is, Mhich is different, is a groMing link Mith
features of aboriginal culture.
31
�of
former
its
and cohesiveness.
strength
accordingly falls on
education,
The
main
of
burden
such as communicational media,
induction
most notably
But these arrangements are hardly adequate for the purpose (for
41
descriptive-style
reasons).
Nor given their
ideological
messages,
television.
especially
in
the
case
of manipulate popular media
like
television
and
popular song and newspapers, are they desirable means.
This situation, the failure or weakness of main institutions of induction
and the high adjustibility and manipulability of the remainder, has advantages
as
in very different ways,
happen
of
Changes
Australia
fairly
perhaps
But
directly from the top down.
For
culture,
a
example,
can
be
shift
of
to a much more violent society could be pulled off by a combination
conservative
governments
and their police forces
and
friends
few
There is copious evidence however,
control
the
induced
or imposed changes tend to take decidedly undesirable directions
matters
that matter:
main media.
reliance andthe like.
civil liberties,
independence from
New Zealand,
children
against
that
the
Alternatively, change can be achieved at a
level, at least for significant subcultures,
of
it
liberating.
perhaps
damaging,
which have a residual basis in the
this sort,
accomplished
of
society,
change in such a society can be accomplished quite rapidly.
cultural
can
For compared with a traditional more stable
well as drawbacks.
by direct action.
who
top-down
North,
for
self-
grass roots
In the case of
consider the effect of massive withdrawal by parents and schools
from competitive sport,
rugby especially (initially in
racially-implicated rugby policies),
and the immersion
of
protest
children
instead in very different types of games.
It
influence
is around this difference in religiosity,
and its marked decline
in
in Australia, that many other cultural contrasts between mainstream
American and Australian societies revolve. However only so much can be made of
the difference; it is by no means a total explanation of the contrasts, as the
41.
See e.g. Illich, especially Deschoolinq Society.
�with
situation
New Zealand culture helps show.
For mainstream New
Zealand
culture otherwise differs from American'culture in many of the ways Australian
does.
The
b.
benign
Vt
qoverment,
(market)
/v
To North Americans the amount of government, and
superficial
organisation and regulation.
of government,
level
of
role
and state control,
the
State:
Australia (and even more in New
in
Zealand) is very conspicuous, and often irksome. 'Australia has a higher level
of
planning than the United States but less than
state
country
France'
as
(Hi Id,
p.39).
Hild
goes
on
such
of
Australia
- a
government,
they find government much
and
upon
remark
to
pervasiveness of rigid bureaucratic organisation' in Australia.
suspicious
centralised
a
'the
Americans are
too
powerful
feature locals are sometimes prepared to acknowledge,
but
in
do
little about, despite much right-leaning media incitement.
Indeed government and its supporting bureaucracy are increasing in power,
size
and
in Australia.
influence
extent of public inquiries,
the
acclaimed
'Australian talent for
even
Western standards,
procedures,
incompatible
bias is written in,
approaches
objectives.
Nor
There
are
policy-determining
For they
are
top-down
a heavy
with bottom-up democratic control;
value
a conservative bias from the judicial system in the
Royal Commissions;
confrontational
intended
e.g.
For
equivalents
of increasing length and real cost.
not much asked in Australia.
questions
of
organization.
questions about these forms of "fact"-finding and
procedure^,
case
and
are large numbers of Royal Commissions and their
there
serious
bureaucracy'
and
This is part of
Royal Commissions and the like.
example,
by
numbers
So also are the associated
the
and
in
methods
Commissions)
employed
(e.g.
are commonly unsuited
are fundamental questions about
forms and procedures of government,
adversarial,
the
for
the
established
which are often raised in USA, much asked
in Australia.
Australia
was
fortunate
to have determined at
33
time
of
Federation
a
�respresentative democratic system,
Mhich Mas,
by the standards of the times,
very sophisticated, and capable of reflecting minority positions * not that it
been used sufficiently for these purposes by most minorities.
has
of
mass-production
update
electronic computing equipment,
it is
noM
federal and state electoral arrangements,
Australian
the
Mith
feasible
to have a
to
more
direct democracy Mith more pluralistic and responsive representation; but such
a change is politically unlikely, improvements in the directness and pluralism
The only changes
of democracy having obtained little public discussion even.
mooted
have
anachronistic simplifications of electoral arrangements (such
are
occurred
of
direction
Mhere
some
and
reasons,
Mhere
money
minorities
a
plays
little
have
major role in
political
the
federal
impact
determining
or
gets
Mho
(For a catalogue of major deficiency of US capaitalistic
and so on.
democracy,
several
US,
the
representation,
elected,
in
in NeM Zealand) Mhich Mould take Australia
as
valuable suggestions for
electoral
arrangements
improvement,
being
one,
smaller
For
OD).
see
population,
another, government remains much more accessible and responsive (e.g. to small
represenations) in Australia than USA,
group
influenced
by
If the unfortunate American
42
folloMed hoMever, much of that Mill change
Connected
the
attitude
America
seem
Mith differences in attitude to goverment are
servants of the government.
are looked doMn upon:
immediately
to
path
is
differences
in
professional lobbying.
to
admit to having.
The civil servants
it is the sort of job one may not,
By contrast,
more
Mhich by contrast is much
the public servants in
be held in considerable esteem (and some among the
taller
in
North
does
not,
Australia
unlopped
43
poppies)
Mork
One source of the difference lies in the underlying attitudes
and service.
In USA the public sector isn't really considered
to
to
Mork
42.
Occasionally for the better. Australian government has much to learn yet
from American about openness and freedom of information.
43.
Hhat is shared betMeen North America and Australia is the attitude of
middle level people Morking for the government: often these people do not
like Morking for the government (even though it provides them Mith a very
comfortable 1iving).
34
�(because
it is outside the market system),
but constitutes a burden
on
the
private sector Mhich does Mork. Though there have been efforts to import these
of (erroneous) market assumptions into Australia,
sorts
they have not really
thriven.
In seemingly curious contrast Mith the respective attitudes taken to
public service,
there is contempt for specific politicians,
if
even
are the vieMS of the political and judicial systems.
there
is
the
In USA,
considerable
resDect for the political system: the constitution is virtually God-given, and
44
certainly something to be proud of and much superior to anything elseMhere.
In
Australia
is considerable cynicism about
there
it has little or no high authority and backing,
system;
judiciary
political
gerrymandering,
the reputation of
same holds as regards the judicial system:
the
and
the
favouritism, etc., are virtually expected and accepted features.
corruptness,
Huch
hoMever,
is
constantly
being
practice) in the Make of scandals.
propped
up
(Mith
unjustified
the
success
in
Both again contrast Mith attitudes to the
public service, Mhich Australians tend to consider relatively honest, and most
certainly not open to bribery on an Asian scale (thank you!).
There are significant (but significantly different)
both mainstream cultures over government:
all
cover
deeper,
the
branches equally;
then,
in Australia respect for the
of government does not penetrate very deep,
branches
tensions,
and certainly does
in USA respect for the
institutions
in
chief
not
goes
but does not cover the functionaries.
The American situation is the more easily explained, in outline at least.
In USA government is vieMed,
frameMork apparatus,
in principle, as a rather minimal regulating and
Mhich does not itself Mork,
but keeps the market system
Mhere
the real Mork is done Mell-oiled and suitably running,
other
capitalistic
44.
institutions
such
as private
property
and
guarantee^
and
individual
1^ recent decades, 'Americans continued to say that they Mere proud of
our system of goverment.
Their lack of confidence Mas clearly directed
at the people running those institutions' (Lipset and Schneider, p.16?).
35
�freedoms.
social
government has become too large,
But
expensive
services),
functionaries
parasitic
as
take the flack for that situation.
Big expensive
arrangements.
unproductive
government
is invidiously contrasted Mith market
Furthermore,
government
often operates,
and is seen operate in
organisations furthering their OMn interests and profits,
large
in
government
And
burden.
many of them accordingly parasites and seen
and employees,
looking out for themselves,
- a
overextended (specially
favour
of
the
whereas
market system, for all its basis in competitive self interest, does not bestow
great
A
favours.
extraordinary
markets:
in
political
America
mainstream
is
the market system bordering
on
and support systems
are
outside
or
operation
of
supported,
deplored.
The
feM
further
assumptions,
deductively justified through)
commitment to competitive individualism.
the
intimacy of regard and effort,
but
mainstream
American commitment to market arrangements is in turn explained by (and,
but
an
the
in
faith
arrangements taken to accompany free
brief the free-enterprise system is religiously
arrangements
by
explained
suspicion of any political arrangements stepping
a
capitalistic
the
beyond
to
commitment
and
system,
about
deal
Mith
cultural
the
The associated emphasis on Mork, and
Mhich accompany market euphoria,
can
be
explained, historically to some extent, by May of the originally difficult and
predominantly puritan settlement of America.
But such a genetic
explanation
is hardly complete; for largely gone, as no more than relics, are the forms of
early more democratic America,
the toMn meeting places and so on,
largely in
favour odf super-market places.
The American commitment to market procedures, and American enthusiasm for
market
d
lochte
methods,
does
not extend to mainstream
a distressing 'Australian distrust of markets'.
have found, underlying this
individualism,
an
Australia,
endorsement
distrust, a Marranted
Mhere
Americans
But Mhere they
rejection
of
might
competitive
they couple it,
not incorrectly, but more superficially, Mith
45
of egalitarianism'.
For market processes do redistribute
Meal th and Mhat goes Mith it, in very unequal fashion over the course of time,
36
�46
both
theory
allocation
market
and American experience attest.
processes
as
highly
desirable
Americans
given,
and
take
to
tend
to
regard
deviations from or interference in on-going market processes, such as a social
preference for equality, as (economically) asinine and certain irrational, and
as carrying an expensive price tag.
The
predominant American view is that the market i^ fair and
wise,
but
preceding quotes are
(From previous page) As Withers, from Mhom the tMO the emotional and
draMn,
remarks,
'as economists and Americans,
to elude them' ANU
intellectual basis and content of such vieMs seems
Reporter 16(6) (1985) 6.
46.
47.
Beginning in 1820 Mith a much more egalitarian society, USA experienced
many decades of increasingly inegalitarian income distribution; see
Williamson and Lindert.
most
Thus, for example, Caves and Krause, pp.400 1, also p.2, Mho for the
al 1
processes
(it
is
after
part simply assume the superiority of market
,
and
appeal
repeatedly
to
the
efficiency
of
economic conventional Misdom),
..
a
definition
of
market outcomes.
It is loaded efficiency, Mith
For
market
efficiency appropriately adjusted to market proces=e=.
minimize
arrangements are not particularly efficient
or to
on market externalities (such as environmental degradation)
maximize on other objectives (such as income fairness).
1 ou t
Extensions of these points apply against the usual arguments rolledOne of
t
of
market
procedures
everyMhere.
0..
for the imposition or dominance
to be Caves and Krause, namely 'the efficiency of
......................
, and
market and nonmarket allocation is open to empirical
test,
and so the
the
distrust of market outcomes should be subject to modification 1
that
evidence Marrants' (p.400).
The trouble Mith this is not merely
(p.400).
much depends on hoM "efficiency" is assessed; it
i. is
-- that empirical tests
ar" virtually never attempted, are difficult to ca<^ out in real-1 ife
situations (Mhere there are too many uncontrolled parameters , and Mhen
methods.
attempted do not deliver unequivocal results favouring marke
of market
So there is fall back to theoretical argument: the
C._ efficiency
„
That
is
true^
Mith
"efficiency"
given
^39**"
processes can be proved.
That is true, Mith "efficiency
P
but under highly restrictive conditions,
(externalities neglected, etc.)
such as perfect competition, Mhich are virtually never satisfied in
Caves
and Krause do recognise that frequent failure
actual conditions.
1
striking
conditions
of one of the more Sn
------- for
— market efficiency in . Australia
may account for local suspicion of markets, Mhich 'may arise natur
y
a oeographically isolated country in Mhich the actors are too f
ensure efficient Market cuties' (p.2: no doubt yet another
but Minor
econoMic reason for pushing for a larger huMan population
is to get Market actors up to competitive strength!)
However such
reasons "cannot really account for the suspicion of
population substantially unfaMiliar with conditions for Market adequacy.
tt is false then, what economists like Caves and Krause try o suggest
(e.g. p.400), that distrust of Markets has, except in special cases, no
economic foundations.
That May be Mainstream American economic wisdom,
but it hardly passes undisputed in many parts of the Morld.
37
�not the government;
1$?57
and 1977 held
"gives
everyone
a
for example,
... large majorities of national samples in
that the free-enterprise system is "fair and wise"
fair choice" (65/D,
(82Z),
and that it is a "fair and efficient
system" (63X)', whereas 'not only do large majorities (1980) believe that "the
government
is
themselves"
is
pretty
(78X),
much
run by a few
big
intereasts
out
looking
for
but also that "you cannot trust the government to do what
right" most of the time (73X)' (Lane,
p.3).
Lane's summary of
American
public attitudes does not extend to Australia:
the public tends to believe that the market system is a more fair
agent than the political system; people tend to include the problem
cases in the political domain and exclude them from the market; they
ignore many of the public benefits and, with certain exceptions,
prefer market goods to political goods; they prefer the market's
criteria of deserts to the polity's criteria of equality and need;
they believe that market procedures are more fair than political
procedures; and they are satisfied that they receive what they deserve
in the market but much less so in the polity, and by a different
measure, are much more satisfied with the general income distribution
among occupations than with the distribution of influence among social
groups in the polity (Lane p.7).
It is enough to reflect on Australian attitudes to wage determination,
security
and medicine,
and the like.
social
Australians are less inclined to
market rewards as fair returns for hard work,
see
and more inclined to see market
rewards as based on luck and chance as well as on performance in popular areas.
In USA,
Even where the market's methods are thought unfair to certain groups,
such as blacks and women, the intrusion of government into the sacred
precincts is regarded with hostility, for the government's program of
rectification trespasses on the evaluation of persons by the market's
process of "revealed contribution".
Hhere government purposes are
approved their implemtation is stifled, partly, at least, because the
government's
justice
norms
are discounted and
because
such
implementation
violated market justice
norms.
Thus,
minimal
government is assured and people are endowed with more commodities and
fewer collective goods (Lane, p.27).
In
Australia,
support,
active
by contrast,
respect and trust,
opposition.
Hhile
the market system does not enjoy this
level
of
but encounters especially in the area of labour,
small local markets (e.g.
fruit and
vegetables,
trash and trivia) are often well supported, the extension of markets into many
significant
spheres
of working and of moral life is
38
resisted.
Unions
and
�Mith extensive nonmarket social agendas, thrive, to
labour and other parties,
irritation of Northern-schooled economists and political scientists
the
diversion of resources, open-ended
regularly point to rent-seeking behaviour,
costs,
and
the
(Mho
zero-sum nature of governmental
redistribution
equity
and
measures).
a certain market distrust or indiffierence
Since
economic phenomenon in Australia,
government
functioning
and various related
claims
Mhat they notice, in particular,
assemble no evidence;
operations in many places Mhere
organised
important
as Mell as to its historical source.
claim,
is
an
it is Morth inquiring as to the evidence of
this phenomenon of 'pervasive distrust',
competition' (p.400),
appears
markets
could
reflect
('the design and scope of governmental policy and action
This
this distrust'), so they assume government interference or intervention.
is
once
again to assume,
erroneously,
that markets are the natural May
state alternative is
constitutes "interference".
contrived,
"rights"
for
or
instance
In
by
hoMever,
areas,
many
governmental
markets
vouchers or the like trade-Morthy items,
to
of
glimpsed)
have
introducing
regulations
be
function
to
be
special
at
all.
Frequently in Australia the government eventually acted in areas Mhere markets
had failed, e.g. in generating employment, adequate Mages, etc., or else Mhere
there
over
Mere no markets,
for instance in the secularisation of society to take
formerly carried on by religious organisations.
Given the
43
context and evolution , it is decidedly misleading to say that
functions
historical
choose at some cost the seemingly greater control of outcomes
that
government interference promises' (p.2).
(and is uniikely to be),
There Mas strictly no
no cost because there Mere no satisfactory
choice
markets,
and so no such government interference.
Australian Mariness of markets, and distaste for them in various socially
^.significant
areas,
had of course been observed much earlier (though not Mith
3?
�same level of disapproval as the Americans display).
the
It Mas part
a
of
long tradition of (predominantly nonmarxist) socialism, Mhich Mas coupled Mith
an
anti-economic
people.
open-handed
'Australians are a
They dislike refusing favours,
Hancock in a much quoted
(thus
costs'
stance and sentiments.
passage:
counting costs is not economic behaviour;
good-tempered,
and they do
e.g.
Connell
not
count
p.29).
nor are the nonmaximizing,
Not
take-a-
day-off, leisure-oriented features of the older culture.
Explaining
mainstream Australian ambivalence toMards government is
more
Given the anti
difficult than explaining the Mariness of market procedures.
authoritarian elements in the history of the country (e.g.the convict origins,
squatting),
bushranging,
strongly egalitarian attitudes and image presented,
the
given
Mhich are continued in the mainstream culture
government in Australia, and the
glamour
b^en
media figures),
supposed
importance:Each
and
of
ncreasing importance of politicians (Mho are
is someMhat surprising.
to lie in the lack of religiosity.
Firstly,
the poMer
and
Part of an explanation
There are tMO
and puritanism foster
Protestantism
points
has
of
49
individualism
every one of us has to ansMer for him or her-self (before
God,
or
48.
(From previous page) Australian history has arguably' shoMn a strong
preference for collective action, both Mhere there might have been
The early convict
markets to intervene in and Mhere there Mere none.
phase affords clear evidence of this, and the later nineteenth century
has !been characterised (by Butlin) as a period of 'colonial social ism'.
The early tMentieth century Mas the time Mhen the Antipodes served as; a
Hore recently , hoMever, the European
laboratory for social experiments,
II.
especial 1y since Nor Id Nar
industrial Morld has caught up,
(Australian public employment and expenditure Mere much higher than most
Western countries in the early post-Mar years, but to have not increased
nearly as much since: see Aitken).
Glenn Nithers made these points,
Mhich as he remarks gives a modified Brookings' vieM, as presented by
Caves and Krause some historical grounding.
49.
As does even the Catholic Church at times of reformation: perhaps Me are
entering a second reformation, as the Church of the Third Horld gets
transformed.
The same types of individualistic themes are also promoted
by Transcendental Meditation (e.g., the emphasis upon 'individuals taking
responsibility for shaping their OMn lives ', irrespective of their socio
economic circumstances; 'the effect of meditation itself is a strong
affirmation of our OMn poMer to affect our OMn lives and so accept
greater responsibility for our OMn level of Mellness': H. Southern, ANU
Reporter 16(5) ( 1985)).
40
�!.;.i h Qii! 9'-.- er) :
is supposedly responsible for his. or her
each
successes and failures,
own
lives,
their
additions! props and supports, such as welfare
etc.
and an elaborate social security system, are not required (or even desirable).
That religious basis tor individualism has been largely eroded or displaced in
Australia,
but
not
North
in
Rmerica where a
latent
puritanism
persists
(prohibition would never have survived in Australia).
the State serves as a substitute if not for the Maker at least
Secondly,
for organised religion or for the Church (in a society strongly influenced
'The functions and power of the state in Australia have come to
Catholicism).
take
over,
O'Farrell,
bx
and
p.7).
displace,
the
'Reliance
on
social
the
activities of
religion''
state has increased to
the
(to
adapt
extent
of
significant erosion of former religious-oriented areas: in charity, hospital=,
a whole gamut of social and psychological services and counselling work ,
and
above all in education (there are, to take one striking
50
example, no strictly private Australasian universities ).
h-= miqhf hav .idd^d,
But the religious explanation is not entirety plausible.
For one thing,
the substitution argument has been used to explain too many '-lu^ely
phenomena:
patriotism.
UBR,
where
phenomena
50.
not
just
the
Nationalism
power
of government,
but
nationalism
also
and patriotism are however at least very strong
no corresponding substitution is assumed.
supposed 1y
connected
explained
appear
almost
as
And in fact
old
as
the
all
and
in
the
allegoric
features of
The reasons for this are complex;
the
1 ack of a
Australasian society taken up below: anti-intellectualism
lack
of
wealth
philanthropic tradition, egalitarianism, and the relative
and
grant
endowmen
t
,
and super-rich capitalist.
On the philanthrophic,
have
.norm
situation
for culture in Australia (to which norm
things
early
substantially reverted following the high-cultural heydays of the
70s), see McLeod, p.2ff.
4!
�can be.
substituting
extent
In addition,
t
the religous explanation covers
which the State has deliberately extended its power and
to
up
the
displaced
rival social structures, thereby undermining community- and self-reliance.
For these reasons a different two-part hypothesis wi1 } be preferred which
is
State
The hypothesis is that
the religious explanation as one part.
includes
progressively
and
organisation
displacing
society,
and
arrangements,
social
local
that what religious
and
the
community
organisations
had
supplied were many community arrangements; especially in health and education,
'n
fact
m economic and political science
(.especially
other
conflation of the State with society
the
decision
social
arrangements:
arrangements
making
is
nowadays
especially
literature),
compared
are
ubiquitious
wi th
it is virtual!y always the state versus the market,
when
market
Mith other
social arrangements'and mechanisms collapsed into the state.
is much less opposition and resistance to the encroachment of
There
where as emphasized
Australia than in USA,
in
state
an
pathetic) faith m market alternatives persists.
rather
reactive)
state
encroachement
egalitarian measures;
for
welfare
and
but often it is promoted for sectional advantage from a
this reason,
for
cand
Sometimes (typically
supported
state (hence the view of the milch-cow state,
hand-out
Partly
in Australia is
unquestioned
the
remarked by Hancock).
the impression still comes strongly
through
that,
despite the growing power of the State, respect for government and politicians
does not run deep in Australian society,
would
do
distaste
no
harm
and could, easily be
were legendary Australian disrespect
for
dislodged.
It
authority
and
for tall poppies directed against political leaders and
government,
so at least that both are regarded more critically.
The
society
surprisingly
rule-bound
and
uncritical
fits with attitudes to government,
character
of
Australian
and again traces back to colonial
origins. H heavy-handed government was something people got accustomed to, and
also relied upon and reacted against,
42
early on in Australia. For example, 'in
�1/-98
government of New South Hates
th?
authoritative to a high degree' (Within,
was
omnipresent,
centralised,
p.22).
And, owing especially to/the
cost of what is much more evident in USA, ! oca! government).
society
apparent!'/ more rule-bound than North American,
is
and
prolonged strikes are much more common in the antipodes.
But although the
as
things
such
To some extent
this
can be seen as a further reflection of rules: trade union laws are stronger in
the Antipodes and unions less repressed.
on the State has meant (excess) toleration of the State and
Reliance
governments, and hence the condoning of much corruption in
branches (e.g. pot ice and prison systems).
than
European
(except by occasional journalists)
government and its
Australian attitudes are more like
m the way corruption is
umerican
North
of
hidden
and allowed to pass.
from
gaze
This is not to imply
that corruption is more extensive than in USA * it is almost certainly less
-
but that it is viewed and treated differently.
The
ugly
underlying
face of the State,
private property,
capitalism:
laissez fairs,
security and violence.
for
advanced
Despite the minima!,
view of the State prevalent m the USA,
The US State has a very extensive,
different.
and conditions
''?ry
the practice is
and crucial role in providing
the conditions + or advanced capitalism both at home and abroad. At home, there
are two main factors, maintenance of capitalistic institutions such as private
property and ailing big business, and interna! security.
In
USA
contrast,
in
property
are
private property has taken on an almost sacred
Australia,
much
restrictions on (in principle)
more extensive,
accept further restrictions and the "erosion" of private
for
example,
equivalent.
is
built
entirely on leasehold land;
Much
rural
land
important
in
leasehold
categories.
establishing
was
unfettered
and there is much more
leasehold,
parks and reserves,
something
is
which
and a good deal
to
Lanberra,
Ameri_an
no
Nuch "freehold" rural land is under various
43
private
preparedness
property.
there
By
character
has
proved
remains
is
types
of
si^y^
�* a ] [ rfi e s te .-g. police -st n d-pr i s o n * s y-s^omsJ——Fm-str^lian...attitudes are more li-^e
North
than
European
in the way corruption is
American
and allowed to pass.
(except\by occasional journalists)
hidden
gaze
from
to imply
This is n
tainly less
that corrup^ixpn is more extensive than in USf) * it is almost c
that it is viewed and treated differently.
private property,
capitali^m:
laissez
face of the State,
underlying
The
t in the USR,
tensive,
The US State has a v
different.
advanced
Despite the minimal,
security and X'iolence.
view of the^^ate preval
fairs,
for
and conditions
the practice is very
and crucial role in providing
both at home and abroad. Rt home, there
the conditions for advanced capit
are two main factors, maintenance of capitalistic institutions such as private
and internal secur i ty.
property and
!
In
s taken on an al
USR
contrast,
in
property
are
st sacred
restrictions on (in principi^)
ia,
more extensive,
restrictions and the "erosion" of private
ortant
a,*tc,n 1 rl
51.
in
built
entirely on leasehold land;
Much
rural
land
establishing
was
leasehold,
parks and reserves,
there
something
preparedness
rty.
is
catMuch ""Treel)ol*d——r-uraJ—Land—Ls—under various
to
Canberra,
American
proved
which
and a good deal
By
private
unfettered
and there is much m
is
character.51
remai
ty
The origin of the institution is much clearer that its .justification.
French constitutional and cultural influence undoubtedly contributed to
the situation that has arisen; but even the French have observed the
'private affluence and public squalor' of much of US of
Fortunately,
however,
USf^ has retained some zones of public land which on French
perception would be private, e.g. beaches, where in the French world it
may be necessary to rent a spot to sit down.
Hhile the guaranteed accumulation of capital is essential to capitalism
and to acquisitiveness, the accumulation of property and a comprehensive
institution of property is not necessary for competitive (as distinct
from acquisitive) individualism.
The reason is simply that competition
may
be
differently motivated than by acquisitivism or
material
accumulation, e.g. for status, honour, pure perfectionism, etc. However
material accumulation can most certainly foster competition (since
cakes are limited); and the Hestern competitive drive would surely be
much dampened were the ability to accumulate material rewards and
property reduced.
�zoning restraints,
etc.
orders,
And
-tor example, environmental preservation, tree preservation
rural land is regulated by
all
virtually
local
Pasture
Protection Boards, Mhich can authorise removal or destruction of noxious Meeds
or species, by
organisations Mhich
bushfire
require
can
fire
restriction
practices, by Mater and soil conservation authorities, and so on. Fortunately,
some
of
Scandinavian
52
regulation Mhich in effect requires the exploitative use of forested land.
hoM<=ver,
the
have
controls
private, corporate and public, are a very visible
Security arrangements,
and
not taken the direction
feature of American social arrangements. In USA the police
53
is highly conspicuous to Antipodeans.
(In this respect the place
expensive
presence
resembles Eastern block countries much more than less uptight parts of Hestern
Accompanying
Europe.)
precautions.
(Among
the
an extraordinarily high
is
this
most
guarded
places
in
level
Australia
of
security
are
American
installations: take a look at the US embassy in Canberra, or at Pine Gap.)
high level of police,
A
things,
different
for
and associated military presence,
first,
instance,
as
often,
can
reflect
repressive
and
unrepresentative political, regimes, or second, considerable social inequality
alonq Mith dubious legal methods of self-aggrandisement,
or third,
both (as
in Brasil). The USA is usually taken to be a relatively pure case of the
e.g.
second.
The
inequality
level
in
opportunity,
theory
of
the
etc.
a
of
security is presented as
society,
in the distribution
reflecting
of
private
level
of
property,
in
the
But it is not merely this: there is no associated accepted
person's
place,
as
in
class
or
culturally
stratified
societies, Mhich .justifies position in a social hierarchy, or Mhich .justifies,
52.
Of course Australian privatisation in turn leaves much to be desired by
Melanesian and Aboriginal standards.
53.
As a raM NeM Zealander, Mho greM up in a small toMn Mith only a couple of
policemen, I Mas astounded by the level of police activity in Meal thy and
laM-abiding Princeton. There Mere 3 standing sets of police in the toMn:
state, city, and university, and the federal force also had access. All
Mere armed: the situation Mas not merely astonishing, but alarming as
�for instance,
On the contrary, it is all too evident, in
continued poverty.
the
highly individualistic US society,
ha=
b<=*=n largely eroded,
role
Mhere sense of social place and
that there is no very sharp moral division
between
54
and illegal aggrandisement,
"legal"
between police and mafia,
etc.
(The
same phenomenon is developing in Australia, especially in NSH and Queensland.)
There
is
a
major reason Mhy the USA is not
another
pure
and
case,
that
concerns the significant level of repression.
The
security arrangements in USA operate to deal
internal
also
Mith
certain types of political dissent. There are substantial numbers of political
mainly black;
prisoners,
even so the number appears small compared Mi th many
of the Third Horld regimes USA supports (e.g. Indonesia to take a neighbouring
55
example)
. In Australia by comparison there are feM political prisoners
(though there are no doubt some,
some of
the
and have been conspicuous examples); hoMever
requisite legislation to detain such prisoners,
legally, is noM
in place, and should be removed before it can be used.
Hhether
or not the number of political prisoners in USA
of prisoners is not.
number
according
to ABC figures,
is
small,
in
There are huge numbers of prisoners
the
USA:
more than half a million people in gaol.
'As its
prison population increases at record rates, it has been estimated that the Uh
has
already
a larger percentage of its citizens behind bars than
nation except the Soviet Union and South Africa" (OD,
figures by means reflect the extent of the crime.
p.28).
any
other
fet the prison
There is an enormous crime
crime rate Mi th more than 5000 unsolved murders a year.
The
USA is,
Australia is not.
sheer,
54,
55.
increasingly since Horld Har II,
a
militarised
society;
The militarisation of the USA is not simply a matter of the
massive numbers (more than 2 million) of Americans in uniform, at home
As Veblen observed, early in the Century.
For Indonesia,
January l'?85/.
see
Amnesty
International.
Lf
s t r a 1 i an
Society
�and
hold doMn the
to
abroad,
and
enterprise
bureaucracy
business
and keep the Morld free (but
empire
It is a matter also of
interests).
and research devoted to
military
heavily militarised Keynesianism) have
(of
USR,
though
not nearly as many as might be expected;
they
have
mainstream
support,
these
the
critics within
sadly it appears
reflect
and to that extent
Ub
industry,
Certainly
objectives.
arrangements
the
for
that
prevailing
the
cu1ture.
one of
in simple terms,
policy and practice is,
US
abroad,
international
capitalism
under US hegemony and of encouraging or
right-leaning
capitalism
in as many places
practice has worked Mell from
part
significant
Mith
militarily
"information",
installing
and education,
a
channelling
is
US domination
largely political and economic and
propaganda
The
feasible.
an American business viewpoint,
of the Morld surplus value into the USa.
maintained by a mix of methods,
together
as
promoting
military,
heavily backed
by
intelligence, security, and military operations.
like american religion,
US practices abroad thus exhibit,
set
of
double standards:
a rhetoric of freedom and
rights,
a remarkable
given
limited
practical realisation Mithin the USa, coupled Mith activities quite opposed to
those ideals in many Third Horld countries.
The capitalistic and bureaucratic
control of the main media and educational outlets is such,
the
majority
perception
of
Americans
remain
largely
of US support of aggression,
sheltered
violence,
that
furthermore,
from
torture,
inconvenient
suppression
of
rights, and so on, abroad (points Mell documented in Chomsky and Herman.)
56
Hhile australia cannot, by and large, be convicted of such practices,
government
policies
activities.
States
malpractices,
56.
support,
find
it
and
remain
very
uncritical
expedient to turn a largely blind
and even atrocities,
of,
eye
of other "allied" or neighbouring
american
to
the
states
These are small-scale activities Mhich channel "aid" in fact beneficial
to military structures of adjacent countries, rather than to the local
peoples, as Mith aid to the Philippines.
�(witness australia's official approach, and aid packages, to Indonesia and the
Phi!ippines).
The
USa
is a particularly violent society,
directly
(in
several
torture
training),
Mays:
military
violence
and exports
practices,
intelligence
through example,
and also less directly,
both
operations,
through
media
coverage
and
the sooner
the
American
life-style ceases to be one to imitate and becomes one to avoid
and
scorn,
popular culture,
the better.
and so on.
From this angle,
The relative extent of violence in US life is Mell enough
'On the average death by homocide is eight
illustrated by homocide rates:
to
nine times more likely in the US than in other advanced industrial states ^OD,
It is even more strikingly revealed by comparative figures for
57
gun killings Mhere detail:s for 1980 are as folloMs:
hand-
p.27).
In
are
Australi a
UK, Canada
SMi tzer 1 and
USa
in
in
in
in
4
8
24
11,998
USa.,
part this is no doubt due to the vast numbers of hand-guns i n
not
used purely for deterrence :
hand-guns
countries
60 mi 11 ion in 1980.
are not available in the same free
they
to
felt
(presently)
are
ideological
difference:
be
required.
and
and
easy
is
there
Pacific
South
In
an
Mhich
May,
nor
important
Reagan's mainstream American vieM that 'the right to
carry arms shal1 not be infringed' is not shared in the South,
Mhere no
such
laMlessness
and
unqualified right is conceded.
The
differences
.just
in Meapon availability,
are
Australia
as a pioneering society,
the
of
American
vieM
of
in roughly the same position as parts
of
American Mest some (unspecific) time ago,
reasons
toting,
the reasons Mhy the common
violence,
some
gun
is
concern the organisation of the society,
seriously
astray.
Other
the extent of socialisation
and lack of key elements of a coMboy economy.
57.
Figures from a 1984 aBC documentary on violence in USa.
are given in 00, pp.28-'?.
4?
Similar figures
�.
Liberty, equality, fraternity - compared and updated.
Though conditions
of personal liberty in Australasia are rivalled in feM other places,
not,
in
marked
contrast
to
58
appropriate bills of rights.
examples
restricted;
USA,
guaranteed constitutionally
Furthermore,
they remain quite
they are
by
or
any
unnecessarily
are conditions on libel and the right to MithdraM one's
labour in Australia (and in NeM Zealand constraints on sexual freedom).
despite
serious
inadequacies in Australasian legal codification and
recognised poor performance areas as regards civil liberties,
Yet,
certain
it seems
clear
that the record of political repression and infringement of civil liberties in
59
USA is Morse.
There is also notably less tendency to self-censureship,
whether
in the Mork-place or in social life,
than in North America.
in Australia (and NeM
Zealand)
Australians tend to be open and speak their minds
on
things.
in several respects
Australian society is considerably more egalitarian,
(but especially wealth and treatment),
dominated
its
cultural
life.
supported^inequality in Britain.
than the Northern societies that
There is
conspicuous,
and
still
have
socially
There is very conspicuous inequality in USA,
most countries in the primary US "sphere
of
influence",
and
also
58.
In certain respects this lack of state guarantee matters only to the
legally inclined Mho Mant to see everything codified (it certainly
In part the lack of
matters less to the anarchistically inclined),
appropriate codification of rights and freedoms is due to poli t ical
inertia and the reluctance of government to concede rights^1 in part it
can be traced to a different heritage from the American, to
t_ {he British
The
trouble
is that there
system enlarging on an uncodified common laM.
______ _ of
_ common
__
are elements
laM, still having some force, Mhich are inimical
to various freedoms.
59.
Nhile it is difficult to impossible to document claims of this sort, some
quantitative impression can be gained by trying to match temporal1 stages
stages in
of political repression in USA, as assembled by Goldstein, Mith
<
Similarly
corresponding
lists
of
conspicuous
infringements
of
Australia.
civil
liberties
could
be
draMn
up.
But
even
if
this
arduous
recognised
there Mould remain many problems of
task Mere folloMed through,
especially
as
to
Mhat
extent population and concentration of
Mei gh t ing,
should
be
used
to
average
data, etc.
popu1 at i on
60.
This is part (but part only) of the alleged rudeness and crudeness
Australians Mhich repels refined Europeans.
On the self-censorship
American citizens, see Goldstein, p.556ff.
in
e.g.
of
of
�Central and Latin America.
The inequality is obvious to Australians, and even
It is confirmed in varying degrees, by
who visit major US cities.
Europeans,
a ranqe of statistics,
home ownership, extent of
as to wealth differentials,
poverty, etc.
inequality
Gross
is not only present in America,
throuoh the competitive individualism of the
underpinned,
blame:
to
herself
work will remove it.
Protestant
work
(such
approved
as
Poverty
culture.
the opportunities to avoid it are there,
or
individual
and
Thus inequality is justified ideologically in terms of a
strongly
and worth ethic and s
American
American inequality is not,
primarily
ideologically
A person in poverty has only himself
squalor are commonly deserved.
and
but is
and
social
philosophers
political
like that of Europe,
however,
suppl'-*'.
one of class, but
and of opportunities connected with this.
of wealth,
philosophy
individualistic
old
New and
money are equated.
A
it
and the extensive popular support
main source of American inequality,
seems
to enjoy,
widespread support for
is evident
fairly
unfettered
market processes and belief in market justice, and so (with further suppressed
assumpt i ons)
in
capi taiism.
American inegalitarianism is supported,
grossly
unequal
distribution
wealth
under
market-based
at a deeper level then,
—sttppor-fs—marke-t—ar^-angetwnts a&d the like,--- t4+e—the-mcc
individualism.
competitive
1 n ter*!
But
the
endor semen t
is far from clear,
some cur i ou s specu 1 ^Lc-n .
ex amp 1e,
much less egalitarian countrDes
it "Australian nationalism" w
it ha
for
een a matter
^en tied to nationalism; but
e explication circular).
And,
in
concerning the vigorous
= democratic values against an angl'-English themselve
,
and h
of
JSA) appear as nationalistic (to make
par t i a 1 opposi t i on to
ertion of k
source
e upper
These no longer tenable theses a
tw-eg di sp 1 i.ced-by a11-J Lh—an t i ^aut
class,
it is
t *.r i an , ttreme---- eta—th# fac
�h'./
wh.3.t
suppor ts
market
competitive
1 n teres ted
endorsement
arrangements and the 1 ike,
But
individualism.,
of egalitarianism'
some c u r 1 ou s speculation.
the
is far from clear,
For ex ample,
the
source
themes
self-
of
'Australia's
of
and has been a matter
for
it has been tied to nationali am $ but
much less egalitarian countries (such as UBA) appear as nationalistic (to make
And,
it "faustralian nationalism" would render the explication circular).
partial opposition to this,
has been pressed a thesis concerning the vigorous
assertion of Australia's democratic values against an anglophile upper
or against the English themselves.
said,
it
being displaced by another,
with
inconsistent
hierarchial
the
organisations
in
ihese no longer tenable theses are, it is
anti-authoritarian, theme - on the face of
extensive popular
as
class,
government
Antipodean
and
army
- as
for
support
to
such
'Australians
something said to be shown by their
-61
bad relations with the police.
No doubt element* of all these
collective dislike of higher au thor i ty',
undoubtedly
themes have historical relevance, and certainly Australian egalitarianism
So far as
deep historical roots'; but that does not explain why it persisted.
however,
it has persisted,
the
including
controlling
two-way
Australian
elites,
linkage
it appears to be due to a complex mix of factors,
anti-authoritarian
perhaps
causal) with the
orientation of the mainstream society,
Hancock
aptly
has
streak
particularly Northern ones.
(not
has
opposition
to
But more important is
the
and
fraternal
and
socialistic
what was 'colonial socialism
called 'socialism without doctrines' (.though
it
and what
is
not
really devoid of underlying ideas).
Not
convincing
61.
only
is
detail,
this explanation of
Australian
egalitarianism
short
on
but in its course it touches upon an interesting paradox,
These now unlikely explanations are brought together in
Connell z4.
Against
Hancock's
claim 'that egalitarianism and nationalism
are
"interwoven"', was
opposed the view of the 'democratic
masses ...
defining themselves against the Anglophile upper class'
(p.34) and
Phillips' claim that 'allied to this rebellion against the English is a
vigorous asset* tion of democratic values' .
'he anti-authoritarian claim
is advanced by Connell himself.
Bad relations with and clashes with the
police are of course not uncommon elsewhere, including America.
�puzzle of Australian anti-authoritarianism - or authoritarianism
the
continues to vex discussion of the mainstream cutture.
there
there
other,
unnecessar11y
is
evident support for,
authoritarian
reliance upon^and
institutions,
such as
heavy-handed
of group size theory.
resist
the
about
complacency
"self-reliance",
most
But on
Australian
attempt wi11
gover nmen t
to
side,
For on the one
clear evidence of Australian antipathy to authority.
is
ujhich
by a difference
Roughly, individuals and small primary groups Mill tend
imposition by other individuals or small groups or
factions,
counter to large groups or attempt to
Australians Mill not
but
buck
the system.
To say that Australian society is more egalitarian than American, or than
British or French, is not however to say that the local myth of an egalitarian
society is Justified,
and some,
and perhaps extensive, poverty.
than m New Zealand),
appears
or that there are not conspicuous differences in wealth
There are (and on both <-ount= more
and the polarisation of income and wealth in
to be increasing (with inflation).
Even so the differences
the very rich and the poor are not nearly as marked,
63
numerous or ill-assisted as in USA.
In
62.
Australia
there
Australia
between
and the poor are not
is also a recognised cultural
drive
towards
so
more
The evidence is notjmere 1y historical and anecdotal, as Rigby shows. Nhat
Rigby demonstrateshs that English college students are 'significantly
more pro—authority' than Australian, 'with English students fa.V'juring
institutional authorities more strongly (p.41, p.46). Rigby's, results
also suggest that Australian radicals (at least among students) are more
opposed to authority than their English counterparts',
and
that
'attitudes towards the police are not anoma 1 ou s in Australian life ...
but fall consistently into a pattern of attitudes towards institutional
authority genera 11 y' (p.46).
Nh areas 'England has lor had J a tradition
of respect for ths police; in Australia the police are commonly viewed
with contempt, especially by the young
as previous studies have
confirmed (p.46) .
Note that authoritarian' is used throughout in itstandard dictionary senses of 'subservience to authority ,
placing
obedience to authority above persona! liberty' and not in the unfortuante
extensions (discussed by Rigby) made by Adorno in elaboration of the
"authoritarian personality".
Rigby explains the notion he is operating
with as 'the degree of approval or disapproval with which a person views
various institutional authorities' (p.42).
51
�equality,
manifested
poppies"
ta!!
or
striking!;/ in the proverbial procedure of "cutting dc.-jn
"tall timbers".
at
F'eop!e who excel,
in
!east
certain
respects such as intellectual or artistic ways, are strong!;/ disapproved of in
certain traditional social groups,
poms,
are
and,
like know-alls,
cut down to size if it can be done.
But this levelling is b;/ no
for instance in sport,
means general!;/ applied locally to outstanding people,
84
politics, and increasingly nowadays in business.
nowadays-
applied
fellow
sm a Iler
break",
a
63.
in the bigger cities is levelling
Even
up,
less
giving
regularly
the
-mall
though such aid appears to have been accepted practice
c omm u n i t i es,
along with
poufters and
wogs,
and h as con s i der ab1e basis in the
t_ u 1 t u r a 1
sympathy with the underdog' and more broadly in an
in
tradition,
intolerance of
(From previous page) There is much argument about the extent of equa!1ty
data organised by Rubenstein (especially Iable 1,
in Australia. ' But
the
meagre
spread of weal th in lustra! ia compared with d-A
p.26) reveals
Embury
and
Fodder 'conclude that although the distribution
and Britain.
Australia
is
far from egalitarian, it is no less so than a
of income in
as
Japan
and
rather more egalitarian than some of the
country such
world's most industrialised nation , notabty, USA, UK, Canada and Italy
They present as a. common finding in sociology that
the
(p. 122)
inequality of size distribution of family income compares favourably with
(p.l8-f.).
that of other countries' (p.188).
Aitkin, in the course of making
= e^cr'R] points of relevance regarding the equality and social welfare
for more than 70 years
situation in Australia, is less cautiou:
Australia has enjoyed the benefits of a basic-wage system and an arbitral
method of settling industrial disputes which incidentally fixes wage and
salary rates.
Two consequences are that Austral ia (a.) has one of the
most equal distributions of income in the world [further references are
cited], and (b)
that there has been a floor under the wage system
throughout the twentieth century" (.pp.18-'?).
Reliable data pinning down the comparative extent of poverty in Australia
and USA faces further difficulties, in differences in the way poverty
lines are set, and because the Australian government fails to keep any
due records of poverty (%?ot always recognising it as a social problem?).
As a very rough rule of thumb,
however, poverty appears almost tw1cf a =
extensive in USu, in terms of percentage of population, as in Australia.
64.
It remains unclear where levelling down applies and where it is waived,
and perhaps there are no clear principles involved.
The criterion, if
any, is not what Caves and Krause suggest, that 'foreign recognition of
outstanding qualities of certain Australians somehow legitimizes those
persons and makes them acceptable at home (p.?).
'Justified levelling-down is a significant feature of the culture, that
will recur; for example, it is linked toAustalian anti-intellectualism,
and it is said to be motivated by the incompetence and typical corruption
of controlling elites.
�64
n nti).3 rLaj^z.----- Ff)—btrsi He = S .
i rtg 1 y
p.
nowadays
break",
a
up,
"giving
small
the
ce
though such aid appears to hav^
and has considerable basis in the
communities,
ma!I er
1evelling
in the b i ggerco
in
tradi tion,
culture
3 1 nnr^-L^Llhaih\hii th the under dog-—and mare- broad! y --i-rY—M' frYtc 1 oranco
65
oppression'' .
pressures
The
extent
greater equality are shown more
to
objectively
of party and political support for redistributative and like
which would lessen inequality.
in
the
measures
Such support, like the support for socialistic
is much more widespread and respectable
measures it is commonly coupled with,
in Australia than in North America.
The
reluctance
broadened
egalitarian
(nowadays
facade of Australasian life has been propped up by
also
declining,
especially
under
the
impact
the
of
a
immigration practice) of rich people to extravagantly display their
wealth (in vulgar European fashion).
Presumably the forces of egalitarianism,
though in part mythical,
explain this reticence to tout wealth and indulge in
66
conspicuous or wasteful consumption.
64.
It remains unclear where levelling down applies and where it is waived,
and perhaps there are no clear principles involved.
The criterion, if
any, is not what Caves and krause suggest, that foreign recognition of
outstanding qualities of certain Australians somehow legitimizes those
persons and makes them acceptable at home (p.2!) .
Qualified levelling-down is a significant feature of the culture, that
will recur; for example, it is linked to Austalian anti-intellectualism,
and it is said to be motivated by the incompetence and typical corruption
of controlling elites.
65.
These sorts of equality in justice. as they might be called, are
mentioned
in Connell 74,
who reminds us of the importance
of
distinguishing equality determinates, such as treatment, condition,
opportunity, and so on.
All these forms of equality are manifested to
some extent in Australia, whereas in UbA equality is more and more
restricted to a certain (but limited) equality of opportunity, along with
equality (in principle) before the law. The famous Australian equality
in treatment, approach and so on, is regularly illustrated by the
phenomena of tea and taxis, and in the (democratic) slogans that 'no-one
is (feels?) superior' and that 'one man is as good as another'
(cf.
p.2'?ff.) .
�But
males,
Australian
to (potential) mates.
Mhite
male-dominated
Evident blots on Australian egalitarianism
social arrangements.
prevailing in USA,
society.
decade,
doubt
It is little consolation that they are perhaps little Morse
.justified.
Altering
these
in
image
While the
of prevailing social arrangements as sexist and racist is no
criticism
those
Momen
and the situation changed considerably in the last
exaggerated,
are
Indeed Australia has a particularly bad
image in the North as a racist and male chauvinist society.
L-jas
Australian
notorious White Australian policy and the treatment of
former
the
egalitarianism has been restricted to
than
Mhich is also often attacked as a racist and sexist
Antipodean arrangements,
in a
fashion
for
Mhich
however there is little traditional basis in any cultures, offers the prospect
of
major changes in social and political arrangements,
other
matters
as peace and Mar (as feminists have explained,
such
especially
and as
in
opinion
po11s have c1 ear 1y indie a ted).
at
With the comparative male egalitarianism of Australasian societies g% a
lack
of
class
stratified
and
Mell
While
(there are professionals,
so forth),
appropriate
distinctions.
Australasian
society
of various sorts,
the important notion of c1 ass,
to the Antipodes.
undoubtedly
blue-collar Morker=,
like so many
enough in the North or at least in Europe,
is
classificatiun=
does not
extrapolate
There is practically no upper class and the
and Morking classes substantially merge,
middle
and there are virtually none of
the
significant social barriers (discussed^/ in Olson) that go Mith cla=r-, at lea = t
6^
(From previous page) This, and the comparative l ack of Meal th, may also
help to explain the paucity of grand mansions in the Australian
countryside.
Host grander mansions these days are built by fairly
recently arrived immigrants Mho have made their fortunes.
.67.
Similarly Marxist theory does not extrapolate Mell Mithout fundamental
overhaul. It is decidedly misleading to speak, as some do, of the rigid
class structure of rural society'* in Australia, Mhere all those spoken of
are land holders, often large landoMners. There are divisions, farmers
and graziers, poor graziers and rich graziers, and there is a rough
understood social order of landholders based on quality of property,
Mealth origin, time in district, social and political affiliations, etc.
But it is hardly a rigid order, and, more important, does not correspond
to Marxist (or other) classes.
�for sufficiently Mhite male Australians.
society
(another
diversity on conventional indicators than
less
shoM
the strata in Australian
Moreover,
in
USA
partly due to the much
but highly stratified society),
"classless."
those
smaller spread of Meal th and smaller population.
in
The conventional stratification picture leaves out an element of
variety
society Mhich may prove of much importance for social
change,
Australian
namely the growing phenomenon of Alternative Australia;
that is,
Mho
people
have dropped out of or moved out of the mainstream society and its concomitant
commitments to a Mork ethic, to materialism, to maintaining an approved social
standing, etc. (in short, have abandoned key elements of the dominant Northern
It
paradigm).
is not knoMn (and is impossible to estimate exactly) hoM many
people belong to this loose and vaguely defined grouping, but it is sometimes
88
very optimistically' put at several millions.
It certainly takes in the
extensive
netMorks
of
communes and alternative farms in
(Mith a main concentration in coastal northern NSN).
prices
is
(for that matter,
USA
rural
are much higher,
hoMever
takes
in
many in the Aboriginal population,
distinctive ethic grouping.
S3.
The grouping
in the cities;
though
land
Mhere
the squatters and many
beach people and others surviving largely on the dole
probably
Zealand,
and unemployment significantly loMer/^j
but includes
in
It appears unmatched
it is not matched in NeM
by no means rural,
Australia
eastern
they
of
the
and it
form
a
It is people from Alternative Australia Mho have
On the groups involved see Smith and Crossley, Cock and
especially
Sommerlad et.al.
To keep matters in perspective, it is important to
recall that these groups have been much influenced by analogous groups in
For instance,
USA and by a significant literature floMing from USA.
Morking
Capra and Spetnak estimate that the membership of 'groups
is over
Mith means and goals that are consistent Mith Green politics .
2 million'* (p.223);
(p.223) ; ^ith a base of that size (though still only about IX
Even more
of the population)^ Green America is far from negligible.
pr om i s i n g, '15 million adult Americans ... according to recent studies by
the research institute SRI International, are basing their lives fully or
par t i a11y on such values as frugality, human scale, seif-de termi nation,
HoMever partial
ecological aMareness and personal groMth'* (p.i?5) ,
basing on one such value may amount to little more than subscription to a
meditation or encounter group; and so the high figures may only reflect
Californian fashions.
54 5^
�played a major part in protest and action movements right around Australia, in
70
the forests of North Queensland, East Gippsland, and first at Terania Creek ,
by the dam sites in Tasmania,
at the uranium mines in South Australia, at the
American installation in Central Australia, ... ,
Though
points,
they
of
many
have broken Mith the dominant social paradigm
these peoples have tapped into elements of
independent Australian culture.
strongly
at
the
critical
continuing
They represent an important source
and, because of the May they connect Mith the older culture, they
for change,
can carry other parts of the established population Mith them.
As
equality
with
and liberty,
even
so,
more
so,
Mith
fraternity.
Mainstream Australian society certainly surpasses American in fraternity, Mith
fraternity
broadly' and
communi ty,
and
sec t i ons).
But liberty , equality, community , these are important virtues to
construed,
sexistly
elements
socialistic
(as
to
Mill duly
include
Mateship,
in
subsequent
appear
aim for, or even better to have already built into a society or state.
that is the sort of society French revolutionaries long envisaged,
sort
of
only
there
society that some of the founders intended to implant in
it
got
out
of control and
greM
in
different
and
Indeed
it is
the
America
dangerous
71
directions.
Australian
society is lucky to retain a solid
cultural
base
6'?.
(From previous page) The dole is the government-supplied unemployment
alloMance.
The dole undoubtedly finances a good deal of day-to-day
operations of Alternative Australia (as distinct from capital investment
in land and equipment), and to that extent its flourishing depends on a
subsidy from mainstream Australia. But it doesn't folloM that it is
parasitic, any more than infant industries Mhich are subsidised are
parasitic. Furthermore, it can be argued, Mith some justice, that
mainstream Australia has confiscated the main means of production for its
OMn ends and uses, and should pay rent for the resources and facilities.
70.
In the forest occupations,
Zea 1 artd Mere adap t ed.
71.
So it is astonishing that, on the basis of its economic performance,
American society is often presented as some sort of model for Australian
society to try to emulate.
A narroM economism,
Mhich measures
productivity through material goods turned out and, more important here,
quality of life basically through per capita GNP, and neglects liberty,
equality and fraternity, is at Mork here/— as it is at Mork in the ideal
developing nations are encouraged to pursue. It is a false ideal.
direct action methods earlier applied in
NeM
�from Mhich to reorient itself, to steer bac k t OM a r ds these traditional virtues
(as amended).
has diverged from its original ideals in large part because
America
ideological leaders have accepted or bought,
its
and most of the public have been
sold, an economic vieM of the Mor 1 d, Mith advanced man (and contemporary Moman
72
even more so) an economic animal .
The large assumption has been and
remains,
".free"
to repeat it in crude populist
form, that the operation of the
enterprise market system within a suitable democratic
framework
Mill
the other virtues, at least to the extent that they can be desirably
73
obtained,
in much the same (no hands) May that the market system guarantees
ensure
most efficient organisation.
The large assumption is false, as the American
74
experience has shoMn;
and it does not fail simply because of imperfections
in the American application of a perfect economic model.
Despite a massive promotional effort in Australia and NeM
both outside and many felloM-travellers Mithin,
the
.just
Zealand,
the American economic vieM of
Morld has not been Midely bought in Australia or NeM Zealand.
that it has been substantially rejected,
australia, but
cultural
tradition.
individual
that
tradition
it
in
in particular
runs counter to important
australia,
materialism
from
components
despite the earthy
It is not
alternative
by
of
materialism
competitive
the
main
of
that
individualism,
or
fixation on economic gain (as dialectical materialism reveals,
at
For
does not imply
least in theory).
72.
and thereby also a rational animal.
On this modern characterisation of
man, and rationality, see, e.g. abraham, chapter 1.
73.
For of course incentive musn't be removed by too much equality.
equality of opportunity, an important sort of equality, that the
enterprise system is supposed to deliver above all others.
74.
Nhat results is rather a society rich in go-getters, scoundrels and
cheats, many of Mhose main heroes, successful capitalists, remain .just
sufficiently on the right side of bent laMS, if that.
Consider,
seriously, e.q., Mhat is applauded in Heilbroner'*s celebration of the
rise of capitalism, in The Nor Idly F'h i 1 osopher s .
But
free
�Competitive individualism,
JoL
and the pace of life.
immensely individualistic,, and highly competitive.
American society
is
Australasian society
is
sufficiently individualistic, but less competitive and operates more on direct
cooperat i on.
Individualism
even more in economic and political
and
practiced
is a conspicuous feature of American arrangements, both as
theory
reinforces
Mhich
practice.
It is seen in competitive form in the American dream, Mhich has no
Australian
equivalent:
is
the
of
dream
manifestations Morth singling out,
Mi th the emphasis on individual salvation,
not reflected in Australia.
it,
Extreme individualism has
for instance,
and elevation of personages as heroes,
selection
making
individual
the
and so on.
in individual life-style,
financially,
other
it
in high culture
in fundamentalist
the
religion
in survivalism, a "movement" again
In USA the individual aims above all to excel; it
is the individual that is unique, Mho can make a difference on his or her OMn,
Mho succeeds.
things,
Individual reduction is very strong,
make
differences,
achieve.
It is individuals Mho do
support systems
The
make
that
such
achievement realisable, the structure and the other individuals, fade into the
background.
Individualism in North America is accordingly not merely methodological
Mith
reduction
of social and political arrangements
to
"individual" actors
in the form of nuclear families and nuclear firms),
(typically
interrelations, other than market exchange,
as can be managed.
implies that each such individual operates,
in large measure,
OMn ends, in an individual-first or individual-only fashion.
in
implies,
situations
of
limited
resources,
and
opportunities, severe competition betMeen individuals.
America certainly,
indeed
an
Australia),
and seemingly inevitably,
immense emphasis,
on
mechanisms
foster
5
Individuali sm
to his or
her
And that in turn
sought
positions
and
Individualism in North
involves competition.
Mhich is exported Morld Mide (and
that
Mith
competitiveness,
so
There is
includes
especially
those
�entrenched in mainstream economics, such as market competitiveness, and factor
competitiveness
active
environmental
America;
for employment,
(e.g.
movements
etc.).
promotion,
in
there is a difference in approach
is much more competitiveness within the
there
the
Even within
US
North
more
movements,
emphasis on leaders, less cooperation, than in Australasian groups.
resulting American-preferred picture of pure individual
The
competition
has however to be conspicuously qualified - rather more than minimally - since
the competitive mechanisms do not continue to function in optimal fashion,
even
market
system, which is not nearly as self-regulating as is often
requires
to
resources.
and
mechanisms.
As well,
etc.
But
purity
the
the
determine broad functions of
the
capitalist
lands
namely
democratic
within these supposedly necessary and desirable
republican
state,
You outshine
move,
change your friends to get ahead, etc.
sort of competitiveness isn't altogether approved of in Australia,
Zealand,
is
And yet another individualistic-type arrangement is required
or beat down your rivals,
New
and
state
such as private capital and private and state
constraints, competition is the avowed and encouraged objective.
in
free
pretended,
to ensure
defend and police the institutions within which
system operates,
select
to clear markets,
state,
and break coalitions and unions,
to
required
and
(capitalist)
the
competition
market
The
without organisational regulation and intervention.
at all,
or
where
the
American influence
is
weaker
That
still less
Polynesian
and
attitudes increasingly influential.
In
Australasia,
there
You do not do down mates.
mateship.
some of
is more cooperation,
with
fortunately not all extra-
friendships are superficial, and fortunately the rural tradition of
familial
neighbourliness,
net
disappeared
adequately
with
explained through
where
the
self-interest,
the advance of agribusiness (itself
significant cultural phenomenon in Australia).
also
coupled
Of course there is far more cooperation
in USA too than the ideology strictly allows for;
entirely
it
individualistic
ideology
does
a
has
far
not
less
There are many other respects
not
square
with
American
�For instance,
practice.
differs
the many places Mhere advanced corporate capitalism
earlier phases of capitalism,
from
in
demand,
producer-controlled
through organisation people, in burgeoning bureaucracies, and so on.
environmentally
very
significant,
by
dominated
cooperation
because they bear on (Mhat are
to present unsatisfactory socio-environmental
alternatives
society
Antipodean attitudes to competition and
different
The
competition is liable to give quite
are
seen
as)
arrangements.
A
weight
to
undue
competitive mechanisms (like the market system) and goals (such as achiever or
product maximization), and so to support a range of undesirable objectives and
practices,
as those exhibited in capitalist business
practice,
75
failure and so on, exhibited in short in contemporary America.
such
differences in lifestyle floM from the differences in
Hany
cooperative
not
friends,
forth.
neighbours,
Antipodean
In
materialistic
extent
acquaintances, Australasians do
to outstrip them in their consumption,
need
competitive-
Because they are not competing to the same
orientation.
Mith their colleagues,
market
material
success,
cultures there is not quite
so
and
the
same
pressure to consumerism (though there is certainly far more than enough) or to
conspicuous or Masteful consumption.
American
culture
consumption,
conspicuous
estimated
partly
in
acquisitive,
terms
of
especially
The competitive individualism of
explains the high levels
of
North
acquisitiveness,
the
the Mastefulness (the consumption and Maste can
throughput).
of
money.
American
culture
is
particularly
The incentive to obtain money is
more of this is always better, typically Mith no upper limit.
be
high;
Hence too there
is strong resource orientation, since resources can be converted into money.
75.
Theoretically the emphasis on competition shoMS up in the Meight assigned
to games such as the prisoners'' dilemma and tragedy-of-the-commons and
the May they are supposed to be taken.
Note hoM very important
differences in culture are for the treatment of these games; an example
is the corresponding children's game Mhich is played very differently by
American children (Mhere it jis competitive tussle) from Chinese children
(for Mhom cooperation affords a rather trivial solution).
�The relative lack of such enterprise and drive in Australia,
of less competitiveness,
the
and
helps explain the slow speed of technology transfer,
to
resistance, both of business and con*=umer =
76
Australia.
The relative lack of enterprise
comparative
in
technology
Northerners often claim,
to the Australian business
innovations' (Stretton,
Immigration
Department,
Mhich
'Australi an
community.
a special program
has
ex tends,
Such a view has been bougtrF by
p.35).
n ew
risk-averse, and stow to copy
capitalists are accused of being unadventurous,
others'
a corollary
attract
to
btj = in^ = -m^n (including Asian ones) and also businesswomen,
the
northern
because Australian
yy
business is lacking, it is. said, in enterpreneurial skills and drive.
The
pace
of
life is much slower in the Antipodes than
North
There are significant differences in time conceptualisation in the
deriving
Antipodes,
in part from the limited extent of industrialisation (wh i *- h tries to
people to be on t i me) and the weakness of c ompe t i t i on in daily
force
There is not the same pressure to get on,
workplace
much
America.
or to be at work,
on
living.
time.
and daily competition goes a race against the clocks (as overtly in
competitive
sport),
also
and
pace,
stress,
competitiveness goes a marked difference in pace,
etc.
Nith
American
with the most rapid pace in
the industrial East where the competition is most widespread and intense.
one moves south and west in US,
declines.
Zealand
Nith
and west from the centre in Canada,
As
the pace
But in Australia the pace is conspicuously slower still, and in New
78
noticably slower again.
Antipodean people are "laid back" by
American standards,
even if city people still seem in an immense rush, to get
nowhere much, to country visitors.
The slower pace is tied not just with !e==
76.
Features of Australian enterprise developed by the former Minister of
Science and technology, B. Jones, in his Sleepers Awake!. Jones, who i=
all in favour of having Australia convert to Northern business enterprise
and competitiveness, or worse the South Asian parody of it, is inclined
to ascribe Australian "failure" to a supposed separation of technology
and culture.
77.
The sooner this program is halted the better. Much the same applies to
recently renewed immigration programs to import more Europeans: for the
reasons see Birrell et. al.
�competitiveness,
but
standards,
threshold
often
a
with
more easy
going
acceptance
sometimes verging on sloppiness,
and evinced
of
letter
such
in
familiar slogans as "It'll do" or the famous She'll be right". The differences
taken up more theoretically in terms of maximization in
be
can
America,
as
opposed to much more widespread acceptance of "enough does" (of satisizing) in
the Antipodes (for details see MSS).
USA it's keep moving,
In
"commodity"
too
is
hustle.
"wasted"),
the
Time is short (even if much of
best
life
is
in
the
fastest
this
lane.
'I need to get back to the office, to be at my
7?
is what is much more often said than in Australia.
There is a clock
Punctuality
class'
is
important.
in/clock out attitude in North America,
fortunately
hasn't
industrious
and
been
widely
shared with Germany and Japan,
or enthusiastically
industrial Antipodes.
adopted
in
the
Nor has the associated American
which
less
go-
getting taken to any great extent.
The
much
Northern go-getter vanishes into a role.
more readily;
Northerners assume
people identify with their position.
In the
Antipodes
instance
much less role playing, people retain their more dimensions,
30
in their jobs.
This has an important corollary for ethics:
Northern
fashion for trying to explain a person's
there
is
roles
ethical position in
for
the
terms
73.
(From previous page) By New Zealand standards metropolitan Australians
are pushy (as well as commonly vulgar);
and for the New Zealand visitor
the very congested Sydney does, at first, acquaintance, appear to
instantiate the rat-race, especially the aggressive driving on the
narrow, crowded and polluted roads.
Harris gets down some of the other
felt
differences:
'New Zealanders regard Australians as flashy,
effusively patronising, as scruffy urchins playing Big Brother
(The
Austral i an, April 23-2'?, l'?85, Neekend Magazine, 5).
79.
Beinq 10 minutes o^f so late for appointments is common, and acceptable,
in Australia;
but not the hour or more some Latin American countries
allegedly tolerate (cf. Awa, p.3).
30.
Nhy there is less readiness to assume roles in the deep South, like the
reluctance of Australians to take deferential or service roles willingly,
is a bit puzzling.
For in mainstream Australian the society is less
individualistic, more social, and in apparently relevant respects less
conservative than American.
The problem is taken up again in the text.
c
�of
his
her
or
various
roles loses much of its
point
force
and
the
in
antipodes.
Role
is
occupation
actions,
responses,
intimately mith formality
coupled
dress,
and so forth.
of
fixity
and
In these matters a rough spectrum
can be observed, as shomn:-
australian
american
European
typical 1y
informal
typical 1y
formal
a
Such
range,
in
exhibited
both to mork
applies
mhich
such things as responses to
In some of these areas,
dress.
leisure
and
strangers,
such as dress,
is
activities,
customs,
and
manners
american culture displays
a
switching between extreme informality and formality, a
certain schizophrenia,
level
of
informality in mainstream australis has led to memorable sociological talk
of
phenomenon
also
seen
in certain trendier australian cults.
the peculiarly australian "culture of informality".
tells
aoainst
',-jell
in
angloph/ije
The extent of informality
the more artificial parts of higher culture mhich do not
australis,
outside
small
(but
sometimes
government
fare
sponsored)
minorities.
Role-regulation extends to person-to-person relations.
an
The
But here there is
interesting reversal of australian and american positions (on the
diagram
above), mith american relations being more flexible than australian (and these
more relaxed in turn than the more British and role-regulated relation^ in Mem
Zealand).
Hhile american approaches to human relations, as to adolescence and
education,
are increasingly influencing australian practices, ameri<-an= =till
more rapidly reach first name stages,
on;
they
details of their life histories, and =o
regularly converse mith strangers .juxtaposed on
invite m^re acquaintances into their houses,
and
more
friendly than australians,
americans tend to be much more open,
public
transport,
and for the most part are marm^r
Of course mhile both
australians
and
forthcoming, and initially friendly than
�Europeans,
are serious questions about the depth and dependability
there
of
many of these (and their) relationships.
The "easygoinoness" that Americans often find in the Antipodes is in part
due
the considerable informality and in part to
to
pace.
slower
the
The
societies are not after al 1 that easygoing in other respects, such as personal
and
relations, and they are not exactly Mell-knoMn for
race
toleration is increasing in Australia Mith the development of a
(though
and further stratified society,
multicultural
of factors,
climate,
strong
though
dying,
is
mix
as is the more leisurely sense of time. One obvious factor i s the
casual dress,
etc.
(Ireland being the European
1 and
encourages informality,
Mhich
inheritance
Irish
Another i s the
of
"Take
your
less submerged than in USf), is
)*
—f ocus on ttLij^gs-^ittpltasised Ml
pnpular
footbal1
Mork,
6
Irel and:
pol 11 les,
Borse
(as the n eMspaper s daily conf i rm).
pub conversation in Dublin;
Mork,
racialism,
more
The easygoing casual features are perhaps due to a
still far from dead^
topics
tolerance
their
an i sat i on,
so they are in Melbourne.
and socialism.
in
n approached in an
lie Mork and union Mork, Mhich are of
especially p
anitested
The s1OMer pace is
informal and rather casuaj^ May by Northern standards^y)(4 I
attitudes to Mork are par
Americans generally notice a 1 ack o
ervjce in the Ptntipodeans,
through indifference to positive r'.
often
astonished
ascribe
to
by
the service
class difference,
North
y illustrated by attitudes to service.
Correspondingly,
the
ranging doMn
Rntipodeans are
Mhich
North,
they
an ascription that\hardly applies in
often
America.
Part of the reason for,this difference lies in different attitudes to Mork, to
the
relative
source
desines and pressures to serve Mell;
these differences remains someMhat obscure.
On the one hand,
is suggested
don' t
that f^ntipj0c!eans in service can be rude because it's acceptable and
have to prove anything,
in particular to the person they're serving.
.
of
_____
On the
___ -
�popular
Australian
racing,
football
focus on things emphasised in
organisation,
Nork,
politics,
These are the
(as the newspapers daily* confirm).
topics of pub conversation m Dublin:
e.
Ireland:
horse
leading
so they are in He 1 bourne.
and socialism.
in
The slower pace is manifested
especially public work and union work, which are often approached in an
work,
informal
and
downright
rather
casual way by Northern standards,
lazy and sloppy fashion by most industrial
organisations or- "systems",
and sometimes
The
standards.
both public and private,
a
in
large
are regarded as open to
some exploitation (time out, free services, etc.) in a way that mates are not.
Attitudes to work are partly illustrated by attitudes to service.
Americans generally notice a lack of service in the An11podeans,
through mdifference'to positive rudeness.
often
astonished
ascribe
to
by
Correspondingly,
the service rendered in the
class difference,
North,
North
ranging down
Antipodeans are
which
they
an ascription that hardly applies in
often
America.
Part of the reason for this difference lies in different attitudes to work, to
the
relative
desires and pressures to serve well;
these differences remains somewhat obscure.
but the full
source
of
On the one hand, it is suggested
that Antipodeans m service can be rude because it*s acceptable and they don t
have to prove anything,
in particular to the person they're serving.
On the
other hand, it is suggested that there is a need in the Antipodes to emphasize
that
there are no strata differences (when there are),
not need to serve.
to show that they
do
On this less likely view Americans can serve because they
are equal, and see themselves as such.
A further element here is North American identification with the
or
the
thought
ladder.
firm:
the person who serves the firm may still often admit
'I might be president',
In
Australia,
or at least much further up the
by contrast with Japan and America,
appear to be the same "organisational feudalism".
but not vice versa.)
concern
to
the
competitive
there does
not
(In Australia, you owe me,
�siihpr hand, it i.i.snn<^e^t-ed^
a need in t]r= AntipDii^s- to<-emphj^M^-
trata differences (mhen there are) ,
there are no
to shom,^ttlat they
do
likely viem Americans,-can serve because they
see themse1ves as such.
fl \ur ther element here is North American identification mith the
or
concern
the person mho serves the firm may still often admit
the
or at least much further up the
ight be president',
thought
Australia,
1 adder.
appear fo'be t h $
the
to
competitive
there does
by contrast mith Japan and America,
not
,3 " nr nan i sat ion al feudJtJism".____ (In Aust rjJ-1-3-,—yiau—cm - -me,
.
e v?r sa t f
especially
Nork,
are
Britain''
and morking conditions and salaries
to a much greater extent by politically
controlled
Australia
blue collar mork,
in America.
than
(Nild,
p.50).
powerful
'Unionisation is high compared to
unions
and
American
Australian unions are mostly left-oriented
The
in
by
American standards, some of them so far to the left that they are strictly off
the
truncated
socially
American
spectrum.
political
They
are
by contrast mith the generally right-leaning US
committed,
and the US industrial-military complex.
union
situation
can
again
be
traced
Part of the reason for the
to
the
unions,
individual
support that strange advanced capitalistic mixture,
mhich
often
furthermore
ideology
of
values
American
competitive
individualism, but an important part lies in social selection, =tate-supported
repression of left-oriented unions (see Goldstein)..
The
Australian unions are,
politicised,
and,
by morld-standards,
by the same industrial standards,
very active and
extremely strike-prone.
They can serve as an important source of and aid to change.
of
the
Australian
environmental
things
prevent
unions
concerns.
extend
to
social
environmental
matters
For the interest=
and
sometime^
Australian unions have been very important in
as bans on uranium mining and shipments,
and heritage destruction,
highly
as mell as
to
=U'_h
in green ban=> to
patterns not emulated
(and
�mostly not wanted) in North America.
It has been suggested, but on slender grounds and by Americans, that such
as
action
green
undesirable
legal
heritage.
And
environmental or other.
important
redressing
for
like those concerning constitutional rights, in a
Mhile
the
in
difference
of
channels
action is,
to
access
Mithout
the
from
the
courts
doubt,
an
American
and
Australia and in NeM Zealand,
that
it cannot account for the differences.
the approved channels sufficient,
in
as many American failures make
many important cases,
to
extremely
difference betMeen the environmental situation in USA and
end,
Mith
The sources of this evidently
and constitutional inheritance
history
politically-approved
approach,
class action cannot be brought in the public interest
situation lie,
different
the
But the most that rings true in this is that,
minor recent exception,
to prevent vandalism,
of
militancy
and
strength
be accounted for by the relative weakness of 1ega1 means
environmental vandalism.
the
the
Mith
movement in Australia and its often confrontational
environmental
can
along
bans,
in
Nor are
in
plain:
there is no alternative but recourse
to
direct action, to the streets and forests.
Like
most
of the Australian unions and universities,
both Morkers
greenies (those active in environmental movements) remain influenced
sometimes inspired
by,
and
certainly linked by,
socialist
by,
ideals.
and
and
The=e
influences, overt in Australia, have largely been Miped out oygone underground
in USA,
being incompatible Mith advanced capitalism,
the American establishment.
as communistic inspired,
the
communist
politicians
can
folloMing
confusion of communism,
Indeed socialist themes are commonly disposed of
or as,
has been
and seen as inimical by
Mhat they are not, ..iust communism.
kicked,
regularly,
and
hard,
by
leads and encouragement from North America,
state socialism,
Although
Australian
a
simple
democratic socialism, and so on has
been made in Australia in the Midespread and crude May that has occurred
in
North America.
Socialism and a Mel fare state approach Mere adopted
long
ago in NeM Zealand (about the beginning of the Century) and only shortly later
�whereas there is little sign of their gaining much ground
in Australia,
no^.'
in North America.
even
Socialist principles are regarded w i t h suspicion even
except for a small minority.
bv more educated North Americans,
Right-leaning
attitudes have a prominence in US that they (rightly) do not enjoy
81
Australia.
In several respects, then, Reagan and his substitutes are
political
in
representative of the mass of America people.
The
double
(Christianity vs.
standards we have
seen
exhibited
American
in
economism) and foreign policy (rights vs.
religion
domination)
and
could have been displayed in trade policy (free enterprise abroad vs. American
82
subsidies and protection) and elsewhere
— contradictions engendered not by
mere
between
practice
and
ideologies
— extend
to^much acclaimed Amt erican
conflict
incompatib 1 e
pragmatism.
ideology
but
threaten ideological fundamentals are not tolerated;
"dangerous"
elements
of
p1ur a 1ism
and
These operate in an unambivalent way only in a narrow ran%e where
ideological fundamentals are not seriously threatened.
to
through
viens are often excluded,
more difficult times at least,
toleration is hardly remarkable,
Thus parties
thought
and foreigners
nith
while natives nith such views are,
83
suppressed.
While the Australian record
in
on
and the society was until recently mu<-h more
uniform in character than American,
the room for political variety and spread
of political parties is greater.
81.
They are reflected in such small things as. the form of anarchist
movements - always strongly individualistic in North America, but mostly
pluralistic and socialistic, and sometimes communistic in Australia.
Even Alternative American remains staunchly individualistic; only in the
quite minor US commune movement do the contrasts begin to break down a
bit.
The differences are important in political philosophy and theory,
where Americans and Antipodeans tend to operate on different wavelength?.
32.
Thus, for
instance, the
policy, which combines a
substantial subsidies and
produce.
83.
See again Goldstei,
for example.
narrow pluralism of capitalist
chapter of 00.
doubl/ standards of American agricultural
free enterprise image with allowance for
discounts #4, American, but not foreign,
Worthwhile proposals for widening the
democracy may be found in the final
�extent of toleration noM evident in Australia is not simply a result
The
of a strong British heritage (from an England that Mas) but OMes something
appear
markedly
multiple
the level of personal
features as Mell:- Firstly,
indigenous
roots,
in
is
in the industrial North
than
egalitarianism,
and
the
encouraged
by
a strong
to
tendency
of vieMS (an infuriating feature for
relativisation
(a
dielike
in the educational structure,
people,
overassertive
toleration
loMer
assertiveness
that
has
overbearing
and
feature
of
to
and so on).
personal
secondly,
in-group
or
teachers).
Ideological
argument and competition is avoided not so much by general pluralism of vieMS,
but by personal relativisation of positions (Mhich looks foolish at first Mith
questions such as God's existence, though not Mith matters of religious belief
and
political opinion).
action is not required.
as
lonq
But it noM looks (Mith
increasing
reorientation of the society and belated introduction of
cultural
methods into social discussion) as if
other
and
this sort of strategy succeeds only so
To be sure,
advance
to
an
- if
consensual
can
relativism
Australian
intellectually respectable pluralism
multi
Northern
control
perfni ts.
*F.
Leisure time activities, eating, drinking, sport and gambling.
retailing
and consumerism,
culture,
that
Australia is
the
it is here,
Americanisation
of
Apart from
in surface elements of more
significant
features
of
popular
life
in
most conspicuous, especially in food and entertainment, but also
in sport.
Take food, for example. American impact and control occurs primarily Mith
fast
foods (Mhere most of the larger chains are American) and in prepared and
highly
processed foods (Mhere many of the companies involved,
larger
biscuit
and snack food companies,
concerns having been bought out.)
ready
are
ultimately
e.g.
all
American,
Significant features of these products
the
local
are
or immediate gratification from largely already-made or -prepared mass-
produced items,
Mith consumer attractiveness achieved through a high level of
�The technology involved is imported from USA (though
fancy packaging.
may
the patents are American,
be some minor local adaptions),
so
involved,
are
skills
local
cheap
adolescent)
(often
there
and feM or no
labour
can
be
exploited.
This pattern applies of course to American penetration of the food
industry,
and tourist industry, in many countries other than Australia; it is
part
incorporation of the "free Morld" into
the
of
the
flagging
American
^'or Id-system, the American imperium as it is sometimes called.
features are involved in the American influence on entertainment
Similar
again designed to Min acceptance by a mass market,
and sport,
immediate gratification,
or
term
action
(or
bright
or
professionalisation.
containing
Take
the
short
achieved for instance in the form of
violence) for passive audiences,
colourful
namely
and
effect
skilful packaging
many
changes
much
by
achieved
set,
of
and
on Australian cricket - formerly
a
very leisurely and, for spectators, often boring game - of American infusions,
dra'A'n
especially
uniforms
The
baseball.
has
game
become
substantially
there are many one day matches, Mhere the players appear in
professionalised,
gaudy
from
and lots of safety gear (noM necessary Mith the
increase
of
pace and stop-start action), and the game proceeds at a much greater pace Mith
lots of croMd pleasing action.
There
is
an American overlay also to more recent forms of
slot machine gambling and,
Australia,
more important,
overlay exhibits the same surface features,
as
in
sport
gratification
and
food
- and underlying these,
casino gambling.
designed to appeal to
action,
- colour,
gambling
professional
commercialism,
in
The
consumers,
quick
polish,
professional
control,
multinational organisation, and repatriation of profits to the North.
But
plausibly
the
in
each of these cases,
especially sport and gambling,
argued that the American influence is superficial - a
single bricks Mall of the Californian brick veneer,
appearance
of
masonry solidity to Mooden houses,
it can
veneer
be
like
designed to give the
a style noM ubiquitous
in
�building
that is on to a
but grafted onto a ecualypt Mood frame structure,
Australia,
evolved,
that
though
antecedents
Mith
Northern
In the building industry (as to some extent in the
in Australia.
influences,
Northern
from
food industry) the distinctively Australian basic house structure is beginning
to
in
disappear
plantation-groMn
places like Canberra Mith the replacement
pine,
Honterey
of
by
hardMOod
the adoption (again from America) uf
light
timber framing codes, and so on.
It
indeed
is
in the spraMling suburbs of Australia that
veneer is most strikingly exhibited,
American
the
and
not just in the housing and streets
styles of automobiles (all local manufacturing companies being American,
a Japanese exception,
Mith
and the predominantly Japanese imports largely American
copies), but in the shopping centres, their supermarkets (American in style of
and
retailing
lots.
parking
increasingly in oMnership or control) and petrol stations
Nonetheless
Davidson is deliberately
and
Mhen
exaggerating
he
Mrites (Mhile ruminating on the film and entertainment situation) that
... Me need all the cultural consciousness Me can muster to delay - if
only
by
the tactic of infinite postponement
- our
complete
incorporation into the American Mgfld-systenr (p.21).
For
merely is there evidence t^fjt the American imperium has
not
i t-
pa = =ed
zenith, but again the American encroachment and influence is superficial.
Despite
the overlay,
the main structures of institutions such as
and gambling remain basically Australian,
of
Australian
forms.
history,
from European,
local adaptions, evolved
and particularly British and
Iri=h,
=o it
so it is Mith home '-ooking.
These
institutions
Mould
and club gambling;
remain substantially intact even if recent
other overlays Mere entirely removed.
Nhat is more,
and
quality of life not readily available,
The
community
afford good examples.
American
these institutions
and Mith further local adaption could to a much greater extent,
America.
over much
So it is Mith the main forms of football, Mith amateur cricket;
is Mith pub drinking,
style
sport
or available
and club structures of much gambling
and
can,
provide for a
at
and
all,
in
drinking
�cA</iAvf*^tnA%)^nf
r^-v^A/
<**<A —
^to
the
^jA,f
^<?/^
^.f-At^Z/y
d. ^r^,f ^ta^n/ At//^<^y
^-A
viewpoint
of
th<=
p ^9^
^?^e-4t^-^-€.
believe what they se^^- accepted,
regional culture,
^cr/A^,
A4^.
largely uncritically accepted.
among
there
others,
are
From
undoubtedly
but they are problems to which there are known answers.
problems here;
nf
?4s ^A7f /i^c
/njA^^nZiAi^-
</<P^/l<tA</;
VAr<?KyA
/6
JTT, V^/
/ ^-, ^-*<?;/ */A,
longer-term answer lies in education,
Part
much
in the teaching of
more
86
critical attitudes to Mhat is presented through media such as television.
Pi
more
viable in countries like Australia (and even
immediate interim measure,
controlled,
more in New Zealand) Mhere radio and television are heavily state
to
and
remove much of the American fiction from the publicly licensed,
channels.
regulated
That
the short answer is the
is,
nondocumentary material displaying violence,
supported
same
as
Mith
so on;
sexual exploitation, and
given the socially and culturally undesirable results of such public
87
of such material,
it fails to merit purchase and public exhibition (if
namely,
use
people Mant to hire or buy this material for their OMn video systems,
another
matter).
difficulties
in
Certainly
selection
there
difficulties
are
here,
processes for Mhat is broadcast
especially licensed commercial,
tied
on
of
predominantly
drugs,
standover
censorship,
commercial activity,
tactics,
pictography,
selection and purchasing policies,
extent,
up
public,
Mith
and
channels (for there is far less fictionalised
violence on public-corporation than commercial TN in Ptustrali^.
suggested is not any kind of
that is
1'1 hat is being
straightforward social regulation
such as regularly
etc;
in
occurs
Mith
this case regulation
hard
of
of a type already folloMed to some limited
for instance in Psustralian content requirements.
Pt practical problem
85.
Contrary to American philosopher Davidson and his followers, usually
accepting Mhat is presented is not essential to living; but the idea
that it is necessary iWa standard part of the Ptmerican cultural and most
Northern and educational frameworks.
88.
See especially Bonney and Nilson.
87.
'The consensus among most of the research community is that violence on
television does lead to aggressive behaviour by children and teenagers
Mho watch the programs' (.reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Narch 13 1?85, p.8).
Psdults too are liable to be desensitized to
violence through television watching, wi th influence not only ^n values
but sp^ill over to the real world, e.g. they estimate their environment
is more violent.
A
sV<vkcL.<-^44
^7, y>,
g in
�mith such content requirements has been that there is insufficient
But
materia!.
rise
the
tota!
reduced.
domination
other
of the Australian and
there is nom much more regiona! materia!;
industries,
former
mith
and,
of Australian cinemas by American
Australian
regions!
as a result, the
has
films
the variety of television material nom available from
Given
an end to American domination of local television programs,
sources,
fi!m
been
morld
and
of
this part of Australian leisure culture, could also be achieved.
and gambling form a mutually supporting trio of immense
drinking
Sport,
importance in the popular culture of Australasia,
the
to grasp or explain.
outsider
('Much American sociological
gambling deals mith it as a deviant activity":
historical
on-going
influence
population is of Irish descent).
brought
and
activities,
writing
A
p.421.)
in Australia is undoubtedly Irish
(in
on
main
early
nomaday about 17X of
the
Nith their blanketing Catholicism, the Irish
propagated rather successfully a religion liberal
masculine
in
but exceedingly narrom in intersexual
such as those of the trio,
enterprises.
mas out;
Caldmell 77,
one quarter of the population mas Irish;
Australia
for
to an extent difficult
Drinking mas in, contraception mas out; gambling mas in, divorce
sport mas in,
lomer-church
homosexuality mas out ...
Catholicism
and
more
Catholicism mostly men in Australia,
purjit/nical
.
In the play-off betmeen
forms
o^
Protestantism,
mhereas in eastern USA more
puritanica!
forces prevailed, and these mere subsequently reinforced by Judaism.
is a central part of Australian social life and so of
Drinking
(Nhile it is important in Nem Zealand also,
social
momen.
life.)
For
it is a less dominant feature
of
It bears on the connected issues of mateship and attitudes
to
matesh ip
relationship,
and
is
mateship
often based upon,
is
(cobbers) mhich excludes momen.
North
culture.
America,
that to his mife.
or groms
characteristically a
Indeed,
out
of,
relation
a
drinking
betmeen
men
in contrast to the apparent norm in
a man's relations to his mates,
or mate,
may be closer than
�The
mateship
mates, first and foremost, through thick and thin.
A first corollary is a
or less rigorously some ambivalence about, social and career
limitation upon,
because
mobility,
may involve leaving one's mates
any transfer or promotion
or distancing from them.
A related corollary is a restriction on competition
because one does not compete seriously Mith one's mates.
similarly
also
mateship engenders,
The mateship
ethos
because mates are treated
requires local egalitarianism,
Thus
equals.
his
Mith
ethos strict!;/ requires that a man should stick
especially given a
little
as
transitivity,
egalitarian and non-competitive features, also encouraged by other elements of
Accompanying aspects of mateship are that
mainstream culture.
the
identity
success are sought,
and
concerns such as a job or career,
serious
and
energy
in leisure,
Mhere they are,
personal
not in
more
and that often a greater level
interest is di rec ted at leisure ac t iv i t i es and pas t imes
than
Excellence in serious things tends to be deflated or denigrated.
Mork.
of Antipodean socialism.
at
Hates
however are supported, and so by extension are those Mho Mould be mates.
mateship is one of the props
of
Thus
A less expected aspect
of mateship, Mhich is after all a communitarian relation of an important type,
is
diminished involvement Mith social (and also sometimes political)
is because mates afford a secure social framework Mhich
this
Perhaps
issues.
unnecessary to look beyond.
it
is
Hates naturally get together frequently, commonly
for sport, gambling or drinking.
The
main
setting
uncomfortable
and
for
drinking
is
pub
the
degenerate form of the English pub.
important public setting for drinking is the clubs,
as the Australian barbeque.
- though
some
city
The hotel Mas,
pubs
have
occasionally invaded by groups of Momen.
the
development
serves,
not
_urious!y
hotel,
a
But an
increasingly
Mhich also commonly cater
Among private group settings, for drinking are such institutions
for gambling.
haunt
or
only
and remains,
been
liberalised,
essentially a male
and
others
are
Thus the hotel is a main setting for
and continuation of mateship.
to reinforce male chauvinism,
The hotel
has
served,
but also to foster
and
racism.
�Until very recently,
and still in some places,
hotels excluded or segregated
and perhaps other groups such as Orientals uho fall towards
Aboriginals,
the
bottom of the caste ladder.
do the places of drinking differ in significant respects
only
Not
those in USA;
extent it is in USA,
and is not a major form for the drinking bout;
nor are
Beer is the mainstay of
is the main alcoholic drink consumed.
and
hotels,
is not consumed to anyuhere near the
given the same prominence as in USA.
cocktails
Hard liquor,
so do the styles of drinking and uhat is drunk.
uh 1 ch is nou heavily taxed in Australia,
from
drinking
But Australian
patterns have changed markedly in the last twenty years;
the
and nine has become
an everyday drink in the clubs and often for lunch.
the feu older clubs can be exclusive in their membership
Nhile
American country clubs carry exorbitant fees,
or
the neu clubs have very
like
modest
joining fees and represent an improvement on the hotels in many respects;
for
they are not aluays, predominantly drinking establishments and dominantly male
but they are more sociable and comfortable, and they carry a range
preserves,
including commonly gambling (on uhich their
of other programs and activities,
depends)
financing
nonprofit associations)
sort
importance,
and
consumer
greatly
Hales).
golf);
but
there
notably returned servicemen's clubs,
and ethnic clubs,
religious
These
interests.
of the
are several
clubs
(community
types
other
catering
for
uhich function in all respects like
are a major post-Har social
country touns,
of
minority
phenomenon,
uhich
altered leisure patterns in parts of Australia (especially Neu
'In
one
political and labour clubs,
and there are many
neu registered clubs,
cooperatives,
registered
are indeed sporting clubs in origin (football of
bouls,
another,
of
Hany
sport.
and
have
South
clubs have replaced churches as the centres for
sociability and recreation; in the metropolitan areas, they have decentralised
leisure facilities providing nightclub, restaurant, gambling and entertainment
outlets
in
leisure
sophistication'*.
the
suburbs;
and in the coastal touns they
And
in these
very
successful
have
brought
some
gambling-financed
�cooperatives,
'sport,
gambling
and
drinking
of
- the pillars
Australian
leisure culture - have found common ground' (Caldwell 77, pp.424, 425).
Sport is the opiate of the masses in Australasia, a main leisure activity
and entertainment form, a major (male) topic of conversation both socially and
and it takes up a significant chunk of the "news"^newspaper coverage
at work,
it is now relegated to the back pages^with local politics occupying
(but
front
It
pages).
is also a major reservoir of chauvinism,
with
'Sport
competitiveness.
its
long traditions may
the
and
conformism
more
m^ifest
male
chauvinism than many other forms of popular Australian culture' (Caldwell
p.41'7');
racial and cultural.
as
such
j^-also manifests and often encourages other forms of
it
Even in sport reevaluation is
77,
chauvinism
place,
taking
including reassessment of the competitive principle, and there is a shift away
from
bureaucratic
Fortunately,
sport,
controls
however,
to
freer
environmentally
forms,
damaging
especially
sports.
vertigo
machine-dependent forms
have not caught on to the same extent as in America;
or art,
nor
of
do
forms such as hunting enjoy a% similar following or so little criticism.
important component of Antipodean newspaper sport,
An
racing
anima!
distinct
as
"sport",
especially,
from
professional,
predominantly
gambling purposes.
integrally tied to gambling.
is
the
type
younger
people
In the participant sports there is,
other
and
This
participate
and now essentially designed for
North, a heavy outdoor emphasis.
but
horse
form
of
in,
is
spectator
and
in contrast with the
This emphasis is partly a New Norld feature,
partly a matter of extensive open space and a favourable outdoor climate.
Explaining
the
separating
sport
sheer extent of sport is a complex matter, best approached by
into
its
different components
looking
and
at
what
is
distinctive in the new world, and what in the Antipodes (at the same time this
reveals
e.g.
the
that
ritualised
limited applicability of psychological substitutibility
sport,
national
substitute
sport
for war).
especially,
is
a
socially
claims,
acceptable
And one thing that is distinctive
is
the
�and
amount
style of gambling-linked sport.
Explaining that is
inseparable
from explaining gambling itself.
have been several attempts to explain the extent and diversity
There
in Australia as compared Mith that in the North,
gambling
smoothly into the culture.
it
according
Morld,
various
and to incorporate
Australians are the heaviest gamblers in the
88
surveys.
Some of the main explanations
to combine the following elements:
try
suggested
to
of
the
of
influence
Irish
Latholicism in overriding the restrictive puritanism, the comparative Meekness
the
of
ethic
Mork
bother?"),
the
the drive to accumulate
and
entrenched
belief
in
gambling
a
strand
form
of
(Mith
as
a
positional
improvement (Mhich appears to date back, like distinctive Australian
games
as 2!-up,
such
together,
to convict times).
gambling
Not all these elements sit
easily
not all of them, such as the Mork ethic, are relevant on their oMn.
The Mork ethic becomes relevant because it Mas Midely believed by
that gambling damagingly undercut Mork,
improvement,
positional
to Meal th,
Mork
"Mhy
of
Protestants
both because of the popular legend of
that gambling offered an alternative route than hard
and because gambling Mas an absorbing leisure-time
activity
Mhich competed successfully Mith (often alienating) Mork.
Moreover,
acommodated.
gambling,
there
are
some
important
complicating
factors
to
be
One is that Mhat is more extensive in Australia is smaller-scale
social
gambling,
entrepreneurial gambling.
not
heavy
punting,
professional
gambling
or
Australians are, by and large, very security minded
and are not large-scale risk takers: hence one of the reasons for the shortage
8'?
of venture capital in Australia .
Despite the risk-taking image, there is
then a strong emphasis on security,
- the
suburban
both in the (home) OMnership expectations
a-cnd—a-s— hegsr-de--
------------------------ 88. Thus e.g. R/deen.
On the extent of Australian gambling, see also
CaldMell 74. Like drinking, gambling is less extensive in NeM Zealand.
8'?.
The extent of gambling in Australia contrasts sharply Mith risk-taking in
investment.
'Risk aversion seems to be endemic in Australia at least as
far as investment in innovative products is concerned'* (S. Macdonald).
�block, the private home, the car, and as regards defence (whence the appeal of
an
American
second
6
gambling.
Australian
complication
concerns
the
'is marked by a heavy reliance on
It
character
of
and
so
chance
But Caldwell's attempt to explain
on skill'* (Caldwell/^ p.20).
little
this
features of the Australian character which deemphasize excellence
through
less
shield).
partly
satisfactory,
than
from sport,
differently
where,
because
it
as he admits,
involves
treating
'excellence ...
is
gambling
is
[almost]
fact the preferred explanations of the characterisatics and
puzzling
always approved of'*.
In
aspects of Australian gambling are unsatisfactory. In several places, Caldwell
has
appealed
in possible explanation'* 'to features of Australian
specifical 1y
to egalitarianism,
concen trates
on
r e1qu i s i t e
trying
to
what these are,
Fatalism,
explaining.
fatal i sm/
mateship and a sense of
say
for example,
character,
not on
how
they
But
he
do
the
apathy,
is said to involve
putting up with unfavourable conditions, and accepting the outcomes of fortune
but with good fortune attributed to luck,
hardly a fatalistic theme,
fatalism might explain a certain dourness or resignation,
Australian,
unclear
with
along
some more typical Australian
Caldwell
since
really
the
extent
makes no difference to
in
disclose
success
that
by luck.
marginally
what
for
this
the bulk of Australian gambling is social
better
than
fatalism
it
remains
i^
Hhat
fated.
that things
surveys
suggestion,
gambling
in
And mateship and egalitarianism only
in
will
but a ^^rious (nonmarket) optimism, a
Unfortunately
do not expect to succeed.
especially
rather than little
seems to be appealing to is not fatalism,
happen as they are already fated to do,
people
features,
how it is supposed to explain extensive gambling,
gambling,
belief
neither
klhile
their
intended
explanatory
which
fare
roles;
egalitarianism does, as will appear, have a minor role.
8^.
(From previous page) The extent of gambling in Australia contrasts
sharply with risk-taking in investment.
'Risk aversion seems to be
endemic in Australia at least as far as investment in innovative products
is concerned* (8. Macdonald).
^^7
/s*
�By contrast,
Inglis attempts an historical explanation,
he sees as the social sources of gambling.
He claims to uncover the following
speculative character of business in a neM country (but unless
the
factors:
looking to Mhat
specially
difficult and distinctive character of the neM country is also
the
invoked
does not distinguish Australia from the rest of the neM
this
that life Mas a gamble in early Australia (but this does
including USA);
explain Mhy social gambling took off,
Irish
heritage
subsequent
mining
persistence
the
and does not account for
the
of
the
of social gambling in Australia);
the role
Mith heightened discovery and rapid riches (but
again
this
to California Mhere gambling practices are different, and are
e.g.,
not concentrated on social gambling).
particular
not
or the augmentation of gambling);
(but this applied also to USA,
industry
applies,
Morld,
These sorts of factors may explain
inherited forms of gambling in Australia,
for instance the
the
Irish
contribution no doubt helps account for the prominence of horse-racing and its
egalitarian betting patterns in Australia (though horse-racing is as important
in
NeM Zealand Mhich had no comparable influx of Irish catholics).
But they
do not explain the persistence and styles of gambling in Australia, as opposed
to
USA.
to
delegated
the
to
extent that it Mas in Australia,
the
Inglis
favours,
hoM Mas it that gambling Mas integrated into
emerges:
question
order,
up in the historical fashion
set
Nhen
rather
commercial and criminal sector as in
than
USA?
a
the
major
social
substantially
question
The
fetches its OMn complex ansMer - in terms of the differing religious pressures
for
the
suppression
and regulation of gambling,
the
respective
gambling and their possible exploitation by capitalistic methods,
types
of
illegal
or
legate and the comparative commitment to market and commercial methods
- once
the features of Australian gambling are explained.
In trying to explain Australian gambling and its distinctive features, it
is
most
important^first to divide gambling into types.
Australian
pursuit
gambling is social,
of Meal th.
A salient feature is that
for "fun", as opposed for
instance
But professional and heavy (and plunge) gambling
to
appear
�be greater in Australia than elsewhere (and
to
not
gambling
than
less
are
in USA,
investment
the
reflecting again
of non-social
Bayesian theory (i.e.
gambling
be
can
gambling can be explained in the
people).
improvement
remains
it
given a largely psychological explanation,
positional
an undoubted consideration in such forms as lottery
is
to
social gambling.
For example-substantial
A
through
Since compulsive
subjective expected utility theory).
here some divi = i'*sn of types helps.
These
May
standard
explain Mhat _i_s distinctive in the Australian scene, broadly
Even
venture
security-
supposed
mindedness of Australians and the timidity of their business
types
and
art
and
union gambling but not in poker machine gambling.
main
The
forms
of
social
such
gambling,
club
as
rather undemanding leisure-time-fillers of
unintellectual
gambling,
acceptable
More ordinary Australians have a good deal of leisure time to fill;
are
types.
and given
the prevailing relatively uncompetitive ethos and general anti-intellectualism
of
the society,
activities
(e.g.
intellectual
or
this time is not often occupied by additional Mork or
for
positional improvement of one sort or another)
higher cultural activities,
But
by
gregarious
television Matching has to some extent substituted in recent
years.
or
direct
television
does
not
the same
offer
stimulation that gambling affords.
established,
socially
acceptable,
activities (like pip? smoking),
and
neMspapers^,
setting;
offering
iKti.
it
social
opportunities
Still, Mhy gambling rather than other time
It is not simply that it Mas and remains an
fillers and entertainment forms?
social
undemanding
or
For both of these more passive and
activities, such as drinking and gambling.
solitary
but by
hobby
form,
Mell
surrounded
Mith
associated
such as ^11 ec ting .snd reading^ + orm guidey
social
contacts and opportunities or at
also^afforde^
uncompetitive?^ form of stimulation, aec
a/, approved
least
funintellectual
a
and
Mhere^excitement could be directly
exper i encecL
tends
to
be extraverted;
leisure time activity
in
Australia
and Mhen it is not directed toMards the
notorious
the gambling situation reveals,
As
�trie,
it is usually practical or- material,
mainstream Australian culture is,
not educational or artistic.
The
to understate matters, neither cultured nor
intel 1ectual,
communication,
Education,
the intellectual
patterns in Australasia are Northern,
England and Scotland,
imported almost entirely,
from
mainly
As a result
very recently, some local adaption.
significant surface educational differences between Australia
are
(though the differences do not touch the
America
North
Mith,
The
life and practicality.
underlying
and so are not of great ideological depth?.
social paradigm,
and
Northern
surface
These
differences bear directly on the continuation of the cultural traditions.
Austral ia
countries.
t^or st
the
has
There
educational record of any
for example,
are,
the
of
three times as many people going on to
higher science studies proportionally in USA as in Australia.
23
to
this
recorded.
Australia.)
better
including 50 per cent
level,
(There
is
up the ladder,
doubt
to
and
different.
similar
ethnic
of
the
blacks,
differentiation
students at more average American
different,
attitudes
to
lowest
in
Not only
educational
segment
education
universities
reflecting the
but are generally nor-se in quality,
the more generous intake of students.
styles
In USA however 83 percent go
than their Australian counterparts,
drive
levels
a
University
motivated
5
In Australia about 20 per cent leave school at 15, and only
3'? percent proceed to higher school certificate.
on
Nhereas in UbA
in Australia only
percent of science students eventually obtain Ph.Ds,
per cent do, etc.
developed
oning in
are
in
are
social
part
no
educational
institutions
are
In North America universities are much more business, and there is
The details of general intellectual life,
differ material 1y.
extent of reading,
etc., al so
It is in intellectual and educational life, especially in the extent of
book reading, that Ne'.-j Zealand culture differs, perhaps most strikingly,
from Australian.
The anti-intelleptu_al charges regularly hurled at
Australians are not often directed at Neu Zealanders, t^h^je traditions
remain much more British.
�not
the
degree
separation of the university
of
business
commun i t i es
evident in Australia.
Education in Australia encounters, and has to combat, the practicality of
the mass of people, the widespread impatience with theory and ideas, and anti
The impatience with theory,
intellectualism.
theory into action,
blue
the demand for translation
the concentration on the practical,
collar (working-class) people,
of
appear not only with
for instance in adult education
but in groups drawn from virtually all strata of the society,
and
groups,
even,
and
perhaps or especially, in groups concerned with changing social consciousness.
The
anti-intellectualism
feature,
striking
locals.
Thu
to
of
Australia is a
widely
cultural
European visitors^and admitted or even insisted on
'sheep-culture,
agriculture,
by
physical culture have reached
standards in Australia but intellectual culture has
high
remarked
been
neglected* .
'Especially important in affecting the output of govenments and the quality of
our political life ...
[is] a suspicion of debate and reason, combined with a
profound anti-intellectualism'.
13
Rnti-intellectualism has however two levels (like anti-theism):
or,
differently, hostility to things intellectual.
though
the
Both appear in Australia,
neglect is far more widespread than hostility (which
restricted
neglect
appears
to a few older class-differentiated cultural groupings),
vast and amorphous middle class vaguely approving of things
largely
most
of
educational.
Note also the role of private schools in Australia, as in USR, as opposed
to New Zealand, where quality secondary eduction is not so privatised.
The whole style of ranking educational institutions in fact differs from
culture to culture.
Stephenson^s "words ring as true as they did the^' 30
writes Dunlevy (Canberra Times l'?84).
years
ago,
so
The other two 'characteristics [which] infect our public life'*, and also
stand in the way of 'a better society in this country", listed by Aitkin
in his cynical and pessimistic conclusion (p.28) are worth recording
also,
namely
widespread authoritarianism and
majoritarianism
in
government, and primary group loyalty (and therewith partisan and even
confrontational practices) in public affairs, i.e. narrow non-pluralistic
matesh i p.
�this
In
does
Australia
neglect,
not differ
from
situation may be Morse in rural USA than it is in rural
the
highly
other
Indeed there are grounds for supposing
materialist cultures, such as the USA.
that
markedly
Australia,
Mhere people commonly have access to public libraries and a variety of
public
c ommun i c a t i on ne tMorks,
terms
In
furnished
America
relative
of
population
Australia
corresponds
perhaps
is
to community radio stations like Canberra's
could Mell adapt, is different.
better
Nothing in
cultural communication netMorks than USA.
Mith
2XX
North
to
or
The US PSS arrangments, Mhich Australia
ethnic radio in most state capitals.
by
size
For Mhat it is Morth (for they are controlled
capitalist right and carry a heavy Northern ideological message)
the
the
main Australian neMspapers also compare favourably Mith American neMspapers
at least on a circulation-size basis
Many
Americans
have
'America's
for
conservatism'
(p.345).
Mhich,
Australia,
remarked,
in a similar
parochialism,
The
though
- and tend to be less parochial.
fashion
to
anti-intellectualism
Merrill,
sc i en t i sm
ano
smoothly
for
same ingredients do not blend so
certainly
instantiating that
on
initially^_starting
coupling of scientism Mith an t i - i n t e 1 1 ec t u a 1 i sm^s^^Can d n a t i on a 1 i sm)^ i s neither
so
conservative
(especially
politically) nor nearly
as
parochial
(perhaps because much further from the centre of things than USA).
there is some significant overlap,
are,
like
Moreover,
of
'P%.
though
because both mainstream cultures are male-
dominated Mith a heavy practical get-things-done orientation.
Australasian
USA
Nor do the
of Australian anti-intellectualism look the same as American,
sources
as
For example, in
male preserves it is still considered that intellectual pursuits
artistic
endeavours,
for practical men,
unmasculine
and
effeminate
("sissy").
ideas and intellectual activity, except as part
a narroM practically-directed result-oriented science,
are an impediment,
Looked at differently things are not so good.
Australia's capital, for
example, hardly turns out, in the form of the Canberra Times, a product
Mhich compares favourably Mith the Nashing ton Post
�an effete luxury.
in
that
Inhere Australian culturet&e3±±s^diverges from American
anti-intellectualism,
culture and thought, ^deriv
the
connected mediocre standards
and
opportunities
various
furthermore,
to
higher
from egalitarian and levelling down elements
culture (for intellectual activities,
serious
of
to
and
excel,
like high culture,
surpass
is
in
offer too many
There
mates).
are,
connected mediocre-maintaining mechanisms in Australian
for example ''social penalisation of deviance from certain "middling"
society,
intellectual
other
norms'* (Ely),
a lopping off
cultures
do share is a
heavy
and
of
intellectual
tall
poppies.
the
Nhat
as
misrepresented
Americans,
a
practical
practical
utilitarianism.
and unlike most Europeans,
orientation,
Australians
are,
often
like
practical do-it-yourself people, proud
But for the most part,
of their fix-it make-do and improvisational abilities.
Australians have strong group loyalties and do not treat those outside primary
groups
with
sense;
nor
aiming
at
sufficient impartiality to count as utilitarians in
they,
in appropriate utilitarianism
greatest
happiness of the greatest
are
'the
societal maximum.
educational
and
or
number'
strict
maximizers,
any
other
They are utilitarian only in the vulgar sense of utility-
focussed and practical,
experimental
fashion,
any
in the sense that theory,
statistical
work,
gets
and research institutes (as e.g.
a low
as opposed to practice and
even
in
higher
the Research School
of
Social
ranking,
Sciences, Australian National University).
The
practical
capabilities of Australians are by no means
directed but include group and social organisation.
individually
Particularly significant
The utilitarian theme was a hare-meleased by Hancock, in his attempt to
reconcile Australian 'individualism with ... reliance upon Government'
(p.55).
In fact utilitarianism is inessential to the style
of
reconciliation Hancock attempts, several sorts of accounts of collective
poster at the service of integrated individual interests serving as well or better in the Australian case.
Even in the academies utilitarianism
hardly predominates;
and it has had little historical importance in
Australian philosophy, though it has regrettably become a position to be
reckoned with in recent years.
By contrast, pragmatism has almost no
foil owing.
�is
australian
'the
organisations
zest for starting,
joining
of all kinds' (aitkin p.26).
and
maintaining
voluntary
This has proved important for
a
long time in the provision of Melfare services in australis, and more recently
40?% n
in the case of the environment.
The pattern of Melfare^in australia, for long
self-provisioning (as distinct from provided by local
largely
elseMhere
),
a "Mel fare partnership" Mith government
into
merged
espec i al 1 y in brick-and mortar- grants and the like,
and
other
organisations.
environmental
a
The
concerns.
government
similar
pattern
funding,
for voluntary,
is
re! igious
as
emerging
as
regards
size of the nongovernmental Melfare sector
in
Rustralia,
an important part of the informal economy, remains extremely large
(est ima ted
9. S
p.26^/
for
equivalent in unpaid mages alone to 1.5'< of GDP,
de t ai 1s);
the informal economy bound up
and
see
Mith
aitkin,
environmental
issues is no longer negligible though governmental assistance is
siight.
But the success of nongovernmental organisation and the informal
economy
up a latent paradox concerning political organisation in australia
throMS
for Mhat i s
paradoxes tied to the already noticed authoritarianism paradox;
afxa poMer+ul authoritarian government doing in self-reliant communities?)
the
one
hand,
there
political culture',
is
'an important self-reliant
in
strain
(a
On
australian
Mith do-it-themselves groups Mhich substituted for
local
government; it is 'a political culture in Mhich voluntary organistions have an
honoured place' (aitkin,
apathy,
though
populace
Mhich
p.26).
But, on the other hand, there is a political
are not as marked as formerly or as- in the USa;
has
by
and
large 'not sought
profound
there
changes
in
is
problems
a
reliance on government to provide and
(this in complete contrast Mith
america)
to
deal
.
a
Mith
and
political
difference-in-size
In contrast Mith USa, for instance, local government Mas
development in australia, and remains Meak: see aitkin, p.23ff.
?7-
a
their
political or social structure for several generations noM" (aitkin p.23);
there
is
a
late
"So australians faced Mith a political problem learned to respond Mith
"Mhat Mill they (= the government) do about it?", Mhereas americans in a
similar situation could be heard to say "Hhat Mill Me do about it?'"
(aitkin, p.23).
ar
^6
�theory,
both lessons for Australian political decentralisation and^some
Mith
expI anatory
0! son' s
Mould appear to resolve the paradox (a theory
pOMer,
individuals,
action,
collective
of
bogie
but
Mhich
initial
the
groups or factions to Mhom
primary
within Mhich mateship^ bonds operate).
in
but Mith
elements
not
attach
and
loyalties
Nhat holds for the smaller local group
individual is directly involved does not
the
resembling
to
transfer
larger
political arrangements? tsri on the contrary, local loyalties act against larger
groups struggle and compete for their OMn
organisation^
enter ^nto a-v^ricty"'of partisan and rent-seeking behaviour.
Australians
political
are
self- or
problems
they
hardly
and
Similarly Mhile
problems,
group-reliant Mith smaller
appeal to government,
interests
larger
for
surprisingly^ to
authoritarian government (for though authoritarianism is not essential,
an
it is
likely in the circumstances).
.The
1
open
times may be changing Mith the serious attempt to apply
"
methods
secretive
to
large group decision making,
games,
numbers
instead
of
group
'a perversion of the majority principle
old
Mhich
in
HoMever the
of more satisfactory and rational decision making methods into large
organisation and choice practices have a long May to go
political
the
simply
getting the numbers is a surrogate for persuasion'* (Aitkin p.28).
adoption
consensual,
J
life,
in
Australian
in such less anti-intellectual (but still often
even
anti
theory) cloisters as the universities and other educational institutions.
Approaches
to the environment.
the frequent presentation of USA as the heartland
An t i podes, despi te
environmental
movement.
proportionately,
the Morld.
of
There
are,
as
Australian
for
example,
more
paid-up
the
of
members,
environmental groups in Australia than anyMhere else
in
Apparently blest Germany, Northern homeland of green politics, noM
comes second in this sort of statistic,
Mell
Ecological aMareness is greater in the
easily ahead of USA and
Canada.
a quantitative difference there is a qualitative difference
and Northern environmentalism.
The Australian movement
As
betMeen
is
much
A
�and
active
more
ecological
auareness
communities.
The
involved.
not
mi th
permeated
Antipodean culture is
encountered in North America
in
except
an
isolated
These are subjective impressions from informants, but there are
some more objective matters to back them up, such as
The
P
issue
Tasmanian
dam issue,
uhich could not have figured as
election
an
in the same sort of uay in North America (though perhaps it could
have
in Noruay);
level of political commitment on such environmental matters
neu
The
9
the preservation of rainforest in NSH.
as
(For details, and other examples, see
Dunphy).
?
for example,
Responses to questionnaires on rainforest and uoodchipping,
uhich indicate uide community concern in Australia on these issues.
impressions
The
quantitative
can,
uay,
by
moreover,
be
backed
up to some
dividing environmental groups into
(conservative) and neuer (post l'?65, more radical).
extent
in
tuo
types:
more
a
older
The overwhelming majority
of people involved in environmental groups in England, for instance, belong to
organisations of the former type,
National
mostly founded last century, especially the
Trust (see Loue and Goyder).
By contrast the
consists predominantly of more recently formed groups.
Australian
The Australian groups
differ in character from those in USA in important uays;
also
for
and less inclined to compromise. For instance, there has never been a
action,
(such
deal
as
as the Sierra Club
made)
uith. organisations
supporting
there has never been a uorking alliance uith shooters or
pouer,
nuclear
clubs
they are,
more active, more radical, more left-leaning, more inclined to
the most part,
major
movement
is commonplace in USA,
or an easy alliance uith
off-road
gun
vehicle
c1ubs.
USA
can
Emerging),
much
in
be
very
roughly seen,
as dividing into tuo parts,
the
uilderness),
uay
as Callenbach
sees
(in
Ecotopi a
Eastern part, uithout
the Old Norld,
of deeper ecological concerns (or
it
of
national
parks
or
and a Neuer Norld, Nestern part, uhich is much more ecologically
�There
concerned.
is
little
doubt however that
the
metropolitan
eastern
industrial part of USA (the Boston-Neu York-Hashington conglomeration) is Mell
and truly in control of things.
in
the
places
uhere
again roughly,
The division gets reflected,
environmental philosophy or
features in university programs,
equivalent
an
seriously
not at the
namely the south and uest,
more
richly-endoued higher-ranked universities in the east.
Jeuish prominence in eastern American universities has something
The
to
There is a significant Jewish element in
do Mith this educational situation.
contemporary US thinking and philosophy, but not to any extent in Australian
American.
The
evident Jewish influence on American economic and political life extends
into
except
insofar as it (increasingly) serves as a Meak copy of
philosophy
and
Nalzer
political theory,
in
elements.
ideology:
This
long
the Mork of Nozick
for instance,
Mhich is overtly infused
influence
exploitation-disrupted
the
Consider,
has
a
substantial
Mith
Jeuish
effect,
Jeuish record is exceedingly disappointing,
Hebraic
especially
arenas like peace and the natural environment
both in
and
in
- Mhere
practice
and
theory (occasional rebels excepted).
The
features
strength of Australian environmentalism arises from a combination of
of
the
land
and
the culture:
the
presence
pouer
and
of
the
surrounding natural Morld, the conspicuousness and the resilience of many more
familiar
Mhich
close,
parts of the environment,
together
the outdoor barbeque-and-beach lifestyle,
Mith a variety of outdoor activities brings
the secular earthiness of the culture,
the
its naturalism,
environment
the
doMn-to-
earth practical character of the people, the do-it-yourself approach to things
like
housing,
repairs
and
so
forth
Mhich
often
frustrating, details of the natural Morld close again.
brings
the
messy,
if
Nhile Hestern American A.
9^.
There are hoMever some European emigres, Mith right-leaning or even
reactionary political vieMS, Mho have an influence on political thinking
in Australia, especially as regards defence and communism.
NeM Zealand
is, by contrast, relatively free of such immigrants.
%?.
Nain reasons Mhy are in fact nicely explained in SchMarzschild.
�these things it does not share all of
of
many
shares
them
by
means,
any
in particular not the areligious character or the style of naturalism.
Despite Australia's frequent inclusion as an industrialised nation, it is
not
industrialised,
highly
mining,
and
agriculture
and
of
much
the
export
in their different Mays quarrying
both
Other Antipodean countries are even less industrialised.
there
the level of Old Norld
yet
isn't
transformation
industrial
land.
the
the
The
European
still
environment
even in most parts of the largest
reaches through conspicuously,
from
And in the Antipodes
control,
the total inhabitable landscape.
of
comes
wealth
cities.
survey of cultural media such as films Mould shoM this clearly enough.
a
rare
(or NeM Zealand) film that doesn't include
Australian
bushdrop,
many
Mhereas
US
exclude
productions
the
some
A
It is
natural
environment
natural
entirely, and even Mhen sequences are shot outside it's often all concrete and
and
glass,
neon
lights and automobiles and
pools
sMimming
- metropolitan
"cu1ture".
Certainly these sorts of urban effects, taken from noMhere in particular,
could
be achieved in parts of the older Australia state capitals,
becoming
(less
very
freeMay
cities in the American-influenced
much
systems hoMever),
Melbourne,
noisy
and
As a result,
older
mode
structures
the largest, Sydney and
are not .just sprauling and mostly unplanned but heavily congested,
polluted,
Mith
nature blotted out in many of
despite
its impressive monuments,
the
inner
poorer
In this they resemble Hashington,
suburbs by red brick and Mires and asphalt.
Mhich
are
free-enterprise
overlaying and expanding
copied from British provincial cities.
Mhich
has only little
planning,
and
is
mostly the American adaption of the European city - an adaption Mhere the city
is
treated as if at first space didn't matter,
structures,
fortunate
al) being,
to have,
so to say,
by contrast,
nor any unity of
better integrated into and less imposed upon,
(the
Australia is
isolated individual ones).
in Canberra a much more
style
holistic
capita),
/
the environment.
Moreover it
�is
hard
not to see and to some extent appreciate the natural environment
on the hills,
especially
Canberra,
neatly planned and in places so green,
between,
lands
even if the flatter
in
so
exhibit (though as cities normally do)
so much artifice.
The
prospects for the environment look rather brighter in Australia than
in USA,
and
for several reasons,
some physical and structural,
much
smaller proportion firmly
population,
and
agriculture
or to industrialist activities.
matter
possibilities
technological
and
a
of good luck than good management;
America
much
For a similar land area Australia has a
cultural.
have been lacking.
some ideological
human
smaller
committed
to
intensive
In large measure this is more a
for both the time and physical and
for a such colossal business
investment
as
in
But cultural reasons have also made a difference
Mill likely become increasingly important:
contrasts
cultural
already
observed, that is.
In
had
Australians came increasingly godless to a land God
the first place,
supposedly forgotten about;
for them there Mas no mandate or
such as the Americans operated under,
in
Australian
life
not merely to multiply and be fruitful,
and exploit it to their oMn ends.
but to dominate the land,
and
approaches
directive
to
the
environment
Nor is there noM
the
extent
of
religiously-reinforced human chauvinism that operates in the industrial North,
and
Mhich
sciences.
informs
the
Secondly,
precedent-bound
foundations
American adulation of,
of
Northern
social
and ideological commitment
. (From previous page) So it is to be hoped that Griffin's environmental
vision, from Mhich Canberra took shape, can be sustained. H.B. Griffin a naturalised Australian Mho greM up in USA - has a significant place in
the groMth of environmentalism in Australia. His role in this regard has
been largely neglected;
for he is usually portrayed .just as an
arch i tec t.
/P/ . On the May in Mhich human chauvinism is Mritten deep into mainline social
sciences, see EE, pp.183-'?.
About the social theory involved, many
Australians are fortunately sceptical - those that bother Mith theory,
that is.
/%%. The practice of government**assisted capitalism of
differs of course from the ideology.
advanced
capitalism
�to,
market arrangements and market-based minimally-regulated
profit-directed
competition is not shared in Australia,
American commitment to the Big,
and,
to big business,
to put it all more theoretically,
capitalism,
controlled
is substantially opposed.
but
to tall poppies, to genius,
to maximization.
extraordinarily bad neMS for the environment.
general
and
documented,
reasons for their damaging effects are sufficiently
theoretical
the
understood.)
such commitments and themes, though influential enough and
In Australia,
and advertised daily through the commercial media,
pushed
in
are
(The damaging effects of these
in practice are quite evident enough and Mell
3-Bad-lTs
But such minimally-
maximization,
and
markets,
So is
do
not
dominate.
For there is a different mainstream ideology Mith a different agenda - such as
social
social
regulation,
and
intervention,
so
arbitration,
consensus,
group
government
The land and the people are not open
forth.
American-style markets in the same '.jay (though there are increasing
ill-considered
pressures
forces",
dairy
market,
e.g.
expose
farmers
in a subsidized and
also
Morks
in favour of
the
environment.
natural
and
are
entitled to fair treatment,
oppressed or poor Australians,
rather
to a "fair go" and assistance.
growing reluctance to see local environments,
especially
and,
by foreign companies.
Fourthly,
Australian environmental movement itself,
Morld
Australian
Thirdly,
are to an increasing extent considered as honorary or even
Australians,
"market
heavily-controlled
markets).
the
and often
to
population
sectors of the
adolescents in over-supplied labour
egalitarianism
animals
to
to
Native
exemplary
like
other
And there is a
like small people,
ripped off,
there is the live and expanding
some of it manifest in
Alternative
Australia.
5.
Formulating and takinq different directions
The
distinctive
features of Australian culture both point
change and supply main parts of an engine for change.
is,
houever,
the
May
to
The standard complaint
that proposals for radical change noM lack,
Mith the demise of
�revolutionary aspirations in the oppressed c 1 asses, any engine for change.
In
more friendly form, the complainfis elaborated along the foliating lines:-
It is easy enough to formulate different directions for the South Pacific
it is far harder to see how such an appropriately different course
countries;
It is not merely that the main countries in the
can be adopted and followed.
region,
European
transformed
descent.
by Europeans,
There
are
are much influenced by people
inevitably,
then,
strong
recent
of
pressures
for
conformity, for similarity to the North, and for cultural anonymity, and there
is much pressure for increased assimilation within the !JS6 sphere of influence
These Northern pressures comprise a familiar package, notably
and control.
*
Domination
popular
media
Northern,
of main forms of communication and education - especially the
such as T'-.J,
especially
books
- by
features
and
missionaries of Northern culture
and
but also intellectual media such
American
but
also
British,
programs,
as
products.
*
Cultural
propaganda.
travelling
ambassadors,
Surprisingly, these people are almost invariably welcomed, their
loaded messages eagerly sought.
reinforce the missionaries.
from,
On a lesser scale,
North
tourists from the
They see the North, generally the areas they come
as ^zi.tmg the standards,
as providing the sort of cultural ideals the
backward Antipodes should be seeking to attain.
*
Top-down
directives
from
aligned with Northern interests.
local
both
private and public
companies,
metropolitan skylines).
which
are
These include not merely the manaoements of
branches of multinational companies,
insurance
sources
and so on (roughly,
but those of a variety of
banks,
those whose buildings now dominate
Etc.
103
Even the most powerful and populous states in the South Pacific region
are
becoming
increasingly
locked into a dual system
of
Northern
control,
namely through
103. Those which operate their own limited imperialism in lesser states of the
region, e.g., Australia in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand in Samoa.
�The
1.
organisation
American
104
The most important of these arrangements in Australia's case
is
hegemony.
of industrialised capitalist states,
under
perhaps the Pacific rim strategy, masterminded by the USA Mith assistance from
and fitting within the world arrangements envisaged by the
Japan,
Trilateral
Commission.
2.
of the economy by
penetration
The
many of them ultimately American controlled.
Northern,
mostly
corporations,
transnational
of
(For the effects
this framework of control in Australia's case, see Crough and Wheelwright.).
A very significant net result is that local economic control is diminishing or
and therewith,
being lost altogether,
local
control
political
in these economically-dominated times,
is diminishing.
National
economies
increasingly
respond, and are seen as obliged to respond, to so-called international forces
"international market" forces in state-rigged markets with
(or
and highly concentrated participants).
effort,
of
much
(unmarketable)
it
intentional,
At the same time there is a concerted
to
reduce
and
remain,
remove
substantially
cultural differences in the contemporary world,
mass consumer society and worldwide markets.
differences
unequal
very
a
to produce
Notwithstanding, major cultural
even in the more industrialised
With
countries.
some
A
care, some fostering, the differences cou1be accentuated in worthwhile ways,
though
the
especially in the industrial
trend,
main
nations,
in
is
the
opposite direction, to almost complete cultural convergence.
On the other side,
forces,
mainly
local,
there are in the South Pacific some
in
counterbalancing
favour of some distancing of Australian
and
New
Zealand cultures from the USA, and of looser relations, especially, presently,
in
matters of (nuclear) defence.
If change is to occur,
it is important to
encourage worthwhile components of these forces,
particularly those
in regional culture
interconnected ways, through
ideas
that regional
and
action.
grounded
cultures
104. For Third World southern countries, financial arrangements through
US-dominated INF and World Bank loom much larger.
and
the
�their
do
conventionalism
and
important.
shape
a
are
There
culture,
undoubted!;/
pragmatism
as
American lifestyle or Australian naturalism
(and
and
Sydney
However what
Russell
that culture determines the shape of the dominant philosophy,
to think,
qualification.
major
philosophy;
dominant
are
and realism a main strand of Australian.
materialism)
requires
reflect
that
philosophies
came
elements
philosophical
but
Certainly,
conversely,
105
culture affects
philosophical
and
constrains
input
can
affect, or even alter, culture.
Genuine
differences
implementation
(as
of
a few very simple
ideas
could
make
major
the 1884-5 stand of the New Zealand government on visits
of
namely that significant principles (of morality)
or
nuclear ships reveals);
features of local culture or regional environments are not sacrificed,
in
jeopardy,
such things as trading advantages or
for
distributed economic benefits.
economism
narrowly
There is a powerful basis for defeating
in Australian and Antipodean cultures,
egalitarian approaches;
short-term
or put
such
in the shape of anti-market
and these and other complementary cultural features
could serve more widely to halt or subvert Northern incursions.
The
South
uncritical
Pacific
Enlightenment
and
for
uncontrolled extension of European culture
take one lesser instance of
that
world-wide
to
spread
and disease) has been very damaging both to indigenous
the lands and seas,
extinction.
mistakes.
(to
and
the
of
peoples
even pushing some of the former inhabitants
to
Nodern people are supposed to learn, if from anything, from their
Among
mistakes of civilizations,
environmental mistakes
are
as
105. Russell 'connecttsl'* philosophies with the social environments of the
philosophers concerned' p.824). Elsewhere, however, Russell only claims
social influences, not determination (e.g., p.827). His working example
is the connection of Dewey's philosophy 'with American enterprise;
in
particular there is the belief in human power, and an unwillingness to
admit "stubborn facts".'*
'His philosophy is a power philosophy.
Russell then proceeded to consider the very real dangers of human power.
Dewey, for his part, contested the connections Russell alleged, as well
as the dangers.
There is much more, however, to the interrelations of
dominant philosophies with cultures and their environments than Russell
unear thed.
�conspicuous as any (sea e.g,
hanger
no
though
beyond
Hatt) .
the reach of a Northern Mar - to
of Northern civilizations,
mistakes
Thors is sti 1 1 time for* the Antipodes
avoid
the
beginning Mith human overpopulation
many
and
environmental impoverishment (as differently illustrated by Italy and Lhina).
There
that
grounded in regional
are various different directions,
a country or place can attempt to take.
There are,
for
features,
example,
tMO
extremal economic directions a contemporary state or region may try to pursue,
as illustra ted:-
other reliance, e.g. upon
i n ternat i onal economic
forces
al ternative
fort-jard May
present
se 1 freli ance
At
the
one
end
lies local self-reliance
and
control,
substantially excluded Mhen it comes to essentials;
(as Mith the Meather of an island),
regulation
largely controlled from elseMhere,
(but
direction.
dominated)
by
the
is
It
or directed through some
toMards- the
dashed arroM,
points
this
direction
general
economy
and control Mith the
for instance at the mercy of international
Northern dominated) economic forces,
shoMn
outside
the
at the other lies outside
patron (as Mith Australia's, defence or Tibet's economy).
that
Mith
that
poMerful
A typical direction,
latter
(backMards)
international
(American
financial institutions such as the INF and the Horld Bank
try
to
impose on client states.
Unfortunately
bent
on
indicate
Mritten
pursuing
given
all likely governments in countries like Australia
the Mrong direction.
the May poMer,
The reasons are
privilege and influence
into the control of societies - lie.
not
appear
difficult
- Northern
to
features
But it does not have to be
or
�stay that way.
difficulty for all suggestions for extensile
major
A
normal governmental procedures,
through
effect
constraint
for change.
is a
change,
severe
For governmental procedures are st on,
put
into
apparent
time
piecemeal
and
whichever
usually reactive (this is even how successful governmental methods,
these are,
vastly
sages
successful)
and
(among
But time is running out for the present (.not
are supposed to be) .
human experiment it is now everywhere
sound men and women of common sense,
from
crackpots
will
1'lhatever is done for change may have to be done with more rapidity
is customary in grander human affairs,
except with war itself (which is
of the main prob 1ems and a likely outcome of
one
as
from
whose numbers are those most confident that present arrangements
persist).
than
as well
said,
heard
socio-economic
catastrophe
ensuing from other problems).
In the present conditions of uncertainty,
a
strategy relevant to both outcomes,
concentrating
upon
imme^d^ate
paths
it would seem wise to plot out
catastrophic breakdown or
to
change
aimed
avoiding
at
while
not,
socio-
env i r onmen t a 1 break down.
Both the deeper American environmentalists and leading German Greens,
unlike
many
thinkers and leaders take the problems with deadly
hope
for a way out of present massive socio-environmental
main
nuclear impasse particularly,
change will take the form of a
This
spread
like a religious revival,
by way of democratic channels.
the
through a mass change
seriousness,
difficulties,
of
spiritual
who
and
consciousness.
conversion,
and
to alter political decisions and directions
These ideas,
while by no means ridiculous in
fashion of new-born Christians' views about their individualistic
escape
from nuclear Armageddon,
and while offering a clear ray of hope, leave most
106
Australians who have encountered them duly sceptical.
That type of massive
change
a
of consciousness (which may not be politically effective) will require
miracle,
and
miracles are not credible.
More important,
that
sort
of
�conversion i_s ruled out culturally in Australia,
spiritual
according to
the
prev i ous ar gumen t.
A drastic and massive change of consciousness,
or religious
is neither likely nor necessary (nor Mould it be sufficient).
Antipodes,
the
someMhat
Mith
isolated
favourable location in
its
Fortunately in
Southern
the
conversion,
Hemisphere,
there are different and
from the belligerent North,
more
These are social Mays
promising routes to change and regional nuclear escape.
and locally self-reliant Mays deeply rooted in the culture. Instead of seeking
to
change
consciousness,
then,
the
and through elements of,
the culture.
lines of religious conversion,
picture
through
of change.
in
But
many
and
those
involves
rather
is
as amended;
straightforwardness,
aMay
than
from
dominant
It encourages many
so to say).
for example those
as interfering Mith crucial features of
running counter to enterprise,
orderliness,
change
not
re-conditioning
counter-cultural,
deplored features of Australian culture,
culture,
of,
Mhat is being offered is a very different
this
respects the route
acquisitive capitalist virtues.
the
in the form
a
The route is thus cultural, not in this respect counter-cultural.
considered
been
Mith
Instead of the picture of change along
Northern paradigms (counter-Northern-culture,
often
Mork
to
is
The main path to change is through culture,
consciousness;
conversion.
idea
that is already there or in the background,
"consciousness"
the
leading
market
that
capitalism,
selfishness and the
initiative,
have
other
It encourages instead traditional virtues of
for instance Midened
generosity,
egalitarianism,
permissiveness,
pluralism,
unsubtlety,
spontaneity,
authenticity, sociaSbility, reliability, anti-authoritarianism,
group-reli^ance, resourcefulness, moderation, leisure!iness.
The main environmental route aMay from Northern social paradigms has been
10^. (From previous page) Host, but of course, not all.
The change-ofconscicusness idea has its adherents, e.g. Cairns, some in Alternative
Australia. Naturally it is not being denied that change-^f-consciousness
(e.g. in the form of ecological conversion) does occur^aac^is an important h
happening. Hhat is at issue is the likely scale of such change.
�and Mhat it involves indicated (e.g. in RP).
t-lhat is
the extent to Mhich elements of mainstream Australian
culture
reconnoitred elsewhere,
is
remarkable
Indeed in Australasian culture there
fit with that divergence from the North.
is
at
best
dominant
social
There is already in the cultures
paradigm.
for a marked SMing aMay from the dominant Northern
basis
vieMpoint,
demagogic
of
ambivalent subscription to major facets
only
is
it
mainly a matter of tipping
Northern
the
a
substantial
paradigm.
an
From
already
a
poised
balance aMay from Nor them-influenced control.
break-aMay
This
involve
first
control has tMO political facets
arrangements
part
Mhich
of
part
relevant
is breaking free from Northern hegemony, control,
alignment
of
The
and
from the influence of foreign states and the grips of transnational
Some
companies.
recovering
Mays
connected
of the Mays this can be accomplished have
local control of media output and messages,
are knoMn,
e.g.
escheMing a false internationalism,
and,
into line Mith
both
so that political arrangements reflect these parts of culture.
reliance,
e.g.
political
bringing
culture,
from
sMeepingly,
more
dropping
moving to greater
regional
been
indicated,
and many
other
self-reliance,
modifying limited liability of companies,
out
of the
international
abandoning the race to keep up Mith the Singaporian
rat-race
Jones and the
(e.g.
E/i^shoMas,
Host of these Mays could
107
The second
designed to strike resounding chords in mainstream culture.
in demolishinq their oMn and others'* environments).
be
rtA"' ccbLt
subsidizing
transnationals,
A.?
providing
hand-outs and undue
shelter
to
big
business or monopolistic professions, cutting assistance to the disadvantaged,
exposing
local small-actor sectors (in difficulty) to the icy Minds of
Morld
107. And Mhere not it is a matter of removing false beliefs, such as that
Australia is currently threatened militarily by hostile states.
These
sorts of beliefs could be altered, at least for many Mho hold them, by
appropriate
persuasion by credible popular figures on mass media
channels. In fact it has suited both government and opposition, hitherto
committed to an essentially bipartisan defence policy, to let false
beliefs about defence, for instance, stand, or even to encourage and
reinforce them.
�market forces, and so on.
such
Tipping the balance involves both positive measures
promoting the valid features in
as
as^
such
measures,
counteracting
freely flowing in from the North,
Australian
culture,
counter-
and
images
and removing damaging impacts and
e.g.
by cutting doMn the floM,
making
it
more expensive, and introducing rivals.
Governments cannot be relied upon
even
Mhere
motivated to do so (e.g. as Mith defence they may
support, because of false beliefs).
rolehas
never
to make requisite changes on their OMn,
been active
in
lack
popular
Apparently, and surprisingly, the State's
Australia,
but
a 1 Mays
reactive.
State
intervention and regulation is and has alMays been in reaction to Mhat
108
happens.
Since governments can not be relied upon to initiate action, it
is important to move for change,
for
such
possible,
change
early
and Mhere possible to obtain popular support
10?
on in movements.
It is important also, Mhere
to bypass government,
building alternative social arrangements and
enlarging the informal economy (see e.g. Nartin).
There is further a component to be exploited in tipping the balance
from the
mainstream
dominant
Northern paradigm, apart from the
Australian
authoritarianism,
culture
(as
e.g.
components
egalitarianism,
of
anti
anti-marketism, satisization, environmentalism, and so on).
That is anti-Americanism.
There
developed
leading
aMay
The attitude in the Antipodes to USA is ambivalent.
is a love-hate relationship in Australia (e.g.
mutual admiration
from
perceived cultural similarities, gratitude from older Australians for American
108. This major theme is advanced, illustrated, and defended in Gilbert,
p.?ff. One important example concerns squatting, other aspects of social
Melfare.
But the theme is liable to be contested, e.g. by Aitkin, Mho
sees 'nearly tMo centuries of reliance on ... omnicompetent initiating
goverment behind us'
(p.27).
HoMever Gilbert seems to be correct;
Australian governments are hardly omnicompetent or 'omnipresent'*, and
they rarely appear to initiate.
10?. That support may be enlisted from culturally unexpected sources, e.g.
Momen in the case of the peace movement, as opinion polls clearly reveal.
The peace movement has not undertaken sufficient political foot-uork,
e.g. grass roots activity such as door knocks, in increasing and
mobilizing this potential support.
�in Morld Mar II;
action
ugly American abroad).
dislike of American blustering,
the Antipodes.
independence,
trying
to
The distaste for being visibly pushed around is strong in
A striking feature of established Antipodean peoples is their
elements
or to be
unwillingness to put up with nonsense,
their
manipulated^ especially by foreigners.
cultural
There is now much anti-US-
in New Zealand since USA made the tactical error of
New Zealand.
bully
the
There is much anti-Americanism in Australia as well as
widespread opposition to the American government.
governmentism
opposition to
as
pushed*
Ao
Of course, the tactic of appeal ingj^such
practices
opposition to the American political
is
a
dangerous one, owing in part to politicians' dishonest penchant for conflating
opposition to a foreign government with opposition to people that goverment is
supposed
to represent (or perhaps on rare occasions does),
easy
the
by
above).
neutralised.
practice
ambiguity of terms like anti-American (an ambiguity
The tactic opens the way to charges of racism,
and the like.
a
But the charges,
For
it
is
on
national chauvinism,
if they can be got at, are straightforwardly
largely a matter of removing
institutions (and cultures) to their individual members,
institutions devolves,
traded
made
fallaciously, into criticism of
crude
reduction
of
so that criticism of
each and every one of
the members.
no
Richard Sylvan
110. This paper had a long and difficult gestation and growth period, before
ye'idling a result that still leaves its author uneasy most days.
He
cehtainly hopes that those who commented on the paper or assisted on the
labour in its earlier days now only dimly recognise it.
Among those to
be thanked are Brian Hartin, Jean Norman, Louise Syvlan (who was
responsible for the monster in the first place), David Bennett, ... .
�On the notion of culture and cultural pluralism
APPENDIX 1:
unfortunately, with very few exceptions,
Definitions of culture abound;
Hany are too narrow,
are bad.
all
for example chauvinistically restricting
culture to human groups (as Kamenka's appalling motto, 'nothing human is alien
p.7.); some are too broad, for example making any sort of organisation
to me',
as a trade union or a local brass band.) a culture.
such
serve
to
connect
problems:- High
redefinitions
of
cu1ture
with [a peoples'] artistic achievement or, even more
111
with (their) literature.
This is h1 on culture, at least insofar
culture
LaJ
narrowly,
as
the types of
indicate
Pt fen examples will
what is included is class restricted,
to certain class-approved
products
and performances (e.g. opera, ballet, drama as opposed to reggae, punk, etc.).
Hhile high redefinitions let in too little,
So
is with the definition of culture as 'the transfer of
it
behavioural means,
(Bonner
with
low redefinitions admit too much.
p.ltj),
culture.
information
most particularly by the process of teaching and learning*
because that includes much that has nothing especially to
For
by
example,
number of bricks on a site,
relaying a weather forecast or passing on
transfers information by behavioural
means,
do
the
but
information of no particular cultural relevance.
By
contrast,
culture.
For
Herskovits:
most definitions mark out something which roughly overlaps
example,
culture
Awa
'settletsJ
for
the
offered
definition
is "the man-made part of the environment"
...'
by
(p.2'?).
Not only is this inadmissibly anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (such
as
Bonner
writers
studies)
imagine);
and extraterrestrial cultures (such
but
worse,
as
science-fiction
this twisted definition appears to
render
a
ill. Thus, for example, Stephenson
throughout his iconoclastic book on
Australian culture.
The equation, with literary texts, like that of a
paradigm
with central texts,
is useful in offering a
materia!
representation of a culture. For there is something solid that can be
grasped and presented.
Similary, money, newspapers and motor cars,
afford material artefacts and museum exhibits of wider popular cultures.
�deserted
town or ancient ruins a culture (rather
mining
of
manifestation
a
past culture) while excluding a system
physics!
the
than
and
beliefs
of
values as a culture (.unless an erroneous theory of systems of propositions
In
invoked).
is
latching onto the physical exemplification it is moreover like
Kuhn' s identification of a text-book with a paradigm.
there is much m common between the notion of culture and
Indeed
libera! extension of the notion of paradigm,
one of uh 1 ch gained currency
&ng!o-ffmerican thought about a hundred years Later than the other.
have
in
Both terms
been used to cover an apparently diverse range of things (and criticised
dismissed for doing just that),
or
Kuhn's
and both do this in rather simitar
because both attempt to capture types of conceptual schema.
parallels
suggest
- certainly once the usefu! notion of a
widely adopted in sociology,
Mays,
Nhat is more the
paradigm,
soc1 a 1
been encountered and worked Mith - a common
has
notion.
Mith but little reflection,
from
advantage of this definition,
involved
and
para!tel
in
a rather different account of culture
the run of anthropologies! definitions straightaway emerges:- P) cu!ture,
or more exact!y a pure culture,
BP)
then,
P great
is that the hard
and part of its appeal,
thus
does not have to be repeated;
the
supplied
a
logical sense;
generous
by
but
the
c!ean-up
Mould
that is,
an elaborate interpretation
relational
structure.
it
is
function
Naturally it is
a
contrast
to
a scientific paradigm,
propositional structure delivered,
is
many
that of a social group.
sketched
take
theoretical
on
a
required
f aithfu1 to Mhat (the social forms, activities and so on) it models.
in
in
Recall that a paradigm is explicated as a model,
form for culture.
system, i.e. on
paradigm,
Mork
in rectifying the notion of paradigm has already been done (e.g.
precisely
structure
is a comprehensive socia! paradigm.
is a paradigm
genera!
to
be
6 social
where
the
the political themes and value judgements,
Group cohesiveness in fact is guaranteed in
examples of such social paradigms (several reproduced
in
the
RP)
because actual groups with distinctive cultures are taken; but the theoretical
�explanation
goes
structure.
The
and
deeper
depends on features of
the
of propositions! structure delivered
types
mode!
underlying
in
shoMn,
are
capsule form, in the first table of this paper contrasting parts of mainstream
American and Philippine cultures;
other more detailed examples are reproduced
in theoretical Mork on social paradigms (e.g. RP, CPE, Cotgrove and references
cited therein).
dust
the
as
of
explication
May
by
paradigm
of
enabled
models
a
clarification and unification job to be done on the giant conceptual mess that
the
of paradigm had become,
notion
facilitates a pleasing and simplifying synthesis.
the
hc"-j
complains
diffusion by pointing to the
about
complaint
his
Consider,
about,
in
definitions of culture to similes and metaphors,
desperation,
as
...
a
map,
as a sieve,
resort
cu1ture
illustrate,
to
Kluckholn
Geertz Minds
but in anthropology more generally, can be reduced.
especially,
up
Geertz
diffusion'
'theoretical
of
so the parallel explication
in
attempted
to the analogies 'perhaps in
and as a matrix',
before a
mere
paragraph later, offering his OMn metaphor of culture as a. Meb of significance
or interpretation (and mode 1 too,
its
in metaphor),
roots
though here an exact technical notion,
Prs it happens,
Geertz's account is not too
has
bad
a
picture of the sort of logical model involved, that is of a system, a Meb**l ike
structure, Mith an interpretation
matrix
The other similes are hoMever more exact:
on it.
imposed,
can
function, supplying significance or meaning
models (though not
as
function
usually
both a map and a
social
ones),
a
map
typically modelling a landscape.
take up Kluckholn's elaboration on culture (not
to
Furthermore,
really
^definitions' as Geertz suggests), a model is indeed '(4) "an abstraction from
Mhich,
behaviour"',
feeling
thinking,
hoMever
is
not
prescript i v e 1 y
Mhere
and
it is a social paradigm,
believing"'* in terms of items
merely descriptive,
as,
supplies
'('?)
"a
validated.
but Mill be applied
mechanism
for
the
(3) "a May of
and
normative
can
The
model
be
regulation
read
of
�(ID? "a set of techniques for adjusting both to the externa!
and
behaviour"'
environment and to other men"'. Such a mode!, which does correspond to '(5) "a
the part of the anthropologist about the '..'jay in which a
on
theory
peop!e in fact behave"' and their view of the wor!d,
orientations,
Since the social paradigm evolves over time,
'(11) "a precipitate of history'",
of
certainly affords '(6) a
structure of pooled learning"' and '(7.) "a set of standardized
to recurrent problems" .
group
it is
and it does record '(2) "the social legacy
the individual [in the society] acquires from his group"'.
three parts or levels of a culture that Conga!ton and David
The
*--P*22 ff.) are similar to those Kuhn includes within a paradigm,
readi1y
supplied
by
a model.
They
are,
first,
the
discern
and likewise
genera!
rules
and
procedures characterising and controlling the behaviour of adherents; secondly
the ideas and vatues.behind these beliefs and procedures; thirdly the products
materia!
and
exemplars
resulting,
e.g.
textbooks,
interpretation function validates both themes and ru!es;
domains
as wel! it
including values and ideas (on both see
of objects,
connection with exemplars and artefacts is less direct,
The
The
newspapers.
RP,
delivers
pp.12-16).
and of more than
textbook may present a paradigm or, more likely, part of one; or
112
it may, like an artefact, supply or be a partial modelling of the paradigm.
one kind.
remaining
The
to
order
culture
reflect
has
life-forms
done.
Ihus
to
of
qualifying term comprehensive is
some of the slackness of the
deliberately
notion
of
Abraham,
styles
there are varying degrees to which this
for one,
can
112.
and
be
explains various inclusive levels of culture
(PP* 12-13) before opting for the most inclusive, under which 'culture is
113
common life of the people
and 'includes the whole of the knowledge,
arts,
in
Hhile
culture.
cover a sufficiently comprehensive part of life
a community,
vague
th<=
the
science, technology, religions, morality, ritual, politics, literature,
theory normally has many models, some exact and canonical, some of
which bring out al! that holds in the theory but not only what holds
there;
and, more sweepmgly still, it has partial models, which
accurately depict part of the theory.
�etiquette
even
compr eh ensi ve,
includes
use of t he.t erm hot'je ver
mastery
a
sculpture,
.
of
a
seventeenth
(p. 12) 114
..."
-fashions
Under
a
all
of
process
literature,
Abraham
(p.13).
of
and could knoM (p.13).
history,
culture!,
music,
pauperisation of Mhat
the
culture
and
painting
conjectures that this use evolved
and eighteenth centuries,
! ess
narroMer,
cu 1 ture i s limited to Mhat are called
In this use [that again of "higher"
of the mind.
things
result
and
educated
the age of enlightenment,
man
'as
in
a
the
stood for',
Such a person could reflect the Mhole culture in
the
more comprehensive use.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high culture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
so
it has been argued, namely attitudes to and approaches to the environment, and
so natural environments largely devoid of man-made features and influences
particular.
in
fuller picture of environmentally-sensitive culture looks like
this:113. (From previous page) See p.21.
Accounts of culture of this very
inclusive, but still unnecessarily anthropic, form are common in the
literature.
Thus, for example, Harris: 'f) culture is the total socially
acquired life-May or life-style of a group of people'
(p.144), their
patterns of behaviour and thought.
Thus, Mith even less qualification,
the first of Kluckholn'-s eleven definitions of culture (as listed in
Geertz pp.4-5), 'the total May of life of of a people', a definition
repeated in Conga)ton and David, p.22.
The intended model accordingly
provides a complete representation of life-Mays of members of the
c u 1 t u r e.
114. H fuller and better account Mhich gets very close to the model-theoretic
analysis, is Kumer's analogous definition of culture:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society's May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it includes
knoMledqe, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is alMays perceived Mi thin an evaluative
frameMork.
Similar too is Tylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a structure
again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex Mhole Mhich includes
knoMledge, belief, art, morals, la.M, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. (Primitive Culture
vol. 7, p.7).
So all human societies have a culture, a generalised
paradigm.
It is better to separate out civi1ization, hoMever, and link
it to its 'root meaning of living in cities'.
�PRIMARY CULTURE DlnGFWl
sense
'culture',
of
and
intellectual
sociology,
in
Mhere
order
culture.
artistic
the
practice
dictionaries,
takes up the primary
namely
Con c i se En q1i sh D i c t i on ary),
consists
in
put]
of
and as presented
culture of a society is said to comprise
a given culture,
state
'the
as it is
lor development,
of
a
in
shared
'the
It is important to separate off -
in
or people Mith,
and the education-derived sense,
the training or discipline in or
group-
particular, the
in Mhich the culture comprises the community,
leading
in Mhich the
to
Evidently the explication, Mhich makes the product primary
a
given
reverses
the culture. like agriculture, viticulture, and
115
Mas first and foremost a process
, a "cultivation" of intellect and
the historical order,
so on,
in
to set aside - some derivative senses,
sharing,
culture
offered
values and beliefs' of the society.
derived sense,
or
as
or people' (cf.
community
norms,
through social paradigms,
explication so far,
The
Mhere
115. Pts Hilliams explains, the ear 1 y meaning of 'culture' Mas as a process;
and the 'culture of the mind' Mas vieMed as a process rather than a
product or achieved state.
In (early) modern use 'culture' became, like
'civilized', a condition. Only Mith the 'fourth modern development did
culture appear as ' the Mho 1e May of life, material, intellectual and
spiritual of a given society' (p.273), i.e., as a comprehensive social
paradigm. The other forms, the first three developments, Mere restricted
versions of this, to respectively the individual, intellectual and moral
parts, and arts and intellectual areas.
To invert the ahistorical explanatory patte^,
so to say, the inherited cu1tures of science?
scientific paradigms are,
�However the reversal makes it easier to qet some grip on
art and technology.
the very rich process-product complex that a culture comprises.
example, goes astray in settling for a process definition of
Bonner,
for
'culture'* allied
to the education-derived sense: 'By culture I mean the transfer of information
by
most
means,
behavioural
by the process
particularly
of
teaching
and
Hhile the definition certainly achieves its intended objective of
learning*.
including animal culture^,
it is, as already remarked, a quite excessively low
redefinition,
such
accounting
things as semaphoring between boy
scouts
as
c u 1 t u r e.
There is a further dimension of complexity so far largely omitted through
restriction
pure
most contemporary states are far from culturally pure, comprising a
cultures,
mixture
1-lhile tribal groups may have relatively
to pure cultures.
of peoples.and cultures.
represented
More generally,
an n-cultural society
by a system of n paradigms adhered to in the society.
6
multi
6
multi
cultural
society
is thus an n-cultural society where n is
cultural
society
may
simply
Australia,
not
include
however be
very
many.
it
pluralistic;
may,
groups of people from different cultures
under some dominant culture which controls
in one region
together
is
as
in
brought
the
main
Much depends then on the type of system of paradigms
political institutions.
involved, on how the paradigms are themselves interrelated and structured.
Ft
society
nil!
function
(cf.
Abraham,
p.lbff.,
incompatible with extreme individualism').
a variety of subcultures.
Mhich
is
not
Characteristically
and
commonly
For culture is the glue of a group;
competing cultures.
integrative
always have a culture,
several
perhaps
it has an important
who remarks that 'culture
is
Ft society wi 1 1 also typically have
f) subculture is a paradigm, included in a culture,
sufficiently
subcultures
comprehensive
to
rank
as
a
share norms and assumptions with some
culture.
larger
culture except where they diverge.
The
dominant
cultures
in countries like Australia and America
can
be
�as having tree structures.
represented
a
is
there
Subcultures
mainstream
century
gentry
Protestant
many
subcultural
long played significant parts in
have
last
example,
Mi th
culture,
differences
the
terms,
116
tributaries.
Transposing to river-network
between
Catholic,
extensive immigration program,
substantial social tolerance,
with
and
chai 1enged.
Alternative
critical
important
an
As a result
assumptions
along
and
that is, the cultural streams remain
of the
mainstream
culture
are
not
those
of
Australia) do however is to criticise and challenge themes of the
accommodate,
These
within
too a pluralistic (a plural paradigm) society
provided the social paradigms present
limits,
no
can
real
to overarching socio-political arrangements and the prevailing type of
threat
structure (if they should however things would have to give or
power
of
complex
permit the relatively easy formation
rival and al ternative social paradigms (such as
Hhat
culture.
dominant
and
Australia now boasts a much more
persistence of subcultures - so long as,
subcu1tures
Protestant
Flexible multi-cultural arrangements,
of ethnic subcultures.
pattern
for
of Australian colonial culture had
streams
bearing on leisure activities such as gambling (see Inglis).
its
history;
Australian
change;
rival river networks are bound to alter the cultural landscape).
like
Cultures,
explaining
illustrated
that
and
paradigms,
social
inducing social change.
explanatory roles.
repudiation
nature',
important
role
on
the
that is,
For example,
in RP).
It is worth
that
it
noticing
to
Philp criticises for Foucault
prevents
him
from
consistent
explaining
in
and
human
culture can replace nature
of the human subject and the denial of a
ground
both
So much has already been shown
as regards social paradigms (e.g.
nature have been supposed mandatory;
'his
an
can also afford explanatory roles in cases where appeal
they
social
have
in
for
human
directed
116. A subculture of a given culture is itself a culture (i.e. a comprehensive
social paradigm) applying to a subgroup of the given wider culture,
which agrees with the wider culture on characterising (paradigmatic)
features but which may diverge, and typically does, by virtue of further
cultural features, i.e. features in its paradigm.
A subculture stands
then technically to a culture as a subalgebra stands to an algebra, etc.
4^
�resistance or social struggle for the better.
explain
a
and justify such resistance 'requires that Me make some commitment to
conception
of the human good and this usually rests on some vieM of
nature and human subjectivity'*.
the
to
social
good
as
human
a.May;
The modifier 'usually' gives the game
route can circuit through culture.
justificatory
directed
Accordingly to Philp t.p.17.!, to
discerned
under
a
The struggle
regional
can
paradigm;
be
the
commitments can be cultural.
The
main real Mork of this paper,
descriptive
some
attempt
of relevant features of the different cultures
at
explanation
has
been
contrasted,
Mith
like much Mork on culture,
of more unexpected features
of
the
cultures,
concerned, some criticism, and some attempt to explain some cultural traits in
terms of others.
enterprise,
cultures
only
This, like the modelling account, points to a more difficult
broached:
investigated,
namely,
the
task of providing theories of
and so perhaps explaining Mhat pulls
them
the
together,
makes them tick, gives them their distinctive shape and grip, and so on.
�APPENDIX 2:
Contemporary scientific redeployment of human nature
attempts of this sort are based on the modern evolutionary synthesis, and
in
appear
extreme
most
form
in
sociobiology.
t'jas
it
However
quickly
recognised that (opportunistic) sociobioligical attempts, such as Nilson's, to
to rule out significant political
117
narrow social alternatives fail.
redeploy
nature
human
underlying characterisation of human nature is
Nilson's
from the main socio-political tradition.
the
[is!
of
set
full
behavioural
possibilities
innate
Li.e.
very
and
different
'In the broader sense, human nature
genetic
or
genetically-determined]
predispositions that characterise the human species;
and in
the
narrower sense, those predispositions that affect social behaviour' t.pp.217-8,
mith
It is not constant or static,
rearrangement).
It is certainly ahistorical,
(sub)species
read
disease
patterns
conjunctively
however the ambiguity in the characterisation of
is resolved.
nature - hardly a set,
disjunctively it
only
n'ill include the full
humans
since genes may mutate.
are liable to
set
suffer;
For if the definition
of
if
is
genetically-determined
read,
those every (normal) human is bound to
less
undergo
plausibly,
at
some
stage.
In any event, such sets are remote from Enlightenment political concerns,
thouph, like health and disease more generally, socially relevant enough;
they
hardly
alternatives.
appear
to
Moreover,
impose
they
significant
offer
constraints
on
no bulwark against racial or
and
political
cultural
and since by no means
118
everything is determined genetically e.g. languages of some cultures.
relativity,
since
races have separate gene subpools,
117. f^s this is a commonplace vie^j,
Singer and especially Pigden.
there is no need to labour it:
see Ruse,
determinism is simply one, and perhaps even the weakest, of
forms of determinism intended to vastly reduce
cultural
variability.
Nilson does not rely on that form exclusively, but helps
himself to other incompatible forms of determinism as suit^: see p.207.
118. Genetic
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�1
On the notion of culture and cultural pluralism
APPENDIX 1:
Definitions of culture abound;
all
unfortunately, with very few exceptions,
Many are too narrow,
are bad.
for example chauvmistica! ly restricting
culture to human groups (as Kamenka's appalling motto, 'nothing human is alien
p.7); some are too broad, for example making any sort of organisation
to me' ,
as a trade union or a local brass band) a culture,
such
to
serve
connect
problems:- High
redefinitions
of
cu1ture
with [a peoples'] artistic achievement or, even more
lil
with (their) literature.
This is nion culture, at least insofar
culture
EaJ
narrowly,
as
the types of
indicate
A few examples w 11 1
what is included is class restricted,
to certain class-approved
products
and performances (e.g. opera, ballet, drama as opposed to reggae, punk, etc.).
Mhile high redefinitions let in too little,
So
is with the definition of culture as 'the transfer of
it
behavioural means,
(Bonner
Mi th
low redefinitions admit too much.
p.l'J),
culture.
information
most particularly by the process of teaching and learning'
because that includes much that has nothing especially to
For
by
example,
number of bricks on a site,
relaying a weather forecast or passing on
transfers information by behavioural
means,
do
the
but
information of no particular cultural relevance. .
By
contrast,
For
culture.
Herskovits:
most definitions mark out something which roughly overlaps
example,
culture
Awa
settleEsJ
for
the
definition
is "the man-made part of the environment"
offered
...'
by
(p.2'?).
Not only is this inadmissibly anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (such
as
Bonner
writers
studies)
imagine);
and extraterrestrial cultures (such
but
worse,
as
science-fiction
this twisted definition appears to
render
a
ill. Thus, for example, Stephenson
throughout his iconoclastic book on
Australian culture.
The equation, with literary texts, like that of a
paradigm
with central texts,
is useful in offering a
material
representation of a culture. 'For there is something solid that can be
grasped and presented.
Similary, money, newspapers and motor cars,
afford material artefacts and museum exhibits of wider popular cultures.
�deserted
toMn or ancient rums a culture (rather
mining
of
manifestation
a
than
past culture) Mhile excluding a system
the
of
physical
and
beliefs
values as a culture (unless an erroneous theory of systems of propositions
invoked).
In
is
latching onto the physical exemplification it is moreover like
Kuhn's identification of a text-book Mith a paradigm.
there is much in common between the notion of culture and
Indeed
liberal extension of the notion of paradigm,
one of Mhich gamed currency
^nglo-Psmerican thought about a hundred years later than the other.
have
in
Both terms
been used to cover an apparently diverse range of things (and criticised
dismissed for doing just that),
or
Kuhn's
and both do this m rather similar
because both attempt to capture types of conceptual schema.
parallels
suggest
- certainly once the useful notion of a
Midely adopted m sociology,
Mays,
Nhat is more the
social
paradigm,
been encountered and Morked Mith - a common
has
notion.
Nith but little reflection,
from
then,
a rather different account of culture
the run of anthropological definitions straightaMay emerges:- & culture,
or more exactly a pure culture,
advantage of this definition,
is a comprehensive socia! paradigm.
and part of its appeal,
R great
is that the hard
Mork
involved
in rectifying the notion of paradigm has already been done (e.g.
RP)
thus
and
parallel
m
the
supplied
system, i.e. on
a
logical sense;
generous
by
but
the
clean-up
Mould
that is,
an elaborate interpretation
relational
structure.
it
is
function
Naturally it is
a
theoretical
on
a
required
fai thfu1 to Mhat (the social forms, activities and so on) it models.
paradigm,
m
contrast
to
a scientific paradigm,
propositional structure delivered,
is
many
that of a social group.
sketched
take
Recall that a paradigm is explicated as a mode!.
form for culture.
precisely
structure
does not have to be repeated;
m
is a paradigm
general
to
be
Ps social
Mhere
the
the political themes and value judgements,
Group cohesiveness in fact is guaranteed in
examples of such social paradigms (several reproduced
in
the
RP)
because actual groups Mith distinctive cultures are taken; but the theoretical
�explanation
goes
structure.
The
deeper
and
depends on features of
underlying
the
of propositional structure delivered
types
are
model
in
shoMn,
capsule form, in the first table of this paper contrasting parts of mainstream
other more detailed examples are reproduced
American and Philippine cultures;
in theoretical Mork
social paradigms (e.g. PP, CPE, Cotgrove and references
cited therein).
Just
expl 1 cat ion
the
as
of
paradigm
of
May
by
models
enabled
a
clarification and unification .job to be done on the giant conceptual mess that
the
of paradigm had become,
notion
facilitates a pleasing and simplifying synthesis.
how
complaint
his
Geertz
to
Consider,
about,
complains
diffusion by pointing to the
about
in
definitions of culture to similes and metaphors,
desperation,
as
...
map,
a
resort
Kluckholn
Geertz Minds
in
attempted
to the analogies ''perhaps in
mere
before a
and as a matrix'*,
as a sieve,
cu1ture
illustrate,
but in anthropology more generally, can be reduced.
especially,
up
diffusion'*
'theoretical
the
of
so the parallel explication
paragraph later, offering his OMn metaphor of culture as a web of significance
or interpretation (and model too,
its
in metaphor).
roots
though here an exact technical notion,
Rs it happens,
Geertz"'s account is not too
has
bad
a
picture of the sort of logical model involved, that is of a system, a Meb-like
structure, Mith an interpretation
imposed,
matrix
both a map and a
The other similes are hoMever more exact:
on it.
function
can
function, supplying significance or meaning
as
models (though not
usually
social
ones),
map
a
typically modelling a landscape.
Furthermore,
take up Kluckholn'* s elaboration on culture (not
to
really
'definitions' as Geertz suggests), a model is indeed '(4) "an abstraction from
behaviour'"',
thinking,
hoMever
Mhich,
and
feeling
is
not
prescriptively
Mhere
believing'" in terms of items
merely descriptive,
as,
supplies '(3) "a May of
it is a social paradigm,
'*('?)
"a
validated.
but Mill be applied
mechanism
for
the
and
normative
can
The
model
be
regulation
read
of
�and "(10) "a set of techniques -tor- adjusting both to the externa!
behaviour'"'
environment and to other men"''. Such a mode!, which does correspond to '(5) "a
theory
the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a
on
peop!e m fact behave'"' and their view of the world,
orientations,
it is
. Since the social paradigm evolves over time,
'(11) "a precipitate of history'"',
of
certainly affords '(6) a
"structure of pooled learning'"' and '(7) "a set of standardized
to recurrent problems'".
group
and it does record '(2) "the social legacy
the individual Ein the society! acquires from his group"'.
three parts or levels of a culture that Conga!ton and David
The
(p.22 ff.) are similar to those Kuhn includes within a paradigm,
by
supplied
readily
a model.
They
are,
first,
the
discern
and likewise
general
rules
and
procedures characterising and controlling the behaviour of adherents; secondly
the ideas and values behind these beliefs and procedures; thirdly the products
and
exemplars
material
resulting,
e.g.
interpretation function validates both themes and rules;
of objects,
domains
The
The
newspapers.
textbooks,
as well it
including values and ideas (on both see
connection with exemplars and artefacts is less direct,
RP,
delivers
pp.12-16).
and of more than
Pt textbook may present a paradigm or, more likely, part of one; or
112
it may, like an artefact, supply or be a partial mode!ling of the paradigm.
one kind.
The
order
culture
remaining
reflect
to
has
life-forms
done.
Thus
to
of
qualifying term comprehensive is
some of the slackness of the
notion
of
culture.
cover a sufficiently comprehensive part of life
a community,
Abraham,
vague
deliberately
for one,
klhile
styles
there are varying degrees to which this
can
and
be
explains various inclusive levels of culture
(pp.12-13) before opting for the most inclusive, under which 'culture is
113
common life of the people'*
and 'includes the whole of the knowledge,
arts,
in
the
the
science, technology, religions, morality, ritual, politics, literature,
112. 6 theory normally has many models, some exact and canonical, some of
which bring out all that holds m the theory but not only what holds
there;
and, more sweepingly still, it has partial models, which
accurately depict part of the theory.
�even
etiquette
and
of the mind.
includes
le
narroMer,
In this use [that again of "higher"
mastery
a
'*
scu1pture,
a
seventeenth
a
Under
use of the term however ''culture is limited to Mhat are called
comprehensive,
things
(p.12)114
'
-fashions
Abraham
(p.13).
process
of
conjectures that this use evolved
pauperisation of Mhat
and eighteenth centuries,
and could knoM (p.13).
the
educated
the age of enlightenment,
man
'as
in
a
the
stood for',
Such a person could reflect the Mhole culture in
the
more comprehensive use.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high culture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
so
it has been argued, namely attitudes to and approaches to the environment, and
so natural environments largely devoid of man-made features and influences
particular.
in
& fuller picture of environmentally-sensitive culture looks like
this:-
113. (From previous page) See p.21.
Accounts of culture of this very
inclusive, but still unnecessarily anthropic, form are common in the
literature.
Thus, for example, Harris: ''Ft culture is the total socially
acquired life-May or life-style of a group of people
(p.144), their
patterns of behaviour and thought.
Thus, Mith even less qualification,
the first of Kluckholn's eleven definitions of culture (as listed in
Geertz pp.4-5), 'the total May of life of of a people', a definition
repeated in Congalton and David, p.22.
The intended model accordingly
provides a complete representation of life-Mays of members of the
culture.
114. Ft fuller and better account Mhich gets very close to the model-theoretic
analysis, is Kumer's analogous definition of culture:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society's May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it includes
knoMledge, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is alMays perceived Mithin an evaluative
frameMork.
Similar too is Tylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a structure
again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex Mhole Mhich includes
knoMledge, belief, art, morals, laM, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. (Primitive Culture
vol. 7, p.7).
So all human societies have a culture, a generalised
paradigm.
It is better to separate out civiliza11on, hoMever, and link
it to its 'root meaning of living in cities'.
�PRIORY CULTURE DIRGRRH
sense
of
"culture"',
and
intellectual
where
sociology,
in
order
culture.
artistic
the
practice
takes up the grimary
namely
dictionaries,
Concise English Dictionary),
consists
in
putJ
of
and as presented
culture of a society is said to comprise
a given culture,
state
the
as it is
tor development,
' the
of
a
in
shared
It is important to separate off *
particular, the
in
in which the culture comprises the community,
and the educa11on-der1ved sense,
the training or discipline in or
groun
or people with,
leading
in which the
to
Evidently the explication, which makes the product primary
the historical order,
so on,
in
to set aside - some derivative senses,
sharing,
culture
offered
values and beliefs' of the society.
der ived sense,
or
as
or people' (cf.
community
norms,
through social paradigms,
explication so -far,
The
a
given
reverses
the culture, like agriculture, viticulture, and
115
was first and foremost a process
, a "cultivation" of intellect and
where
115. Rs Williams explains, the early meaning of 'culture'' was as a process;
and the ''culture of the mind' was viewed as a process rather than a
product or achieved state.
In (early) modern use 'culture' became, like
'civilized'', a condition. Only with the 'fourth modern development did
culture appear as 'the whole way of life, material, intellectual and
spiritual of a given society* (p.273), i.e., as a comprehensive social
paradigm. The other forms, the first three developments, were restricted
versions of this, to respectively the individual, intellectual and moral
parts, and arts and intellectual areas.
To invert the ahistorical explanatory patten^
so to say, the inherited cu1tures of science.
scientific paradigms are,
�art and technology.
However the reversal makes it easier to get some grip on
the very rich process-product complex that a culture comprises.
example, goes astray in settling for a process definition of
Bonner,
for
allied
'culture
to the education-derived senses ''By culture I mean the transfer of information
by
behavioural
particularly
most
means,
of
by the process
teaching
and
Nhile the definition certainly achieves its intended objective of
learning*',
it is, as already remarked, a quite excessively low
including animal culture^
accounting
redefinition,
such
things as semaphoring between boy
scouts
as
culture.
There is a further dimension of complexity so far largely omitted through
restriction
pure
most contemporary states are far from culturally pure, comprising a
cultures,
mixture
Mhile tribal groups may have relatively
to pure cultures.
More generally,
of peoples and cultures.
represented
an n-cultural society
by a system of n paradigms adhered to in the society.
&
multi
ft
multi
cultural
society
is thus an n-cultural society where n is
cultural
society
may
simply
Australia,
not
include
however be
very
many.
pluralistic;
it
as
may,
groups of people from different cultures
under some dominant culture which controls
in one region
together
is
in
brought
main
the
Much depends then on the type of system of paradigms
poli tical institutions.
involved, on how the paradigms are themselves interrelated and structured.
Ps
society
will
function
(cf.
Abraham,
p.lbff.,
incompatible with extreme individualism').
a variety of subcultures.
which
is
not
Characteristically
and
commonly
For culture is the glue of a group;
competing cultures.
integrative
always have a culture,
several
perhaps
it has an important
who remarks that
culture
is
society will also typically have
R subculture is a paradigm, included in a culture,
sufficiently
subcultures
comprehensive
to
rank
as
a
share norms and assumptions with some
culture.
larger
culture except where they diverge.
The
dominant
cultures
in countries like Australia and America
can
be
�is
there
Subcultures
with
many
century
gentry
the
differences
terms,
11.S
tributaries.
subculture!
hong played significant parts in
have
last
Protestant
culture,
mainstream
a
example,
Transposing to river-network
as having tree structures.
reoresented
between
Catholic,
extensive immigration program,
pattern
of ethnic subcultures.
important
As a result
complex
accommodate,
and
that is, the cultural streams remain
of the
mainstream
culture
are
not
those
of
These
within
too a pluralistic (a plural paradigm) society
provided the social paradigms present
limits,
can
no
real
to overarching socio-political arrangements and the prevailing type of
threat
structure (if they should however things would have to give or
power
along
permit the relatively easy formation
assumptions
of
Australia) do however is to criticise and challenge themes of the
culture.
dominant
an
rival and alternative social paradigms (such as
k-lhat
chai 1enged.
Al ternative
critical
and
and
Australia now boasts a much more
persistence of subcultures - so long as,
subcultures
Protestant
Flexible multi-cultural arrangements,
substantial social tolerance,
with
for
of Australian colonial culture had
streams
bearing on leisure activities such as gambling (see Inglis),
its
history;
lustra!ian
change;
rival river networks are bound to alter the r*.;Xural landscape).
Cultures,
explaining
and
illustrated
that
like
paradigms,
social
inducing social change.
explanatory roles.
repudiation
nature",
important
role
on
the
that is,
For example,
in RP).
It is worth
that
it
noticing
to
Philp criticises for Foucault
prevents
him
from
consistent
explaining
in
and
human
culture can replace nature
of the human subject and the denial of a
ground
both
So much has already been shown
as regards social paradigms (e.g.
nature have been supposed mandatory;
'his
an
can also afford explanatory roles in cases where appeal
they
social
have
in
for
human
directed
IIS, A subculture of a given culture is itself a culture (i.e. a comprehensive
social paradigm) applying to a subgroup of the given wider culture,
which agrees with the wider culture on characterising (paradigmatic)
features but which may diverge, and typically does, by virtue of further
cultural features, i.e. features in its paradigm.
A subculture stands
then technically to a culture as a subalgebra stands to an algebra, etc.
�resistance or social struggle tor the better,
explain
a
and justify such resistance 'requires that ^e make some commitment to
conception
of the human good and this usually rests on some vie^j of
human
The modifier 'usually* gives the game
a^ay;
nature and human subjectivity'*.
the
route can circuit through culture.
justificatory
directed
accordingly to Philp (p.17), to
to
social
good
as
under
discerned
a
The struggle
can
paradigm^
regional
be
the
c ommitmen t s c an be cultural.
The
main real ^ork of this paper,
descriptive
some
attempt
like much Mork on culture,
of relevant features of the different cultures
at
explanation
of more unexpected features
has
been
contrasted,
^ith
of
the
cultures
concerned, some criticism, and some attempt to explain some cultural traits in
terms of others.
enterprise,
cultures
only
This, like the modelling account, points to a more difficult
broached:
investigated,
namely,
the
task of providing theories of
and so perhaps explaining ^hat pulls
them
the
together,
makes them tick, gives them their distinctive shape and grip, and so on.
�Contemporary scientific redeployment of human nature
APPENDIX 2:
attempts of this sort are based on the modern evolutionary synthesis, and
most
in
appear
extreme
form
in
sociobiology.
However
it
Mas
quickly
recognised that (opportunistic) sociobiol^gical attempts, such as Nilson's, to
nature
human
to rule out significant political
117
narroM social alternatives fail.
redeploy
underlying characterisation of human nature is
Nilson's
from the main socio-political tradition.
[is]
of
set
full
the
possibilities
[i.e,
innate
very
different
'In the broader sense, human nature
genetic
genetically-determinedJ
or
predispositions that characterise the human species;
behavioural
and
and in
the
narrower sense, those predispositions that affect social behaviour'* (pp.217-8,
Mith
It is certainly ahistorical,
read
disjunctively it
disease
hoMever the ambiguity in the characterisation of
nature - hardly a set,
(sub)species
patterns
conjunctively
only
since genes may mutate.
It is not constant or static,
rearrangement).
Mill include the full
humans
For if the definition
is resolved.
are liable to
set
suffer;
of
if
is
genetically-determined
read,
those every (normal) human is bound to
less
undergo
plausibly,
at
some
stage.
In any event, such sets are remote from Enlightenment political concerns,
though, like health and disease more generally, socially relevant enough;
they
hardly
alternatives.
appear
to
Moreover,
impose
they
significant
offer
constraints
on
no bulMark against racial or
and
political
cultural
and since by no means
118
everything is determined genetically e.g. languages of some cultures.
relativity,
since
races have separate gene subpools,
117. Fss this is a commonplace vieM,
Singer^, and especially Pigden.
there is no need to labour it:
see Ruse,
118. Genetic determinism is simply one, and perhaps even the Meakest, of
several
forms of determinism intended to vastly reduce
cultural
variability.
Nilson does not rely on that form exclusively, but helps
himself to other incompatible forms of determinism as suit^: see p.207.
�REFERENCES
W.E. Abraham, Ths Mind of Africa, University of lilinois
ess, Litica^o, i-S2.
D, A. Aitkin, ''Mhere does Australia stand?', in Withers, pp.18-31.
Pipers, Maori Myths and Tri ba' Legends, Longman Pau], Auckland, 1984.
N.E. Awa, '"Culture and credibility'", Ceres 16 (5) (1983) 28-38,
E. Best, The Maori, Vol, 1, Tombs, Wellington, 1924,
R. Birrell, D. HiH
Sydney, 1984.
J.T. Bonner,
1980.
.^nd J,
Neville,
Populate and
Perish?,
Fontana/AFC,
The Evolution of Culture in animals, Princeton University Press,
B. Bonney and H.
1983.
Australia's Commercial Media, Macmillan, Melbourne,
Wilson,
8.J. Berry, Human, Hegel and Human Nature, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1982.
J. Cairns, The Quiet Revolution. Widescop^e.^Camberw.elJ^J-Jiotg^^a. 1975^.
8.T, jCald/wel.l., '"The gambling AustraTian.'L^_in Change in Australia (ed.
Edgar), Cheshire, Melbourne, 1974.
D.L.
G.T. Caldwell, '"Leisure', in Davies et.al., pp.410-439.
G.T. Caldwell, '"Some historical and sociological characteristics of Australian
gambling', in Caldwell et.al.
G.T. Caldwell, M. Dickerson, B. Haig and L.
Australia, Croom Helm, Sydney, 1985.
Sylvan (eds.),
Camb' ing—ijl
F. Capra and C. Spretnak, Green Poli tics, Hutchinson, London, 1984.
R.E. Caves and L.8. Krause, The Australian Economy:
George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1984.
N. Chomsky and E. Herman,
Press, Boston, 1979.
A M1ew from the North,
The Political Economy of Human Rights,
South c.nd
P. Cock, Alternative Australia, Quartet Books, Melbourne, 19/9.
J. Cohen and J. Rogers, On Democracy, Penguin, New York, 1984.
David,
The Individual in the Making, Wiley, Sydney,
A.A.
Congalton andA.E.
1976.
R.W.
Connell, 'Images of Australia in Social Change in Australia
Edgar), Cheshire, Melbourne, 1974.
(ed.
R. W. Connell, Ruling fl ass, Ruling Culture,
S. Cotgrove, Catastrophe or Cornucopia, Wiley, New <ork, 1?87.
G. Crough and T. Wheelwright, Australia: A Client State, Penguin, Australia,
D.
�1982.
E. C^llenbach, Ecotopia Emerprng,
A.F. Davies
1985.
and S.
Encel (eds.),
lustra Han Society.,
Melbourne,
Cheshire,
A.F. Davies, S. Encel and M. Berry (eds.), lustra!!an Soci e t y. Third Edition,
Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 19777.
M.J. Dunphy, Alternative Thoughts, Total Environment Centre, Sydney, 1984.
R. Ely, 'Australian Historians on "Tall
Cultural History 3 (1984) 104-128.
Poppies":
a
survey'',
Austra - i an
B.L. Embury and N. Fodder, ''Economic Welfare in Australia' in Austral i an
Social Issues of the 70"s, (ed. P.R. Nilson), Butterworths, Sydney, 1972.
G. Gaus, The Modern Liberal Theory of 'Man. Croom Helm, London, 1983.
A. Gilbert, 'The state and nature in Australia, Australian Cultural History
1981, (eds. S. Goldberg and F.&Smith), Canberra, 1982, pp.9-28.
R.J. Goldstein,
1978.
Political Repression in Modern America,
N.K. Hancock, Austra! ia. E. 3^.^^
G.K.
Hall,
Boston,
, London, 1930.
M. Harris, Culture, People, Nature. Second edition, Cromwell, 1975.
Hays,
Conservation
and the Gospel of Efficiency:
Conservation Movement. 1390-1920. Cambridge, MA, 1959.
R. Heilbroner,
The Worldly Philosophers.
Schuster, New York, 1987.
3rd
revised
The
Progressive
edit.,
Simon
and
T. Hobbes, Levi athan( ed. M. Oakeshot^, Oxford, 1948.
I. Illich, Des-z h co ling Soc i e t y, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971.
K.S. Inglis, 'Religious behaviour'*, in A.F. Davies and S.
Australian Society. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1985, pp.43-75.
Encel
(eds.),
K.S. Inglis, 'Gambling and culture^ in Australia'' in Caldwell et.al,
B. Jones, SIeepers Awake'. Oxford University Press, 1982.
E.
Kamenka. 'Culture and Australian culture',
(1984) 7-18.
Australian Cultural History 3
T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revo1utions. Second edition, University
of Chicago Press, 1970.
K. Kumar, The Social and Cultural Impact of Transnational Enterprises, Horking
Paper No. 8, ?tRP, University of Sydney, 1979.
R.E. Lane, "Market .justice, political justice'', Hugo Nolfsen Memorial Lecture,
Melbourne, May, 1985.
N. Lini, Keynote address, Australia and the South Pacific. Proceedings of a
Conference held at the Australian National University, 1982.
//3
�The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter, Alan? (Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta) to Richard Sylvan, 9 Jun 1988 re
feedback on paper. (4 pages)
�%/,y
7
Ch
/
<^/
'
C2<
*1-
7
—
���On the notion of culture and cultural pluralism
APPENDIX 1:
unfortunately, with very + ew exception s,
Definitions of culture abound;
y
all
Many are too narrow,
3re bad.
cu1ture to human groups (as Kamenka's
p.7) ; some are too broad,
,
brass band) a culture.
as a trade union
(such
problems:- High
serve
connect
EaJ
as
redefinitions
with Ea peoples'] artistic achievement
culture
with (their) literature.
narrowly,
A few examples will
of
cu1ture
even
or,
more
This is high culture, at least insofar
what is included is class restricted,
to certain class-approved
products
and performances (e.g. opera, ballet, drama as opposed to reggae, punk, etc.).
low redefinitions admit too much.
"the transfer of
information
by
process of teaching and learning'
(Bonner
p.10),
because that includes much that has nothing especially to
do
the
number of bricks on a site,
transfers information by behavioural
means,
but
information of no particular cultural relevance.
By
contrast,
most definitions mark out something which roughly overlaps
Awa
'settleEsJ
for
the
definition
by
(p.2?).
"the man-made part of the environment"
Herskovi ts:
offered
this inadmissibly anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (such
Bonner
as
writers
-f&sl
studies)
imagine);
and extraterrestrial cultures (such
but
as
science-fiction
this twisted definition appears to
worse,
LL't.........
render
throughout his iconoclastic book o
L Thus , for t example, Stephenson
Australian culture.
The equation, with literary texts, like that of
paradigm
with central texts,
is useful in offering a
materia
representation of a culture. For there is something solid that can b
grasped and presented.
Similary, money, newspapers and motor cars
afford material artefacts and museum exhibits of wider popular cultures.
?5
a
�deserted
town or ancient ruins a culture (rather
mining
of
manifestation
a
than
past culture) while excluding a system
physical
the
of
beliefs
and
values as a culture (unless an erroneous theory of systems of propositions
invoked).
In
is
latching onto the physical exemplification it is moreover like
Kuhn's identification of a text-book Mith a paradigm.
Indeed
there is much in common between the notion of culture and
Kuhns
one of which'gained currency
Both terms
Rnglo-&merican thought about a hundred years later than the other.
have
or
in
been used to cover an apparently diverse range of things (and criticised
dismissed for doing just that),
and both do this in
Nhat is more the
because both attempt to capture types of conceptual schema.
paradigm,
a common
been encountered and worked Mith
noti on.
then,
from
the run of anthropological definitions straightaway emerges
advan tage of this definition,
i nvo1ved
and
paral1 el
in
and part of its appeal,
is that the hard
work
would
take
in rectifying the notion of paradigm
thus
does not have to be repeated;
form for culture.
precisely
structure
6 great
is a comprehensive social paradigm
or more exactly a pure culture.
RP)
a rather different account of cu1ture
but
c1ean-up
Recal 1 that a paradigm is expli cated as a model,
is
it
the
supplied
the
by
an elaborate interpretation
function
is
a
theoretical
on
required
faithful to what (the social forms, activities and so on) it models,
paradigm,
in
contrast
to
a scientific paradigm,
proposi tional structure delivered,
is
many
that of a social group.
sketched
general
a
is a paradigm
to
be
& social
where
the
the political themes and value .judgements,
Group cohesiveness in fact is guaranteed in
examples of such social paradigms (several reproduced
in
the
RP)
because actual groups with distinctive cultures are taken; but the theoretical
96
�explanation
goes
structure.
The
deeper
depends on features of
and
of propositional structure delivered
types
model
underlying
the
are
in
shoMn,
capsule form, in the first table of this paper contrasting parts of mainstream
other more detailed examples are reproduced
American and Philippine cul bares;
in theoretical Mork on social paradigms (e.g. RP, CPE, Cotgrove^and references
cited therein).
Just
as
the
of
explication
by
paradigm
May
of
models
enabled
a
clarification and unification .job to be done on the giant conceptual mess that
the
of paradigm had become,
notion
so the parallel explication
in
abou t,
but in anthropology more generally, can be reduced.
especially,
up
his
c^.\tu,rg.
Kluckholn
Geertz Minds
attempted
in
resor t
diffusion by pointing to the
about
complaint
of
and^r metaphors, to the analogies 'perhaps in
as
desperation,
a map*,
and as a matrix',
as a sieve,
before
a
mere
paragraph later, offering his OMn metaphor of culture as a Meb of significance
' ' too,
'
, though here an exact technical notion, has
or interpretation (and model
its roots in metaphor]^ Rs it happen^Geertz^/ account is not too bad a picture
of the sort of logical model involved
structure^Mith an interpretation
imposed,
typically
on it.
that is of a system, a Meb-like
function,
supplying signifi'-arn.e -r meaning
The other similes are hoMever more exact:
modelling
a
landscape.
Furthermore,
elaboration of) culture (not really 'definitions
is indeed '(4) "an abstraction from behaviour"',
paradigm,
supplies '(3) "a May of thinking,
of items validated.
to
take
ooth a map and a.
up
as Geertz suggests),
a model
Mhere it is a social
Mhich,
feeling and believing"
The model hoMever is not merely descriptive,
applied and can be read prescriptively as,
Kluckholn s
in rerm=.
but Mill be
('?) "a mechanism for the normative
regulation of behaviour"' and '(10) "a set of techniques for adjusting both to
the
external
environment
and to other
97
men'".
Such
a
model,
Mhich
does
2
�to '(5) "a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the
correspond
in
group of people in fact behave'" and their vieM
a
Mhich
'*(4) a "structure of pooled learning'"' and
affords
certainly
of
standardized orientations, to recurrent problems'"'.
^ay
Morld,
the
(7) "a set
of
Since the social paradigm
it
does
1egacy the individual [in the society] acquires
from
is ''(11) "a precipitate of
history'",
and
his group'"
discern
of a culture that Conga!ton and David
three parts or
The
Kuhn includes
readily
supplied
They
a model.
by
are,
procedures characterising and controlling the behaviour of adherents; secondly
procedures; thirdly the products
and
exemplars
material
resulting,
e.g.
interpretation function validate^! both themes
The
connection Mi th exemplars and artefacts is^e^^ direct,
RP,
The
delivers
as Mel lit
including values and ideas (on both see
of objects,
domains
neMspapers.
textbooks,
pp.12-16).
and of more than
3 textbook may present a paradigm^^or^more likely, part of one; or
on^ kind.
it may, like an artefact, supply or be a partial modelling of the paradigm.
remaining
The
culture
life-forms
done.
to
has
Thus
of
qualifying term comprehensive is
cover a sufficiently comprehensive part of life
a community,
Rbraham,
vague
deliberately
styles
there are varying degrees to Mhich this
for one,
can
and
be
explains various inclusive levels of
7 '
(pp.12-13) before opting for tbe most inclusive, under Mhich 'culture is
If§'
and 'includes the Mhole of the knoMledge,
common life of the people
arts,
in
the
the
science, technology, religions, morali ty, ri tual, politics, literature,
ttTP*. & theory normally has many models, some exact and canonical, some of
__
Mhich bring, out
all that holds in the theory but not only Mhat holds
i s i ngTy stil Impartial models, Mhich ac-e a'-'_urately
there; and, more surpr -----depict part of the theory. )
98
�ULk
etiquette
fashions
...'
of
eighteenth
pauperisation
centuries,
Such
(p.13).
narrower,
a
Under
In this use [that again of "higher"
of the mind.
includes a mastery of all literature,
process
(p.12)
^ess
use of the term however 'culture is limited to Mhat are caned
comprehensive,
things
and
a
of Mhat the educated man in
cou 1 d
culture
history, music, painting and sculpture,
the age of enlightenment ,
person
culture],
reflect
the
the
s even teen th
stood for',
Mho i e
culture
and
and could knoM
in
the
more
c ompr eh en s i ve u se.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high t.u = ture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
so
it has been argued, namely attitudes to and approaches to the environment, and
so natural environments largely devoid of man-made features and influences
particular.
in
R fuller picture of environmentally-sensitive culture looks like
this:11^-. (From previous page) See p.21.
Accounts of culture of
.;!i= very
inclusive, but still unnecessarily anthropic, form are common in the
. __ literature.
Thus, for example, Harris: 'A culture is the total socially
acquired life-May or life-style of a group of people*
(p.144), their
patterns of behaviour and thought.
Thus, Mith even less qualification,
the first of Kluckholn's eleven definitions of culture (as listed in
Geertz pp.4-5), 'the total may of life of of a people', a definition
repeated in Congalton and David, p.22.
The intended model accordingly
provides a complete representation of life-Mays of members of the
cul tur-e.
111^ Ft fuller and better account Mhich gets very close to the model-theoretic
analysis, is Kumer's analogous definition of culture:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society s May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it in'„lude=>
knowledge, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is always perceived Mithin an evaluative
framework.
Similar too is Tylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a structure
again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex MholeMhich includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, laM, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. (Primitive Culture
vol. 7, p.7).
So all human societies have a culture, a generalised
paradigm.
It is better to separate out civi1ization, however, and link
it to its 'root meaning of living in cities .
�religions, morality, ritual, politics, literature, even etiquette and fashions
is
'culture
use
limited
to
Mhat
are called
things
of
mind.
the
In
this
[that
history,
con.jec tures
that
music,
this
painting and sculpture,/^..' (p.13),
use
evolved
'as
a
result
of
Rbraham^.
of
a / process
^7 /J
cen turles,
he age of enlightenment, stood for'', and could knoM (p.13).
Such
a per son could reflect the Mhole culture in the more comprehensive use.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high culture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
it
has been argued,
natural
environments
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
namely attitudes to and approaches to
the
largely devoid of man-made features and
so
environment,
influences
in
/Recounts of culture of this very inclusive form but still unnecessari
an thropic form, are common m the literature* ^hus^for example^Harris:
<R culture is the total socially acquired life-May or life-style of
a group of people' (p.144), their patterns of behaviour and
though t.
Thus, Mith even less qualification, the first of Kluckholn's eleven
definitions of culture ^listed m Geertz pp.4-5),
the total May of life
of a peopled a definition repeated in
and David^p.22. lhe
model ^provides a complete representation o+ life-Mays of members of the
R fuller and better account^Mhich gets very ejase to^ the model-theoretic
analysis^ ig Kiernan's analogous definition of jculturq:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society's May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it includes
knoMledge, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is alMays perceived Mithin an evaluative
frameMork.
Similar too is
Taylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a
structure again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex Mhole Mhich
includes knoMledge, belief, art, morals, laM, customs, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society'.
(Primitive Culture vol. 7, p.7). So al 1 human societies have a culture,
a generalised paradigm.
It is better to separate out c iyi l,i zat 1 on,
hoMever, and i-t—nc-sep%'e/. +<sf? its 'root meaning of living in cities'.
�PRIMARY CULTURE DIAGRAM
sense
of
"'culture'',
intellectual
sociology,
in
and
mhere
order
culture.
artistic
the
,
*
practice
takes up the primary
namely
lor development,
Con c i se English 0 i c t i on ary) ,
in
-state
put]
in
a
in
shared
"the
particular, the
group-
or people mith,
and the education-derived sense,
leading
in mhich the
to
Evidently the explication, mhich makes the product primary
a
given
reverses
like agriculture, viticulture, and
the culture,
mas first and foremost a process
of
It is important to separate off -
the training or discipline in or
mhere
of
and as presented
culture of a society is said to comprise
a given culture,
consists
"the
as it is
in mhich the culture comprises the community,
the historical order,
so on,
dictionaries,
in
to set aside - some derivative senses,
sharing,
culture
offered
values and beliefs"' of the society.
derived sense,
or
as
or people"' (cf.
community
norms,
through social paradigms,
explication so -far,
The
,
a "cultivation" of intellect and
11^ As Mi 11 iams explains, the ear 1 y meaning of "culture"' mas as a process;
and the "culture of the mind" mas viemed as a process rather than a
product or achieved state.
In (early) modern use "culture" became, like
'civilized"', a condition.
Onlp^the "fourth modern development" did
culture appear as "the mhole may of life, material, intellectual and
spiritual of a given society"' (p.273), i.e., as a comprehensive social
paradigm.
The other forms, the first three developments^mere restricted
versions of this, to respectively the individual, intellectual and moral
parts, and arts and intellectual areas.
,
r.
To invent the ahistorical explanatory pattern, scientific paradigms are,
so to say, the inherited cu1tures of science.
100
�However the reversal makes it easier- to get some grip on
art and technology.
the very rich process-product complex that a culture comprises.
example, goes astray in settling for a process definition of
for
Bonner,
allied
'culture
to the education-derived sense: "'By culture I mean the transfer of information
by
means,
behavioural
by the process
particularly
most
of
and
teaching
Hhile the definition certainly achieves its intended objective of
learning'.
including (cultures'^ an7maC^g%p&,
excessively
it is,
as already
remarked,
a
accounting such things as semaphoring
loM redefinition,
quite
between
boy scouts as culture.
There is a further dimension of complexity so far largely omitted through
restriction
pure
most contemporary states are far from culturally pure, comprising a
cultures,
mixture
Nhile tribal groups may have relatively
to pure cultures.
of peoples and cultures.
represented
More generally,
an n-cultural society
by a system of n paradigms adhered to in the society.
&
multi
&
multi
cultural
society
is thus an n-cultural society Mhere n is
cultural
society
may
Australia,
simply
not
include
however be
very
many.
it
pluralistic;
as
may,
in
brought
groups of people from different cultures
under some dominant culture Mhich controls
in one region
together
is
the
main
Much depends then on the type of system of paradigms
political institutions.
involved, on hoM the paradigms are themselves interrelated and structured.
Pt
society
Mill
function
(cf.
Ptbraham,
p.l5ff.,
incompatible Mith extreme individualism ).
a variety of subcultures.
is
Mhich
not
Characteristically
and
commonly
For culture is the glue of a group;
competing cultures.
integrative
alMays have a culture,
several
perhaps
it has an important
Mho remarks that
culture
is
Pt society Mill also typically have
Pt subculture is a paradigm, included in a culture,
sufficiently
subcultures
comprehensive
to
rank
as
a
share norms and assumptions Mith some
culture.
larger
culture except Mhere they diverge.
The
dominant
cultures
in countries like Australia and Ptmerica
101
can
be
�as having tree structures.
represented
a
is
there
Subcultures
century
gentry
Protestant
many
the
between
differences
terms,.
1 1^
tribu.ari!=''=.
subcultural
long played significant parts in
have
last
example,
with
culture,
mainstream
Transposing to river-network
Australian
L-athoXc,
extensive immigration program,
of ethnic subcultures.
pattern
with
critical
challenged.
and
an
o?
As a result
complex
aiong
permit the relatively easy formation
assumptions
and
that is, the cultural streams remain
of the
mainstream
culture
rival and alternative social paradigms (such as
Plhat
important
Australia now boasts a much more
persistence of subcultures - so long as,
and
Protestant
Flexible multi-cultural arrangements,
substantial social tolerance,
subcultures
f'-tr
of Australian colonial culture had
streams
bearing on leisure activities such as gambling (see Inglis?.
its
history;
are
n^t
those
of
the
Al ternative
These
culture.
dominant
accommodate,
within
too a pluralistic (a plural paradigm) society
provided the social paradigms present
limits,
r^m
no
to overarching socio-political arrangements and the prevailing type of
threat
structure (if they should however things would have to give or
P'Ower
tan
t-ha^ge,
rival river networks are bound to alter the cultural landscape).
Cultures,
explaining
and
illustrated
that
like
they
social
paradigms,
inducing social change.
'his
important
role
in RP).
It is worth
can also afford explanatory roles in cases where appeal
explanatory roles.
repudiation
nature',
an
on
the
that is,
For example,
that
it
noticing
to
Philp criticises for Foucault
prevents
him
from
i_on = i = .en.
explaining
in
and
human
culture can replace nature
of the human subject and the denial of a
ground
both
So much has already been shown
as regards social paradigms (e.g.
nature have been supposed mandatory;
social
have
in
for
numaf;
directed
11^). A subculture of a given culture is itself a culture (i.e. a comprehensive
social paradigm) applying to a subgroup of the given wider culture,
which agrees with the wider culture on characterising (paradigma.i'-)
\
features but which may diverge, and typically does, by virtue of further
cultural features, i.e. features in its paradigm.
A subculture stands
102
�resistance or social struggle for the better.
explain
a
and .justify such resistance 'requires that Me make some commitment to
conception
of the human good and this usually rests on some vieM of
human
The modifier "usually"' gives the game
aMay;
nature and human subjectivity"'.
the
Accordingly to Philp tp.i7), to
route can circuit through culture.
justificatory
directed
social
to
as
good
discerned
under
a
The struggle
can
paradigm;
regional
be
the
commitments can be cultural.
has
been
descriptive of relevant fea^f tures of the different cultures
contrasted.
Mi th
some
of
The
attempt
concerned,
in
main
terms
A
Mork
at
this paper,
of
explanation
like much Mork
on
culture,
of more unexpected features
the
cu1tures
some criticism, and some attempt to explain some cu1tural
of others.
This,
like the modelling account,
points to
a
more
difficult enterprise, only broached: namely, the task of providing theories of
the
cultures formufsrfed,
and so perhaps explaining Mhat pulls them together,
makes them tick, gives them their shape and grip, and so on.
A
103
�/ .<
/ /
Contemporary scientific redeployment of human nature
APPENDIX 2:
Attempts
evolutionary
of this sort are based on the moder^tn
synthesis,
and appear in most extreme form in sociobiology.
r
/e cc^"i A r
)
% Sociobioldoical attempts, such as Nilson's, to redeploy human nature to
A
j '
1
a]t I er natives fail.
rule out ^political possibilities and narroM social ajtli,
A
underlying
Wilson's
characterisation of human nature is very different
the main socio-political tradition.
the
full set of innate Ei.e.
those
sense,
and
in
nature.*- hardly
set.'
a
the
hoMever
is
(pp.217-8,
For
the
definition
if
socially
relevant
b5t
subpools,
and
or
since
cultural
relativity,
since
stage.J^ In
any
though, like health more
they hardly
significant constraints on political alternatives.
racial
disease
less plausibly, conjunctively
if read,
enough;
of
read
is
Mill inclue the full set of genetically-determined
it
It is
characterisation
^b^Vare remote from Enlightenment concerns,
against
Mith
the
those every (normal) human is bound to undergo at some
generally,
narrower
ambiguity in
resolved.
patterns humans are liable to suffer;
event,
the
It is not constant or static, since genes may mutate.
ahistorical,
only
behavioural
genetic or genetically-determinedJ
predispositions that affect social behaviour'
rearrangement).
disp^M^tively
'* In the broader- sense, human nature Ei-sJ
characterise the human species;
that
predispositions
from
appear
to
impose
Moreover, i*t—is no bulwark
races
separate
have
by no means everything is determined
gene
genetically^ e.g.
language^of some culture).
there is no need to labour it:
see Ruse,
'*1-
As this is a commonplace vieM,
Singer and especially Pigden.
11^
Genetic determinism is simply one, and perhaps^ the M^kest, of several
forms of determinism intended to vastly reduce cultural variability.
Nilson does not rely on that form exclusively: see p.207.
AtPijol/ /o
)
104
y
*
y
o
�situation of certaintg such as the eLementarg choLce situationi affords,
expectation vaLues drop out. Then, as under the maximaLLtg criteri^, R is the
rat LonaL choLce under this utiLitg criterion; B cannot be^a rat LonaL oho Lee,
it
is^)--------------------
The same argument, Lf correct, ref'ute^Bages^anism. For, as Suppes c La Lms,
the Bayesian posLtLon Leads to the oversLL sLngte prLncLpLe of ra t Lona L i tg, the
principLe of maximizing expected utLLLtg: One action or decision shouLd be
chosen over another Lf^ the expected utLLLtg of the fLrst Ls at L'east as great
as that of the second, ... (p.178).^
_
(p.178)." ((The arguments
aLso eawt&r princ ip Les,
such as that
criter ia^
of
sure
thing,
appeaLed
to
in
derivations
of
maximization
Satisizing, doLng-MLth-enough, counters the orthodox rat LonaLitg axioms;
satisficing, doing-as-Meii-as-can-be-in-the-circumstances, does not. Satisficing
is constrained maximization; the satisficer, organisation man on bimon s
picture, aiMags chooses the maximum from among aLternatLves aireadg enumerated,
and so in the eLementrg diagram chooses R, not B (as satisizers mag), inere is
aLready a Literature at pains to point out that satisficing does not int^ fer^
Mith the rationatitu axioms.— though that it does not Mas^ cLear enough from
Limited rationaiitg^ Thus, for exampLe, Riker and Ordeshook
turn^g
criticisms of the principle of maximizing expected utiLitg on satisficing
qrounds, ^d bu arguing (incorrectLg) that in aLL pr^cticaL cases maximizing snd
satisficing r^^ease identicai^ appeat tMice to Simon s authoritg:
MhLLe some enthusiasts have misinterpreted hLs argument as antiratLonaL, Ln fac*^ Professor Simon does not suppose that, Mhen better
or Morse aLternatives are cieartg avaiiabie to the chooser, ne mag
reject the better for Morse, just because the worse H sat^factory
(pp.21-2). ... CertainLg Professor Simon is not asking for thLs,
because even Ln hLs termf, Lt Ls LrratLonaL to reject better for Morse.
be expected to occur
Os an LrratLonaLLtg satisficing cannot then
(p-23).
Ue need not
the enthusiasts; but Me are supposLng
Mhat S'^mon ded no t.
7
...........................
Various
Ln ./rat LonaL
^9.. Impact on paradoxes and on ratLonaL
behaviour.. L
— ---- paradoxes
]——— r*
A—t------------------------------- - ——----------- ;--------7-7%-------_______________________________
A cases paradox disapp
dLSappearaag
choLce theorg appear Ln a neM Light; in many peases
atftytt7H5etgcr> For the aLr o^ paradox derLves from competLng maximization crLterLa.
R good exampLe is provided bg NeMComb's paradox, Mhich is supposed to arise
in the foLLoMing situation^:
There are tMO boxes before gou: one transparent and one opaque. You
can see that there is $1,000 in the transparent box, and gou knoM that
there is either $1,000,000 or nothing in the opaque box. You must
choose betMeen the foLLoMing tMO acts: take the contents onig of the
opaque box or take the contents of both boxes. Furthermore, there is a
being in Mhose predictive poMers gou have enormous confidence, 3nd gou
knoM that he has aLreadg determined the contents of the opaque box
according to the foLLoMing ruLes: If he predicted that gou Mouid take
-9-
A
��Take the list of characteristics Gilson considers for instance (Mhich forms in
a
curious May part of his attempt to rehabilitate a particular partisan
of humans on the strength of sociobiology:
p.22).
The list
has to be pruned
if"it is to cover the spread of knoMn human races and cultures,
vaguer
and less question-begging (e.g.
removed);
but
then
vieM
and
rendered
Mith reference to relations to numan-=>
it ceases to separate tribes of humans
from
tribes
primates or other nonhumans. [Detail and adjust.]
/f2'
7
o+
�The NeM Zealand comparison:
APPENDIX 3.
Preliminary notes towards
or New
qualitative rating of mainstream New Zealand culture,
A
Zealand
data, as against an Australian (and sometimes other) goes as follows:but still high for Angloceltic world (presumably per capita
less,
Drinking:
patterns similar except for club phenomenon in Australia,
figures available);
and dry areas and prohibition proclivities in New Zealand.
Gambling:
significantly
but
less,
for
patterns similar except
important
matters of clubs and casinos.
Sport:
but less variety in New Zealand, owing to greater
similar addiction,
New Zealand emphasis on tramping,
uniformity of culture.
trail systems, not
matched in Oz.
Permissiveness:
variety.
less,
markedly
especially
concerning
sexual
issues
and
But Polynesian alternative increasingly influential in New Zealand.
Plural ism:
a
less,
more
uniform society,
with few ethnic
groupings
and
strata.
stronger, but still less so than UK.
Authori tarianism:
It is hypothesized by
Sinclair that older authority patterns in New Zealand arise from child rearing
especially
techniques,
in Oz.
counterpart
are,
the
famous
Plunkett
method,
The result was a rather up-tight
the suggestion is, more laid-back, easy-going.
which
no
had
product.
real
Australians
Vet the matter is not =o
simple, as the next items reveal.
Policing
and
opposition among the younger in New Zealand.
increasing
bushrangers,
cultural
Long-standing opposition to police
coercive methods:
etc.,
mythology.
in
New
Zealand,
in
Oz,
But no adulation of
and no Eureka Stockade
Violence perhaps less in New Zealand,
or
associated
though (at home)
neither society is very violent by American standards.
Egali tarianism:
slightly more in New Zealand, despite the Australian image.
In both Jack is as good as his master.
Pace of Life:
slower in New Zealand.
1
�less in NeM
Poverty:
in NeM Zealand.
Distrust of markets
simi1 ar
less than Oz
Fraternity and mateship:
Hale chauvinism:
margina11y less (?)
Unionisation:
Mith
no
environmen tai actions.
Environmen t:
communi ties
mixed
Extensive
NeM Zealand to many i ssues
in
even
sympathy,
public
among
rural
the
An issue breakdoMn is
required
here:
better
Chemicals and Maste management:
Parks and reserves:
National ism:
(Inglis)
margina11y better,
excessively
in
Morse
both places
strong in both
It is taken as validating
consider the many memorials Mith 'they
their country' scattered around small toMns.
national ism
(or stateism)
as
a
means
and
Hi th
by political leaders).
It can be
Mar and sport
of social and national cohesion,
purpose (e.g.
died
It is sometimes suggested
is the neM secular religion
operation in those tMo related enterprises,
death
for
that
seen
in
Both have served
and have been
used
for
that
(Hars Mere a common method of obtaining
maintaining integration of large states,
improved
communications
perhaps fall into disuse)
and propaganda
netMorks,
that
method
Divisive national sport is interesting from
could
this
angle also.
Federalism
and
Australian
idea
federation:
of
adding
No experience in
NeM
NeM Zealand as a further
sympathetic consideration in NeM Zealand.
2
Zealand.
state
The
obtains
frequent
little
There Mas, and is, no loyalty to an
�Australasian nation.
Communications:
Broadcasting less commercialised in Ne^j Zealand.
As a result
less H) violence, etc.
Reading:
more in Neu Zealand.
Education and Research:
opposition to theory.
(HoM much more?)
Little research done in Ne^ Zealand, but less
mixed.
Public school system better.
3
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
Letter, Alastair (University of Waikato) to Richard Sylvan, 17 April 1985 re feedback on
paper. (4 pages (2 leaves))
Letter, Tom (Philosophy Department, Massey University) to Richard Sylvan, 10 Jul 1985
re feedback on paper. (3 pages (2 leaves))
�
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*
HORKING DRAFT
CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL DIVERGENCE:
a South Pacific perspective
with emphasis on the Australian/American contrast
A ma.ior function of culture is to regulate and control change,1
Political
in the South Pacific,
change
North,
industrial
can,
in
and political
principle then,
the
be grounded in and
powered
by
One organising theme, a corollary of
features of local and regional.culture.
the
from
divergence
argument, facilitates the transition from principle to
practice:- It
is
that the requisite elements are present in regional cultures, the potentiality
is
South Pacific region (and Australia
the
for
there,
in
particular)
to
proceed in a very different social and political direction from the North (and
USA in particular).
th"
from
American arrangements,
Given the radical
unsatisfactoriness of the
2
in many frequently exposed respects , such a different
direction is worth taking - if it can be.
serious problem in the way of
a
But
arrangements,
from outside or from above.
change is imposition of
And,
political
since imposition shades into
this is
only one of the obstacles impeding change in the
South Pacific and elsewhere.
Another^forcing more and more peoples, no longer
political pressure,
sheltered
into the same type
of
socio-political
is supposed to derive from human nature itself.
Free people are
by geographical isolation,
arrangements
economic people,
in pretty much the American mould,
so it
is
claimed.
By
this route, economic imperialism can replace political imperialism.
1.
Nature,
theory
- one
culture,
to
which
A supposedly key question in political
and control.
we are said to have no satisfactory
answer
in
the
absence of a worthwhile theory of human nature (or human natures) - is this:-
1.
Thus Abraham p.29ff.; Awa p.30.
2.
For a recent trenchant expose, see Cohen and Rogers.
1
To
extent does human nature alloM for alternative political
Mhat
arrangements? Or, to turn the question around:-
in
virtue
of
nature
the
of
much-promoted
6nglo-6merican
Enl ightenment,
is
oMn
gain
or
(including
technical knoM-hoM),
from
6
the
taboos
(and
Mill
(properly) concerned Mi th
information
3
free people are basically economic people.
but for their
shortage
of
that is to replace one ideology by another.
ideology is no longer so
Enlightenment
of
range
descended
directly
are essentially
people
that is,
interests;
6 s ought noM to be evident,
the
answer ,
self-centred individuals,
become)
broad
that once freed from systems of myths,
superstition,
from
the
"nature" reduce the organisationa! options?
HoM does that
controls,
on
humans
What restrictions are imposed
evident:
Mhat
But
recommends
it?
Under pressure of this sort, the 6nglo-6merican answer gets transformed to the
that the economic picture of human nature is superior,
theme
and fitting
of
That 'self-appointed West European superiority'' has in
4
the
Romantics.
Fortunately,
turn been disputed, since the time of Herder and
rational
creatures.
hoMever, the extensive ensuing dialectic can be substantially avoided.
For all these questions and ansMers presuppose, to begin
Mi th, a certain
misplaced essential ism, that there is such an invariant nature common to human
beings,
Mhich
exactly
separates humans from other
creatures,
suitably constant and invariant
5
necessary and sufficient conditions , are legion. They are
specify
such
an
essence,
attempts
to
given
by
and
a frequent feature of Enlightenment thought. 611 men are the same
because of universal drives [such as to pleasure and the avoidance of
pain]. These drives mill operate independently of any location.
Chief among those drives Mas that toMards self-preservation - Hol bach,
for instance, stipulates:
Me shall call nature in man the collection of properties and
quali t i es Mhich constitute him Mhat he is, Mhich are inherent to
his species, Mhich distinguish him from other animal species or
every man feels, thinks,
Mhich he has in common Mi th them
3^
These people are also picked out under various alternative (but not
strictly equivalent) descriptions, e.g. as acquisitive individuals,
possessive individuals.
2
acts and seeks his oMn Mell-being at all times;
these are
qualities and properties that constitute human nature ... 6.
But this attempt at essentialist definition of human nature fails,
Fts it stands, the definition is inadequate;
characteristic May.
humans seek just their OMn Mell-being alMays;
hut f?
yoMtc df-e,
other commitments.^
L
to
egoism,
by
HoMever,
replacing
(
'Mell-being'
(such as human vegetables,
definition,
replacing
'every
definition is again inadequate;
example,
in a quite
for not all
some are altruistic,
some have
Ct '
suppose Me avoid such familiar counterinstances
rendering such internal egoism analytic.
examples
the
by
say
'broad
Mell-being',
thus
&nd suppose to avoid other counter-
morons and the like),
man' by 'every normal human'.
Me normalise
the
then
the
But
for it fails to distinguish humans from, for
It applies equally to dolphin nature or, for that matter,
dolphins.
to qori11 a nature.
Of
4.
course
the
definition can again be patched,
by
appealing
to
the
(From previous page) See Berry, p.30ff., from Mhom the quote is taken,
It
is Morth spelling out a little the extent of agreement and
disagreement Mi th Herder. Hhat is applauded is
1. 'Herder's dismissal of the Enlightenment's conception of human nature
as static, acultural and ahistorical' (Berry, p.32), but not.
XI.
Herder's cultural relativism, that 'each culture ... should be
treated on its OMn merits and not judged by some faulty perspective such
_
In the
as la belle_____
nature
' (p.3U), or from any other perspective.
pluralistic framework of the text (Mhich presupposes PPP), a good many
cross-cultural judgements are made and defended.
X2.
Herder's relativisation of human nature to culture, and embodiment
of it in cu1ture; for example, 'it is through language that human nature
Hi th
can be seen to be specifical1y embodied in cu1ture' <p.32).
bu t
relativisation the notion loses its original theoretical point;
Mhile failing in this role, cultural nature is open to many of the same
Nor can language bear the Meigh t
sorts of objections as human nature.
Herder loads upon it.
Herder's human chauvisism: '... it is speech and Mi th that reason
X3.
I1an can choose, man is king'
and freedom, that differentiates man.
Hild animals are free, can choose, communicate, solve puzzles,
(p.36).
carry
out elementary reasoning;
in these respects they surpass
and
and
many
other
humans.
Furthermore,
X3 gets Herder into serious
chi 1dren
not
to
say
inconsistency,
Mi
th
1.
trouble,
5.
6.
Abraham, draMing on Hittgenstein,
essence, p.23ff.
Berry p.17.
presents just these conditions for an
Berry supplies several other similar examples.
3
cluster of -features that separate humans from other mammals or
anatomical
biological specification of homo sapiens.
the
to
normalised
But the resulting
definition,
Mi th its analytical egoism, does little more than such biological
definitions
of
human:
it does not supply a nature,
does
it
deliver
not
superbiological
features of political relevance. The notion of human nature
-a/"!
thus fragments: into the satisfactory enough biological notion of human, and
an
superbiological (or sociobiological)
unsatisfactory
nature or essence.
addition;
What is this further, problematic, nature?
that
of
The Romantics
can be read as arguing that there is none, no nature as distinct from culture,
only local nature (Herder's term) Mhich coincides Mith culture.
excretions and variations in order to reach an essence leaves,
cultural
off
Peeling
like
Wittgenstein's artichoke, nothing.
The notion of human nature is a theoretical item,
amid cultural variability,
stability
a constant bulMark against
but designed as Mell to justify (as natural or, failing that,
of
type
particular
political
provide
introduced to
economy and legislature, and
relativism,
as superior)
its
a
imposition
7
fashion,
fact
and
that
the
is not so easily dissolved,
notion
by one illustration.
is Mritten large in much
political
but is defective,
illustration reveals,
such
a
HoMever the
theory,
does not shoM that it or the embedding theory is sound.
received,
not,
This resilient notion has been Midely applied in
else.
everyMhere
and
is
f)nd it is
and in its socio-political selectivity it is,
as the
virtually of a piece Mith human chauvinism (Mhich Mould
assign an unduly privileged position to human beings in the ecological
scheme
of things).
In
under
7.
fact
the superbiological notion of human nature begins
any attempt to set it doMn,
in much the May that
attempts
to
dissolve
supporting
Hence the Enlightenment program of imposing enlightened Western culture
everyMhere, later emphasised by Bentham.
The Legislator, knoMing that
human nature is ever the same [different countries do not have different
catalogues of pleasure and pain), can reform the laMS and even transplant
them from one society to another' (Berry, p.18).
doMn something ethically
chauvinism
3
disintegrate.
The notion of human nature - a nature
human
there
stable or constant social
some
are
features
humans
about
(some special classes of humans excepted perhaps)
humans
that
special
- presupposes
holding
for
across different cultures, Mhich are furthermore distinctive!/ human
peop!es,
features.
The
presupposition fails,
because once cultural variation between
shared
peoples
characteristics
remain ,
Mhich
furthermore
are
shared
various
by
animal
cu1tures, such as those of primates.
Consider ,
books,
or
first,
such
products or tools of more literary cultures as
Since
of contemporary cultures as telephones and computers.
cultures
lacked
such items,
their
possession
most
distribution
or
obviously cannot figure as part of Mhat marks out human nature. Consider next,
Mhat are commonly taken to be key components of (human) nature, certain
then,
basic human needs,
such as food and shelter.
These requirements are far from
free of cultural and environmental determinants.
as required in the May of shelter,
place to place.
Mays,
common
under
For look at Mhat is regarded
and hoM it varies from cu1ture to culture,
(&nd even Mhat is taken as basic can often be met in a myriad
Mays.)
though acceptably in some cultures only in a feM fixed
The
denominator is the rather trivial requirement of some sort
more extreme conditions - a requirement also of Mombats.
The situation
This claim concerning human chauvinism is argued in detail in EE. But the
claim concerning human nature is only sketchily defended in the text. For
.................................
'
t nature, 1 ike
the alleged social-arrangement-dictating
features of' human
determinism,
are
alleged
features
of
economic
or
technological
simi1 ar
insofar
as
they
to
be
removed
especially
rather major obstacles
supposedly severely and inevitably restrict the character of future
societies - than the main business of the present enterprise.
For tunately then the claim, that the superbiological notion of human
nature is a defective theoretical one Mhich dissolves, is defended
elseMhere: not only,
,, in effect, in Mork of Romantics from Herder on, but
also in significant recent literature. Foucault, for example, can be read
as saying that human nature is an invention of the Enlightenment Mhich
dissolves: ''his much discussed ... dissolution of man is nothing more, or
less, than the claim that the attempt to establish order upon a
scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and
italics added).
food,
Mith
and
sex,
so on,
considerably from race to race,
by
flourish.
Again
the somewhat
conditions,
trivial
lowest
or
more
loosely
Mhere
common
tribal
denominator
Nor are attempts to mark out
by some more complex list of jointly necessary
nature
vary
requirements
Europeans for example being very inefficient
applies also to various groups of animals.
human
Dietary
tribal standards and unable to survive satisfactorily
many
people
is hardly better.
by a cluster of natural
and
features,
the
sufficient
much
more
successful, or of direct political application without the importation of what
is culturally at issue - values. In any case, such vague and general lists as
10
emerge
impose little constraint at all on a political direction, since a
variety of political arrangements is compatible with such listings.
Accordingly,
nature
as such is not. an
important
constraint
on
or a theory of human nature a key ingredient in endeavours
11
work out a political philosophy or political directions .
The reason is
political
to
human
theory,
the reason that determining the conditions for the good life would
like
not
impose a satisfactory constraint on a political theory, namely presupposition
12
failure.
Like the meaning of life , the good life fails to demarcate a
single
thing;
there
are many styles of good lives.
So too there
is
human
*9^
The
converse is seen in the extent to which tribal peoples gain weight
on European diets, At another level, consider the Haori attitude to, and
underlying revulsion by, cooked food: see Alpers, p.7-9.
10.
For one such list, which however requires pruning and adjustment, see
Nilson, p.22. As it happens, Nilson does not make anything much of this
list (which does not supply necessary conditions), immediately presents a
parallel list for insect societies - a list which does considerable
damage to more traditional claims about human nature - and then proceeds
in effect to demolish main criteria that have been used to separate
humans from animals and to restrict cultures to human societies (e.g.
p.39).
For more on contemporary "scientific" efforts to deploy a theory of human
nature for social and political ends, see Appendix 2.
11.
Nhich is perhaps as well, since we still have so little reliable and
unprejudiced information as to what "human nature" amounts to, what its
variational possibilities, in different environments, might be, or of the
possibilities beyond past terrestrial selections of cultures.
12.
On which see Routley and Griffin.
6
and human nature,
nature
depending on the culture or social paradigm and
on
Nature, both human and not, varies uith culture and environment.
the setting.
Because of this tuo-uay dependence,
there is no unique stable superbiological
human nature.
notion of human
is
nature
the
picture of nature as given, as a
stable
across races and tribes,
notion
uith culture as a variable
There is no such culturally invariant division:
The picture is flaued in much the same uay,
as
perception,
top.
on
culture affects local nature.
as the familiar picture of
then,
stable
consisting of given uninterpreted sense data,
across
(normal) perceivers, uith interpretation imposed on the neutral data.
Nor therefore is culture something that can be creamed off the top, so to
find real human features or basic nature
to
speak,
Certainly,
underneath.
be destroyed; however uhat results from removal by destruction of
not something closer to real people,
but people uith a destroyed
it is also uith attempts like Hobbes or Rauls to peel
organisation
off
the the top,
in order to locate in a
political
quasi-analytical
or
quasi-historical uay, a state of nature underneath or preceding some organised
state
or
other,
derived from mistaken
flaued picture,
questionable
or
presuppositions, is assumed.
Hhat uill be found underneath, or in the original (natural) state, is, it
is usually conveniently assumed, a nature that fits the vieu to be developed uith the
explai ned
and
the
culture's
riqht values very fortunately in-built.
is
privileged
image
status quo -
position of some
of itself,
and
elements of the
as uell
dominant
as
a
be
serves
for
economic man,
social
hardly surprisingly, that
for Enlightenment man,
7
dominant
Northern
fully competitive possessive individualism (much the same model,
uhich
to
or justified is something like present socio-political arrangements
paradigm - underlying human nature turns out to be,
of
Given that uhat
for
the
that is,
"rational
etc.)
person",
myths,
to
The myth of unique human nature functions,
perpetuate
other
like many
or instil particular social arrangements
and
special
pr ivi1ege.
Thus too the myth of human nature is linked to other culture-based myths,
myths
the
of
predominantly
self-interested
- to
rational)
(normal)
al 1
bring
humans
maximizer s
no firm starting point in human nature,
myths.
of
myths.
None
aboriginal
peoples
comprised
their
least
and
as
insofar
as
they
are
Mith
the
image
of
up
As there is no underlying hard ground,
so there is none in these
repeated
the
Melanesians,
associated
Polynesians
or
Australian
maximizers;
strongly communal lifestyles and
after
especially,
and
(at
individuals
The South Pacific Mas, and remains, rich in cultures Mhich upset these
associated
indeed
aggressive
some of the myths bound
in
urban-industrial humans.
contemporary
as
preparedness
a loM sufficiency threshold had been reached,
source of criticism from the
European cultures
Mork
stop,
to
Mas a major
that
came
to
dominate the region.
forms and types of
Even
aggressiveness,
and approaches to
Mar,
often
taken to be solid ground, are culture and environment dependent, and vary Mi th
13
both
parameters .
Aggressiveness is often supposed to impose
huge
constraints
on political
arrangements.
But there is little substance to the
claim that humans are naturally aggressive independently of social or cultural
setting.
The most that appears
clear is that circumstances can be
through croMding or provocation or cultural
arranged,
for
instance
TEh
A striking illustration of environmental variation is afforded by the
differences betMeen savannah dMelling and forest dMelling tribes of
baboons.
For a local illustration, consider Maori approaches to Mar
(like Mar conventions, a social phenomenon), before European corruption.
Thus Best reports that 'an individual, or a Mhole clan, might decline to
take part in an engagement on account of some evil omen, and such an
action Mould be approved of (p.15).
There are several, apparently
reliable, stories of Maoris engaged in Mar supplying the opposition Mith
equipment or ammunition, or temporarily abandoning their fighting effort
to help out the other (British) side, so the battle could proceed
proper 1y.
relocation,
Mhere
of
peoples
cultures Mill become aggressive
familiar
more
people of other cultures Mill not,
in the face of immense brutality.
depends
Once
types.
Certainly some arrangements are required to
but these can be of a Mide range of
shortsightedly
again,
Mhat is normally
as fixed:
see
certainly,
such
Mhich
components
nature
human
accounted
varies Mith culture and environment,
and
upon
perhaps
as people often do
but Mill just give up,
cope Mith or suitably isolate aggression,
alternative
- and
often
people
as
selfishness,
cooperativeness, individuality do.
Hhat
is
presently much more important than either culture or nature
determining social arrangements is another factor:
imposition.
social
Whatever
one
from
Mithout,
through
region
and neM arrangements imposed,
Hith long-standing arrangements,
May or another.
invariably
namely, outside control or
arrangements have evolved in a
local nature and culture can be overridden,
imposition
is
and the changes in arrangements typically
especially,
the South Pacific has,
in
almost
involve
either violence in their adaption or mass migration of people or both.
last tMO hundred years,
in
In the
like much of the
been drastically so affected, in a complex May. ^nd the changes,
neMer Morld
still floMing strongly from the North, continue.
He
are
in the last days of the destruction of
old
and
cultures,
economic
destruction is noM to a considerable extent by more subtle cultural,
and
technological
Outside
direct
control can be exercised,
economic sanctions,
film
and
television (i.e.
earlier
times.
in many Mays less blatant
than
such as through introduction
of
etc.,
as
monetary and loan policies,
as through exchange and training programs,
magazines,
14.
or occur,
intervention of one sort or another,
neM technologies,
Mell
means than the cruder methods of slightly
the
textbooks,
through physical
advertising
and
exemplifications of
Hi Ison's argument that humans are innately aggressive involves such an
invalid move: he looks at the behaviour of Semai men Mhen 'taken out of
their nonviolent society' by recruitment in a British colonial army
(p.100)!
^s Mell, Hilson's case rests on a dubious redefinition of
innateness, and a loM redefinition of aggressiveness to take in forms of
mere (nonaggressive) conflict (pp.9?-100).
of
process of cultural conversion and erosion;
this quieter
are
unwittingly, part
European peoples in the South Pacific are often
culture).
rather than,
victims as well as,
now
but many of
perpetrators (cf.
us
and
Crough
Wheelwright).
Human
communities
have been - and many still are
- as
insensitive
to
other human cultures as they are to the natural environment (witness Americans
and their allies in Vietnam).
or
beyond redemption.
pushed
of
creation
Like an ecosystem, a culture can be destroyed,
This is
disaster
areas proceeds
Yet
the
blatant cases
15
by disruption of culture and lifestyle using violence.
There is
typically
political
furthermore,
where
apace
is possible at all,
recovery
a
sometimes of the order of human generations.
perhaps
well-known.
sufficiently
production
of
imperialism,
these politically
e.g.
USA
in
contaminated
Central America,
- in
recovery
long
period,
Yet there is increasing
regions,
Israel in
especially
Lebanon,
through
Russia
in
Afghanistan, Indonesia in East Timor and West Papua, etc.
In the South Pacific, there are many quieter Northern influences at work,
but
the
strongest now is unquestionably the
businessmen,
films
can
academics,
American.
American
companies,
tourists and warships, their technology and patents,
and television programs,
There
are the most evident and
be various motives and aims (and assumptions) behind the
newer
behind endeavours such as the American to
16
Granted it
everywhere.
"free
enterprise"
philosophy
and
practice
their
17
business
and
American
to
American
economic
supremacy,
mostly contributes to
and
economic imperialism,
15.
These disaster areas should perhaps be cordoned off like those
by communicable disease,
but from continuing disruptive,
interference.
infected
outside
What is said about American cultural and politic al imperial ism applies,
with adaption, in a lesser way, to imperialism and col onial ism by other
nation-states such as USSR, Britain, France and Indonesia. USA has no
monopoly on imperialism. US imperialism in the third wor1 dis in part
documented and analysed in Chomsky and Herman.
17.
Though not invariably as the experience with the Japanese motor industry
has indicated.
10
the transfer of substantial regional wealth and surplus value to the
to
But
national economic reasons are not the only sort of reasons such
are
pursued;
apart
t^at many
from the side-issue of integrity,
USA.
policies
Americans
really do believe in the optimality of their local ideals to the exclusion
other
of
arrangements, there are deeper and somewhat more respectable ideological
reasons as wel1.
imperialistic
The
that
assumption
for
nature,
be
underpinned
all human nature is at bottom really
political
(a
technological
means.
can
instance highly economically oriented.
distortions
economic)
endeavours
means,
way:
they
by
like
Thus,
descriptive
a
American
human
but for political
analogue of economic externalities)
and
lack
and
other peoples would choose the American (political
simply have not really been given the
For many peoples this is simply not true;
of
opportunity
or
for most other cultures let
us hope, or pray, that this is not the case. Alternatively, or as well, a more
arrogant
prescriptive assumption may be at work,
that all human nature ought
best, because America not only has the best
18
way of life in the world and mostly the best ways of doing things
, but has
to be like American nature at its
a
special
hold
on rationality.
The free-enterprise
system
(perhaps
representative democracy American-style tacked on) is the rational
18.
with
enterprise
Thus, for example, American agricultural textbooks and agricultural
spokespeople are fond of announcing that American agriculture is the best
in the world;
similarly for environmental
protection,
forestry,
technology, university education, and so on.
But since they are the
best, it is evident that these American ways should be exported, isn't
it? Even granting the large assumptions, No, firstly, because that is to
neglect important regional and local variations and differences, and
secondly because these ways may interfere with other significant features
of regional life or culture.
It' has not passed unremarked that the high standard of material life in
USA depends in part on a very fortunate inheritance (e.g. some of the
best and deepest soils) and in part, as in Europe, on a lower standard of
1 i f e and conditions elsewhere, upon siphoning off wealth and especially
resources (US currently uses about one-fifth of world resources and 30 X
To be sure, economic apologetics
of world energy) from other regions.
proffer other explanations of American transcendence, e.g. ingenious
constructions like that of Olson, built on a sandy logic of economic
actors collectively locked into economically determined arrangements,
substantially independent of the resource base.
11
Certainly the system is sometimes peddled,
embodied.
the
American May,
it.
Mhich Mas often
Mith the same evangelism as Christianity,
and presented as the rational religion,
seen
by genuine believers in
at least before science got
at
science hasn't got at the free-enterprise religion yet, but on the
Hell,
noM has a social division heavily devoted to its justification and
19
furtherance.
HoMever some philosophy has got at the system, sufficiently to
contrary
that it is no unique embodiment of rationality - there is none such
reveal
but
a decidedly irrational practice in many circumstances.
is
irrational if local goals are to preserve local
especially
Thus,
it
environments
is
and
cultures, as much experience helps attest.
is aspects of the false descriptive assumption,
It
Mith
emerge
rejection,that are a main focus in Mhat folloMS (though various
its
the reasons for rejecting the prescriptive assumption
recorded).
broader
and Mhat can
important
An
basic
nor
in
substan t i al 1y
of
Mill also emerge or get
underlying theme Mill continue to be
that
nei ther
varies
human
Mays that are highly political relevant - relevant
to
the
frameMork a society adopts. In
imposed
upon from outside or above, the variation can be
through
cultural
variation
alternative
assumptions,
is part of "nature",
again
"human nature"
variations;
(Mhich
but
in
turn
depends
on
environment,etc)
are then, those of cultural pluralism, that
shaping in particular local human nature. Of course once
can be pared back and back to try to
in this May Mhat are taken to be
important
remove
cultural
superbiological
features of human nature for political theory are also excised (e.g.
that
The
make prisoners' dilemmas and commons' tragedies come out one May
features
rather
than another).
19.
In elaborating on hoM modern societies control their citizens, Foucault
has explained various extensive types of social control exercised and
licensed through received social sciences, by May of approved standards
of normality, health, stability, adequacy, rationality, etc.: see Philp,
p. 15.
12
Just as different cultures can mean different social arrangements,
so in
a larger setting they can imply different political organisation and different
directions.
political
Where
do
requisite differences
not
occur,
because
incongruous arrangements have been imposed, cultural differences can be a
"A
powerful force for change. Likewise developing elements of cultural difference
can
a potent base for social change - or resistance to imposed
be
(especially) in communities where other more orthodox
as economic incentives or penalties,
have
change
bases for change,
become inoperative or
-
such
failed,
or
used,
but
are not available.
Culture is however a double-edged instrument,
resisted.
example,
For
though
not only to be
indigenous
leading
features of
Pacific cultures are to be reactivated, as forces for change, some
these cultures are to be resisted (such as male domination),
features
Features of culture are thus
modern Western cu1tures.
of
along with
and confront undesirable (implanted or imported) sources
resist
many
used
to
culture;
of
excessive consumerism, persuasive
such as, inequitable political arrangements,
advertising
media and loaded news systems,
structures,
etc.
for
sol id foundation - but also
This
reasons
is as true for American culture as Antipodean.
Mhy
job
forth,
is
to
antagonistic
One
of
the
so
mainstream American culture
so
encouraging
prime sources of
up resistance against,
and
culture.
alienating
It is important not only to build and design alternatives -
which elements of
di sman tie,
chief
holloa suburbia,
that
movements
offering
or
and
alternatives have been repressed by the dominant corporations
the state apparatus (see especially Goldstein).
2
The
Why
work with such an unfavourable contrast case as Australian—society
regional and environmental orientation.'
in defence of themes
concerning
1*'
'yV
4"
cultural variation and their force for change,
contrast
US
it would no doubt be easier to
culture with some other culture which diverges
13
more
strikingly
Mith some Pacific society poised for revolutionary change, such as perhaps the
Then there are conspicuous differences,
Philippines.
as the following
table
begins to reveal:-
SOME WESTERN CULTURAL THEMES CONTRASTED HITH THIRD HORLD
Fi1i pi no [Melanesian J
North American [AustralianJ
Individual autonomy encouraged;
Mithin paradigm, individual should
individualize, solve oMn problems,
develop OMn opinions
Dependence encouraged; point of
reference is authority, older kin folk
Competition [aJ primarymethod
of motivation
Community reduces or excludes incentive
to excel over others
Relations Mith others informal
and direct
Relations Mith others more formal;
social interactions more structured
Clear distinction betMeen public
and private property
Public property divertable unguililty
into private [Much "property", e.g.
1 and, is communal J
Materialism a dominant value
Spiritual, religious things matter as
much or more than material.
Evident trouble
culture
Mith
the choice of Australia as contrast is that
is not only much influenced (like all
Australian
accessible cultures) by
parts
of American culture, but is very similar in many respects, including evolution
and
comparative
stability.
similarities are often sought,
to
that
in broad outline,
explanations
of
the
and it is debated Mhether the similarities are
by imitation or through similar evolution.
explained
debate is,
is so similar
It
simple:
namely,
The ansMer
to
the
as Mill appear, both types of
mechanism have played a role.
There are,
as
a
main
contentions
so
hoMever,
contrasting
several reasons for Morking Mith Australian culture
case Mith American.
A lesser one is
that
if
regarding differences can be made good in =uch a case it Mill
much the easier Mhere more conspicuous differences occur.
But the aim
the
be
is
not to make a difficult argumentative task more difficult. Rather it is to try
207
This table, adapted from AMa
more discussion is given.
p.30,
14
is draMn from SteMart,
Mhere
much
to
clear the May for a different philosophy and different political positions
in
Australia,
and
Pacific,
more comprehensively in the South
than
those
slavishly adopted from the North, to clear the May for political arrangements,
grounded in the elements of local culture, Mhich are more benign, both to
the
environment and to other cultures, than those imported from the North.
in several respects,
Australia is,
named from Europe the
Antipodes,
a
(bordered
the north by the Hallace line).
There is some prospect that this region
21
a meaningful sense.
That in turn encourages the
Mill become nuclear-free,in
or be induced in the
faint hope that other socio-political changes may occur,
- a
region
notably
moving
aMay from the dangerous and
nuclear
poMer
and nuclear Meapons.
independence comes from the USA.
Antipodean
exploitative
main
The
damaging pattern,
(and
significant
and
perhaps
this
The USA Mould impose significant
generally it aims to include the region under its
that
to
opposition
components of its Mar system, including nuclear Meapons,
more
attitudes
so Mell exemplified in technological things nuclear,
of the North,
practices
If
includes
Mhich
biological and geophysical region of the South Pacific
distinctive
in
region
inexact
rather
the most important component of that
capitalist
is
already Mell established,
the main) resistance
upon the region; and
to
broken,
be
eventually
must
hegemony.
come
from
Australia.
countries
Smaller
have
resisted
Marships;
first Vanuatu and recently,
genuinely
nuclear-free
suit.
And
politically
21.
if
and
the
the imposition
environmentally
American
initiative is
deeper,
to
Australia
broaden
tied to a more
nuclear
NeM Zealand. If a
more significantly,
South Pacific is to emerge,
nuclear-free
of
must
into
profound
folloM
something
regional
This is just one reason Mhy the recent fashion of trying to count
Australia as part of Asia, Mhich it is not, or as Mithin the (excessively
large) Asian-Pacific region, Mhich it analytically is, should be
resisted.
No doubt looking at the larger region is convenient for
economic and some defence purposes, for trade and aid;
but it is narroM
economically-focussed,
nation-state thinking,
Mhich discounts huge
geographical, biological and cultural differences.
15
independence
and
then
militarism,
leaders.
Australia
the
Hence
free
self-reliance,
from
of
components
the
must not merely follow,
but be there
interest in American/Australian
cultural
American
Mith
the
differences,
especially those relevant to socio-political divergence.
The
main
cultural groupings of the Antipodean region can
be
developed
from the following diagram:
Aboriginal peoples
Australian
Polynesian
Melanesi an
Anglophi1e
Main
Colonial
Powers
/////
Francophi1e
poli tical1y
entirely
dominated
Poli tical1y
subordinate
Largely
independent
politically*
The independence struggle continues in NeM Caledonia Cohere it Mill
probably succeed soon) and in West Papua (Mhere there appears little
prospect of success against the Javanese without outside support).
The
situation in Fiji is complicated as a result of the colonially-organised
immigration of East Indians (so typical a legacy of British control).
%
Apart from the Indonesian intrusion, there is American penetration
Samoa, and the French remain, most notably in Society Islands.
There
are
Antipodes,
Zealand).
tMO
essentially
major
independent
Melanesian and Anglo-Australasian (i.e. White
in
the
Australian and
NeM
groupings
The latter is the important group from the point of vieM of present
for the usual politico-economic reasons: comparative
change in the Antipodes,
numbers, poMer, influence, Meal th, resources, etc.
cultural features matter,
be
cultural
in
obtained
significantly,
in
such
a
It is Mi th this group that
and Mill make a difference, assuming difference can
May.
For
Melanesian
culture
for the most part in the right sorts of Mays,
American culture.
16
already
differs,
from mainstream
Though
culture.
already
features
distinctive
language suggests).
with
in
Antipodean
origins and attitudes can be enhanced,
varying
carefully
and
from
and extended to change
away
can
(like
continuing
those of sweet
powerful
Northern
Perhaps
by
directions
of
insensitivity.
intellectual and educational factors,
evolution
influenced,
away
Perhaps that movement
Northern barbarism and socio-environmental
cultural
observable
European
Cultural evolution is proceeding, perhaps with considerable pace (as
situation
European
from
are
there
stock,
the
the peoples of Australasia now consist predominantly of
pea
the
evolution)
forces,
now
suitably
be
predominantly
and multinationalisation, not merely resisted but turned to
22
advantaoe.
Among the questions which immediately arise, but which
Americanisation
local
remain insufficiently
investigated,
life.
are those concerning the interaction
How do
intellectual
cultural
and
culture?
Conversely, what impact do the cultural shifts
intellectual
elements
of
influence
- whatever they are,
a fundamental matter * have on intellectual life, especially in areas that lie
23
at the heart of such life, namely ideological orientation and philosophy?
A
special case,
from which this exercise began, is that where the philosophy is
environmental philosophy,
and
to
the
environment.
where the orientation concerns attitudes to
An
initial question resulting
differential effect of Antipodean culture,
or of the
is:
what
nature
is
the
distinctive elements in
22.
Often these Northern forces are presented as those of internationalism,
which is taken to be desirable. But ask what African, or Latin American,
or even Russian components these forces reflect, and what centres these
forces emanate from, and the extent of internationalism and mix of
nations and companies involved, will become clearer. Certainly there are
desirable qualities in internationalism, but these seem to be displayed
on the faces of internationalism least often observed or paraded.
23.
It is difficult to gauge how much philosophical and speculative concerns
matter to more ordinary people.
In a direct way, not very much, one is
inclined to say; yet ideological themes, like technological changes
deriving from the advance of science, heavily influence them and even perhaps
control the main structure of their lives.
As Keynes wrote in a much
quoted passage, 'Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt
from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct
economist' - or more likely philosopher or shaman (for the fuller quotation,
see Heilbroner, p.12).
17
24
it, upon attitudes and approach to the environment?
Answers
relations
Mill
be prised out by contrasting differences in attitudes
so far as they can be
to the environment,
Antipodeans Mith those of Northerners.
of attitudes,
set
still
a
discerned,
clearly
even among dominant cultural groups,
in the North.
After
there
Asia,
contrast in attitudes to the natural Morld betMeen
marked
of
there is not a uniform
firstly,
in the usual May the immense complication of
aside
setting
But,
and
the
is
Old
Horld and the NeM Horld. In the Old Horld there Mas and still is comparatively
and practically none for
little feel for the natural environment,
or the need for it or the desirability of it.
Milderness
Unsurprisingly, these attitudes
are ideologically underpinned, in particular by ancient chauvinistic themes as
to
the locus of all value in humans (and,
by more modern,
equally defective,
formerly,
in Mhat they image) and
themes forged in the Enlightenment,
that
superiority is manifested through independence of the natural Morld,
cultural
especially independence of the vagaries of climate and natural plant
25
groMth.
It is not that Europe, by contrast Mith the Antipodes, is entirely
and
devoid
of natural environment,
that there is no natural environment left
in
USSR, say, but that most of it is remote and that the culturally dominant part
of
the
primarily
Soviet
in
community does not live anyMhere near,
the
vicinity
of HoscoM,
environment as of any value for itself,
The
elements
and
does
not
but in
the
cities,
regard
the
natural
but only as a means,
of deeper ecological approaches,
instrumentally.
like the hazards
of
tobacco
smoking and industrial pollution, are not Mell knoMn or Midely advertised in
26
USSR
or the Eastern European block generally - though Eastern European
countries contain much of the least ecologically disturbed of European lands.
24.
And the converse is equally important:
the impact of local environments
on the cultures?
Approaches to the environment are an important
component of culture, more so than such obvious manifestations of culture
as literature (see beloM).
25.
For details of such Enlightenment tests of cultural
intimately
bound
to
the overarching
ideals
Perfectibility, see Berry p.14.
18
superiority, tests
of
Progress
and
Of course the Old Horld cannot,
environmentally.
European-based
some
Environmental
IUCN
environmentalism.
And
be entirely set
organisations
(such
aside
as
the
and the British National Trust) have been operating
for
time,
considerable
and could never,
and
movements
and
have
influence
an
had
on
Australasian
people in Europe concerned
there have long been
Mi th
happenings in the NeMer Horld, especially the nearest part of it, Africa. But
27
for
the
most part the spirit of European culture
remains
antienvironmental:
there Mas,
and for the most part still is (though things
changing Mi th green movements and parties),
for,
the
natural
environment,
as
little interest in,
gardening
and
more recently plantation forestry.
cultures''
other
exploitation,
such
and
opposed to the managed
environment in Mhich the Mealthier took an interest,
they
e.g.
little
through
for
feel
manipulated
landscape
As for other places'
fit
are
and
plunder
and
at least Mas the dominant attitude and the practice
(and
environments,
Mell
the practice persists at best thinly disguised,
Mere
though no longer uncontested:
Japanese enterprise in the Pacific).
So in Mhat folloMs Old Norld,
28
European approaches
are mostly left out of vieM: the spotlight shifts to the
consider
neMer-fangled North American attitudes, Mhich are hoMever intertMined Mi th Old
Norld sentiments.
The
most
substantial,
most
articulate,
and still
by
far
the
best
26.
(From previous page) In the period folloMing the Russian revolution until
the rise of Stalin, there Mas considerable, if shalloM, concern among
Russian scientists as to the environment (see Neiner). Like much else in
Russian society this rather elitist concern Mas actively discouraged. At
a more popular level environmental concern noM loses out to elements of
economism.
''In a country Mhere the glory of technology and the glitter
of economic groMth still radiate so seductively, radical environmental
protection does not have much of a chance even Mi th the best of
intentions'' (Haren-Grisebach, quoted in Capra and Spretnak, p.78).
27.
Exceptions such as Hill's life-style, for one, represents are exceptions,
and very conspicuous as a result.
28.
These approaches form, of course, the main stock of the disastrous
environmental heritage that Mas sloMly adapted and is still being adapted
in the NeM Morld. The stronger environmental components emerged from the
Northern
European heritage,
not the Latin or Southern
European
inheritance. This is evident too from the Meakness of environmentalism in
Latin America.
19
documented
past and
And it is uith the situation in North America,
America.
environment
contrast
America
movements are those,
environmental
there
the
adopted,
This is a further major
the other end of the cultural contrast being
as
North
the attitudes to the
that ue best look for contrasts,
Antipodean scene.
of
present,
ue
that
reason
for
developed,
best
taking
and
as
select representative of the industrial North.
ue dig doun to the details of the cultural differences that
Before
to
differing
attitudes in the Antipodes - difference that could
accentuated - there are,
should
come first,
and then junked,
determinism.
rubbish).
are those that some uill think
since they could render much of uhat follous
the issues surrounding determinism,
be
differences
have been brought out (issues uhich can then be throun out uith the
Among the issues postponed,
readily
preliminary issues to be dealt uith, and
as aluays,
issues to be postponed until the substantive cultural
other
yet
lead
of technological,
irrelevant:
economic, and cultural
for example, uere correct,
If Marx's technological determinism,
multitude of productive forces accessible to men determines the
29
nature of society',
then there uould be little scope for a distinct culture
'the
that
or distinctive attitudes to the environment in
the
Antipodes,
the productive forces accessible are supplied from the
can only remain,
of
as it mainly is,
North.
since most of
The Antipodes
predominantly derivative. But the evidence
cultural divergence from the North assembled in uhat follous uill afford a
base on uhich to argue that such deterministic themes are false, that cultural
30
divergence is occurring (and could be accelerated).
And this is happening
though
much,
the economic life by uhich such cultural things are supported is
too
much,
under the influence of the North;
though (under present governments) the
prospects
indeed it is
very
happening
of economic and much higher
cultural independence are bleak (unless, e.g., nuclear disaster befalls us).
2?.
Seiected Horks 1:
31 d.
20
In
free
some parts of intellectual life,
it is comparatively easy
the heavy influence of the North,
of
for regional intellectual life to
One of these areas is philosophy, especially more narrowly
prosper.
(the
philosophy
sort
break
to
of thing that tends to go
in
on
somewhat
academic
insulated
academies). Academic philosophy is easy, because a few people can do that. For
cultural differentiation, by contrast, ideas have to affect whole communities,
Philosophical ideas can be
to be absorbed and acted upon and in accord with.
like
bubbles
one
community life.
and
positions
with in an office
plays
In any case,
on-going
or
cell,
not
affecting
wider
there undoubtedly are distinctive philosophical
philosophical research projects
in
Australia
(see
For other academic areas, especially those with an empirical base
Prospects).
relying on high technology,
it is more difficult to obtain such independence.
For different reasons, there is also, as with high technology, little prospect
of
This
attaining a full distinctive or independent high culture in the Antipodes.
is partly because the human
people,
deal
at less than 20
million
is (fortunately) too small and widely distributed to support a
in
comprises.
30.
population base,
the
way
of such artifice as parts of
high
It is also because such high culture is,
culture
and
great
substantially
remains,
primarily
(From previous page) Determinism may be pushed into one or other of these
forms: i) it asserts some sort of necessity. Then it is falsified by the
real possibility of alternative technological choices, for instance. Or
ii) it is only contingently true. Then the phenomena of sub-cultures and
rival social cultures refutes it: see Cotgrove.
Technological determinism neglects major causative factors in change,
such as environmental factors. The land or resource base is almost as
important as the technology available, in lower technology societies more
important, so land determinism is at least as plausible as technological
determinism - which helps to show that neither are plausible. But both
can be combined into a broader economic determinism, which is much more
difficult to refute. However even if economics is very broadly construed,
such determinism is false. Economics operates within a framework of moral
and legal and other constraints; many choices - moral, legal and other which affect change significantly fall outside that framework.
Technological determinism and other forms of determinism are important in
bolstering the uniformity of human nature and culture assumptions, or at
least the theme of the convergence of culture with the spread of Hestern
technology and mainstream economics. So its falsity is also important.
21
31
a European product.
attitudes to the environment, though definitely an important -feature of a
are not part of high culture. Nor do they fit easily into
culture,
but
culture":
"loiter
the
most
been
part,
HoMever
differentiation.
of
the
Mhere attitudes to the environment have not,
for
again is largely because the
that
cultures is a European one,
as
regarded
Mherever
a
significant
division
feature
of
cultural
such attitudes fit - it Mill probably
harm to see them as part of a broader loMer culture,
little
so-called
and at the
same
time help to erode the erroneous idea that interest in natural environment
an
elitist class concern - they tie directly Mith elements of culture at
do
is
the
loMer end.
At the loMer cultural level there are very distinctive features - some of
admittedly
them
features
are
can
gambling,
common
found in many colonies,
and
just
perhaps
be
in the different attitudes of Antipodeans to the
included such things - and attitudes
environment.
- as
them
these
religion,
time, service, etc. Nearer the grass-roots level there is a
Momen,
culture
to
colonial
Some of
- Mhich separate Australasian from Northern culture.
reflected
Here
those
in
Australia
snd
NeM
Zealand
Mith
distinctive
feature^
reflected in folk lore, folksong and myth (not all of them admirable, e.g. the
treatment
of indigenous people,
organised
sports.
Yet
Antipodean cultures,
authoritarianism,
that
there
and of Momen),
are also differences betMeen
differences in pace,
these
tMo
main
religious orientation, ethnic mix,
conservatism, political organisation, values
are sometimes hard to pin doMn precisely.
all-important fact that part of Australia,
31.
and in the mania for similar
There is,
- differences
for instance,
by contrast Mith NeM Zealand
the
(but
It can be argued that philosophy and other intellectual enterprises are
also. This is not so. Philosophy in Asia - from Mhere indigenous
Antipodean people apparently originated - predates that in the Nest.
There are, moreover, grounds for suspecting that the roots of
philosophy Mere imported into the Nest, to Ancient Greece, from India.
AnyMay, every full culture includes an ideology and some rudiments at
least of philosophy.
22
in Eastern USA),
places
like
Mas settled as a penal
appear to colour many of the differential features of the
origins
culture.
On
the
other
Islanders
is
noM
introducing Polynesian
language,
concepts and attitudes) into NeM Zealand culture,
quite
The
colony.
corresponds
in
side,
increasing presence of
the
strands
Though
Australia.
Australian
Maori
and
elements
of
the
(especially
convict
to Mhich nothing
concentrates
Mhat. folloMS
on
mainstream Australian culture and its contrast Mith American,
much of Mhat is
observed for Australia can be seen to extend to NeM Zealand.
But not all
more conspicuous differences at least Mill be remarked.
any means:
One major difference,
rest
the
of
by
Antipodes,
in
Australia,
hard to miss,
concerns
Mhich separates Australia from
of
the nature
the
environment
itself.
contrast Mith the islands of the remainder of
striking
the
the
Antipodes, is in the first place, vast - approximately the size of continental
USA
or
again
paradigmatically
of
Europe
(including
contrasted Northern
Eastern
Europe),
i.e.
It is also,
regions.
not a geologically neMer mountainous country.
flat land,
from the eastern seaboard and a feM other favoured areas,
of
the
main
an old Morn-doMn
And it
apart
is,
a dry to arid land,
predominantly treeless, a Mide red and grey land, Mith unusual inhabitants. It
is
still seen by Northerners as a harsh and difficult land,
alien and
often
ugly (formerly it Mas also an incomplete and Godless land); and this is hoM it
is
frequently vieMed also by NeM Zealanders.
landscape
and
is,
much
more
to superficial appearance,
congenial
to
from
people
NeM
The much modified
Zealand
much more like the European North,
the
North.
Correlatively,
population of NeM Zealand tends to look
32
more to the North, to England in particular, than that of Australia.
established
European-descended
Australians are often imagined to partake of the land,
earthiness.
promoted
32^
Certainly
image
of the
the
much
its harshness and
corresponding features have been assigned to the muchAustralian-Man-of-the-Land,
Thus, for example, the
ansMers back to London.
tough,
legal appeal frameMorks in NeM
23
tall
and
slim,
Zealand
still
bronzed, sun and time lined, a stockman or at least a horseman. But so far the
is not so different from that of the Texan (if they spoke,
image
Nor of course is this image of the people at all accurate.
distinguish them).
are mainly (almost 90X) suburban,
Australians
would
that
them 1iving
more than half of
in one of the two huge urban conglomerates , centred on Sydney and Melbourne,
33
The men are often soft, if brown in summer,
on the milder east coast.
increasingly resemble counterparts
in
Hhile there are certainly important features
of
and they
the western American cities.
convergence
technological-economic
for
of
features
the
land
here
determinism
and
pattern,
Thus,
is of some importance in helping
the history
of
its
the
also
network.
communication
and
transport
i t has much 1 ess relevance for
the convergence;
there is
deriving from a similar or common settlement
and
framework
economic
North America to bring out,
from
divergence
(
and Mi th little experience of the
from excess beer consumption,
overweight
account
divergence,
settlement
where
land-based
(a
determinism, so to misleadingly say) are much more important.
overlapping history,
An
part
of
especially of California and the
south-eastern
transforms
(regions which can easily be seen as ecological
of
one
in the convergence:
another),
analogous
frontier
experience,
only
there is not
but there are the miners who
came
in
the
from
there are
major differences:-
of
from
the
Australasia had no Spanish experience,
and the conf 1ic ts
American settlers with the natives were very different
the
compar i son
hostilities
in
Australia or
wars
in
New
Zealand.
character
in
Still,
the
with California avoids complicating features of US history with no
substan ti al analogue in Australia, e.g. the puritanical religious settlements,
the
slave experience and the civil war.
33.
In New Zealand the compact countryside is much more densely settled than
most of Australia, but the population is again mostly suburban (a perfect
target for television) and small town, and is (at about 86X) more urban
than USA.
24
However California is
not
entirely
but often regarded even in America as something of an anomaly
typical of USA,
(and certainly as much more experimental, cult-ridden, etc., than say the more
conformist Midwest or South).
there are significant cultural differences between
While
especially eastern USA,
USA,
there are also, then,
Australia
and
powerful forces at work
eroding those differences. The differences are already such that extrapolation
Australia of US experience and experiments in socio-political areas can be
to
unreliable, and is strictly illegitimate. For it is evident enough that, where
cultures differ sufficiently, transfer or extrapolation from one to the
may
be
unjustified.
conveniently ignored,
cultural respects.
been
seen
with
What
often
has
not
been
so that damaging
clarity,
have not
agricultural
forestry
to
cutting,
control
Australia.
Examples
burning,
differences
in the people,
have been simply
(clear
and intensive agricultural methods
(heavy
extensive use of herbicides,
machinery,
its
practices
are intensive
etc.)
and
North America with
generally better soils and more favourable rainfall regimes,
imported
been
has
even in the land,
which can be got away with more easily in
practices,
else
is that America and Australia do differ considerably in
Surprisingly the differences,
any
or
seen,
other
forestry
So it is even more with
etc.).
the
which are perhaps harder to see than those in the
1 and.
The differences carry over to differences in social and political theory,
and
differences
significant
unlikely
includes
directions
to
minarchism
arrangements;
Whitehead's
related
generally
in
in American
philosophy and ideology.
34
philosophy , for example,
obtain responsive chords or much following
individualistic,
as
more
(or
right-leaning
competitive
libertarianism),
anti-social
and
in
for
There
are
which
are
Australia.
which
Australian
This
too
is
social
but it also includes religious-based organic philosophies, such
later philosophy (which is scarcely known in
transcendental philosophies of nature,
25
Australia)
which are much too
and
religious
for secular Australian culture.
3.
Grimy details of the cultural contrast
problem
it
that
hard
is
There is of course the inevitable
that
to say much about culture
qualified and even then still subject to counterexamples.
is
Also it is hard
test hypotheses, and confirm observations, of the type involved.
much
point
in
heavily
not
even such impressionistic accounts and theory as
to
Yet there is
follows, in
particular for the intended social and political applications.
main
The
socioloqy.
method
Though
it
adopted
is
is
what
might
be
marshmallow sociology,
called
like
impression i st i c
marshmallow
it
has
substance. And it is different from and an improvement upon pop sociology. For
firstly
it backed and cross-checked,
tighter data;
anecdotal,
and,
where it can be,
other
secondly, it is assembled into a theory. It is not merely
then, in two major respects. However, it does not pretend to offer
better than tendency or trend statements;
(atypical)
by surveys and
exceptions.
But
to any generalisation there will be
that's alright.
That is the stuff
of
improved
common knowledge. The aim of course is to fit these trend generalisations into
a better story,
To
avoid
contrasts
strictly
such
into a theoretical structure,
repeated
and tiresome qualification
which can then be put to work.
of
claims,
comparisons
are however stated in bolder form than the evidence or their
bases
Often a qualifying functor should be taken as implicit
in
Even then there is constant danger of lapsing into naivety
or
warrant.
claims.
and
mere caricature in this wide and difficult sociological landscape.
34.
(From previous page) Perhaps the more original directions in an imperial
culture not exactly distinguished by its intellectual originality (as
opposed to its technological genius), especially given its resources. For
unless times have changed since the Second Horld Har, there are no
American philosophers of really great stature. Whatever one may think of
Santayana and Hhitehead, they were not really American philosophers, much
of their work being done within a European setting and a good deal in
Europe. Emerson was not strictly a philosopher. James, though clever and
entertaining, was a lightweight (by Greek standards), so presumably was
Dewey. Perhaps the erratic and eccentric Peirce affords the exception
that
proves the rule.
But the salient point is that
American
civilization, like Roman civilization with which it invites comparison,
has
not attained the intellectual heights that might have
been
anticipated, given the colossal material base.
24
present
The
rests there,
focus
unexpected
in
to
and
these
out
bring
have to go doMn
other
differences
trying
Although
contrast
upon features of environmental
differences,
socio-political
inter 1aced
preferably
some
of
between environmentalism in Australia and North America.
contrasts
one
investigation greM from the discovery
Mel1,
as
and
first,
of environmentalism in Australia by comparison even Mith North
America.
But
at points of deep ideological difference, ue soon and
by beginning elsewhere,
easily diverge into many other - sometimes relevant, sometimes more trifling features of the broader cultures, before returning at the end to environmental
contrasts.
the resulting investigation Manders through and over a Mi de and
Although
no kind of completeness is sought;
varied cultural landscape,
grander
edifices of the built cultural 1andscape
1ibraries,
35
outside.
the
larger
obiiquely,
- art
many
galleries,
of
the
museums,
and so on - are not entered or even glanced at from the
theatres,
as these structures of higher culture are typically clustered
only touch attitudes to
they
cities,
by contrast Mith religion,
Mhich,
the
natural
in
environment
Mhatever main Western form
it
assumes, has tended to dictate and enforce a shalloM human chauvinism.
a.
The influence
and decline of,
religion. There is considerable basis for
the all-important theme that "Australia [is] best understood as a (the
post-Christian
(O"Farrell,
society,
p.3).
in
Although
Mhich religion [is] barely relevant
theme
this
requires
first)
culturally"
qualification,
virtually any cultural generalisation (and gets qualified in its
source),
like
it
is not far from the mark. Australian
religions
suspicious of the Mider culture - and both to a more intense degree
than elseMhere" (p.7).
35.
On the historical place of some of these edifices in Australian culture,
see issues of Australian Cultural History.
27
Though 'there is much evidence for thinking that Australian
is becoming more secular in character',
The
phenomenon.
decline
Christianity
the weakness of religion is not a new
from a comparatively low level
began
of
popular
commitment;
'Australian churches have never been able to claim the allegiance
36
of more than a minority of the people.
In
basis)
Australia
religious
declined
has
August 3).
Nationwide,
from
attendance (on more than
33Xtol8-19Xover
the
a
merely
past
feu
to Australians
Sundays
religious
USA,
the
in
(a
resident
receding
gospel).
tending
sometimes
(ABC,
feature
The religious
to straight nuttiness,
not only in sizeable
in USA,
of Australian
presence on television (e.g.
10 channels have a
years
In Europe religious attendance is much?higher, 50X or
more, and in North America higher still, sometimes put at 60X.
fervour
occasional
life),
church
is evident
turn-outs
on
but especially in the
in a not atypical major city 3 out of
heavy religious component,
substantial portions of it hot
The born-again Christian movement - a major (and dangerous) movement
in USA involving not merely a shift back to older Christian values but also to
the
far political right - has had comparatively little flow-on in
This
religious
publicity,
these
revivals,
have
Australia.
emphasized
old
36.
The quotations are from Inglis, p.72 and p.73 respectively. The second
quote reports the only thorough study of early religious practice in
Australi a.
37.
figures from William Grey.
Such figures
are
very
Unconfirmed
Part
of
this
is
due
to
'the
reluctance
of
people
to
be
con troversi al
the
census
form,
about
their
indifference
or
hostility
to
candid, on
In
one
study
less
than
SOX
of
those
claiming
affiliation
religion'.
'could give any details at all of what takes place at Church' (Inglis,
Actual fiqures for religious behaviour (e.g. saying
p.45 and p.46).
grace, reading bible, etc.) in Australia are also 'extremely low'.
Regularly, however, there is news of a religious revival in Austra la.
But it like frequent news of the rise in value of the Australian dollar.
Having fallen not so long ago from an exchange value of US$1.12 to, on
occasions, less than $0.60, it has now risen from 63 cents to 65 cents.
'Revivalism ... has been a normal part of Protestant evangelism here for
more than a century: but there has never been any solid evidence that it
shifted for long the boundary between the Church and the world (Inglis,
p.74)
28
contradictions.
There are serious tensions, to say the least, in the American
(characteristically
religious commitment
combine
Jewish) Mith acquisitive individualism and its trappings.
peaples have Mitnessed the incompatibility (cf.
Melanesi an
Lini).
that conspicuous
at tenders do not have a serious or very deep religious
redistribution
Christian
dedicated minority.
is
the
commitment,
and the like being undertaken only by a very
smal1
But an alternative suggestion Mhich also has some backing
there is a cultural schizophrenia:
that
of
resolution takes the line that most
obvious
or
and
Many colonised
missionised
An
Christian
there are
separate
salvations,
religious and acquisitive economic.
The
religious
differences
between
USA
Australia
and
originate
in
important differences in the May the tMO colonies Mere first settled, the type
their backgrounds and their commitments,
of people,
more
conversion
But there is
The differences have been enhanced Mith the mass 20th
to it than that.
century
and so on.
to
in
science,
Australia
a
doMn-to-earth,
very
naturalistic, evolutionary science, incompatible Mith spiritual elements.
resistance to religion in Austral a is a resistance to
The
general 1y
spirituality
The only religion that has had or made
(including idealism).
much
impact is Christianity (its more recent role being due in considerable part to
practices).
immigration
That
impact moreover is slight compared Mith
North
America: the reborn Christian movement did not roll through Australia, leaving
converts
everyMhere.
Attitudes
to
religion
and
spirituality
Australian society not only from North American but also from
separate
the, in certain
respects more conservative, NeM Zealand society.
Attitudes to spirituality are directly reflected in Australian philosophy
and
in
attitudes to the environment.
A predominant
position
and
research
program, in Australian philosophy is materialism, in a strongly reductionistic
form.
The
that nature.
natural Morld studied by physical science is all;
In fact man is but an advanced
2?
man is part
of
sort of computing system, and so
at
Hind is effectively identified Mith
bottom a naturally-evolved "machine".
brain,
mental
of
product
Australian
states
being brain states (of
sophisticated
"Miring" and programming.
materialism is opposed,
religiously
or
some
sort),
Even Mhere
crude
this
rival minority positions are
spiritually involved;
a
consciousness
mostly
Mhile they are rather more opposed
not
to
reductionism, they are mostly secular.
dominant materialist reductionist
The
philosophy reflects
touches
and
in
other
several
the
broader sense, and a certain earthiness: the Australian male is a man from and
of
secondari1y.
famous
tie
so to speak,
the earth,
Attitudes to,
and,
in the North (though someMhat unjustly,
only
as Mill become apparent),
the environment.
by
traditional
Western religions;
fortunate
so the
do
chauvinism
human
For
and male chauvinism are analogous phenomena Mith similar sources;
38
They are
attitudes and patterns of domination go Mith them.
supported
figure
for Mhich Australia is
and oppression of Momen,
more directly to attitudes to
Momen
as in much mythology,
similarly
decline
of
is of paramount importance in their demise.
The
direc tion
most important for
more
5"/
environmental
thinking has
taken.
A
contrast
main
American environmental thought is in the
the
betMeen
religious/spiritual
componen t of the latter, but not the former. Deeper environmental positions in
USA
are much
more inclined to find
39
things,
to make room for the sacred,
Buddh i sm
and
spiritual
to
consider
Certainly
other
dimensions
in
natural
sympathetically
Zen
things
not
these
are
absent from the Australian scene, especially from parts of the North
40
scene , but they lack the prominence in Australian
environmentalism
33.
that they attain in North America;
As ecofeminism has stressed.
Earlier cu1tures in the Antipodes, e.g.
Polynesian, also display conspicuous chauvinism, Once again culture is to
be resisted as Mell as used.
30
regarded as essential.
then,
In many respects,
been
ideas,
and
often
that
is,
Mi th class chauvinisms.
outsiders,
partial
characteristically linked Mith sets of false
have
religions
damaging
the decline of religion is to be Melcomed.
Mi th
For
very
and
nonsubscribers
marked intolerance for
But the decline can
leave
or
a
a place
vacuum,
imported science;
and i t has in Australia.
The vacuum is hardly being filled
in a satisfactory May, as
The
for
areligious
character of Australian life has important
culture and change.
For it means that one of the main
implications
institutions
of
induction (namely church, family, and school), Mhich normally inculcate social
cultural values and Morld vieM,
norms,
many
in
the
of
influence
are largely untouched
Church and religion.
by
the
critical
historically
really
But the situation is
or
missing
seriously
Meakened.
There is no longer
respected elders - except in isolated and specialised areas,
even
such as
that technical or professional field - and
emphasis
on
youth tells against much deference or many concessions to
of
the
sort
made in more traditional or
Coupled Mi th this is the decline of the family,
39.
Third
the
heavy
Horld
of
experts
or
people
more
frameMork
a
this
in
is,
and disturbing. For other traditional components of induction are
remarkable,
also
society
That
is substantially missing.
cultural
older
communities.
Mhich has certainly lost much
(From previous page) Thus, for example, virtually all the books Nash
mentions (in 82) as "defining the emerging field" of environmental
ethics, if not overtly religious, have a heavy religious bias: indeed
Nash mentions "the
tendency to emphasize the religious nature of
man-environment relations".
deep ecology is spiritual in its every essence"; so say, accurately
enough, Capra and Spretnak (p.53) , in the course of reporting on "the
spiri tual aspects of [German] green politics " and continuing their
(pp.53-6)
German
German-Amer i can
this account
comparisons.
On
religiosity
of
American
environmentalism.
environmental ism shares the
40.
(From previous page) Or from Patrick Hhite"s approach.
But he is
inclined to bring God in Mays that leave many thinking Australians
uncomfortable. Hhat there is, Mhich is different, is a groMing link Mith
features of aboriginal culture.
31
of
former
its
and cohesiveness.
strength
accordingly falls on
education,
The
main
of
burden
such as communicational media,
induction
most notably
But these arrangements are hardly adequate for the purpose (for
41
descriptive-style
reasons).
Nor given their
ideological
messages,
television.
especially
in
the
case
of manipulate popular media
like
television
and
popular song and newspapers, are they desirable means.
This situation, the failure or weakness of main institutions of induction
and the high adjustibility and manipulability of the remainder, has advantages
as
in very different ways,
happen
of
Changes
Australia
fairly
perhaps
But
directly from the top down.
For
culture,
a
example,
can
be
shift
of
to a much more violent society could be pulled off by a combination
conservative
governments
and their police forces
and
friends
few
There is copious evidence however,
control
the
induced
or imposed changes tend to take decidedly undesirable directions
matters
that matter:
main media.
reliance andthe like.
civil liberties,
independence from
New Zealand,
children
against
that
the
Alternatively, change can be achieved at a
level, at least for significant subcultures,
of
it
liberating.
perhaps
damaging,
which have a residual basis in the
this sort,
accomplished
of
society,
change in such a society can be accomplished quite rapidly.
cultural
can
For compared with a traditional more stable
well as drawbacks.
by direct action.
who
top-down
North,
for
self-
grass roots
In the case of
consider the effect of massive withdrawal by parents and schools
from competitive sport,
rugby especially (initially in
racially-implicated rugby policies),
and the immersion
of
protest
children
instead in very different types of games.
It
influence
is around this difference in religiosity,
and its marked decline
in
in Australia, that many other cultural contrasts between mainstream
American and Australian societies revolve. However only so much can be made of
the difference; it is by no means a total explanation of the contrasts, as the
41.
See e.g. Illich, especially Deschoolinq Society.
with
situation
New Zealand culture helps show.
For mainstream New
Zealand
culture otherwise differs from American'culture in many of the ways Australian
does.
The
b.
benign
Vt
qoverment,
(market)
/v
To North Americans the amount of government, and
superficial
organisation and regulation.
of government,
level
of
role
and state control,
the
State:
Australia (and even more in New
in
Zealand) is very conspicuous, and often irksome. 'Australia has a higher level
of
planning than the United States but less than
state
country
France'
as
(Hi Id,
p.39).
Hild
goes
on
such
of
Australia
- a
government,
they find government much
and
upon
remark
to
pervasiveness of rigid bureaucratic organisation' in Australia.
suspicious
centralised
a
'the
Americans are
too
powerful
feature locals are sometimes prepared to acknowledge,
but
in
do
little about, despite much right-leaning media incitement.
Indeed government and its supporting bureaucracy are increasing in power,
size
and
in Australia.
influence
extent of public inquiries,
the
acclaimed
'Australian talent for
even
Western standards,
procedures,
incompatible
bias is written in,
approaches
objectives.
Nor
There
are
policy-determining
For they
are
top-down
a heavy
with bottom-up democratic control;
value
a conservative bias from the judicial system in the
Royal Commissions;
confrontational
intended
e.g.
For
equivalents
of increasing length and real cost.
not much asked in Australia.
questions
of
organization.
questions about these forms of "fact"-finding and
procedure^,
case
and
are large numbers of Royal Commissions and their
there
serious
bureaucracy'
and
This is part of
Royal Commissions and the like.
example,
by
numbers
So also are the associated
the
and
in
methods
Commissions)
employed
(e.g.
are commonly unsuited
are fundamental questions about
forms and procedures of government,
adversarial,
the
for
the
established
which are often raised in USA, much asked
in Australia.
Australia
was
fortunate
to have determined at
33
time
of
Federation
a
respresentative democratic system,
Mhich Mas,
by the standards of the times,
very sophisticated, and capable of reflecting minority positions * not that it
been used sufficiently for these purposes by most minorities.
has
of
mass-production
update
electronic computing equipment,
it is
noM
federal and state electoral arrangements,
Australian
the
Mith
feasible
to have a
to
more
direct democracy Mith more pluralistic and responsive representation; but such
a change is politically unlikely, improvements in the directness and pluralism
The only changes
of democracy having obtained little public discussion even.
mooted
have
anachronistic simplifications of electoral arrangements (such
are
occurred
of
direction
Mhere
some
and
reasons,
Mhere
money
minorities
a
plays
little
have
major role in
political
the
federal
impact
determining
or
gets
Mho
(For a catalogue of major deficiency of US capaitalistic
and so on.
democracy,
several
US,
the
representation,
elected,
in
in NeM Zealand) Mhich Mould take Australia
as
valuable suggestions for
electoral
arrangements
improvement,
being
one,
smaller
For
OD).
see
population,
another, government remains much more accessible and responsive (e.g. to small
represenations) in Australia than USA,
group
influenced
by
If the unfortunate American
42
folloMed hoMever, much of that Mill change
Connected
the
attitude
America
seem
Mith differences in attitude to goverment are
servants of the government.
are looked doMn upon:
immediately
to
path
is
differences
in
professional lobbying.
to
admit to having.
The civil servants
it is the sort of job one may not,
By contrast,
more
Mhich by contrast is much
the public servants in
be held in considerable esteem (and some among the
taller
in
North
does
not,
Australia
unlopped
43
poppies)
Mork
One source of the difference lies in the underlying attitudes
and service.
In USA the public sector isn't really considered
to
to
Mork
42.
Occasionally for the better. Australian government has much to learn yet
from American about openness and freedom of information.
43.
Hhat is shared betMeen North America and Australia is the attitude of
middle level people Morking for the government: often these people do not
like Morking for the government (even though it provides them Mith a very
comfortable 1iving).
34
(because
it is outside the market system),
but constitutes a burden
on
the
private sector Mhich does Mork. Though there have been efforts to import these
of (erroneous) market assumptions into Australia,
sorts
they have not really
thriven.
In seemingly curious contrast Mith the respective attitudes taken to
public service,
there is contempt for specific politicians,
if
even
are the vieMS of the political and judicial systems.
there
is
the
In USA,
considerable
resDect for the political system: the constitution is virtually God-given, and
44
certainly something to be proud of and much superior to anything elseMhere.
In
Australia
is considerable cynicism about
there
it has little or no high authority and backing,
system;
judiciary
political
gerrymandering,
the reputation of
same holds as regards the judicial system:
the
and
the
favouritism, etc., are virtually expected and accepted features.
corruptness,
Huch
hoMever,
is
constantly
being
practice) in the Make of scandals.
propped
up
(Mith
unjustified
the
success
in
Both again contrast Mith attitudes to the
public service, Mhich Australians tend to consider relatively honest, and most
certainly not open to bribery on an Asian scale (thank you!).
There are significant (but significantly different)
both mainstream cultures over government:
all
cover
deeper,
the
branches equally;
then,
in Australia respect for the
of government does not penetrate very deep,
branches
tensions,
and certainly does
in USA respect for the
institutions
in
chief
not
goes
but does not cover the functionaries.
The American situation is the more easily explained, in outline at least.
In USA government is vieMed,
frameMork apparatus,
in principle, as a rather minimal regulating and
Mhich does not itself Mork,
but keeps the market system
Mhere
the real Mork is done Mell-oiled and suitably running,
other
capitalistic
44.
institutions
such
as private
property
and
guarantee^
and
individual
1^ recent decades, 'Americans continued to say that they Mere proud of
our system of goverment.
Their lack of confidence Mas clearly directed
at the people running those institutions' (Lipset and Schneider, p.16?).
35
freedoms.
social
government has become too large,
But
expensive
services),
functionaries
parasitic
as
take the flack for that situation.
Big expensive
arrangements.
unproductive
government
is invidiously contrasted Mith market
Furthermore,
government
often operates,
and is seen operate in
organisations furthering their OMn interests and profits,
large
in
government
And
burden.
many of them accordingly parasites and seen
and employees,
looking out for themselves,
- a
overextended (specially
favour
of
the
whereas
market system, for all its basis in competitive self interest, does not bestow
great
A
favours.
extraordinary
markets:
in
political
America
mainstream
is
the market system bordering
on
and support systems
are
outside
or
operation
of
supported,
deplored.
The
feM
further
assumptions,
deductively justified through)
commitment to competitive individualism.
the
intimacy of regard and effort,
but
mainstream
American commitment to market arrangements is in turn explained by (and,
but
an
the
in
faith
arrangements taken to accompany free
brief the free-enterprise system is religiously
arrangements
by
explained
suspicion of any political arrangements stepping
a
capitalistic
the
beyond
to
commitment
and
system,
about
deal
Mith
cultural
the
The associated emphasis on Mork, and
Mhich accompany market euphoria,
can
be
explained, historically to some extent, by May of the originally difficult and
predominantly puritan settlement of America.
But such a genetic
explanation
is hardly complete; for largely gone, as no more than relics, are the forms of
early more democratic America,
the toMn meeting places and so on,
largely in
favour odf super-market places.
The American commitment to market procedures, and American enthusiasm for
market
d
lochte
methods,
does
not extend to mainstream
a distressing 'Australian distrust of markets'.
have found, underlying this
individualism,
an
Australia,
endorsement
distrust, a Marranted
Mhere
Americans
But Mhere they
rejection
of
might
competitive
they couple it,
not incorrectly, but more superficially, Mith
45
of egalitarianism'.
For market processes do redistribute
Meal th and Mhat goes Mith it, in very unequal fashion over the course of time,
36
46
both
theory
allocation
market
and American experience attest.
processes
as
highly
desirable
Americans
given,
and
take
to
tend
to
regard
deviations from or interference in on-going market processes, such as a social
preference for equality, as (economically) asinine and certain irrational, and
as carrying an expensive price tag.
The
predominant American view is that the market i^ fair and
wise,
but
preceding quotes are
(From previous page) As Withers, from Mhom the tMO the emotional and
draMn,
remarks,
'as economists and Americans,
to elude them' ANU
intellectual basis and content of such vieMs seems
Reporter 16(6) (1985) 6.
46.
47.
Beginning in 1820 Mith a much more egalitarian society, USA experienced
many decades of increasingly inegalitarian income distribution; see
Williamson and Lindert.
most
Thus, for example, Caves and Krause, pp.400 1, also p.2, Mho for the
al 1
processes
(it
is
after
part simply assume the superiority of market
,
and
appeal
repeatedly
to
the
efficiency
of
economic conventional Misdom),
..
a
definition
of
market outcomes.
It is loaded efficiency, Mith
For
market
efficiency appropriately adjusted to market proces=e=.
minimize
arrangements are not particularly efficient
or to
on market externalities (such as environmental degradation)
maximize on other objectives (such as income fairness).
1 ou t
Extensions of these points apply against the usual arguments rolledOne of
t
of
market
procedures
everyMhere.
0..
for the imposition or dominance
to be Caves and Krause, namely 'the efficiency of
......................
, and
market and nonmarket allocation is open to empirical
test,
and so the
the
distrust of market outcomes should be subject to modification 1
that
evidence Marrants' (p.400).
The trouble Mith this is not merely
(p.400).
much depends on hoM "efficiency" is assessed; it
i. is
-- that empirical tests
ar" virtually never attempted, are difficult to ca<^ out in real-1 ife
situations (Mhere there are too many uncontrolled parameters , and Mhen
methods.
attempted do not deliver unequivocal results favouring marke
of market
So there is fall back to theoretical argument: the
C._ efficiency
„
That
is
true^
Mith
"efficiency"
given
^39**"
processes can be proved.
That is true, Mith "efficiency
P
but under highly restrictive conditions,
(externalities neglected, etc.)
such as perfect competition, Mhich are virtually never satisfied in
Caves
and Krause do recognise that frequent failure
actual conditions.
1
striking
conditions
of one of the more Sn
------- for
— market efficiency in . Australia
may account for local suspicion of markets, Mhich 'may arise natur
y
a oeographically isolated country in Mhich the actors are too f
ensure efficient Market cuties' (p.2: no doubt yet another
but Minor
econoMic reason for pushing for a larger huMan population
is to get Market actors up to competitive strength!)
However such
reasons "cannot really account for the suspicion of
population substantially unfaMiliar with conditions for Market adequacy.
tt is false then, what economists like Caves and Krause try o suggest
(e.g. p.400), that distrust of Markets has, except in special cases, no
economic foundations.
That May be Mainstream American economic wisdom,
but it hardly passes undisputed in many parts of the Morld.
37
not the government;
1$?57
and 1977 held
"gives
everyone
a
for example,
... large majorities of national samples in
that the free-enterprise system is "fair and wise"
fair choice" (65/D,
(82Z),
and that it is a "fair and efficient
system" (63X)', whereas 'not only do large majorities (1980) believe that "the
government
is
themselves"
is
pretty
(78X),
much
run by a few
big
intereasts
out
looking
for
but also that "you cannot trust the government to do what
right" most of the time (73X)' (Lane,
p.3).
Lane's summary of
American
public attitudes does not extend to Australia:
the public tends to believe that the market system is a more fair
agent than the political system; people tend to include the problem
cases in the political domain and exclude them from the market; they
ignore many of the public benefits and, with certain exceptions,
prefer market goods to political goods; they prefer the market's
criteria of deserts to the polity's criteria of equality and need;
they believe that market procedures are more fair than political
procedures; and they are satisfied that they receive what they deserve
in the market but much less so in the polity, and by a different
measure, are much more satisfied with the general income distribution
among occupations than with the distribution of influence among social
groups in the polity (Lane p.7).
It is enough to reflect on Australian attitudes to wage determination,
security
and medicine,
and the like.
social
Australians are less inclined to
market rewards as fair returns for hard work,
see
and more inclined to see market
rewards as based on luck and chance as well as on performance in popular areas.
In USA,
Even where the market's methods are thought unfair to certain groups,
such as blacks and women, the intrusion of government into the sacred
precincts is regarded with hostility, for the government's program of
rectification trespasses on the evaluation of persons by the market's
process of "revealed contribution".
Hhere government purposes are
approved their implemtation is stifled, partly, at least, because the
government's
justice
norms
are discounted and
because
such
implementation
violated market justice
norms.
Thus,
minimal
government is assured and people are endowed with more commodities and
fewer collective goods (Lane, p.27).
In
Australia,
support,
active
by contrast,
respect and trust,
opposition.
Hhile
the market system does not enjoy this
level
of
but encounters especially in the area of labour,
small local markets (e.g.
fruit and
vegetables,
trash and trivia) are often well supported, the extension of markets into many
significant
spheres
of working and of moral life is
38
resisted.
Unions
and
Mith extensive nonmarket social agendas, thrive, to
labour and other parties,
irritation of Northern-schooled economists and political scientists
the
diversion of resources, open-ended
regularly point to rent-seeking behaviour,
costs,
and
the
(Mho
zero-sum nature of governmental
redistribution
equity
and
measures).
a certain market distrust or indiffierence
Since
economic phenomenon in Australia,
government
functioning
and various related
claims
Mhat they notice, in particular,
assemble no evidence;
operations in many places Mhere
organised
important
as Mell as to its historical source.
claim,
is
an
it is Morth inquiring as to the evidence of
this phenomenon of 'pervasive distrust',
competition' (p.400),
appears
markets
could
reflect
('the design and scope of governmental policy and action
This
this distrust'), so they assume government interference or intervention.
is
once
again to assume,
erroneously,
that markets are the natural May
state alternative is
constitutes "interference".
contrived,
"rights"
for
or
instance
In
by
hoMever,
areas,
many
governmental
markets
vouchers or the like trade-Morthy items,
to
of
glimpsed)
have
introducing
regulations
be
function
to
be
special
at
all.
Frequently in Australia the government eventually acted in areas Mhere markets
had failed, e.g. in generating employment, adequate Mages, etc., or else Mhere
there
over
Mere no markets,
for instance in the secularisation of society to take
formerly carried on by religious organisations.
Given the
43
context and evolution , it is decidedly misleading to say that
functions
historical
choose at some cost the seemingly greater control of outcomes
that
government interference promises' (p.2).
(and is uniikely to be),
There Mas strictly no
no cost because there Mere no satisfactory
choice
markets,
and so no such government interference.
Australian Mariness of markets, and distaste for them in various socially
^.significant
areas,
had of course been observed much earlier (though not Mith
3?
same level of disapproval as the Americans display).
the
It Mas part
a
of
long tradition of (predominantly nonmarxist) socialism, Mhich Mas coupled Mith
an
anti-economic
people.
open-handed
'Australians are a
They dislike refusing favours,
Hancock in a much quoted
(thus
costs'
stance and sentiments.
passage:
counting costs is not economic behaviour;
good-tempered,
and they do
e.g.
Connell
not
count
p.29).
nor are the nonmaximizing,
Not
take-a-
day-off, leisure-oriented features of the older culture.
Explaining
mainstream Australian ambivalence toMards government is
more
Given the anti
difficult than explaining the Mariness of market procedures.
authoritarian elements in the history of the country (e.g.the convict origins,
squatting),
bushranging,
strongly egalitarian attitudes and image presented,
the
given
Mhich are continued in the mainstream culture
government in Australia, and the
glamour
b^en
media figures),
supposed
importance:Each
and
of
ncreasing importance of politicians (Mho are
is someMhat surprising.
to lie in the lack of religiosity.
Firstly,
the poMer
and
Part of an explanation
There are tMO
and puritanism foster
Protestantism
points
has
of
49
individualism
every one of us has to ansMer for him or her-self (before
God,
or
48.
(From previous page) Australian history has arguably' shoMn a strong
preference for collective action, both Mhere there might have been
The early convict
markets to intervene in and Mhere there Mere none.
phase affords clear evidence of this, and the later nineteenth century
has !been characterised (by Butlin) as a period of 'colonial social ism'.
The early tMentieth century Mas the time Mhen the Antipodes served as; a
Hore recently , hoMever, the European
laboratory for social experiments,
II.
especial 1y since Nor Id Nar
industrial Morld has caught up,
(Australian public employment and expenditure Mere much higher than most
Western countries in the early post-Mar years, but to have not increased
nearly as much since: see Aitken).
Glenn Nithers made these points,
Mhich as he remarks gives a modified Brookings' vieM, as presented by
Caves and Krause some historical grounding.
49.
As does even the Catholic Church at times of reformation: perhaps Me are
entering a second reformation, as the Church of the Third Horld gets
transformed.
The same types of individualistic themes are also promoted
by Transcendental Meditation (e.g., the emphasis upon 'individuals taking
responsibility for shaping their OMn lives ', irrespective of their socio
economic circumstances; 'the effect of meditation itself is a strong
affirmation of our OMn poMer to affect our OMn lives and so accept
greater responsibility for our OMn level of Mellness': H. Southern, ANU
Reporter 16(5) ( 1985)).
40
!.;.i h Qii! 9'-.- er) :
is supposedly responsible for his. or her
each
successes and failures,
own
lives,
their
additions! props and supports, such as welfare
etc.
and an elaborate social security system, are not required (or even desirable).
That religious basis tor individualism has been largely eroded or displaced in
Australia,
but
not
North
in
Rmerica where a
latent
puritanism
persists
(prohibition would never have survived in Australia).
the State serves as a substitute if not for the Maker at least
Secondly,
for organised religion or for the Church (in a society strongly influenced
'The functions and power of the state in Australia have come to
Catholicism).
take
over,
O'Farrell,
bx
and
p.7).
displace,
the
'Reliance
on
social
the
activities of
religion''
state has increased to
the
(to
adapt
extent
of
significant erosion of former religious-oriented areas: in charity, hospital=,
a whole gamut of social and psychological services and counselling work ,
and
above all in education (there are, to take one striking
50
example, no strictly private Australasian universities ).
h-= miqhf hav .idd^d,
But the religious explanation is not entirety plausible.
For one thing,
the substitution argument has been used to explain too many '-lu^ely
phenomena:
patriotism.
UBR,
where
phenomena
50.
not
just
the
Nationalism
power
of government,
but
nationalism
also
and patriotism are however at least very strong
no corresponding substitution is assumed.
supposed 1y
connected
explained
appear
almost
as
And in fact
old
as
the
all
and
in
the
allegoric
features of
The reasons for this are complex;
the
1 ack of a
Australasian society taken up below: anti-intellectualism
lack
of
wealth
philanthropic tradition, egalitarianism, and the relative
and
grant
endowmen
t
,
and super-rich capitalist.
On the philanthrophic,
have
.norm
situation
for culture in Australia (to which norm
things
early
substantially reverted following the high-cultural heydays of the
70s), see McLeod, p.2ff.
4!
can be.
substituting
extent
In addition,
t
the religous explanation covers
which the State has deliberately extended its power and
to
up
the
displaced
rival social structures, thereby undermining community- and self-reliance.
For these reasons a different two-part hypothesis wi1 } be preferred which
is
State
The hypothesis is that
the religious explanation as one part.
includes
progressively
and
organisation
displacing
society,
and
arrangements,
social
local
that what religious
and
the
community
organisations
had
supplied were many community arrangements; especially in health and education,
'n
fact
m economic and political science
(.especially
other
conflation of the State with society
the
decision
social
arrangements:
arrangements
making
is
nowadays
especially
literature),
compared
are
ubiquitious
wi th
it is virtual!y always the state versus the market,
when
market
Mith other
social arrangements'and mechanisms collapsed into the state.
is much less opposition and resistance to the encroachment of
There
where as emphasized
Australia than in USA,
in
state
an
pathetic) faith m market alternatives persists.
rather
reactive)
state
encroachement
egalitarian measures;
for
welfare
and
but often it is promoted for sectional advantage from a
this reason,
for
cand
Sometimes (typically
supported
state (hence the view of the milch-cow state,
hand-out
Partly
in Australia is
unquestioned
the
remarked by Hancock).
the impression still comes strongly
through
that,
despite the growing power of the State, respect for government and politicians
does not run deep in Australian society,
would
do
distaste
no
harm
and could, easily be
were legendary Australian disrespect
for
dislodged.
It
authority
and
for tall poppies directed against political leaders and
government,
so at least that both are regarded more critically.
The
society
surprisingly
rule-bound
and
uncritical
fits with attitudes to government,
character
of
Australian
and again traces back to colonial
origins. H heavy-handed government was something people got accustomed to, and
also relied upon and reacted against,
42
early on in Australia. For example, 'in
1/-98
government of New South Hates
th?
authoritative to a high degree' (Within,
was
omnipresent,
centralised,
p.22).
And, owing especially to/the
cost of what is much more evident in USA, ! oca! government).
society
apparent!'/ more rule-bound than North American,
is
and
prolonged strikes are much more common in the antipodes.
But although the
as
things
such
To some extent
this
can be seen as a further reflection of rules: trade union laws are stronger in
the Antipodes and unions less repressed.
on the State has meant (excess) toleration of the State and
Reliance
governments, and hence the condoning of much corruption in
branches (e.g. pot ice and prison systems).
than
European
(except by occasional journalists)
government and its
Australian attitudes are more like
m the way corruption is
umerican
North
of
hidden
and allowed to pass.
from
gaze
This is not to imply
that corruption is more extensive than in USA * it is almost certainly less
-
but that it is viewed and treated differently.
The
ugly
underlying
face of the State,
private property,
capitalism:
laissez fairs,
security and violence.
for
advanced
Despite the minima!,
view of the State prevalent m the USA,
The US State has a very extensive,
different.
and conditions
''?ry
the practice is
and crucial role in providing
the conditions + or advanced capitalism both at home and abroad. At home, there
are two main factors, maintenance of capitalistic institutions such as private
property and ailing big business, and interna! security.
In
USA
contrast,
in
property
are
private property has taken on an almost sacred
Australia,
much
restrictions on (in principle)
more extensive,
accept further restrictions and the "erosion" of private
for
example,
equivalent.
is
built
entirely on leasehold land;
Much
rural
land
important
in
leasehold
categories.
establishing
was
unfettered
and there is much more
leasehold,
parks and reserves,
something
is
which
and a good deal
to
Lanberra,
Ameri_an
no
Nuch "freehold" rural land is under various
43
private
preparedness
property.
there
By
character
has
proved
remains
is
types
of
si^y^
* a ] [ rfi e s te .-g. police -st n d-pr i s o n * s y-s^omsJ——Fm-str^lian...attitudes are more li-^e
North
than
European
in the way corruption is
American
and allowed to pass.
(except\by occasional journalists)
hidden
gaze
from
to imply
This is n
tainly less
that corrup^ixpn is more extensive than in USf) * it is almost c
that it is viewed and treated differently.
private property,
capitali^m:
laissez
face of the State,
underlying
The
t in the USR,
tensive,
The US State has a v
different.
advanced
Despite the minimal,
security and X'iolence.
view of the^^ate preval
fairs,
for
and conditions
the practice is very
and crucial role in providing
both at home and abroad. Rt home, there
the conditions for advanced capit
are two main factors, maintenance of capitalistic institutions such as private
and internal secur i ty.
property and
!
In
s taken on an al
USR
contrast,
in
property
are
st sacred
restrictions on (in principi^)
ia,
more extensive,
restrictions and the "erosion" of private
ortant
a,*tc,n 1 rl
51.
in
built
entirely on leasehold land;
Much
rural
land
establishing
was
leasehold,
parks and reserves,
there
something
preparedness
rty.
is
catMuch ""Treel)ol*d——r-uraJ—Land—Ls—under various
to
Canberra,
American
proved
which
and a good deal
By
private
unfettered
and there is much m
is
character.51
remai
ty
The origin of the institution is much clearer that its .justification.
French constitutional and cultural influence undoubtedly contributed to
the situation that has arisen; but even the French have observed the
'private affluence and public squalor' of much of US of
Fortunately,
however,
USf^ has retained some zones of public land which on French
perception would be private, e.g. beaches, where in the French world it
may be necessary to rent a spot to sit down.
Hhile the guaranteed accumulation of capital is essential to capitalism
and to acquisitiveness, the accumulation of property and a comprehensive
institution of property is not necessary for competitive (as distinct
from acquisitive) individualism.
The reason is simply that competition
may
be
differently motivated than by acquisitivism or
material
accumulation, e.g. for status, honour, pure perfectionism, etc. However
material accumulation can most certainly foster competition (since
cakes are limited); and the Hestern competitive drive would surely be
much dampened were the ability to accumulate material rewards and
property reduced.
zoning restraints,
etc.
orders,
And
-tor example, environmental preservation, tree preservation
rural land is regulated by
all
virtually
local
Pasture
Protection Boards, Mhich can authorise removal or destruction of noxious Meeds
or species, by
organisations Mhich
bushfire
require
can
fire
restriction
practices, by Mater and soil conservation authorities, and so on. Fortunately,
some
of
Scandinavian
52
regulation Mhich in effect requires the exploitative use of forested land.
hoM<=ver,
the
have
controls
private, corporate and public, are a very visible
Security arrangements,
and
not taken the direction
feature of American social arrangements. In USA the police
53
is highly conspicuous to Antipodeans.
(In this respect the place
expensive
presence
resembles Eastern block countries much more than less uptight parts of Hestern
Accompanying
Europe.)
precautions.
(Among
the
an extraordinarily high
is
this
most
guarded
places
in
level
Australia
of
security
are
American
installations: take a look at the US embassy in Canberra, or at Pine Gap.)
high level of police,
A
things,
different
for
and associated military presence,
first,
instance,
as
often,
can
reflect
repressive
and
unrepresentative political, regimes, or second, considerable social inequality
alonq Mith dubious legal methods of self-aggrandisement,
or third,
both (as
in Brasil). The USA is usually taken to be a relatively pure case of the
e.g.
second.
The
inequality
level
in
opportunity,
theory
of
the
etc.
a
of
security is presented as
society,
in the distribution
reflecting
of
private
level
of
property,
in
the
But it is not merely this: there is no associated accepted
person's
place,
as
in
class
or
culturally
stratified
societies, Mhich .justifies position in a social hierarchy, or Mhich .justifies,
52.
Of course Australian privatisation in turn leaves much to be desired by
Melanesian and Aboriginal standards.
53.
As a raM NeM Zealander, Mho greM up in a small toMn Mith only a couple of
policemen, I Mas astounded by the level of police activity in Meal thy and
laM-abiding Princeton. There Mere 3 standing sets of police in the toMn:
state, city, and university, and the federal force also had access. All
Mere armed: the situation Mas not merely astonishing, but alarming as
for instance,
On the contrary, it is all too evident, in
continued poverty.
the
highly individualistic US society,
ha=
b<=*=n largely eroded,
role
Mhere sense of social place and
that there is no very sharp moral division
between
54
and illegal aggrandisement,
"legal"
between police and mafia,
etc.
(The
same phenomenon is developing in Australia, especially in NSH and Queensland.)
There
is
a
major reason Mhy the USA is not
another
pure
and
case,
that
concerns the significant level of repression.
The
security arrangements in USA operate to deal
internal
also
Mith
certain types of political dissent. There are substantial numbers of political
mainly black;
prisoners,
even so the number appears small compared Mi th many
of the Third Horld regimes USA supports (e.g. Indonesia to take a neighbouring
55
example)
. In Australia by comparison there are feM political prisoners
(though there are no doubt some,
some of
the
and have been conspicuous examples); hoMever
requisite legislation to detain such prisoners,
legally, is noM
in place, and should be removed before it can be used.
Hhether
or not the number of political prisoners in USA
of prisoners is not.
number
according
to ABC figures,
is
small,
in
There are huge numbers of prisoners
the
USA:
more than half a million people in gaol.
'As its
prison population increases at record rates, it has been estimated that the Uh
has
already
a larger percentage of its citizens behind bars than
nation except the Soviet Union and South Africa" (OD,
figures by means reflect the extent of the crime.
p.28).
any
other
fet the prison
There is an enormous crime
crime rate Mi th more than 5000 unsolved murders a year.
The
USA is,
Australia is not.
sheer,
54,
55.
increasingly since Horld Har II,
a
militarised
society;
The militarisation of the USA is not simply a matter of the
massive numbers (more than 2 million) of Americans in uniform, at home
As Veblen observed, early in the Century.
For Indonesia,
January l'?85/.
see
Amnesty
International.
Lf
s t r a 1 i an
Society
and
hold doMn the
to
abroad,
and
enterprise
bureaucracy
business
and keep the Morld free (but
empire
It is a matter also of
interests).
and research devoted to
military
heavily militarised Keynesianism) have
(of
USR,
though
not nearly as many as might be expected;
they
have
mainstream
support,
these
the
critics within
sadly it appears
reflect
and to that extent
Ub
industry,
Certainly
objectives.
arrangements
the
for
that
prevailing
the
cu1ture.
one of
in simple terms,
policy and practice is,
US
abroad,
international
capitalism
under US hegemony and of encouraging or
right-leaning
capitalism
in as many places
practice has worked Mell from
part
significant
Mith
militarily
"information",
installing
and education,
a
channelling
is
US domination
largely political and economic and
propaganda
The
feasible.
an American business viewpoint,
of the Morld surplus value into the USa.
maintained by a mix of methods,
together
as
promoting
military,
heavily backed
by
intelligence, security, and military operations.
like american religion,
US practices abroad thus exhibit,
set
of
double standards:
a rhetoric of freedom and
rights,
a remarkable
given
limited
practical realisation Mithin the USa, coupled Mith activities quite opposed to
those ideals in many Third Horld countries.
The capitalistic and bureaucratic
control of the main media and educational outlets is such,
the
majority
perception
of
Americans
remain
largely
of US support of aggression,
sheltered
violence,
that
furthermore,
from
torture,
inconvenient
suppression
of
rights, and so on, abroad (points Mell documented in Chomsky and Herman.)
56
Hhile australia cannot, by and large, be convicted of such practices,
government
policies
activities.
States
malpractices,
56.
support,
find
it
and
remain
very
uncritical
expedient to turn a largely blind
and even atrocities,
of,
eye
of other "allied" or neighbouring
american
to
the
states
These are small-scale activities Mhich channel "aid" in fact beneficial
to military structures of adjacent countries, rather than to the local
peoples, as Mith aid to the Philippines.
(witness australia's official approach, and aid packages, to Indonesia and the
Phi!ippines).
The
USa
is a particularly violent society,
directly
(in
several
torture
training),
Mays:
military
violence
and exports
practices,
intelligence
through example,
and also less directly,
both
operations,
through
media
coverage
and
the sooner
the
American
life-style ceases to be one to imitate and becomes one to avoid
and
scorn,
popular culture,
the better.
and so on.
From this angle,
The relative extent of violence in US life is Mell enough
'On the average death by homocide is eight
illustrated by homocide rates:
to
nine times more likely in the US than in other advanced industrial states ^OD,
It is even more strikingly revealed by comparative figures for
57
gun killings Mhere detail:s for 1980 are as folloMs:
hand-
p.27).
In
are
Australi a
UK, Canada
SMi tzer 1 and
USa
in
in
in
in
4
8
24
11,998
USa.,
part this is no doubt due to the vast numbers of hand-guns i n
not
used purely for deterrence :
hand-guns
countries
60 mi 11 ion in 1980.
are not available in the same free
they
to
felt
(presently)
are
ideological
difference:
be
required.
and
and
easy
is
there
Pacific
South
In
an
Mhich
May,
nor
important
Reagan's mainstream American vieM that 'the right to
carry arms shal1 not be infringed' is not shared in the South,
Mhere no
such
laMlessness
and
unqualified right is conceded.
The
differences
.just
in Meapon availability,
are
Australia
as a pioneering society,
the
of
American
vieM
of
in roughly the same position as parts
of
American Mest some (unspecific) time ago,
reasons
toting,
the reasons Mhy the common
violence,
some
gun
is
concern the organisation of the society,
seriously
astray.
Other
the extent of socialisation
and lack of key elements of a coMboy economy.
57.
Figures from a 1984 aBC documentary on violence in USa.
are given in 00, pp.28-'?.
4?
Similar figures
.
Liberty, equality, fraternity - compared and updated.
Though conditions
of personal liberty in Australasia are rivalled in feM other places,
not,
in
marked
contrast
to
58
appropriate bills of rights.
examples
restricted;
USA,
guaranteed constitutionally
Furthermore,
they remain quite
they are
by
or
any
unnecessarily
are conditions on libel and the right to MithdraM one's
labour in Australia (and in NeM Zealand constraints on sexual freedom).
despite
serious
inadequacies in Australasian legal codification and
recognised poor performance areas as regards civil liberties,
Yet,
certain
it seems
clear
that the record of political repression and infringement of civil liberties in
59
USA is Morse.
There is also notably less tendency to self-censureship,
whether
in the Mork-place or in social life,
than in North America.
in Australia (and NeM
Zealand)
Australians tend to be open and speak their minds
on
things.
in several respects
Australian society is considerably more egalitarian,
(but especially wealth and treatment),
dominated
its
cultural
life.
supported^inequality in Britain.
than the Northern societies that
There is
conspicuous,
and
still
have
socially
There is very conspicuous inequality in USA,
most countries in the primary US "sphere
of
influence",
and
also
58.
In certain respects this lack of state guarantee matters only to the
legally inclined Mho Mant to see everything codified (it certainly
In part the lack of
matters less to the anarchistically inclined),
appropriate codification of rights and freedoms is due to poli t ical
inertia and the reluctance of government to concede rights^1 in part it
can be traced to a different heritage from the American, to
t_ {he British
The
trouble
is that there
system enlarging on an uncodified common laM.
______ _ of
_ common
__
are elements
laM, still having some force, Mhich are inimical
to various freedoms.
59.
Nhile it is difficult to impossible to document claims of this sort, some
quantitative impression can be gained by trying to match temporal1 stages
stages in
of political repression in USA, as assembled by Goldstein, Mith
<
Similarly
corresponding
lists
of
conspicuous
infringements
of
Australia.
civil
liberties
could
be
draMn
up.
But
even
if
this
arduous
recognised
there Mould remain many problems of
task Mere folloMed through,
especially
as
to
Mhat
extent population and concentration of
Mei gh t ing,
should
be
used
to
average
data, etc.
popu1 at i on
60.
This is part (but part only) of the alleged rudeness and crudeness
Australians Mhich repels refined Europeans.
On the self-censorship
American citizens, see Goldstein, p.556ff.
in
e.g.
of
of
Central and Latin America.
The inequality is obvious to Australians, and even
It is confirmed in varying degrees, by
who visit major US cities.
Europeans,
a ranqe of statistics,
home ownership, extent of
as to wealth differentials,
poverty, etc.
inequality
Gross
is not only present in America,
throuoh the competitive individualism of the
underpinned,
blame:
to
herself
work will remove it.
Protestant
work
(such
approved
as
Poverty
culture.
the opportunities to avoid it are there,
or
individual
and
Thus inequality is justified ideologically in terms of a
strongly
and worth ethic and s
American
American inequality is not,
primarily
ideologically
A person in poverty has only himself
squalor are commonly deserved.
and
but is
and
social
philosophers
political
like that of Europe,
however,
suppl'-*'.
one of class, but
and of opportunities connected with this.
of wealth,
philosophy
individualistic
old
New and
money are equated.
A
it
and the extensive popular support
main source of American inequality,
seems
to enjoy,
widespread support for
is evident
fairly
unfettered
market processes and belief in market justice, and so (with further suppressed
assumpt i ons)
in
capi taiism.
American inegalitarianism is supported,
grossly
unequal
distribution
wealth
under
market-based
at a deeper level then,
—sttppor-fs—marke-t—ar^-angetwnts a&d the like,--- t4+e—the-mcc
individualism.
competitive
1 n ter*!
But
the
endor semen t
is far from clear,
some cur i ou s specu 1 ^Lc-n .
ex amp 1e,
much less egalitarian countrDes
it "Australian nationalism" w
it ha
for
een a matter
^en tied to nationalism; but
e explication circular).
And,
in
concerning the vigorous
= democratic values against an angl'-English themselve
,
and h
of
JSA) appear as nationalistic (to make
par t i a 1 opposi t i on to
ertion of k
source
e upper
These no longer tenable theses a
tw-eg di sp 1 i.ced-by a11-J Lh—an t i ^aut
class,
it is
t *.r i an , ttreme---- eta—th# fac
h'./
wh.3.t
suppor ts
market
competitive
1 n teres ted
endorsement
arrangements and the 1 ike,
But
individualism.,
of egalitarianism'
some c u r 1 ou s speculation.
the
is far from clear,
For ex ample,
the
source
themes
self-
of
'Australia's
of
and has been a matter
for
it has been tied to nationali am $ but
much less egalitarian countries (such as UBA) appear as nationalistic (to make
And,
it "faustralian nationalism" would render the explication circular).
partial opposition to this,
has been pressed a thesis concerning the vigorous
assertion of Australia's democratic values against an anglophile upper
or against the English themselves.
said,
it
being displaced by another,
with
inconsistent
hierarchial
the
organisations
in
ihese no longer tenable theses are, it is
anti-authoritarian, theme - on the face of
extensive popular
as
class,
government
Antipodean
and
army
- as
for
support
to
such
'Australians
something said to be shown by their
-61
bad relations with the police.
No doubt element* of all these
collective dislike of higher au thor i ty',
undoubtedly
themes have historical relevance, and certainly Australian egalitarianism
So far as
deep historical roots'; but that does not explain why it persisted.
however,
it has persisted,
the
including
controlling
two-way
Australian
elites,
linkage
it appears to be due to a complex mix of factors,
anti-authoritarian
perhaps
causal) with the
orientation of the mainstream society,
Hancock
aptly
has
streak
particularly Northern ones.
(not
has
opposition
to
But more important is
the
and
fraternal
and
socialistic
what was 'colonial socialism
called 'socialism without doctrines' (.though
it
and what
is
not
really devoid of underlying ideas).
Not
convincing
61.
only
is
detail,
this explanation of
Australian
egalitarianism
short
on
but in its course it touches upon an interesting paradox,
These now unlikely explanations are brought together in
Connell z4.
Against
Hancock's
claim 'that egalitarianism and nationalism
are
"interwoven"', was
opposed the view of the 'democratic
masses ...
defining themselves against the Anglophile upper class'
(p.34) and
Phillips' claim that 'allied to this rebellion against the English is a
vigorous asset* tion of democratic values' .
'he anti-authoritarian claim
is advanced by Connell himself.
Bad relations with and clashes with the
police are of course not uncommon elsewhere, including America.
puzzle of Australian anti-authoritarianism - or authoritarianism
the
continues to vex discussion of the mainstream cutture.
there
there
other,
unnecessar11y
is
evident support for,
authoritarian
reliance upon^and
institutions,
such as
heavy-handed
of group size theory.
resist
the
about
complacency
"self-reliance",
most
But on
Australian
attempt wi11
gover nmen t
to
side,
For on the one
clear evidence of Australian antipathy to authority.
is
ujhich
by a difference
Roughly, individuals and small primary groups Mill tend
imposition by other individuals or small groups or
factions,
counter to large groups or attempt to
Australians Mill not
but
buck
the system.
To say that Australian society is more egalitarian than American, or than
British or French, is not however to say that the local myth of an egalitarian
society is Justified,
and some,
and perhaps extensive, poverty.
than m New Zealand),
appears
or that there are not conspicuous differences in wealth
There are (and on both <-ount= more
and the polarisation of income and wealth in
to be increasing (with inflation).
Even so the differences
the very rich and the poor are not nearly as marked,
63
numerous or ill-assisted as in USA.
In
62.
Australia
there
Australia
between
and the poor are not
is also a recognised cultural
drive
towards
so
more
The evidence is notjmere 1y historical and anecdotal, as Rigby shows. Nhat
Rigby demonstrateshs that English college students are 'significantly
more pro—authority' than Australian, 'with English students fa.V'juring
institutional authorities more strongly (p.41, p.46). Rigby's, results
also suggest that Australian radicals (at least among students) are more
opposed to authority than their English counterparts',
and
that
'attitudes towards the police are not anoma 1 ou s in Australian life ...
but fall consistently into a pattern of attitudes towards institutional
authority genera 11 y' (p.46).
Nh areas 'England has lor had J a tradition
of respect for ths police; in Australia the police are commonly viewed
with contempt, especially by the young
as previous studies have
confirmed (p.46) .
Note that authoritarian' is used throughout in itstandard dictionary senses of 'subservience to authority ,
placing
obedience to authority above persona! liberty' and not in the unfortuante
extensions (discussed by Rigby) made by Adorno in elaboration of the
"authoritarian personality".
Rigby explains the notion he is operating
with as 'the degree of approval or disapproval with which a person views
various institutional authorities' (p.42).
51
equality,
manifested
poppies"
ta!!
or
striking!;/ in the proverbial procedure of "cutting dc.-jn
"tall timbers".
at
F'eop!e who excel,
in
!east
certain
respects such as intellectual or artistic ways, are strong!;/ disapproved of in
certain traditional social groups,
poms,
are
and,
like know-alls,
cut down to size if it can be done.
But this levelling is b;/ no
for instance in sport,
means general!;/ applied locally to outstanding people,
84
politics, and increasingly nowadays in business.
nowadays-
applied
fellow
sm a Iler
break",
a
63.
in the bigger cities is levelling
Even
up,
less
giving
regularly
the
-mall
though such aid appears to have been accepted practice
c omm u n i t i es,
along with
poufters and
wogs,
and h as con s i der ab1e basis in the
t_ u 1 t u r a 1
sympathy with the underdog' and more broadly in an
in
tradition,
intolerance of
(From previous page) There is much argument about the extent of equa!1ty
data organised by Rubenstein (especially Iable 1,
in Australia. ' But
the
meagre
spread of weal th in lustra! ia compared with d-A
p.26) reveals
Embury
and
Fodder 'conclude that although the distribution
and Britain.
Australia
is
far from egalitarian, it is no less so than a
of income in
as
Japan
and
rather more egalitarian than some of the
country such
world's most industrialised nation , notabty, USA, UK, Canada and Italy
They present as a. common finding in sociology that
the
(p. 122)
inequality of size distribution of family income compares favourably with
(p.l8-f.).
that of other countries' (p.188).
Aitkin, in the course of making
= e^cr'R] points of relevance regarding the equality and social welfare
for more than 70 years
situation in Australia, is less cautiou:
Australia has enjoyed the benefits of a basic-wage system and an arbitral
method of settling industrial disputes which incidentally fixes wage and
salary rates.
Two consequences are that Austral ia (a.) has one of the
most equal distributions of income in the world [further references are
cited], and (b)
that there has been a floor under the wage system
throughout the twentieth century" (.pp.18-'?).
Reliable data pinning down the comparative extent of poverty in Australia
and USA faces further difficulties, in differences in the way poverty
lines are set, and because the Australian government fails to keep any
due records of poverty (%?ot always recognising it as a social problem?).
As a very rough rule of thumb,
however, poverty appears almost tw1cf a =
extensive in USu, in terms of percentage of population, as in Australia.
64.
It remains unclear where levelling down applies and where it is waived,
and perhaps there are no clear principles involved.
The criterion, if
any, is not what Caves and Krause suggest, that 'foreign recognition of
outstanding qualities of certain Australians somehow legitimizes those
persons and makes them acceptable at home (p.?).
'Justified levelling-down is a significant feature of the culture, that
will recur; for example, it is linked toAustalian anti-intellectualism,
and it is said to be motivated by the incompetence and typical corruption
of controlling elites.
64
n nti).3 rLaj^z.----- Ff)—btrsi He = S .
i rtg 1 y
p.
nowadays
break",
a
up,
"giving
small
the
ce
though such aid appears to hav^
and has considerable basis in the
communities,
ma!I er
1evelling
in the b i ggerco
in
tradi tion,
culture
3 1 nnr^-L^Llhaih\hii th the under dog-—and mare- broad! y --i-rY—M' frYtc 1 oranco
65
oppression'' .
pressures
The
extent
greater equality are shown more
to
objectively
of party and political support for redistributative and like
which would lessen inequality.
in
the
measures
Such support, like the support for socialistic
is much more widespread and respectable
measures it is commonly coupled with,
in Australia than in North America.
The
reluctance
broadened
egalitarian
(nowadays
facade of Australasian life has been propped up by
also
declining,
especially
under
the
impact
the
of
a
immigration practice) of rich people to extravagantly display their
wealth (in vulgar European fashion).
Presumably the forces of egalitarianism,
though in part mythical,
explain this reticence to tout wealth and indulge in
66
conspicuous or wasteful consumption.
64.
It remains unclear where levelling down applies and where it is waived,
and perhaps there are no clear principles involved.
The criterion, if
any, is not what Caves and krause suggest, that foreign recognition of
outstanding qualities of certain Australians somehow legitimizes those
persons and makes them acceptable at home (p.2!) .
Qualified levelling-down is a significant feature of the culture, that
will recur; for example, it is linked to Austalian anti-intellectualism,
and it is said to be motivated by the incompetence and typical corruption
of controlling elites.
65.
These sorts of equality in justice. as they might be called, are
mentioned
in Connell 74,
who reminds us of the importance
of
distinguishing equality determinates, such as treatment, condition,
opportunity, and so on.
All these forms of equality are manifested to
some extent in Australia, whereas in UbA equality is more and more
restricted to a certain (but limited) equality of opportunity, along with
equality (in principle) before the law. The famous Australian equality
in treatment, approach and so on, is regularly illustrated by the
phenomena of tea and taxis, and in the (democratic) slogans that 'no-one
is (feels?) superior' and that 'one man is as good as another'
(cf.
p.2'?ff.) .
But
males,
Australian
to (potential) mates.
Mhite
male-dominated
Evident blots on Australian egalitarianism
social arrangements.
prevailing in USA,
society.
decade,
doubt
It is little consolation that they are perhaps little Morse
.justified.
Altering
these
in
image
While the
of prevailing social arrangements as sexist and racist is no
criticism
those
Momen
and the situation changed considerably in the last
exaggerated,
are
Indeed Australia has a particularly bad
image in the North as a racist and male chauvinist society.
L-jas
Australian
notorious White Australian policy and the treatment of
former
the
egalitarianism has been restricted to
than
Mhich is also often attacked as a racist and sexist
Antipodean arrangements,
in a
fashion
for
Mhich
however there is little traditional basis in any cultures, offers the prospect
of
major changes in social and political arrangements,
other
matters
as peace and Mar (as feminists have explained,
such
especially
and as
in
opinion
po11s have c1 ear 1y indie a ted).
at
With the comparative male egalitarianism of Australasian societies g% a
lack
of
class
stratified
and
Mell
While
(there are professionals,
so forth),
appropriate
distinctions.
Australasian
society
of various sorts,
the important notion of c1 ass,
to the Antipodes.
undoubtedly
blue-collar Morker=,
like so many
enough in the North or at least in Europe,
is
classificatiun=
does not
extrapolate
There is practically no upper class and the
and Morking classes substantially merge,
middle
and there are virtually none of
the
significant social barriers (discussed^/ in Olson) that go Mith cla=r-, at lea = t
6^
(From previous page) This, and the comparative l ack of Meal th, may also
help to explain the paucity of grand mansions in the Australian
countryside.
Host grander mansions these days are built by fairly
recently arrived immigrants Mho have made their fortunes.
.67.
Similarly Marxist theory does not extrapolate Mell Mithout fundamental
overhaul. It is decidedly misleading to speak, as some do, of the rigid
class structure of rural society'* in Australia, Mhere all those spoken of
are land holders, often large landoMners. There are divisions, farmers
and graziers, poor graziers and rich graziers, and there is a rough
understood social order of landholders based on quality of property,
Mealth origin, time in district, social and political affiliations, etc.
But it is hardly a rigid order, and, more important, does not correspond
to Marxist (or other) classes.
for sufficiently Mhite male Australians.
society
(another
diversity on conventional indicators than
less
shoM
the strata in Australian
Moreover,
in
USA
partly due to the much
but highly stratified society),
"classless."
those
smaller spread of Meal th and smaller population.
in
The conventional stratification picture leaves out an element of
variety
society Mhich may prove of much importance for social
change,
Australian
namely the growing phenomenon of Alternative Australia;
that is,
Mho
people
have dropped out of or moved out of the mainstream society and its concomitant
commitments to a Mork ethic, to materialism, to maintaining an approved social
standing, etc. (in short, have abandoned key elements of the dominant Northern
It
paradigm).
is not knoMn (and is impossible to estimate exactly) hoM many
people belong to this loose and vaguely defined grouping, but it is sometimes
88
very optimistically' put at several millions.
It certainly takes in the
extensive
netMorks
of
communes and alternative farms in
(Mith a main concentration in coastal northern NSN).
prices
is
(for that matter,
USA
rural
are much higher,
hoMever
takes
in
many in the Aboriginal population,
distinctive ethic grouping.
S3.
The grouping
in the cities;
though
land
Mhere
the squatters and many
beach people and others surviving largely on the dole
probably
Zealand,
and unemployment significantly loMer/^j
but includes
in
It appears unmatched
it is not matched in NeM
by no means rural,
Australia
eastern
they
of
the
and it
form
a
It is people from Alternative Australia Mho have
On the groups involved see Smith and Crossley, Cock and
especially
Sommerlad et.al.
To keep matters in perspective, it is important to
recall that these groups have been much influenced by analogous groups in
For instance,
USA and by a significant literature floMing from USA.
Morking
Capra and Spetnak estimate that the membership of 'groups
is over
Mith means and goals that are consistent Mith Green politics .
2 million'* (p.223);
(p.223) ; ^ith a base of that size (though still only about IX
Even more
of the population)^ Green America is far from negligible.
pr om i s i n g, '15 million adult Americans ... according to recent studies by
the research institute SRI International, are basing their lives fully or
par t i a11y on such values as frugality, human scale, seif-de termi nation,
HoMever partial
ecological aMareness and personal groMth'* (p.i?5) ,
basing on one such value may amount to little more than subscription to a
meditation or encounter group; and so the high figures may only reflect
Californian fashions.
54 5^
played a major part in protest and action movements right around Australia, in
70
the forests of North Queensland, East Gippsland, and first at Terania Creek ,
by the dam sites in Tasmania,
at the uranium mines in South Australia, at the
American installation in Central Australia, ... ,
Though
points,
they
of
many
have broken Mith the dominant social paradigm
these peoples have tapped into elements of
independent Australian culture.
strongly
at
the
critical
continuing
They represent an important source
and, because of the May they connect Mith the older culture, they
for change,
can carry other parts of the established population Mith them.
As
equality
with
and liberty,
even
so,
more
so,
Mith
fraternity.
Mainstream Australian society certainly surpasses American in fraternity, Mith
fraternity
broadly' and
communi ty,
and
sec t i ons).
But liberty , equality, community , these are important virtues to
construed,
sexistly
elements
socialistic
(as
to
Mill duly
include
Mateship,
in
subsequent
appear
aim for, or even better to have already built into a society or state.
that is the sort of society French revolutionaries long envisaged,
sort
of
only
there
society that some of the founders intended to implant in
it
got
out
of control and
greM
in
different
and
Indeed
it is
the
America
dangerous
71
directions.
Australian
society is lucky to retain a solid
cultural
base
6'?.
(From previous page) The dole is the government-supplied unemployment
alloMance.
The dole undoubtedly finances a good deal of day-to-day
operations of Alternative Australia (as distinct from capital investment
in land and equipment), and to that extent its flourishing depends on a
subsidy from mainstream Australia. But it doesn't folloM that it is
parasitic, any more than infant industries Mhich are subsidised are
parasitic. Furthermore, it can be argued, Mith some justice, that
mainstream Australia has confiscated the main means of production for its
OMn ends and uses, and should pay rent for the resources and facilities.
70.
In the forest occupations,
Zea 1 artd Mere adap t ed.
71.
So it is astonishing that, on the basis of its economic performance,
American society is often presented as some sort of model for Australian
society to try to emulate.
A narroM economism,
Mhich measures
productivity through material goods turned out and, more important here,
quality of life basically through per capita GNP, and neglects liberty,
equality and fraternity, is at Mork here/— as it is at Mork in the ideal
developing nations are encouraged to pursue. It is a false ideal.
direct action methods earlier applied in
NeM
from Mhich to reorient itself, to steer bac k t OM a r ds these traditional virtues
(as amended).
has diverged from its original ideals in large part because
America
ideological leaders have accepted or bought,
its
and most of the public have been
sold, an economic vieM of the Mor 1 d, Mith advanced man (and contemporary Moman
72
even more so) an economic animal .
The large assumption has been and
remains,
".free"
to repeat it in crude populist
form, that the operation of the
enterprise market system within a suitable democratic
framework
Mill
the other virtues, at least to the extent that they can be desirably
73
obtained,
in much the same (no hands) May that the market system guarantees
ensure
most efficient organisation.
The large assumption is false, as the American
74
experience has shoMn;
and it does not fail simply because of imperfections
in the American application of a perfect economic model.
Despite a massive promotional effort in Australia and NeM
both outside and many felloM-travellers Mithin,
the
.just
Zealand,
the American economic vieM of
Morld has not been Midely bought in Australia or NeM Zealand.
that it has been substantially rejected,
australia, but
cultural
tradition.
individual
that
tradition
it
in
in particular
runs counter to important
australia,
materialism
from
components
despite the earthy
It is not
alternative
by
of
materialism
competitive
the
main
of
that
individualism,
or
fixation on economic gain (as dialectical materialism reveals,
at
For
does not imply
least in theory).
72.
and thereby also a rational animal.
On this modern characterisation of
man, and rationality, see, e.g. abraham, chapter 1.
73.
For of course incentive musn't be removed by too much equality.
equality of opportunity, an important sort of equality, that the
enterprise system is supposed to deliver above all others.
74.
Nhat results is rather a society rich in go-getters, scoundrels and
cheats, many of Mhose main heroes, successful capitalists, remain .just
sufficiently on the right side of bent laMS, if that.
Consider,
seriously, e.q., Mhat is applauded in Heilbroner'*s celebration of the
rise of capitalism, in The Nor Idly F'h i 1 osopher s .
But
free
Competitive individualism,
JoL
and the pace of life.
immensely individualistic,, and highly competitive.
American society
is
Australasian society
is
sufficiently individualistic, but less competitive and operates more on direct
cooperat i on.
Individualism
even more in economic and political
and
practiced
is a conspicuous feature of American arrangements, both as
theory
reinforces
Mhich
practice.
It is seen in competitive form in the American dream, Mhich has no
Australian
equivalent:
is
the
of
dream
manifestations Morth singling out,
Mi th the emphasis on individual salvation,
not reflected in Australia.
it,
Extreme individualism has
for instance,
and elevation of personages as heroes,
selection
making
individual
the
and so on.
in individual life-style,
financially,
other
it
in high culture
in fundamentalist
the
religion
in survivalism, a "movement" again
In USA the individual aims above all to excel; it
is the individual that is unique, Mho can make a difference on his or her OMn,
Mho succeeds.
things,
Individual reduction is very strong,
make
differences,
achieve.
It is individuals Mho do
support systems
The
make
that
such
achievement realisable, the structure and the other individuals, fade into the
background.
Individualism in North America is accordingly not merely methodological
Mith
reduction
of social and political arrangements
to
"individual" actors
in the form of nuclear families and nuclear firms),
(typically
interrelations, other than market exchange,
as can be managed.
implies that each such individual operates,
in large measure,
OMn ends, in an individual-first or individual-only fashion.
in
implies,
situations
of
limited
resources,
and
opportunities, severe competition betMeen individuals.
America certainly,
indeed
an
Australia),
and seemingly inevitably,
immense emphasis,
on
mechanisms
foster
5
Individuali sm
to his or
her
And that in turn
sought
positions
and
Individualism in North
involves competition.
Mhich is exported Morld Mide (and
that
Mith
competitiveness,
so
There is
includes
especially
those
entrenched in mainstream economics, such as market competitiveness, and factor
competitiveness
active
environmental
America;
for employment,
(e.g.
movements
etc.).
promotion,
in
there is a difference in approach
is much more competitiveness within the
there
the
Even within
US
North
more
movements,
emphasis on leaders, less cooperation, than in Australasian groups.
resulting American-preferred picture of pure individual
The
competition
has however to be conspicuously qualified - rather more than minimally - since
the competitive mechanisms do not continue to function in optimal fashion,
even
market
system, which is not nearly as self-regulating as is often
requires
to
resources.
and
mechanisms.
As well,
etc.
But
purity
the
the
determine broad functions of
the
capitalist
lands
namely
democratic
within these supposedly necessary and desirable
republican
state,
You outshine
move,
change your friends to get ahead, etc.
sort of competitiveness isn't altogether approved of in Australia,
Zealand,
is
And yet another individualistic-type arrangement is required
or beat down your rivals,
New
and
state
such as private capital and private and state
constraints, competition is the avowed and encouraged objective.
in
free
pretended,
to ensure
defend and police the institutions within which
system operates,
select
to clear markets,
state,
and break coalitions and unions,
to
required
and
(capitalist)
the
competition
market
The
without organisational regulation and intervention.
at all,
or
where
the
American influence
is
weaker
That
still less
Polynesian
and
attitudes increasingly influential.
In
Australasia,
there
You do not do down mates.
mateship.
some of
is more cooperation,
with
fortunately not all extra-
friendships are superficial, and fortunately the rural tradition of
familial
neighbourliness,
net
disappeared
adequately
with
explained through
where
the
self-interest,
the advance of agribusiness (itself
significant cultural phenomenon in Australia).
also
coupled
Of course there is far more cooperation
in USA too than the ideology strictly allows for;
entirely
it
individualistic
ideology
does
a
has
far
not
less
There are many other respects
not
square
with
American
For instance,
practice.
differs
the many places Mhere advanced corporate capitalism
earlier phases of capitalism,
from
in
demand,
producer-controlled
through organisation people, in burgeoning bureaucracies, and so on.
environmentally
very
significant,
by
dominated
cooperation
because they bear on (Mhat are
to present unsatisfactory socio-environmental
alternatives
society
Antipodean attitudes to competition and
different
The
competition is liable to give quite
are
seen
as)
arrangements.
A
weight
to
undue
competitive mechanisms (like the market system) and goals (such as achiever or
product maximization), and so to support a range of undesirable objectives and
practices,
as those exhibited in capitalist business
practice,
75
failure and so on, exhibited in short in contemporary America.
such
differences in lifestyle floM from the differences in
Hany
cooperative
not
friends,
forth.
neighbours,
Antipodean
In
materialistic
extent
acquaintances, Australasians do
to outstrip them in their consumption,
need
competitive-
Because they are not competing to the same
orientation.
Mith their colleagues,
market
material
success,
cultures there is not quite
so
and
the
same
pressure to consumerism (though there is certainly far more than enough) or to
conspicuous or Masteful consumption.
American
culture
consumption,
conspicuous
estimated
partly
in
acquisitive,
terms
of
especially
The competitive individualism of
explains the high levels
of
North
acquisitiveness,
the
the Mastefulness (the consumption and Maste can
throughput).
of
money.
American
culture
is
particularly
The incentive to obtain money is
more of this is always better, typically Mith no upper limit.
be
high;
Hence too there
is strong resource orientation, since resources can be converted into money.
75.
Theoretically the emphasis on competition shoMS up in the Meight assigned
to games such as the prisoners'' dilemma and tragedy-of-the-commons and
the May they are supposed to be taken.
Note hoM very important
differences in culture are for the treatment of these games; an example
is the corresponding children's game Mhich is played very differently by
American children (Mhere it jis competitive tussle) from Chinese children
(for Mhom cooperation affords a rather trivial solution).
The relative lack of such enterprise and drive in Australia,
of less competitiveness,
the
and
helps explain the slow speed of technology transfer,
to
resistance, both of business and con*=umer =
76
Australia.
The relative lack of enterprise
comparative
in
technology
Northerners often claim,
to the Australian business
innovations' (Stretton,
Immigration
Department,
Mhich
'Australi an
community.
a special program
has
ex tends,
Such a view has been bougtrF by
p.35).
n ew
risk-averse, and stow to copy
capitalists are accused of being unadventurous,
others'
a corollary
attract
to
btj = in^ = -m^n (including Asian ones) and also businesswomen,
the
northern
because Australian
yy
business is lacking, it is. said, in enterpreneurial skills and drive.
The
pace
of
life is much slower in the Antipodes than
North
There are significant differences in time conceptualisation in the
deriving
Antipodes,
in part from the limited extent of industrialisation (wh i *- h tries to
people to be on t i me) and the weakness of c ompe t i t i on in daily
force
There is not the same pressure to get on,
workplace
much
America.
or to be at work,
on
living.
time.
and daily competition goes a race against the clocks (as overtly in
competitive
sport),
also
and
pace,
stress,
competitiveness goes a marked difference in pace,
etc.
Nith
American
with the most rapid pace in
the industrial East where the competition is most widespread and intense.
one moves south and west in US,
declines.
Zealand
Nith
and west from the centre in Canada,
As
the pace
But in Australia the pace is conspicuously slower still, and in New
78
noticably slower again.
Antipodean people are "laid back" by
American standards,
even if city people still seem in an immense rush, to get
nowhere much, to country visitors.
The slower pace is tied not just with !e==
76.
Features of Australian enterprise developed by the former Minister of
Science and technology, B. Jones, in his Sleepers Awake!. Jones, who i=
all in favour of having Australia convert to Northern business enterprise
and competitiveness, or worse the South Asian parody of it, is inclined
to ascribe Australian "failure" to a supposed separation of technology
and culture.
77.
The sooner this program is halted the better. Much the same applies to
recently renewed immigration programs to import more Europeans: for the
reasons see Birrell et. al.
competitiveness,
but
standards,
threshold
often
a
with
more easy
going
acceptance
sometimes verging on sloppiness,
and evinced
of
letter
such
in
familiar slogans as "It'll do" or the famous She'll be right". The differences
taken up more theoretically in terms of maximization in
be
can
America,
as
opposed to much more widespread acceptance of "enough does" (of satisizing) in
the Antipodes (for details see MSS).
USA it's keep moving,
In
"commodity"
too
is
hustle.
"wasted"),
the
Time is short (even if much of
best
life
is
in
the
fastest
this
lane.
'I need to get back to the office, to be at my
7?
is what is much more often said than in Australia.
There is a clock
Punctuality
class'
is
important.
in/clock out attitude in North America,
fortunately
hasn't
industrious
and
been
widely
shared with Germany and Japan,
or enthusiastically
industrial Antipodes.
adopted
in
the
Nor has the associated American
which
less
go-
getting taken to any great extent.
The
much
Northern go-getter vanishes into a role.
more readily;
Northerners assume
people identify with their position.
In the
Antipodes
instance
much less role playing, people retain their more dimensions,
30
in their jobs.
This has an important corollary for ethics:
Northern
fashion for trying to explain a person's
there
is
roles
ethical position in
for
the
terms
73.
(From previous page) By New Zealand standards metropolitan Australians
are pushy (as well as commonly vulgar);
and for the New Zealand visitor
the very congested Sydney does, at first, acquaintance, appear to
instantiate the rat-race, especially the aggressive driving on the
narrow, crowded and polluted roads.
Harris gets down some of the other
felt
differences:
'New Zealanders regard Australians as flashy,
effusively patronising, as scruffy urchins playing Big Brother
(The
Austral i an, April 23-2'?, l'?85, Neekend Magazine, 5).
79.
Beinq 10 minutes o^f so late for appointments is common, and acceptable,
in Australia;
but not the hour or more some Latin American countries
allegedly tolerate (cf. Awa, p.3).
30.
Nhy there is less readiness to assume roles in the deep South, like the
reluctance of Australians to take deferential or service roles willingly,
is a bit puzzling.
For in mainstream Australian the society is less
individualistic, more social, and in apparently relevant respects less
conservative than American.
The problem is taken up again in the text.
c
of
his
her
or
various
roles loses much of its
point
force
and
the
in
antipodes.
Role
is
occupation
actions,
responses,
intimately mith formality
coupled
dress,
and so forth.
of
fixity
and
In these matters a rough spectrum
can be observed, as shomn:-
australian
american
European
typical 1y
informal
typical 1y
formal
a
Such
range,
in
exhibited
both to mork
applies
mhich
such things as responses to
In some of these areas,
dress.
leisure
and
strangers,
such as dress,
is
activities,
customs,
and
manners
american culture displays
a
switching between extreme informality and formality, a
certain schizophrenia,
level
of
informality in mainstream australis has led to memorable sociological talk
of
phenomenon
also
seen
in certain trendier australian cults.
the peculiarly australian "culture of informality".
tells
aoainst
',-jell
in
angloph/ije
The extent of informality
the more artificial parts of higher culture mhich do not
australis,
outside
small
(but
sometimes
government
fare
sponsored)
minorities.
Role-regulation extends to person-to-person relations.
an
The
But here there is
interesting reversal of australian and american positions (on the
diagram
above), mith american relations being more flexible than australian (and these
more relaxed in turn than the more British and role-regulated relation^ in Mem
Zealand).
Hhile american approaches to human relations, as to adolescence and
education,
are increasingly influencing australian practices, ameri<-an= =till
more rapidly reach first name stages,
on;
they
details of their life histories, and =o
regularly converse mith strangers .juxtaposed on
invite m^re acquaintances into their houses,
and
more
friendly than australians,
americans tend to be much more open,
public
transport,
and for the most part are marm^r
Of course mhile both
australians
and
forthcoming, and initially friendly than
Europeans,
are serious questions about the depth and dependability
there
of
many of these (and their) relationships.
The "easygoinoness" that Americans often find in the Antipodes is in part
due
the considerable informality and in part to
to
pace.
slower
the
The
societies are not after al 1 that easygoing in other respects, such as personal
and
relations, and they are not exactly Mell-knoMn for
race
toleration is increasing in Australia Mith the development of a
(though
and further stratified society,
multicultural
of factors,
climate,
strong
though
dying,
is
mix
as is the more leisurely sense of time. One obvious factor i s the
casual dress,
etc.
(Ireland being the European
1 and
encourages informality,
Mhich
inheritance
Irish
Another i s the
of
"Take
your
less submerged than in USf), is
)*
—f ocus on ttLij^gs-^ittpltasised Ml
pnpular
footbal1
Mork,
6
Irel and:
pol 11 les,
Borse
(as the n eMspaper s daily conf i rm).
pub conversation in Dublin;
Mork,
racialism,
more
The easygoing casual features are perhaps due to a
still far from dead^
topics
tolerance
their
an i sat i on,
so they are in Melbourne.
and socialism.
in
n approached in an
lie Mork and union Mork, Mhich are of
especially p
anitested
The s1OMer pace is
informal and rather casuaj^ May by Northern standards^y)(4 I
attitudes to Mork are par
Americans generally notice a 1 ack o
ervjce in the Ptntipodeans,
through indifference to positive r'.
often
astonished
ascribe
to
by
the service
class difference,
North
y illustrated by attitudes to service.
Correspondingly,
the
ranging doMn
Rntipodeans are
Mhich
North,
they
an ascription that\hardly applies in
often
America.
Part of the reason for,this difference lies in different attitudes to Mork, to
the
relative
source
desines and pressures to serve Mell;
these differences remains someMhat obscure.
On the one hand,
is suggested
don' t
that f^ntipj0c!eans in service can be rude because it's acceptable and
have to prove anything,
in particular to the person they're serving.
.
of
_____
On the
___ -
popular
Australian
racing,
football
focus on things emphasised in
organisation,
Nork,
politics,
These are the
(as the newspapers daily* confirm).
topics of pub conversation m Dublin:
e.
Ireland:
horse
leading
so they are in He 1 bourne.
and socialism.
in
The slower pace is manifested
especially public work and union work, which are often approached in an
work,
informal
and
downright
rather
casual way by Northern standards,
lazy and sloppy fashion by most industrial
organisations or- "systems",
and sometimes
The
standards.
both public and private,
a
in
large
are regarded as open to
some exploitation (time out, free services, etc.) in a way that mates are not.
Attitudes to work are partly illustrated by attitudes to service.
Americans generally notice a lack of service in the An11podeans,
through mdifference'to positive rudeness.
often
astonished
ascribe
to
by
Correspondingly,
the service rendered in the
class difference,
North,
North
ranging down
Antipodeans are
which
they
an ascription that hardly applies in
often
America.
Part of the reason for this difference lies in different attitudes to work, to
the
relative
desires and pressures to serve well;
these differences remains somewhat obscure.
but the full
source
of
On the one hand, it is suggested
that Antipodeans m service can be rude because it*s acceptable and they don t
have to prove anything,
in particular to the person they're serving.
On the
other hand, it is suggested that there is a need in the Antipodes to emphasize
that
there are no strata differences (when there are),
not need to serve.
to show that they
do
On this less likely view Americans can serve because they
are equal, and see themselves as such.
A further element here is North American identification with the
or
the
thought
ladder.
firm:
the person who serves the firm may still often admit
'I might be president',
In
Australia,
or at least much further up the
by contrast with Japan and America,
appear to be the same "organisational feudalism".
but not vice versa.)
concern
to
the
competitive
there does
not
(In Australia, you owe me,
siihpr hand, it i.i.snn<^e^t-ed^
a need in t]r= AntipDii^s- to<-emphj^M^-
trata differences (mhen there are) ,
there are no
to shom,^ttlat they
do
likely viem Americans,-can serve because they
see themse1ves as such.
fl \ur ther element here is North American identification mith the
or
concern
the person mho serves the firm may still often admit
the
or at least much further up the
ight be president',
thought
Australia,
1 adder.
appear fo'be t h $
the
to
competitive
there does
by contrast mith Japan and America,
not
,3 " nr nan i sat ion al feudJtJism".____ (In Aust rjJ-1-3-,—yiau—cm - -me,
.
e v?r sa t f
especially
Nork,
are
Britain''
and morking conditions and salaries
to a much greater extent by politically
controlled
Australia
blue collar mork,
in America.
than
(Nild,
p.50).
powerful
'Unionisation is high compared to
unions
and
American
Australian unions are mostly left-oriented
The
in
by
American standards, some of them so far to the left that they are strictly off
the
truncated
socially
American
spectrum.
political
They
are
by contrast mith the generally right-leaning US
committed,
and the US industrial-military complex.
union
situation
can
again
be
traced
Part of the reason for the
to
the
unions,
individual
support that strange advanced capitalistic mixture,
mhich
often
furthermore
ideology
of
values
American
competitive
individualism, but an important part lies in social selection, =tate-supported
repression of left-oriented unions (see Goldstein)..
The
Australian unions are,
politicised,
and,
by morld-standards,
by the same industrial standards,
very active and
extremely strike-prone.
They can serve as an important source of and aid to change.
of
the
Australian
environmental
things
prevent
unions
concerns.
extend
to
social
environmental
matters
For the interest=
and
sometime^
Australian unions have been very important in
as bans on uranium mining and shipments,
and heritage destruction,
highly
as mell as
to
=U'_h
in green ban=> to
patterns not emulated
(and
mostly not wanted) in North America.
It has been suggested, but on slender grounds and by Americans, that such
as
action
green
undesirable
legal
heritage.
And
environmental or other.
important
redressing
for
like those concerning constitutional rights, in a
Mhile
the
in
difference
of
channels
action is,
to
access
Mithout
the
from
the
courts
doubt,
an
American
and
Australia and in NeM Zealand,
that
it cannot account for the differences.
the approved channels sufficient,
in
as many American failures make
many important cases,
to
extremely
difference betMeen the environmental situation in USA and
end,
Mith
The sources of this evidently
and constitutional inheritance
history
politically-approved
approach,
class action cannot be brought in the public interest
situation lie,
different
the
But the most that rings true in this is that,
minor recent exception,
to prevent vandalism,
of
militancy
and
strength
be accounted for by the relative weakness of 1ega1 means
environmental vandalism.
the
the
Mith
movement in Australia and its often confrontational
environmental
can
along
bans,
in
Nor are
in
plain:
there is no alternative but recourse
to
direct action, to the streets and forests.
Like
most
of the Australian unions and universities,
both Morkers
greenies (those active in environmental movements) remain influenced
sometimes inspired
by,
and
certainly linked by,
socialist
by,
ideals.
and
and
The=e
influences, overt in Australia, have largely been Miped out oygone underground
in USA,
being incompatible Mith advanced capitalism,
the American establishment.
as communistic inspired,
the
communist
politicians
can
folloMing
confusion of communism,
Indeed socialist themes are commonly disposed of
or as,
has been
and seen as inimical by
Mhat they are not, ..iust communism.
kicked,
regularly,
and
hard,
by
leads and encouragement from North America,
state socialism,
Although
Australian
a
simple
democratic socialism, and so on has
been made in Australia in the Midespread and crude May that has occurred
in
North America.
Socialism and a Mel fare state approach Mere adopted
long
ago in NeM Zealand (about the beginning of the Century) and only shortly later
whereas there is little sign of their gaining much ground
in Australia,
no^.'
in North America.
even
Socialist principles are regarded w i t h suspicion even
except for a small minority.
bv more educated North Americans,
Right-leaning
attitudes have a prominence in US that they (rightly) do not enjoy
81
Australia.
In several respects, then, Reagan and his substitutes are
political
in
representative of the mass of America people.
The
double
(Christianity vs.
standards we have
seen
exhibited
American
in
economism) and foreign policy (rights vs.
religion
domination)
and
could have been displayed in trade policy (free enterprise abroad vs. American
82
subsidies and protection) and elsewhere
— contradictions engendered not by
mere
between
practice
and
ideologies
— extend
to^much acclaimed Amt erican
conflict
incompatib 1 e
pragmatism.
ideology
but
threaten ideological fundamentals are not tolerated;
"dangerous"
elements
of
p1ur a 1ism
and
These operate in an unambivalent way only in a narrow ran%e where
ideological fundamentals are not seriously threatened.
to
through
viens are often excluded,
more difficult times at least,
toleration is hardly remarkable,
Thus parties
thought
and foreigners
nith
while natives nith such views are,
83
suppressed.
While the Australian record
in
on
and the society was until recently mu<-h more
uniform in character than American,
the room for political variety and spread
of political parties is greater.
81.
They are reflected in such small things as. the form of anarchist
movements - always strongly individualistic in North America, but mostly
pluralistic and socialistic, and sometimes communistic in Australia.
Even Alternative American remains staunchly individualistic; only in the
quite minor US commune movement do the contrasts begin to break down a
bit.
The differences are important in political philosophy and theory,
where Americans and Antipodeans tend to operate on different wavelength?.
32.
Thus, for
instance, the
policy, which combines a
substantial subsidies and
produce.
83.
See again Goldstei,
for example.
narrow pluralism of capitalist
chapter of 00.
doubl/ standards of American agricultural
free enterprise image with allowance for
discounts #4, American, but not foreign,
Worthwhile proposals for widening the
democracy may be found in the final
extent of toleration noM evident in Australia is not simply a result
The
of a strong British heritage (from an England that Mas) but OMes something
appear
markedly
multiple
the level of personal
features as Mell:- Firstly,
indigenous
roots,
in
is
in the industrial North
than
egalitarianism,
and
the
encouraged
by
a strong
to
tendency
of vieMS (an infuriating feature for
relativisation
(a
dielike
in the educational structure,
people,
overassertive
toleration
loMer
assertiveness
that
has
overbearing
and
feature
of
to
and so on).
personal
secondly,
in-group
or
teachers).
Ideological
argument and competition is avoided not so much by general pluralism of vieMS,
but by personal relativisation of positions (Mhich looks foolish at first Mith
questions such as God's existence, though not Mith matters of religious belief
and
political opinion).
action is not required.
as
lonq
But it noM looks (Mith
increasing
reorientation of the society and belated introduction of
cultural
methods into social discussion) as if
other
and
this sort of strategy succeeds only so
To be sure,
advance
to
an
- if
consensual
can
relativism
Australian
intellectually respectable pluralism
multi
Northern
control
perfni ts.
*F.
Leisure time activities, eating, drinking, sport and gambling.
retailing
and consumerism,
culture,
that
Australia is
the
it is here,
Americanisation
of
Apart from
in surface elements of more
significant
features
of
popular
life
in
most conspicuous, especially in food and entertainment, but also
in sport.
Take food, for example. American impact and control occurs primarily Mith
fast
foods (Mhere most of the larger chains are American) and in prepared and
highly
processed foods (Mhere many of the companies involved,
larger
biscuit
and snack food companies,
concerns having been bought out.)
ready
are
ultimately
e.g.
all
American,
Significant features of these products
the
local
are
or immediate gratification from largely already-made or -prepared mass-
produced items,
Mith consumer attractiveness achieved through a high level of
The technology involved is imported from USA (though
fancy packaging.
may
the patents are American,
be some minor local adaptions),
so
involved,
are
skills
local
cheap
adolescent)
(often
there
and feM or no
labour
can
be
exploited.
This pattern applies of course to American penetration of the food
industry,
and tourist industry, in many countries other than Australia; it is
part
incorporation of the "free Morld" into
the
of
the
flagging
American
^'or Id-system, the American imperium as it is sometimes called.
features are involved in the American influence on entertainment
Similar
again designed to Min acceptance by a mass market,
and sport,
immediate gratification,
or
term
action
(or
bright
or
professionalisation.
containing
Take
the
short
achieved for instance in the form of
violence) for passive audiences,
colourful
namely
and
effect
skilful packaging
many
changes
much
by
achieved
set,
of
and
on Australian cricket - formerly
a
very leisurely and, for spectators, often boring game - of American infusions,
dra'A'n
especially
uniforms
The
baseball.
has
game
become
substantially
there are many one day matches, Mhere the players appear in
professionalised,
gaudy
from
and lots of safety gear (noM necessary Mith the
increase
of
pace and stop-start action), and the game proceeds at a much greater pace Mith
lots of croMd pleasing action.
There
is
an American overlay also to more recent forms of
slot machine gambling and,
Australia,
more important,
overlay exhibits the same surface features,
as
in
sport
gratification
and
food
- and underlying these,
casino gambling.
designed to appeal to
action,
- colour,
gambling
professional
commercialism,
in
The
consumers,
quick
polish,
professional
control,
multinational organisation, and repatriation of profits to the North.
But
plausibly
the
in
each of these cases,
especially sport and gambling,
argued that the American influence is superficial - a
single bricks Mall of the Californian brick veneer,
appearance
of
masonry solidity to Mooden houses,
it can
veneer
be
like
designed to give the
a style noM ubiquitous
in
building
that is on to a
but grafted onto a ecualypt Mood frame structure,
Australia,
evolved,
that
though
antecedents
Mith
Northern
In the building industry (as to some extent in the
in Australia.
influences,
Northern
from
food industry) the distinctively Australian basic house structure is beginning
to
in
disappear
plantation-groMn
places like Canberra Mith the replacement
pine,
Honterey
of
by
hardMOod
the adoption (again from America) uf
light
timber framing codes, and so on.
It
indeed
is
in the spraMling suburbs of Australia that
veneer is most strikingly exhibited,
American
the
and
not just in the housing and streets
styles of automobiles (all local manufacturing companies being American,
a Japanese exception,
Mith
and the predominantly Japanese imports largely American
copies), but in the shopping centres, their supermarkets (American in style of
and
retailing
lots.
parking
increasingly in oMnership or control) and petrol stations
Nonetheless
Davidson is deliberately
and
Mhen
exaggerating
he
Mrites (Mhile ruminating on the film and entertainment situation) that
... Me need all the cultural consciousness Me can muster to delay - if
only
by
the tactic of infinite postponement
- our
complete
incorporation into the American Mgfld-systenr (p.21).
For
merely is there evidence t^fjt the American imperium has
not
i t-
pa = =ed
zenith, but again the American encroachment and influence is superficial.
Despite
the overlay,
the main structures of institutions such as
and gambling remain basically Australian,
of
Australian
forms.
history,
from European,
local adaptions, evolved
and particularly British and
Iri=h,
=o it
so it is Mith home '-ooking.
These
institutions
Mould
and club gambling;
remain substantially intact even if recent
other overlays Mere entirely removed.
Nhat is more,
and
quality of life not readily available,
The
community
afford good examples.
American
these institutions
and Mith further local adaption could to a much greater extent,
America.
over much
So it is Mith the main forms of football, Mith amateur cricket;
is Mith pub drinking,
style
sport
or available
and club structures of much gambling
and
can,
provide for a
at
and
all,
in
drinking
cA</iAvf*^tnA%)^nf
r^-v^A/
<**<A —
^to
the
^jA,f
^<?/^
^.f-At^Z/y
d. ^r^,f ^ta^n/ At//^<^y
^-A
viewpoint
of
th<=
p ^9^
^?^e-4t^-^-€.
believe what they se^^- accepted,
regional culture,
^cr/A^,
A4^.
largely uncritically accepted.
among
there
others,
are
From
undoubtedly
but they are problems to which there are known answers.
problems here;
nf
?4s ^A7f /i^c
/njA^^nZiAi^-
</<P^/l<tA</;
VAr<?KyA
/6
JTT, V^/
/ ^-, ^-*<?;/ */A,
longer-term answer lies in education,
Part
much
in the teaching of
more
86
critical attitudes to Mhat is presented through media such as television.
Pi
more
viable in countries like Australia (and even
immediate interim measure,
controlled,
more in New Zealand) Mhere radio and television are heavily state
to
and
remove much of the American fiction from the publicly licensed,
channels.
regulated
That
the short answer is the
is,
nondocumentary material displaying violence,
supported
same
as
Mith
so on;
sexual exploitation, and
given the socially and culturally undesirable results of such public
87
of such material,
it fails to merit purchase and public exhibition (if
namely,
use
people Mant to hire or buy this material for their OMn video systems,
another
matter).
difficulties
in
Certainly
selection
there
difficulties
are
here,
processes for Mhat is broadcast
especially licensed commercial,
tied
on
of
predominantly
drugs,
standover
censorship,
commercial activity,
tactics,
pictography,
selection and purchasing policies,
extent,
up
public,
Mith
and
channels (for there is far less fictionalised
violence on public-corporation than commercial TN in Ptustrali^.
suggested is not any kind of
that is
1'1 hat is being
straightforward social regulation
such as regularly
etc;
in
occurs
Mith
this case regulation
hard
of
of a type already folloMed to some limited
for instance in Psustralian content requirements.
Pt practical problem
85.
Contrary to American philosopher Davidson and his followers, usually
accepting Mhat is presented is not essential to living; but the idea
that it is necessary iWa standard part of the Ptmerican cultural and most
Northern and educational frameworks.
88.
See especially Bonney and Nilson.
87.
'The consensus among most of the research community is that violence on
television does lead to aggressive behaviour by children and teenagers
Mho watch the programs' (.reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Narch 13 1?85, p.8).
Psdults too are liable to be desensitized to
violence through television watching, wi th influence not only ^n values
but sp^ill over to the real world, e.g. they estimate their environment
is more violent.
A
sV<vkcL.<-^44
^7, y>,
g in
mith such content requirements has been that there is insufficient
But
materia!.
rise
the
tota!
reduced.
domination
other
of the Australian and
there is nom much more regiona! materia!;
industries,
former
mith
and,
of Australian cinemas by American
Australian
regions!
as a result, the
has
films
the variety of television material nom available from
Given
an end to American domination of local television programs,
sources,
fi!m
been
morld
and
of
this part of Australian leisure culture, could also be achieved.
and gambling form a mutually supporting trio of immense
drinking
Sport,
importance in the popular culture of Australasia,
the
to grasp or explain.
outsider
('Much American sociological
gambling deals mith it as a deviant activity":
historical
on-going
influence
population is of Irish descent).
brought
and
activities,
writing
A
p.421.)
in Australia is undoubtedly Irish
(in
on
main
early
nomaday about 17X of
the
Nith their blanketing Catholicism, the Irish
propagated rather successfully a religion liberal
masculine
in
but exceedingly narrom in intersexual
such as those of the trio,
enterprises.
mas out;
Caldmell 77,
one quarter of the population mas Irish;
Australia
for
to an extent difficult
Drinking mas in, contraception mas out; gambling mas in, divorce
sport mas in,
lomer-church
homosexuality mas out ...
Catholicism
and
more
Catholicism mostly men in Australia,
purjit/nical
.
In the play-off betmeen
forms
o^
Protestantism,
mhereas in eastern USA more
puritanica!
forces prevailed, and these mere subsequently reinforced by Judaism.
is a central part of Australian social life and so of
Drinking
(Nhile it is important in Nem Zealand also,
social
momen.
life.)
For
it is a less dominant feature
of
It bears on the connected issues of mateship and attitudes
to
matesh ip
relationship,
and
is
mateship
often based upon,
is
(cobbers) mhich excludes momen.
North
culture.
America,
that to his mife.
or groms
characteristically a
Indeed,
out
of,
relation
a
drinking
betmeen
men
in contrast to the apparent norm in
a man's relations to his mates,
or mate,
may be closer than
The
mateship
mates, first and foremost, through thick and thin.
A first corollary is a
or less rigorously some ambivalence about, social and career
limitation upon,
because
mobility,
may involve leaving one's mates
any transfer or promotion
or distancing from them.
A related corollary is a restriction on competition
because one does not compete seriously Mith one's mates.
similarly
also
mateship engenders,
The mateship
ethos
because mates are treated
requires local egalitarianism,
Thus
equals.
his
Mith
ethos strict!;/ requires that a man should stick
especially given a
little
as
transitivity,
egalitarian and non-competitive features, also encouraged by other elements of
Accompanying aspects of mateship are that
mainstream culture.
the
identity
success are sought,
and
concerns such as a job or career,
serious
and
energy
in leisure,
Mhere they are,
personal
not in
more
and that often a greater level
interest is di rec ted at leisure ac t iv i t i es and pas t imes
than
Excellence in serious things tends to be deflated or denigrated.
Mork.
of Antipodean socialism.
at
Hates
however are supported, and so by extension are those Mho Mould be mates.
mateship is one of the props
of
Thus
A less expected aspect
of mateship, Mhich is after all a communitarian relation of an important type,
is
diminished involvement Mith social (and also sometimes political)
is because mates afford a secure social framework Mhich
this
Perhaps
issues.
unnecessary to look beyond.
it
is
Hates naturally get together frequently, commonly
for sport, gambling or drinking.
The
main
setting
uncomfortable
and
for
drinking
is
pub
the
degenerate form of the English pub.
important public setting for drinking is the clubs,
as the Australian barbeque.
- though
some
city
The hotel Mas,
pubs
have
occasionally invaded by groups of Momen.
the
development
serves,
not
_urious!y
hotel,
a
But an
increasingly
Mhich also commonly cater
Among private group settings, for drinking are such institutions
for gambling.
haunt
or
only
and remains,
been
liberalised,
essentially a male
and
others
are
Thus the hotel is a main setting for
and continuation of mateship.
to reinforce male chauvinism,
The hotel
has
served,
but also to foster
and
racism.
Until very recently,
and still in some places,
hotels excluded or segregated
and perhaps other groups such as Orientals uho fall towards
Aboriginals,
the
bottom of the caste ladder.
do the places of drinking differ in significant respects
only
Not
those in USA;
extent it is in USA,
and is not a major form for the drinking bout;
nor are
Beer is the mainstay of
is the main alcoholic drink consumed.
and
hotels,
is not consumed to anyuhere near the
given the same prominence as in USA.
cocktails
Hard liquor,
so do the styles of drinking and uhat is drunk.
uh 1 ch is nou heavily taxed in Australia,
from
drinking
But Australian
patterns have changed markedly in the last twenty years;
the
and nine has become
an everyday drink in the clubs and often for lunch.
the feu older clubs can be exclusive in their membership
Nhile
American country clubs carry exorbitant fees,
or
the neu clubs have very
like
modest
joining fees and represent an improvement on the hotels in many respects;
for
they are not aluays, predominantly drinking establishments and dominantly male
but they are more sociable and comfortable, and they carry a range
preserves,
including commonly gambling (on uhich their
of other programs and activities,
depends)
financing
nonprofit associations)
sort
importance,
and
consumer
greatly
Hales).
golf);
but
there
notably returned servicemen's clubs,
and ethnic clubs,
religious
These
interests.
of the
are several
clubs
(community
types
other
catering
for
uhich function in all respects like
are a major post-Har social
country touns,
of
minority
phenomenon,
uhich
altered leisure patterns in parts of Australia (especially Neu
'In
one
political and labour clubs,
and there are many
neu registered clubs,
cooperatives,
registered
are indeed sporting clubs in origin (football of
bouls,
another,
of
Hany
sport.
and
have
South
clubs have replaced churches as the centres for
sociability and recreation; in the metropolitan areas, they have decentralised
leisure facilities providing nightclub, restaurant, gambling and entertainment
outlets
in
leisure
sophistication'*.
the
suburbs;
and in the coastal touns they
And
in these
very
successful
have
brought
some
gambling-financed
cooperatives,
'sport,
gambling
and
drinking
of
- the pillars
Australian
leisure culture - have found common ground' (Caldwell 77, pp.424, 425).
Sport is the opiate of the masses in Australasia, a main leisure activity
and entertainment form, a major (male) topic of conversation both socially and
and it takes up a significant chunk of the "news"^newspaper coverage
at work,
it is now relegated to the back pages^with local politics occupying
(but
front
It
pages).
is also a major reservoir of chauvinism,
with
'Sport
competitiveness.
its
long traditions may
the
and
conformism
more
m^ifest
male
chauvinism than many other forms of popular Australian culture' (Caldwell
p.41'7');
racial and cultural.
as
such
j^-also manifests and often encourages other forms of
it
Even in sport reevaluation is
77,
chauvinism
place,
taking
including reassessment of the competitive principle, and there is a shift away
from
bureaucratic
Fortunately,
sport,
controls
however,
to
freer
environmentally
forms,
damaging
especially
sports.
vertigo
machine-dependent forms
have not caught on to the same extent as in America;
or art,
nor
of
do
forms such as hunting enjoy a% similar following or so little criticism.
important component of Antipodean newspaper sport,
An
racing
anima!
distinct
as
"sport",
especially,
from
professional,
predominantly
gambling purposes.
integrally tied to gambling.
is
the
type
younger
people
In the participant sports there is,
other
and
This
participate
and now essentially designed for
North, a heavy outdoor emphasis.
but
horse
form
of
in,
is
spectator
and
in contrast with the
This emphasis is partly a New Norld feature,
partly a matter of extensive open space and a favourable outdoor climate.
Explaining
the
separating
sport
sheer extent of sport is a complex matter, best approached by
into
its
different components
looking
and
at
what
is
distinctive in the new world, and what in the Antipodes (at the same time this
reveals
e.g.
the
that
ritualised
limited applicability of psychological substitutibility
sport,
national
substitute
sport
for war).
especially,
is
a
socially
claims,
acceptable
And one thing that is distinctive
is
the
and
amount
style of gambling-linked sport.
Explaining that is
inseparable
from explaining gambling itself.
have been several attempts to explain the extent and diversity
There
in Australia as compared Mith that in the North,
gambling
smoothly into the culture.
it
according
Morld,
various
and to incorporate
Australians are the heaviest gamblers in the
88
surveys.
Some of the main explanations
to combine the following elements:
try
suggested
to
of
the
of
influence
Irish
Latholicism in overriding the restrictive puritanism, the comparative Meekness
the
of
ethic
Mork
bother?"),
the
the drive to accumulate
and
entrenched
belief
in
gambling
a
strand
form
of
(Mith
as
a
positional
improvement (Mhich appears to date back, like distinctive Australian
games
as 2!-up,
such
together,
to convict times).
gambling
Not all these elements sit
easily
not all of them, such as the Mork ethic, are relevant on their oMn.
The Mork ethic becomes relevant because it Mas Midely believed by
that gambling damagingly undercut Mork,
improvement,
positional
to Meal th,
Mork
"Mhy
of
Protestants
both because of the popular legend of
that gambling offered an alternative route than hard
and because gambling Mas an absorbing leisure-time
activity
Mhich competed successfully Mith (often alienating) Mork.
Moreover,
acommodated.
gambling,
there
are
some
important
complicating
factors
to
be
One is that Mhat is more extensive in Australia is smaller-scale
social
gambling,
entrepreneurial gambling.
not
heavy
punting,
professional
gambling
or
Australians are, by and large, very security minded
and are not large-scale risk takers: hence one of the reasons for the shortage
8'?
of venture capital in Australia .
Despite the risk-taking image, there is
then a strong emphasis on security,
- the
suburban
both in the (home) OMnership expectations
a-cnd—a-s— hegsr-de--
------------------------ 88. Thus e.g. R/deen.
On the extent of Australian gambling, see also
CaldMell 74. Like drinking, gambling is less extensive in NeM Zealand.
8'?.
The extent of gambling in Australia contrasts sharply Mith risk-taking in
investment.
'Risk aversion seems to be endemic in Australia at least as
far as investment in innovative products is concerned'* (S. Macdonald).
block, the private home, the car, and as regards defence (whence the appeal of
an
American
second
6
gambling.
Australian
complication
concerns
the
'is marked by a heavy reliance on
It
character
of
and
so
chance
But Caldwell's attempt to explain
on skill'* (Caldwell/^ p.20).
little
this
features of the Australian character which deemphasize excellence
through
less
shield).
partly
satisfactory,
than
from sport,
differently
where,
because
it
as he admits,
involves
treating
'excellence ...
is
gambling
is
[almost]
fact the preferred explanations of the characterisatics and
puzzling
always approved of'*.
In
aspects of Australian gambling are unsatisfactory. In several places, Caldwell
has
appealed
in possible explanation'* 'to features of Australian
specifical 1y
to egalitarianism,
concen trates
on
r e1qu i s i t e
trying
to
what these are,
Fatalism,
explaining.
fatal i sm/
mateship and a sense of
say
for example,
character,
not on
how
they
But
he
do
the
apathy,
is said to involve
putting up with unfavourable conditions, and accepting the outcomes of fortune
but with good fortune attributed to luck,
hardly a fatalistic theme,
fatalism might explain a certain dourness or resignation,
Australian,
unclear
with
along
some more typical Australian
Caldwell
since
really
the
extent
makes no difference to
in
disclose
success
that
by luck.
marginally
what
for
this
the bulk of Australian gambling is social
better
than
fatalism
it
remains
i^
Hhat
fated.
that things
surveys
suggestion,
gambling
in
And mateship and egalitarianism only
in
will
but a ^^rious (nonmarket) optimism, a
Unfortunately
do not expect to succeed.
especially
rather than little
seems to be appealing to is not fatalism,
happen as they are already fated to do,
people
features,
how it is supposed to explain extensive gambling,
gambling,
belief
neither
klhile
their
intended
explanatory
which
fare
roles;
egalitarianism does, as will appear, have a minor role.
8^.
(From previous page) The extent of gambling in Australia contrasts
sharply with risk-taking in investment.
'Risk aversion seems to be
endemic in Australia at least as far as investment in innovative products
is concerned* (8. Macdonald).
^^7
/s*
By contrast,
Inglis attempts an historical explanation,
he sees as the social sources of gambling.
He claims to uncover the following
speculative character of business in a neM country (but unless
the
factors:
looking to Mhat
specially
difficult and distinctive character of the neM country is also
the
invoked
does not distinguish Australia from the rest of the neM
this
that life Mas a gamble in early Australia (but this does
including USA);
explain Mhy social gambling took off,
Irish
heritage
subsequent
mining
persistence
the
and does not account for
the
of
the
of social gambling in Australia);
the role
Mith heightened discovery and rapid riches (but
again
this
to California Mhere gambling practices are different, and are
e.g.,
not concentrated on social gambling).
particular
not
or the augmentation of gambling);
(but this applied also to USA,
industry
applies,
Morld,
These sorts of factors may explain
inherited forms of gambling in Australia,
for instance the
the
Irish
contribution no doubt helps account for the prominence of horse-racing and its
egalitarian betting patterns in Australia (though horse-racing is as important
in
NeM Zealand Mhich had no comparable influx of Irish catholics).
But they
do not explain the persistence and styles of gambling in Australia, as opposed
to
USA.
to
delegated
the
to
extent that it Mas in Australia,
the
Inglis
favours,
hoM Mas it that gambling Mas integrated into
emerges:
question
order,
up in the historical fashion
set
Nhen
rather
commercial and criminal sector as in
than
USA?
a
the
major
social
substantially
question
The
fetches its OMn complex ansMer - in terms of the differing religious pressures
for
the
suppression
and regulation of gambling,
the
respective
gambling and their possible exploitation by capitalistic methods,
types
of
illegal
or
legate and the comparative commitment to market and commercial methods
- once
the features of Australian gambling are explained.
In trying to explain Australian gambling and its distinctive features, it
is
most
important^first to divide gambling into types.
Australian
pursuit
gambling is social,
of Meal th.
A salient feature is that
for "fun", as opposed for
instance
But professional and heavy (and plunge) gambling
to
appear
be greater in Australia than elsewhere (and
to
not
gambling
than
less
are
in USA,
investment
the
reflecting again
of non-social
Bayesian theory (i.e.
gambling
be
can
gambling can be explained in the
people).
improvement
remains
it
given a largely psychological explanation,
positional
an undoubted consideration in such forms as lottery
is
to
social gambling.
For example-substantial
A
through
Since compulsive
subjective expected utility theory).
here some divi = i'*sn of types helps.
These
May
standard
explain Mhat _i_s distinctive in the Australian scene, broadly
Even
venture
security-
supposed
mindedness of Australians and the timidity of their business
types
and
art
and
union gambling but not in poker machine gambling.
main
The
forms
of
social
such
gambling,
club
as
rather undemanding leisure-time-fillers of
unintellectual
gambling,
acceptable
More ordinary Australians have a good deal of leisure time to fill;
are
types.
and given
the prevailing relatively uncompetitive ethos and general anti-intellectualism
of
the society,
activities
(e.g.
intellectual
or
this time is not often occupied by additional Mork or
for
positional improvement of one sort or another)
higher cultural activities,
But
by
gregarious
television Matching has to some extent substituted in recent
years.
or
direct
television
does
not
the same
offer
stimulation that gambling affords.
established,
socially
acceptable,
activities (like pip? smoking),
and
neMspapers^,
setting;
offering
iKti.
it
social
opportunities
Still, Mhy gambling rather than other time
It is not simply that it Mas and remains an
fillers and entertainment forms?
social
undemanding
or
For both of these more passive and
activities, such as drinking and gambling.
solitary
but by
hobby
form,
Mell
surrounded
Mith
associated
such as ^11 ec ting .snd reading^ + orm guidey
social
contacts and opportunities or at
also^afforde^
uncompetitive?^ form of stimulation, aec
a/, approved
least
funintellectual
a
and
Mhere^excitement could be directly
exper i encecL
tends
to
be extraverted;
leisure time activity
in
Australia
and Mhen it is not directed toMards the
notorious
the gambling situation reveals,
As
trie,
it is usually practical or- material,
mainstream Australian culture is,
not educational or artistic.
The
to understate matters, neither cultured nor
intel 1ectual,
communication,
Education,
the intellectual
patterns in Australasia are Northern,
England and Scotland,
imported almost entirely,
from
mainly
As a result
very recently, some local adaption.
significant surface educational differences between Australia
are
(though the differences do not touch the
America
North
Mith,
The
life and practicality.
underlying
and so are not of great ideological depth?.
social paradigm,
and
Northern
surface
These
differences bear directly on the continuation of the cultural traditions.
Austral ia
countries.
t^or st
the
has
There
educational record of any
for example,
are,
the
of
three times as many people going on to
higher science studies proportionally in USA as in Australia.
23
to
this
recorded.
Australia.)
better
including 50 per cent
level,
(There
is
up the ladder,
doubt
to
and
different.
similar
ethnic
of
the
blacks,
differentiation
students at more average American
different,
attitudes
to
lowest
in
Not only
educational
segment
education
universities
reflecting the
but are generally nor-se in quality,
the more generous intake of students.
styles
In USA however 83 percent go
than their Australian counterparts,
drive
levels
a
University
motivated
5
In Australia about 20 per cent leave school at 15, and only
3'? percent proceed to higher school certificate.
on
Nhereas in UbA
in Australia only
percent of science students eventually obtain Ph.Ds,
per cent do, etc.
developed
oning in
are
in
are
social
part
no
educational
institutions
are
In North America universities are much more business, and there is
The details of general intellectual life,
differ material 1y.
extent of reading,
etc., al so
It is in intellectual and educational life, especially in the extent of
book reading, that Ne'.-j Zealand culture differs, perhaps most strikingly,
from Australian.
The anti-intelleptu_al charges regularly hurled at
Australians are not often directed at Neu Zealanders, t^h^je traditions
remain much more British.
not
the
degree
separation of the university
of
business
commun i t i es
evident in Australia.
Education in Australia encounters, and has to combat, the practicality of
the mass of people, the widespread impatience with theory and ideas, and anti
The impatience with theory,
intellectualism.
theory into action,
blue
the demand for translation
the concentration on the practical,
collar (working-class) people,
of
appear not only with
for instance in adult education
but in groups drawn from virtually all strata of the society,
and
groups,
even,
and
perhaps or especially, in groups concerned with changing social consciousness.
The
anti-intellectualism
feature,
striking
locals.
Thu
to
of
Australia is a
widely
cultural
European visitors^and admitted or even insisted on
'sheep-culture,
agriculture,
by
physical culture have reached
standards in Australia but intellectual culture has
high
remarked
been
neglected* .
'Especially important in affecting the output of govenments and the quality of
our political life ...
[is] a suspicion of debate and reason, combined with a
profound anti-intellectualism'.
13
Rnti-intellectualism has however two levels (like anti-theism):
or,
differently, hostility to things intellectual.
though
the
Both appear in Australia,
neglect is far more widespread than hostility (which
restricted
neglect
appears
to a few older class-differentiated cultural groupings),
vast and amorphous middle class vaguely approving of things
largely
most
of
educational.
Note also the role of private schools in Australia, as in USR, as opposed
to New Zealand, where quality secondary eduction is not so privatised.
The whole style of ranking educational institutions in fact differs from
culture to culture.
Stephenson^s "words ring as true as they did the^' 30
writes Dunlevy (Canberra Times l'?84).
years
ago,
so
The other two 'characteristics [which] infect our public life'*, and also
stand in the way of 'a better society in this country", listed by Aitkin
in his cynical and pessimistic conclusion (p.28) are worth recording
also,
namely
widespread authoritarianism and
majoritarianism
in
government, and primary group loyalty (and therewith partisan and even
confrontational practices) in public affairs, i.e. narrow non-pluralistic
matesh i p.
this
In
does
Australia
neglect,
not differ
from
situation may be Morse in rural USA than it is in rural
the
highly
other
Indeed there are grounds for supposing
materialist cultures, such as the USA.
that
markedly
Australia,
Mhere people commonly have access to public libraries and a variety of
public
c ommun i c a t i on ne tMorks,
terms
In
furnished
America
relative
of
population
Australia
corresponds
perhaps
is
to community radio stations like Canberra's
could Mell adapt, is different.
better
Nothing in
cultural communication netMorks than USA.
Mith
2XX
North
to
or
The US PSS arrangments, Mhich Australia
ethnic radio in most state capitals.
by
size
For Mhat it is Morth (for they are controlled
capitalist right and carry a heavy Northern ideological message)
the
the
main Australian neMspapers also compare favourably Mith American neMspapers
at least on a circulation-size basis
Many
Americans
have
'America's
for
conservatism'
(p.345).
Mhich,
Australia,
remarked,
in a similar
parochialism,
The
though
- and tend to be less parochial.
fashion
to
anti-intellectualism
Merrill,
sc i en t i sm
ano
smoothly
for
same ingredients do not blend so
certainly
instantiating that
on
initially^_starting
coupling of scientism Mith an t i - i n t e 1 1 ec t u a 1 i sm^s^^Can d n a t i on a 1 i sm)^ i s neither
so
conservative
(especially
politically) nor nearly
as
parochial
(perhaps because much further from the centre of things than USA).
there is some significant overlap,
are,
like
Moreover,
of
'P%.
though
because both mainstream cultures are male-
dominated Mith a heavy practical get-things-done orientation.
Australasian
USA
Nor do the
of Australian anti-intellectualism look the same as American,
sources
as
For example, in
male preserves it is still considered that intellectual pursuits
artistic
endeavours,
for practical men,
unmasculine
and
effeminate
("sissy").
ideas and intellectual activity, except as part
a narroM practically-directed result-oriented science,
are an impediment,
Looked at differently things are not so good.
Australia's capital, for
example, hardly turns out, in the form of the Canberra Times, a product
Mhich compares favourably Mith the Nashing ton Post
an effete luxury.
in
that
Inhere Australian culturet&e3±±s^diverges from American
anti-intellectualism,
culture and thought, ^deriv
the
connected mediocre standards
and
opportunities
various
furthermore,
to
higher
from egalitarian and levelling down elements
culture (for intellectual activities,
serious
of
to
and
excel,
like high culture,
surpass
is
in
offer too many
There
mates).
are,
connected mediocre-maintaining mechanisms in Australian
for example ''social penalisation of deviance from certain "middling"
society,
intellectual
other
norms'* (Ely),
a lopping off
cultures
do share is a
heavy
and
of
intellectual
tall
poppies.
the
Nhat
as
misrepresented
Americans,
a
practical
practical
utilitarianism.
and unlike most Europeans,
orientation,
Australians
are,
often
like
practical do-it-yourself people, proud
But for the most part,
of their fix-it make-do and improvisational abilities.
Australians have strong group loyalties and do not treat those outside primary
groups
with
sense;
nor
aiming
at
sufficient impartiality to count as utilitarians in
they,
in appropriate utilitarianism
greatest
happiness of the greatest
are
'the
societal maximum.
educational
and
or
number'
strict
maximizers,
any
other
They are utilitarian only in the vulgar sense of utility-
focussed and practical,
experimental
fashion,
any
in the sense that theory,
statistical
work,
gets
and research institutes (as e.g.
a low
as opposed to practice and
even
in
higher
the Research School
of
Social
ranking,
Sciences, Australian National University).
The
practical
capabilities of Australians are by no means
directed but include group and social organisation.
individually
Particularly significant
The utilitarian theme was a hare-meleased by Hancock, in his attempt to
reconcile Australian 'individualism with ... reliance upon Government'
(p.55).
In fact utilitarianism is inessential to the style
of
reconciliation Hancock attempts, several sorts of accounts of collective
poster at the service of integrated individual interests serving as well or better in the Australian case.
Even in the academies utilitarianism
hardly predominates;
and it has had little historical importance in
Australian philosophy, though it has regrettably become a position to be
reckoned with in recent years.
By contrast, pragmatism has almost no
foil owing.
is
australian
'the
organisations
zest for starting,
joining
of all kinds' (aitkin p.26).
and
maintaining
voluntary
This has proved important for
a
long time in the provision of Melfare services in australis, and more recently
40?% n
in the case of the environment.
The pattern of Melfare^in australia, for long
self-provisioning (as distinct from provided by local
largely
elseMhere
),
a "Mel fare partnership" Mith government
into
merged
espec i al 1 y in brick-and mortar- grants and the like,
and
other
organisations.
environmental
a
The
concerns.
government
similar
pattern
funding,
for voluntary,
is
re! igious
as
emerging
as
regards
size of the nongovernmental Melfare sector
in
Rustralia,
an important part of the informal economy, remains extremely large
(est ima ted
9. S
p.26^/
for
equivalent in unpaid mages alone to 1.5'< of GDP,
de t ai 1s);
the informal economy bound up
and
see
Mith
aitkin,
environmental
issues is no longer negligible though governmental assistance is
siight.
But the success of nongovernmental organisation and the informal
economy
up a latent paradox concerning political organisation in australia
throMS
for Mhat i s
paradoxes tied to the already noticed authoritarianism paradox;
afxa poMer+ul authoritarian government doing in self-reliant communities?)
the
one
hand,
there
political culture',
is
'an important self-reliant
in
strain
(a
On
australian
Mith do-it-themselves groups Mhich substituted for
local
government; it is 'a political culture in Mhich voluntary organistions have an
honoured place' (aitkin,
apathy,
though
populace
Mhich
p.26).
But, on the other hand, there is a political
are not as marked as formerly or as- in the USa;
has
by
and
large 'not sought
profound
there
changes
in
is
problems
a
reliance on government to provide and
(this in complete contrast Mith
america)
to
deal
.
a
Mith
and
political
difference-in-size
In contrast Mith USa, for instance, local government Mas
development in australia, and remains Meak: see aitkin, p.23ff.
?7-
a
their
political or social structure for several generations noM" (aitkin p.23);
there
is
a
late
"So australians faced Mith a political problem learned to respond Mith
"Mhat Mill they (= the government) do about it?", Mhereas americans in a
similar situation could be heard to say "Hhat Mill Me do about it?'"
(aitkin, p.23).
ar
^6
theory,
both lessons for Australian political decentralisation and^some
Mith
expI anatory
0! son' s
Mould appear to resolve the paradox (a theory
pOMer,
individuals,
action,
collective
of
bogie
but
Mhich
initial
the
groups or factions to Mhom
primary
within Mhich mateship^ bonds operate).
in
but Mith
elements
not
attach
and
loyalties
Nhat holds for the smaller local group
individual is directly involved does not
the
resembling
to
transfer
larger
political arrangements? tsri on the contrary, local loyalties act against larger
groups struggle and compete for their OMn
organisation^
enter ^nto a-v^ricty"'of partisan and rent-seeking behaviour.
Australians
political
are
self- or
problems
they
hardly
and
Similarly Mhile
problems,
group-reliant Mith smaller
appeal to government,
interests
larger
for
surprisingly^ to
authoritarian government (for though authoritarianism is not essential,
an
it is
likely in the circumstances).
.The
1
open
times may be changing Mith the serious attempt to apply
"
methods
secretive
to
large group decision making,
games,
numbers
instead
of
group
'a perversion of the majority principle
old
Mhich
in
HoMever the
of more satisfactory and rational decision making methods into large
organisation and choice practices have a long May to go
political
the
simply
getting the numbers is a surrogate for persuasion'* (Aitkin p.28).
adoption
consensual,
J
life,
in
Australian
in such less anti-intellectual (but still often
even
anti
theory) cloisters as the universities and other educational institutions.
Approaches
to the environment.
the frequent presentation of USA as the heartland
An t i podes, despi te
environmental
movement.
proportionately,
the Morld.
of
There
are,
as
Australian
for
example,
more
paid-up
the
of
members,
environmental groups in Australia than anyMhere else
in
Apparently blest Germany, Northern homeland of green politics, noM
comes second in this sort of statistic,
Mell
Ecological aMareness is greater in the
easily ahead of USA and
Canada.
a quantitative difference there is a qualitative difference
and Northern environmentalism.
The Australian movement
As
betMeen
is
much
A
and
active
more
ecological
auareness
communities.
The
involved.
not
mi th
permeated
Antipodean culture is
encountered in North America
in
except
an
isolated
These are subjective impressions from informants, but there are
some more objective matters to back them up, such as
The
P
issue
Tasmanian
dam issue,
uhich could not have figured as
election
an
in the same sort of uay in North America (though perhaps it could
have
in Noruay);
level of political commitment on such environmental matters
neu
The
9
the preservation of rainforest in NSH.
as
(For details, and other examples, see
Dunphy).
?
for example,
Responses to questionnaires on rainforest and uoodchipping,
uhich indicate uide community concern in Australia on these issues.
impressions
The
quantitative
can,
uay,
by
moreover,
be
backed
up to some
dividing environmental groups into
(conservative) and neuer (post l'?65, more radical).
extent
in
tuo
types:
more
a
older
The overwhelming majority
of people involved in environmental groups in England, for instance, belong to
organisations of the former type,
National
mostly founded last century, especially the
Trust (see Loue and Goyder).
By contrast the
consists predominantly of more recently formed groups.
Australian
The Australian groups
differ in character from those in USA in important uays;
also
for
and less inclined to compromise. For instance, there has never been a
action,
(such
deal
as
as the Sierra Club
made)
uith. organisations
supporting
there has never been a uorking alliance uith shooters or
pouer,
nuclear
clubs
they are,
more active, more radical, more left-leaning, more inclined to
the most part,
major
movement
is commonplace in USA,
or an easy alliance uith
off-road
gun
vehicle
c1ubs.
USA
can
Emerging),
much
in
be
very
roughly seen,
as dividing into tuo parts,
the
uilderness),
uay
as Callenbach
sees
(in
Ecotopi a
Eastern part, uithout
the Old Norld,
of deeper ecological concerns (or
it
of
national
parks
or
and a Neuer Norld, Nestern part, uhich is much more ecologically
There
concerned.
is
little
doubt however that
the
metropolitan
eastern
industrial part of USA (the Boston-Neu York-Hashington conglomeration) is Mell
and truly in control of things.
in
the
places
uhere
again roughly,
The division gets reflected,
environmental philosophy or
features in university programs,
equivalent
an
seriously
not at the
namely the south and uest,
more
richly-endoued higher-ranked universities in the east.
Jeuish prominence in eastern American universities has something
The
to
There is a significant Jewish element in
do Mith this educational situation.
contemporary US thinking and philosophy, but not to any extent in Australian
American.
The
evident Jewish influence on American economic and political life extends
into
except
insofar as it (increasingly) serves as a Meak copy of
philosophy
and
Nalzer
political theory,
in
elements.
ideology:
This
long
the Mork of Nozick
for instance,
Mhich is overtly infused
influence
exploitation-disrupted
the
Consider,
has
a
substantial
Mith
Jeuish
effect,
Jeuish record is exceedingly disappointing,
Hebraic
especially
arenas like peace and the natural environment
both in
and
in
- Mhere
practice
and
theory (occasional rebels excepted).
The
features
strength of Australian environmentalism arises from a combination of
of
the
land
and
the culture:
the
presence
pouer
and
of
the
surrounding natural Morld, the conspicuousness and the resilience of many more
familiar
Mhich
close,
parts of the environment,
together
the outdoor barbeque-and-beach lifestyle,
Mith a variety of outdoor activities brings
the secular earthiness of the culture,
the
its naturalism,
environment
the
doMn-to-
earth practical character of the people, the do-it-yourself approach to things
like
housing,
repairs
and
so
forth
Mhich
often
frustrating, details of the natural Morld close again.
brings
the
messy,
if
Nhile Hestern American A.
9^.
There are hoMever some European emigres, Mith right-leaning or even
reactionary political vieMS, Mho have an influence on political thinking
in Australia, especially as regards defence and communism.
NeM Zealand
is, by contrast, relatively free of such immigrants.
%?.
Nain reasons Mhy are in fact nicely explained in SchMarzschild.
these things it does not share all of
of
many
shares
them
by
means,
any
in particular not the areligious character or the style of naturalism.
Despite Australia's frequent inclusion as an industrialised nation, it is
not
industrialised,
highly
mining,
and
agriculture
and
of
much
the
export
in their different Mays quarrying
both
Other Antipodean countries are even less industrialised.
there
the level of Old Norld
yet
isn't
transformation
industrial
land.
the
the
The
European
still
environment
even in most parts of the largest
reaches through conspicuously,
from
And in the Antipodes
control,
the total inhabitable landscape.
of
comes
wealth
cities.
survey of cultural media such as films Mould shoM this clearly enough.
a
rare
(or NeM Zealand) film that doesn't include
Australian
bushdrop,
many
Mhereas
US
exclude
productions
the
some
A
It is
natural
environment
natural
entirely, and even Mhen sequences are shot outside it's often all concrete and
and
glass,
neon
lights and automobiles and
pools
sMimming
- metropolitan
"cu1ture".
Certainly these sorts of urban effects, taken from noMhere in particular,
could
be achieved in parts of the older Australia state capitals,
becoming
(less
very
freeMay
cities in the American-influenced
much
systems hoMever),
Melbourne,
noisy
and
As a result,
older
mode
structures
the largest, Sydney and
are not .just sprauling and mostly unplanned but heavily congested,
polluted,
Mith
nature blotted out in many of
despite
its impressive monuments,
the
inner
poorer
In this they resemble Hashington,
suburbs by red brick and Mires and asphalt.
Mhich
are
free-enterprise
overlaying and expanding
copied from British provincial cities.
Mhich
has only little
planning,
and
is
mostly the American adaption of the European city - an adaption Mhere the city
is
treated as if at first space didn't matter,
structures,
fortunate
al) being,
to have,
so to say,
by contrast,
nor any unity of
better integrated into and less imposed upon,
(the
Australia is
isolated individual ones).
in Canberra a much more
style
holistic
capita),
/
the environment.
Moreover it
is
hard
not to see and to some extent appreciate the natural environment
on the hills,
especially
Canberra,
neatly planned and in places so green,
between,
lands
even if the flatter
in
so
exhibit (though as cities normally do)
so much artifice.
The
prospects for the environment look rather brighter in Australia than
in USA,
and
for several reasons,
some physical and structural,
much
smaller proportion firmly
population,
and
agriculture
or to industrialist activities.
matter
possibilities
technological
and
a
of good luck than good management;
America
much
For a similar land area Australia has a
cultural.
have been lacking.
some ideological
human
smaller
committed
to
intensive
In large measure this is more a
for both the time and physical and
for a such colossal business
investment
as
in
But cultural reasons have also made a difference
Mill likely become increasingly important:
contrasts
cultural
already
observed, that is.
In
had
Australians came increasingly godless to a land God
the first place,
supposedly forgotten about;
for them there Mas no mandate or
such as the Americans operated under,
in
Australian
life
not merely to multiply and be fruitful,
and exploit it to their oMn ends.
but to dominate the land,
and
approaches
directive
to
the
environment
Nor is there noM
the
extent
of
religiously-reinforced human chauvinism that operates in the industrial North,
and
Mhich
sciences.
informs
the
Secondly,
precedent-bound
foundations
American adulation of,
of
Northern
social
and ideological commitment
. (From previous page) So it is to be hoped that Griffin's environmental
vision, from Mhich Canberra took shape, can be sustained. H.B. Griffin a naturalised Australian Mho greM up in USA - has a significant place in
the groMth of environmentalism in Australia. His role in this regard has
been largely neglected;
for he is usually portrayed .just as an
arch i tec t.
/P/ . On the May in Mhich human chauvinism is Mritten deep into mainline social
sciences, see EE, pp.183-'?.
About the social theory involved, many
Australians are fortunately sceptical - those that bother Mith theory,
that is.
/%%. The practice of government**assisted capitalism of
differs of course from the ideology.
advanced
capitalism
to,
market arrangements and market-based minimally-regulated
profit-directed
competition is not shared in Australia,
American commitment to the Big,
and,
to big business,
to put it all more theoretically,
capitalism,
controlled
is substantially opposed.
but
to tall poppies, to genius,
to maximization.
extraordinarily bad neMS for the environment.
general
and
documented,
reasons for their damaging effects are sufficiently
theoretical
the
understood.)
such commitments and themes, though influential enough and
In Australia,
and advertised daily through the commercial media,
pushed
in
are
(The damaging effects of these
in practice are quite evident enough and Mell
3-Bad-lTs
But such minimally-
maximization,
and
markets,
So is
do
not
dominate.
For there is a different mainstream ideology Mith a different agenda - such as
social
social
regulation,
and
intervention,
so
arbitration,
consensus,
group
government
The land and the people are not open
forth.
American-style markets in the same '.jay (though there are increasing
ill-considered
pressures
forces",
dairy
market,
e.g.
expose
farmers
in a subsidized and
also
Morks
in favour of
the
environment.
natural
and
are
entitled to fair treatment,
oppressed or poor Australians,
rather
to a "fair go" and assistance.
growing reluctance to see local environments,
especially
and,
by foreign companies.
Fourthly,
Australian environmental movement itself,
Morld
Australian
Thirdly,
are to an increasing extent considered as honorary or even
Australians,
"market
heavily-controlled
markets).
the
and often
to
population
sectors of the
adolescents in over-supplied labour
egalitarianism
animals
to
to
Native
exemplary
like
other
And there is a
like small people,
ripped off,
there is the live and expanding
some of it manifest in
Alternative
Australia.
5.
Formulating and takinq different directions
The
distinctive
features of Australian culture both point
change and supply main parts of an engine for change.
is,
houever,
the
May
to
The standard complaint
that proposals for radical change noM lack,
Mith the demise of
revolutionary aspirations in the oppressed c 1 asses, any engine for change.
In
more friendly form, the complainfis elaborated along the foliating lines:-
It is easy enough to formulate different directions for the South Pacific
it is far harder to see how such an appropriately different course
countries;
It is not merely that the main countries in the
can be adopted and followed.
region,
European
transformed
descent.
by Europeans,
There
are
are much influenced by people
inevitably,
then,
strong
recent
of
pressures
for
conformity, for similarity to the North, and for cultural anonymity, and there
is much pressure for increased assimilation within the !JS6 sphere of influence
These Northern pressures comprise a familiar package, notably
and control.
*
Domination
popular
media
Northern,
of main forms of communication and education - especially the
such as T'-.J,
especially
books
- by
features
and
missionaries of Northern culture
and
but also intellectual media such
American
but
also
British,
programs,
as
products.
*
Cultural
propaganda.
travelling
ambassadors,
Surprisingly, these people are almost invariably welcomed, their
loaded messages eagerly sought.
reinforce the missionaries.
from,
On a lesser scale,
North
tourists from the
They see the North, generally the areas they come
as ^zi.tmg the standards,
as providing the sort of cultural ideals the
backward Antipodes should be seeking to attain.
*
Top-down
directives
from
aligned with Northern interests.
local
both
private and public
companies,
metropolitan skylines).
which
are
These include not merely the manaoements of
branches of multinational companies,
insurance
sources
and so on (roughly,
but those of a variety of
banks,
those whose buildings now dominate
Etc.
103
Even the most powerful and populous states in the South Pacific region
are
becoming
increasingly
locked into a dual system
of
Northern
control,
namely through
103. Those which operate their own limited imperialism in lesser states of the
region, e.g., Australia in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand in Samoa.
The
1.
organisation
American
104
The most important of these arrangements in Australia's case
is
hegemony.
of industrialised capitalist states,
under
perhaps the Pacific rim strategy, masterminded by the USA Mith assistance from
and fitting within the world arrangements envisaged by the
Japan,
Trilateral
Commission.
2.
of the economy by
penetration
The
many of them ultimately American controlled.
Northern,
mostly
corporations,
transnational
of
(For the effects
this framework of control in Australia's case, see Crough and Wheelwright.).
A very significant net result is that local economic control is diminishing or
and therewith,
being lost altogether,
local
control
political
in these economically-dominated times,
is diminishing.
National
economies
increasingly
respond, and are seen as obliged to respond, to so-called international forces
"international market" forces in state-rigged markets with
(or
and highly concentrated participants).
effort,
of
much
(unmarketable)
it
intentional,
At the same time there is a concerted
to
reduce
and
remain,
remove
substantially
cultural differences in the contemporary world,
mass consumer society and worldwide markets.
differences
unequal
very
a
to produce
Notwithstanding, major cultural
even in the more industrialised
With
countries.
some
A
care, some fostering, the differences cou1be accentuated in worthwhile ways,
though
the
especially in the industrial
trend,
main
nations,
in
is
the
opposite direction, to almost complete cultural convergence.
On the other side,
forces,
mainly
local,
there are in the South Pacific some
in
counterbalancing
favour of some distancing of Australian
and
New
Zealand cultures from the USA, and of looser relations, especially, presently,
in
matters of (nuclear) defence.
If change is to occur,
it is important to
encourage worthwhile components of these forces,
particularly those
in regional culture
interconnected ways, through
ideas
that regional
and
action.
grounded
cultures
104. For Third World southern countries, financial arrangements through
US-dominated INF and World Bank loom much larger.
and
the
their
do
conventionalism
and
important.
shape
a
are
There
culture,
undoubted!;/
pragmatism
as
American lifestyle or Australian naturalism
(and
and
Sydney
However what
Russell
that culture determines the shape of the dominant philosophy,
to think,
qualification.
major
philosophy;
dominant
are
and realism a main strand of Australian.
materialism)
requires
reflect
that
philosophies
came
elements
philosophical
but
Certainly,
conversely,
105
culture affects
philosophical
and
constrains
input
can
affect, or even alter, culture.
Genuine
differences
implementation
(as
of
a few very simple
ideas
could
make
major
the 1884-5 stand of the New Zealand government on visits
of
namely that significant principles (of morality)
or
nuclear ships reveals);
features of local culture or regional environments are not sacrificed,
in
jeopardy,
such things as trading advantages or
for
distributed economic benefits.
economism
narrowly
There is a powerful basis for defeating
in Australian and Antipodean cultures,
egalitarian approaches;
short-term
or put
such
in the shape of anti-market
and these and other complementary cultural features
could serve more widely to halt or subvert Northern incursions.
The
South
uncritical
Pacific
Enlightenment
and
for
uncontrolled extension of European culture
take one lesser instance of
that
world-wide
to
spread
and disease) has been very damaging both to indigenous
the lands and seas,
extinction.
mistakes.
(to
and
the
of
peoples
even pushing some of the former inhabitants
to
Nodern people are supposed to learn, if from anything, from their
Among
mistakes of civilizations,
environmental mistakes
are
as
105. Russell 'connecttsl'* philosophies with the social environments of the
philosophers concerned' p.824). Elsewhere, however, Russell only claims
social influences, not determination (e.g., p.827). His working example
is the connection of Dewey's philosophy 'with American enterprise;
in
particular there is the belief in human power, and an unwillingness to
admit "stubborn facts".'*
'His philosophy is a power philosophy.
Russell then proceeded to consider the very real dangers of human power.
Dewey, for his part, contested the connections Russell alleged, as well
as the dangers.
There is much more, however, to the interrelations of
dominant philosophies with cultures and their environments than Russell
unear thed.
conspicuous as any (sea e.g,
hanger
no
though
beyond
Hatt) .
the reach of a Northern Mar - to
of Northern civilizations,
mistakes
Thors is sti 1 1 time for* the Antipodes
avoid
the
beginning Mith human overpopulation
many
and
environmental impoverishment (as differently illustrated by Italy and Lhina).
There
that
grounded in regional
are various different directions,
a country or place can attempt to take.
There are,
for
features,
example,
tMO
extremal economic directions a contemporary state or region may try to pursue,
as illustra ted:-
other reliance, e.g. upon
i n ternat i onal economic
forces
al ternative
fort-jard May
present
se 1 freli ance
At
the
one
end
lies local self-reliance
and
control,
substantially excluded Mhen it comes to essentials;
(as Mith the Meather of an island),
regulation
largely controlled from elseMhere,
(but
direction.
dominated)
by
the
is
It
or directed through some
toMards- the
dashed arroM,
points
this
direction
general
economy
and control Mith the
for instance at the mercy of international
Northern dominated) economic forces,
shoMn
outside
the
at the other lies outside
patron (as Mith Australia's, defence or Tibet's economy).
that
Mith
that
poMerful
A typical direction,
latter
(backMards)
international
(American
financial institutions such as the INF and the Horld Bank
try
to
impose on client states.
Unfortunately
bent
on
indicate
Mritten
pursuing
given
all likely governments in countries like Australia
the Mrong direction.
the May poMer,
The reasons are
privilege and influence
into the control of societies - lie.
not
appear
difficult
- Northern
to
features
But it does not have to be
or
stay that way.
difficulty for all suggestions for extensile
major
A
normal governmental procedures,
through
effect
constraint
for change.
is a
change,
severe
For governmental procedures are st on,
put
into
apparent
time
piecemeal
and
whichever
usually reactive (this is even how successful governmental methods,
these are,
vastly
sages
successful)
and
(among
But time is running out for the present (.not
are supposed to be) .
human experiment it is now everywhere
sound men and women of common sense,
from
crackpots
will
1'lhatever is done for change may have to be done with more rapidity
is customary in grander human affairs,
except with war itself (which is
of the main prob 1ems and a likely outcome of
one
as
from
whose numbers are those most confident that present arrangements
persist).
than
as well
said,
heard
socio-economic
catastrophe
ensuing from other problems).
In the present conditions of uncertainty,
a
strategy relevant to both outcomes,
concentrating
upon
imme^d^ate
paths
it would seem wise to plot out
catastrophic breakdown or
to
change
aimed
avoiding
at
while
not,
socio-
env i r onmen t a 1 break down.
Both the deeper American environmentalists and leading German Greens,
unlike
many
thinkers and leaders take the problems with deadly
hope
for a way out of present massive socio-environmental
main
nuclear impasse particularly,
change will take the form of a
This
spread
like a religious revival,
by way of democratic channels.
the
through a mass change
seriousness,
difficulties,
of
spiritual
who
and
consciousness.
conversion,
and
to alter political decisions and directions
These ideas,
while by no means ridiculous in
fashion of new-born Christians' views about their individualistic
escape
from nuclear Armageddon,
and while offering a clear ray of hope, leave most
106
Australians who have encountered them duly sceptical.
That type of massive
change
a
of consciousness (which may not be politically effective) will require
miracle,
and
miracles are not credible.
More important,
that
sort
of
conversion i_s ruled out culturally in Australia,
spiritual
according to
the
prev i ous ar gumen t.
A drastic and massive change of consciousness,
or religious
is neither likely nor necessary (nor Mould it be sufficient).
Antipodes,
the
someMhat
Mith
isolated
favourable location in
its
Fortunately in
Southern
the
conversion,
Hemisphere,
there are different and
from the belligerent North,
more
These are social Mays
promising routes to change and regional nuclear escape.
and locally self-reliant Mays deeply rooted in the culture. Instead of seeking
to
change
consciousness,
then,
the
and through elements of,
the culture.
lines of religious conversion,
picture
through
of change.
in
But
many
and
those
involves
rather
is
as amended;
straightforwardness,
aMay
than
from
dominant
It encourages many
so to say).
for example those
as interfering Mith crucial features of
running counter to enterprise,
orderliness,
change
not
re-conditioning
counter-cultural,
deplored features of Australian culture,
culture,
of,
Mhat is being offered is a very different
this
respects the route
acquisitive capitalist virtues.
the
in the form
a
The route is thus cultural, not in this respect counter-cultural.
considered
been
Mith
Instead of the picture of change along
Northern paradigms (counter-Northern-culture,
often
Mork
to
is
The main path to change is through culture,
consciousness;
conversion.
idea
that is already there or in the background,
"consciousness"
the
leading
market
that
capitalism,
selfishness and the
initiative,
have
other
It encourages instead traditional virtues of
for instance Midened
generosity,
egalitarianism,
permissiveness,
pluralism,
unsubtlety,
spontaneity,
authenticity, sociaSbility, reliability, anti-authoritarianism,
group-reli^ance, resourcefulness, moderation, leisure!iness.
The main environmental route aMay from Northern social paradigms has been
10^. (From previous page) Host, but of course, not all.
The change-ofconscicusness idea has its adherents, e.g. Cairns, some in Alternative
Australia. Naturally it is not being denied that change-^f-consciousness
(e.g. in the form of ecological conversion) does occur^aac^is an important h
happening. Hhat is at issue is the likely scale of such change.
and Mhat it involves indicated (e.g. in RP).
t-lhat is
the extent to Mhich elements of mainstream Australian
culture
reconnoitred elsewhere,
is
remarkable
Indeed in Australasian culture there
fit with that divergence from the North.
is
at
best
dominant
social
There is already in the cultures
paradigm.
for a marked SMing aMay from the dominant Northern
basis
vieMpoint,
demagogic
of
ambivalent subscription to major facets
only
is
it
mainly a matter of tipping
Northern
the
a
substantial
paradigm.
an
From
already
a
poised
balance aMay from Nor them-influenced control.
break-aMay
This
involve
first
control has tMO political facets
arrangements
part
Mhich
of
part
relevant
is breaking free from Northern hegemony, control,
alignment
of
The
and
from the influence of foreign states and the grips of transnational
Some
companies.
recovering
Mays
connected
of the Mays this can be accomplished have
local control of media output and messages,
are knoMn,
e.g.
escheMing a false internationalism,
and,
into line Mith
both
so that political arrangements reflect these parts of culture.
reliance,
e.g.
political
bringing
culture,
from
sMeepingly,
more
dropping
moving to greater
regional
been
indicated,
and many
other
self-reliance,
modifying limited liability of companies,
out
of the
international
abandoning the race to keep up Mith the Singaporian
rat-race
Jones and the
(e.g.
E/i^shoMas,
Host of these Mays could
107
The second
designed to strike resounding chords in mainstream culture.
in demolishinq their oMn and others'* environments).
be
rtA"' ccbLt
subsidizing
transnationals,
A.?
providing
hand-outs and undue
shelter
to
big
business or monopolistic professions, cutting assistance to the disadvantaged,
exposing
local small-actor sectors (in difficulty) to the icy Minds of
Morld
107. And Mhere not it is a matter of removing false beliefs, such as that
Australia is currently threatened militarily by hostile states.
These
sorts of beliefs could be altered, at least for many Mho hold them, by
appropriate
persuasion by credible popular figures on mass media
channels. In fact it has suited both government and opposition, hitherto
committed to an essentially bipartisan defence policy, to let false
beliefs about defence, for instance, stand, or even to encourage and
reinforce them.
market forces, and so on.
such
Tipping the balance involves both positive measures
promoting the valid features in
as
as^
such
measures,
counteracting
freely flowing in from the North,
Australian
culture,
counter-
and
images
and removing damaging impacts and
e.g.
by cutting doMn the floM,
making
it
more expensive, and introducing rivals.
Governments cannot be relied upon
even
Mhere
motivated to do so (e.g. as Mith defence they may
support, because of false beliefs).
rolehas
never
to make requisite changes on their OMn,
been active
in
lack
popular
Apparently, and surprisingly, the State's
Australia,
but
a 1 Mays
reactive.
State
intervention and regulation is and has alMays been in reaction to Mhat
108
happens.
Since governments can not be relied upon to initiate action, it
is important to move for change,
for
such
possible,
change
early
and Mhere possible to obtain popular support
10?
on in movements.
It is important also, Mhere
to bypass government,
building alternative social arrangements and
enlarging the informal economy (see e.g. Nartin).
There is further a component to be exploited in tipping the balance
from the
mainstream
dominant
Northern paradigm, apart from the
Australian
authoritarianism,
culture
(as
e.g.
components
egalitarianism,
of
anti
anti-marketism, satisization, environmentalism, and so on).
That is anti-Americanism.
There
developed
leading
aMay
The attitude in the Antipodes to USA is ambivalent.
is a love-hate relationship in Australia (e.g.
mutual admiration
from
perceived cultural similarities, gratitude from older Australians for American
108. This major theme is advanced, illustrated, and defended in Gilbert,
p.?ff. One important example concerns squatting, other aspects of social
Melfare.
But the theme is liable to be contested, e.g. by Aitkin, Mho
sees 'nearly tMo centuries of reliance on ... omnicompetent initiating
goverment behind us'
(p.27).
HoMever Gilbert seems to be correct;
Australian governments are hardly omnicompetent or 'omnipresent'*, and
they rarely appear to initiate.
10?. That support may be enlisted from culturally unexpected sources, e.g.
Momen in the case of the peace movement, as opinion polls clearly reveal.
The peace movement has not undertaken sufficient political foot-uork,
e.g. grass roots activity such as door knocks, in increasing and
mobilizing this potential support.
in Morld Mar II;
action
ugly American abroad).
dislike of American blustering,
the Antipodes.
independence,
trying
to
The distaste for being visibly pushed around is strong in
A striking feature of established Antipodean peoples is their
elements
or to be
unwillingness to put up with nonsense,
their
manipulated^ especially by foreigners.
cultural
There is now much anti-US-
in New Zealand since USA made the tactical error of
New Zealand.
bully
the
There is much anti-Americanism in Australia as well as
widespread opposition to the American government.
governmentism
opposition to
as
pushed*
Ao
Of course, the tactic of appeal ingj^such
practices
opposition to the American political
is
a
dangerous one, owing in part to politicians' dishonest penchant for conflating
opposition to a foreign government with opposition to people that goverment is
supposed
to represent (or perhaps on rare occasions does),
easy
the
by
above).
neutralised.
practice
ambiguity of terms like anti-American (an ambiguity
The tactic opens the way to charges of racism,
and the like.
a
But the charges,
For
it
is
on
national chauvinism,
if they can be got at, are straightforwardly
largely a matter of removing
institutions (and cultures) to their individual members,
institutions devolves,
traded
made
fallaciously, into criticism of
crude
reduction
of
so that criticism of
each and every one of
the members.
no
Richard Sylvan
110. This paper had a long and difficult gestation and growth period, before
ye'idling a result that still leaves its author uneasy most days.
He
cehtainly hopes that those who commented on the paper or assisted on the
labour in its earlier days now only dimly recognise it.
Among those to
be thanked are Brian Hartin, Jean Norman, Louise Syvlan (who was
responsible for the monster in the first place), David Bennett, ... .
On the notion of culture and cultural pluralism
APPENDIX 1:
unfortunately, with very few exceptions,
Definitions of culture abound;
Hany are too narrow,
are bad.
all
for example chauvinistically restricting
culture to human groups (as Kamenka's appalling motto, 'nothing human is alien
p.7.); some are too broad, for example making any sort of organisation
to me',
as a trade union or a local brass band.) a culture.
such
serve
to
connect
problems:- High
redefinitions
of
cu1ture
with [a peoples'] artistic achievement or, even more
111
with (their) literature.
This is h1 on culture, at least insofar
culture
LaJ
narrowly,
as
the types of
indicate
Pt fen examples will
what is included is class restricted,
to certain class-approved
products
and performances (e.g. opera, ballet, drama as opposed to reggae, punk, etc.).
Hhile high redefinitions let in too little,
So
is with the definition of culture as 'the transfer of
it
behavioural means,
(Bonner
with
low redefinitions admit too much.
p.ltj),
culture.
information
most particularly by the process of teaching and learning*
because that includes much that has nothing especially to
For
by
example,
number of bricks on a site,
relaying a weather forecast or passing on
transfers information by behavioural
means,
do
the
but
information of no particular cultural relevance.
By
contrast,
culture.
For
Herskovits:
most definitions mark out something which roughly overlaps
example,
culture
Awa
'settletsJ
for
the
offered
definition
is "the man-made part of the environment"
...'
by
(p.2'?).
Not only is this inadmissibly anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (such
as
Bonner
writers
studies)
imagine);
and extraterrestrial cultures (such
but
worse,
as
science-fiction
this twisted definition appears to
render
a
ill. Thus, for example, Stephenson
throughout his iconoclastic book on
Australian culture.
The equation, with literary texts, like that of a
paradigm
with central texts,
is useful in offering a
materia!
representation of a culture. For there is something solid that can be
grasped and presented.
Similary, money, newspapers and motor cars,
afford material artefacts and museum exhibits of wider popular cultures.
deserted
town or ancient ruins a culture (rather
mining
of
manifestation
a
past culture) while excluding a system
physics!
the
than
and
beliefs
of
values as a culture (.unless an erroneous theory of systems of propositions
In
invoked).
is
latching onto the physical exemplification it is moreover like
Kuhn' s identification of a text-book with a paradigm.
there is much m common between the notion of culture and
Indeed
libera! extension of the notion of paradigm,
one of uh 1 ch gained currency
&ng!o-ffmerican thought about a hundred years Later than the other.
have
in
Both terms
been used to cover an apparently diverse range of things (and criticised
dismissed for doing just that),
or
Kuhn's
and both do this in rather simitar
because both attempt to capture types of conceptual schema.
parallels
suggest
- certainly once the usefu! notion of a
widely adopted in sociology,
Mays,
Nhat is more the
paradigm,
soc1 a 1
been encountered and worked Mith - a common
has
notion.
Mith but little reflection,
from
advantage of this definition,
involved
and
para!tel
in
a rather different account of culture
the run of anthropologies! definitions straightaway emerges:- P) cu!ture,
or more exact!y a pure culture,
BP)
then,
P great
is that the hard
and part of its appeal,
thus
does not have to be repeated;
the
supplied
a
logical sense;
generous
by
but
the
c!ean-up
Mould
that is,
an elaborate interpretation
relational
structure.
it
is
function
Naturally it is
a
contrast
to
a scientific paradigm,
propositional structure delivered,
is
many
that of a social group.
sketched
take
theoretical
on
a
required
f aithfu1 to Mhat (the social forms, activities and so on) it models.
in
in
Recall that a paradigm is explicated as a model,
form for culture.
system, i.e. on
paradigm,
Mork
in rectifying the notion of paradigm has already been done (e.g.
precisely
structure
is a comprehensive socia! paradigm.
is a paradigm
genera!
to
be
6 social
where
the
the political themes and value judgements,
Group cohesiveness in fact is guaranteed in
examples of such social paradigms (several reproduced
in
the
RP)
because actual groups with distinctive cultures are taken; but the theoretical
explanation
goes
structure.
The
and
deeper
depends on features of
the
of propositions! structure delivered
types
mode!
underlying
in
shoMn,
are
capsule form, in the first table of this paper contrasting parts of mainstream
American and Philippine cultures;
other more detailed examples are reproduced
in theoretical Mork on social paradigms (e.g. RP, CPE, Cotgrove and references
cited therein).
dust
the
as
of
explication
May
by
paradigm
of
enabled
models
a
clarification and unification job to be done on the giant conceptual mess that
the
of paradigm had become,
notion
facilitates a pleasing and simplifying synthesis.
the
hc"-j
complains
diffusion by pointing to the
about
complaint
his
Consider,
about,
in
definitions of culture to similes and metaphors,
desperation,
as
...
a
map,
as a sieve,
resort
cu1ture
illustrate,
to
Kluckholn
Geertz Minds
but in anthropology more generally, can be reduced.
especially,
up
Geertz
diffusion'
'theoretical
of
so the parallel explication
in
attempted
to the analogies 'perhaps in
and as a matrix',
before a
mere
paragraph later, offering his OMn metaphor of culture as a. Meb of significance
or interpretation (and mode 1 too,
its
in metaphor),
roots
though here an exact technical notion,
Prs it happens,
Geertz's account is not too
has
bad
a
picture of the sort of logical model involved, that is of a system, a Meb**l ike
structure, Mith an interpretation
matrix
The other similes are hoMever more exact:
on it.
imposed,
can
function, supplying significance or meaning
models (though not
as
function
usually
both a map and a
social
ones),
a
map
typically modelling a landscape.
take up Kluckholn's elaboration on culture (not
to
Furthermore,
really
^definitions' as Geertz suggests), a model is indeed '(4) "an abstraction from
Mhich,
behaviour"',
feeling
thinking,
hoMever
is
not
prescript i v e 1 y
Mhere
and
it is a social paradigm,
believing"'* in terms of items
merely descriptive,
as,
supplies
'('?)
"a
validated.
but Mill be applied
mechanism
for
the
(3) "a May of
and
normative
can
The
model
be
regulation
read
of
(ID? "a set of techniques for adjusting both to the externa!
and
behaviour"'
environment and to other men"'. Such a mode!, which does correspond to '(5) "a
the part of the anthropologist about the '..'jay in which a
on
theory
peop!e in fact behave"' and their view of the wor!d,
orientations,
Since the social paradigm evolves over time,
'(11) "a precipitate of history'",
of
certainly affords '(6) a
structure of pooled learning"' and '(7.) "a set of standardized
to recurrent problems" .
group
it is
and it does record '(2) "the social legacy
the individual [in the society] acquires from his group"'.
three parts or levels of a culture that Conga!ton and David
The
*--P*22 ff.) are similar to those Kuhn includes within a paradigm,
readi1y
supplied
by
a model.
They
are,
first,
the
discern
and likewise
genera!
rules
and
procedures characterising and controlling the behaviour of adherents; secondly
the ideas and vatues.behind these beliefs and procedures; thirdly the products
materia!
and
exemplars
resulting,
e.g.
textbooks,
interpretation function validates both themes and ru!es;
domains
as wel! it
including values and ideas (on both see
of objects,
connection with exemplars and artefacts is less direct,
The
The
newspapers.
RP,
delivers
pp.12-16).
and of more than
textbook may present a paradigm or, more likely, part of one; or
112
it may, like an artefact, supply or be a partial modelling of the paradigm.
one kind.
remaining
The
to
order
culture
reflect
has
life-forms
done.
Ihus
to
of
qualifying term comprehensive is
some of the slackness of the
deliberately
notion
of
Abraham,
styles
there are varying degrees to which this
for one,
can
112.
and
be
explains various inclusive levels of culture
(PP* 12-13) before opting for the most inclusive, under which 'culture is
113
common life of the people
and 'includes the whole of the knowledge,
arts,
in
Hhile
culture.
cover a sufficiently comprehensive part of life
a community,
vague
th<=
the
science, technology, religions, morality, ritual, politics, literature,
theory normally has many models, some exact and canonical, some of
which bring out al! that holds in the theory but not only what holds
there;
and, more sweepmgly still, it has partial models, which
accurately depict part of the theory.
etiquette
even
compr eh ensi ve,
includes
use of t he.t erm hot'je ver
mastery
a
sculpture,
.
of
a
seventeenth
(p. 12) 114
..."
-fashions
Under
a
all
of
process
literature,
Abraham
(p.13).
of
and could knoM (p.13).
history,
culture!,
music,
pauperisation of Mhat
the
culture
and
painting
conjectures that this use evolved
and eighteenth centuries,
! ess
narroMer,
cu 1 ture i s limited to Mhat are called
In this use [that again of "higher"
of the mind.
things
result
and
educated
the age of enlightenment,
man
'as
in
a
the
stood for',
Such a person could reflect the Mhole culture in
the
more comprehensive use.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high culture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
so
it has been argued, namely attitudes to and approaches to the environment, and
so natural environments largely devoid of man-made features and influences
particular.
in
fuller picture of environmentally-sensitive culture looks like
this:113. (From previous page) See p.21.
Accounts of culture of this very
inclusive, but still unnecessarily anthropic, form are common in the
literature.
Thus, for example, Harris: 'f) culture is the total socially
acquired life-May or life-style of a group of people'
(p.144), their
patterns of behaviour and thought.
Thus, Mith even less qualification,
the first of Kluckholn'-s eleven definitions of culture (as listed in
Geertz pp.4-5), 'the total May of life of of a people', a definition
repeated in Conga)ton and David, p.22.
The intended model accordingly
provides a complete representation of life-Mays of members of the
c u 1 t u r e.
114. H fuller and better account Mhich gets very close to the model-theoretic
analysis, is Kumer's analogous definition of culture:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society's May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it includes
knoMledqe, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is alMays perceived Mi thin an evaluative
frameMork.
Similar too is Tylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a structure
again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex Mhole Mhich includes
knoMledge, belief, art, morals, la.M, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. (Primitive Culture
vol. 7, p.7).
So all human societies have a culture, a generalised
paradigm.
It is better to separate out civi1ization, hoMever, and link
it to its 'root meaning of living in cities'.
PRIMARY CULTURE DlnGFWl
sense
'culture',
of
and
intellectual
sociology,
in
Mhere
order
culture.
artistic
the
practice
dictionaries,
takes up the primary
namely
Con c i se En q1i sh D i c t i on ary),
consists
in
put]
of
and as presented
culture of a society is said to comprise
a given culture,
state
'the
as it is
lor development,
of
a
in
shared
'the
It is important to separate off -
in
or people Mith,
and the education-derived sense,
the training or discipline in or
group-
particular, the
in Mhich the culture comprises the community,
leading
in Mhich the
to
Evidently the explication, Mhich makes the product primary
a
given
reverses
the culture. like agriculture, viticulture, and
115
Mas first and foremost a process
, a "cultivation" of intellect and
the historical order,
so on,
in
to set aside - some derivative senses,
sharing,
culture
offered
values and beliefs' of the society.
derived sense,
or
as
or people' (cf.
community
norms,
through social paradigms,
explication so far,
The
Mhere
115. Pts Hilliams explains, the ear 1 y meaning of 'culture' Mas as a process;
and the 'culture of the mind' Mas vieMed as a process rather than a
product or achieved state.
In (early) modern use 'culture' became, like
'civilized', a condition. Only Mith the 'fourth modern development did
culture appear as ' the Mho 1e May of life, material, intellectual and
spiritual of a given society' (p.273), i.e., as a comprehensive social
paradigm. The other forms, the first three developments, Mere restricted
versions of this, to respectively the individual, intellectual and moral
parts, and arts and intellectual areas.
To invert the ahistorical explanatory patte^,
so to say, the inherited cu1tures of science?
scientific paradigms are,
However the reversal makes it easier to qet some grip on
art and technology.
the very rich process-product complex that a culture comprises.
example, goes astray in settling for a process definition of
Bonner,
for
'culture'* allied
to the education-derived sense: 'By culture I mean the transfer of information
by
most
means,
behavioural
by the process
particularly
of
teaching
and
Hhile the definition certainly achieves its intended objective of
learning*.
including animal culture^,
it is, as already remarked, a quite excessively low
redefinition,
such
accounting
things as semaphoring between boy
scouts
as
c u 1 t u r e.
There is a further dimension of complexity so far largely omitted through
restriction
pure
most contemporary states are far from culturally pure, comprising a
cultures,
mixture
1-lhile tribal groups may have relatively
to pure cultures.
of peoples.and cultures.
represented
More generally,
an n-cultural society
by a system of n paradigms adhered to in the society.
6
multi
6
multi
cultural
society
is thus an n-cultural society where n is
cultural
society
may
simply
Australia,
not
include
however be
very
many.
it
pluralistic;
may,
groups of people from different cultures
under some dominant culture which controls
in one region
together
is
as
in
brought
the
main
Much depends then on the type of system of paradigms
political institutions.
involved, on how the paradigms are themselves interrelated and structured.
Ft
society
nil!
function
(cf.
Abraham,
p.lbff.,
incompatible with extreme individualism').
a variety of subcultures.
Mhich
is
not
Characteristically
and
commonly
For culture is the glue of a group;
competing cultures.
integrative
always have a culture,
several
perhaps
it has an important
who remarks that 'culture
is
Ft society wi 1 1 also typically have
f) subculture is a paradigm, included in a culture,
sufficiently
subcultures
comprehensive
to
rank
as
a
share norms and assumptions with some
culture.
larger
culture except where they diverge.
The
dominant
cultures
in countries like Australia and America
can
be
as having tree structures.
represented
a
is
there
Subcultures
mainstream
century
gentry
Protestant
many
subcultural
long played significant parts in
have
last
example,
Mi th
culture,
differences
the
terms,
116
tributaries.
Transposing to river-network
between
Catholic,
extensive immigration program,
substantial social tolerance,
with
and
chai 1enged.
Alternative
critical
important
an
As a result
assumptions
along
and
that is, the cultural streams remain
of the
mainstream
culture
are
not
those
of
Australia) do however is to criticise and challenge themes of the
accommodate,
These
within
too a pluralistic (a plural paradigm) society
provided the social paradigms present
limits,
no
can
real
to overarching socio-political arrangements and the prevailing type of
threat
structure (if they should however things would have to give or
power
of
complex
permit the relatively easy formation
rival and al ternative social paradigms (such as
Hhat
culture.
dominant
and
Australia now boasts a much more
persistence of subcultures - so long as,
subcu1tures
Protestant
Flexible multi-cultural arrangements,
of ethnic subcultures.
pattern
for
of Australian colonial culture had
streams
bearing on leisure activities such as gambling (see Inglis).
its
history;
Australian
change;
rival river networks are bound to alter the cultural landscape).
like
Cultures,
explaining
illustrated
that
and
paradigms,
social
inducing social change.
explanatory roles.
repudiation
nature',
important
role
on
the
that is,
For example,
in RP).
It is worth
that
it
noticing
to
Philp criticises for Foucault
prevents
him
from
consistent
explaining
in
and
human
culture can replace nature
of the human subject and the denial of a
ground
both
So much has already been shown
as regards social paradigms (e.g.
nature have been supposed mandatory;
'his
an
can also afford explanatory roles in cases where appeal
they
social
have
in
for
human
directed
116. A subculture of a given culture is itself a culture (i.e. a comprehensive
social paradigm) applying to a subgroup of the given wider culture,
which agrees with the wider culture on characterising (paradigmatic)
features but which may diverge, and typically does, by virtue of further
cultural features, i.e. features in its paradigm.
A subculture stands
then technically to a culture as a subalgebra stands to an algebra, etc.
4^
resistance or social struggle for the better.
explain
a
and justify such resistance 'requires that Me make some commitment to
conception
of the human good and this usually rests on some vieM of
nature and human subjectivity'*.
the
to
social
good
as
human
a.May;
The modifier 'usually' gives the game
route can circuit through culture.
justificatory
directed
Accordingly to Philp t.p.17.!, to
discerned
under
a
The struggle
regional
can
paradigm;
be
the
commitments can be cultural.
The
main real Mork of this paper,
descriptive
some
attempt
of relevant features of the different cultures
at
explanation
has
been
contrasted,
Mith
like much Mork on culture,
of more unexpected features
of
the
cultures,
concerned, some criticism, and some attempt to explain some cultural traits in
terms of others.
enterprise,
cultures
only
This, like the modelling account, points to a more difficult
broached:
investigated,
namely,
the
task of providing theories of
and so perhaps explaining Mhat pulls
them
the
together,
makes them tick, gives them their distinctive shape and grip, and so on.
APPENDIX 2:
Contemporary scientific redeployment of human nature
attempts of this sort are based on the modern evolutionary synthesis, and
in
appear
extreme
most
form
in
sociobiology.
t'jas
it
However
quickly
recognised that (opportunistic) sociobioligical attempts, such as Nilson's, to
to rule out significant political
117
narrow social alternatives fail.
redeploy
nature
human
underlying characterisation of human nature is
Nilson's
from the main socio-political tradition.
the
[is!
of
set
full
behavioural
possibilities
innate
Li.e.
very
and
different
'In the broader sense, human nature
genetic
or
genetically-determined]
predispositions that characterise the human species;
and in
the
narrower sense, those predispositions that affect social behaviour' t.pp.217-8,
mith
It is not constant or static,
rearrangement).
It is certainly ahistorical,
(sub)species
read
disease
patterns
conjunctively
however the ambiguity in the characterisation of
is resolved.
nature - hardly a set,
disjunctively it
only
n'ill include the full
humans
since genes may mutate.
are liable to
set
suffer;
For if the definition
of
if
is
genetically-determined
read,
those every (normal) human is bound to
less
undergo
plausibly,
at
some
stage.
In any event, such sets are remote from Enlightenment political concerns,
thouph, like health and disease more generally, socially relevant enough;
they
hardly
alternatives.
appear
to
Moreover,
impose
they
significant
offer
constraints
on
no bulwark against racial or
and
political
cultural
and since by no means
118
everything is determined genetically e.g. languages of some cultures.
relativity,
since
races have separate gene subpools,
117. f^s this is a commonplace vie^j,
Singer and especially Pigden.
there is no need to labour it:
see Ruse,
determinism is simply one, and perhaps even the weakest, of
forms of determinism intended to vastly reduce
cultural
variability.
Nilson does not rely on that form exclusively, but helps
himself to other incompatible forms of determinism as suit^: see p.207.
118. Genetic
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K. Rudeen, 'The global gamble'', Sports Illustrated, August 4, 1958, pp. 10-13.
B. Russell, Hist or y of Hee tern Philosoph y, Allen and Unwin, London, 1947.
S.S. Schwarzschild,
'The unnatural Jew'*,
Environmental Ethics 6 ( 1984)
347-
P. Singer, (booRon Sociobiology)
M. Smith and 0. Crossley, (eds.) The Nay Cut:
Austral i a, Lan sdown e, Me 1 bcume, 1975.
Radical
Alternatives
in
Snyder,
E.A. Sommerlad, P.L. Dawson and J.C. Altman, Rural Land Sharing Communities^
An
Alternative Economic Model? Bureal of Labour Market Research,
Monograph Series No. 7, Australian Government Printing Service, L'angerra,
19851
P.R.
The Foundations of Lui tune, N. J. Mi 1 es, Sydney, 193*5.
St ewar t, American Cultural Patterns:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971.
E.
H.
Stephensen ,
Stretton,
36.
A
Cross-Cultural
Perspective,
'Hhere does Australia stand?: A Discussion', in Hithers, pp.32-
R. Sylvan, 'Prospects for regional philosophies in Australasia', Australasian
Journa 1 of Philosophy S3 ( 1985) 188-204.
R. Sylvan, 'Philosophy, politics and pluralism.
I. Relevant modellings and
arguments', Research Series in Logic and Metaphysics, No. 2, Rese a r ch
Schoo! of Social Sciences,
Australian National University,
1985;
referred to as PPP.
R. Sylvan, 'Culture, philosophy, and approaches to the natural environment an Australian perspective'', in Ethics, Environment, Ecology (.ed. D.
Bennett), Australian National University, 1985; referred to as CPE.
E.B. Tyl^r, Primitive Culture, Vol. 7., London, 1871.
T.
Veblen, An inquiry into the Nature of Peace, Viking, New fork, 1945.
T. Vinson,
'Crime'*, in Davies et.al.
E. Matt, [Latest environmental book!
D.R.
H i1d
R.
Heiner,
'The
historical
origins
Envi ronmen t a 1 Revi ew 6 ( 1982) 42-61.
of
Soviet
environmentalism',
[soc i o1ogy book J
Hilliams, 'Culture and civilization", in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (ed.
P. Edwards), Macmillan, London, 1967, vol. 2, pp.273-362.
R. Williams, Keywords, Fontana, London, 1976.
J.G. Williamson and P.H. Linder t, American
History, Academic Press, Ne^' York, 1980.
E.O.
Hi1son,
1973.
On Human Nature,
Inequality:
Harvard University Press,
0. Withers (ed.), Bigger or Smaller Government?, Papers
Symposium of the Academy of the Social Sciences in
Canberra, 1983.
A
Hacroeconomic
Cambridge,
from the
Australia
L. Wittgenstein, Phi1osophica 1 Investigarions, Blackwell, Oxford, 195x.
Nass.,
Sixth
1982,
1
On the notion of culture and cultural pluralism
APPENDIX 1:
Definitions of culture abound;
all
unfortunately, with very few exceptions,
Many are too narrow,
are bad.
for example chauvmistica! ly restricting
culture to human groups (as Kamenka's appalling motto, 'nothing human is alien
p.7); some are too broad, for example making any sort of organisation
to me' ,
as a trade union or a local brass band) a culture,
such
to
serve
connect
problems:- High
redefinitions
of
cu1ture
with [a peoples'] artistic achievement or, even more
lil
with (their) literature.
This is nion culture, at least insofar
culture
EaJ
narrowly,
as
the types of
indicate
A few examples w 11 1
what is included is class restricted,
to certain class-approved
products
and performances (e.g. opera, ballet, drama as opposed to reggae, punk, etc.).
Mhile high redefinitions let in too little,
So
is with the definition of culture as 'the transfer of
it
behavioural means,
(Bonner
Mi th
low redefinitions admit too much.
p.l'J),
culture.
information
most particularly by the process of teaching and learning'
because that includes much that has nothing especially to
For
by
example,
number of bricks on a site,
relaying a weather forecast or passing on
transfers information by behavioural
means,
do
the
but
information of no particular cultural relevance. .
By
contrast,
For
culture.
Herskovits:
most definitions mark out something which roughly overlaps
example,
culture
Awa
settleEsJ
for
the
definition
is "the man-made part of the environment"
offered
...'
by
(p.2'?).
Not only is this inadmissibly anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (such
as
Bonner
writers
studies)
imagine);
and extraterrestrial cultures (such
but
worse,
as
science-fiction
this twisted definition appears to
render
a
ill. Thus, for example, Stephenson
throughout his iconoclastic book on
Australian culture.
The equation, with literary texts, like that of a
paradigm
with central texts,
is useful in offering a
material
representation of a culture. 'For there is something solid that can be
grasped and presented.
Similary, money, newspapers and motor cars,
afford material artefacts and museum exhibits of wider popular cultures.
deserted
toMn or ancient rums a culture (rather
mining
of
manifestation
a
than
past culture) Mhile excluding a system
the
of
physical
and
beliefs
values as a culture (unless an erroneous theory of systems of propositions
invoked).
In
is
latching onto the physical exemplification it is moreover like
Kuhn's identification of a text-book Mith a paradigm.
there is much in common between the notion of culture and
Indeed
liberal extension of the notion of paradigm,
one of Mhich gamed currency
^nglo-Psmerican thought about a hundred years later than the other.
have
in
Both terms
been used to cover an apparently diverse range of things (and criticised
dismissed for doing just that),
or
Kuhn's
and both do this m rather similar
because both attempt to capture types of conceptual schema.
parallels
suggest
- certainly once the useful notion of a
Midely adopted m sociology,
Mays,
Nhat is more the
social
paradigm,
been encountered and Morked Mith - a common
has
notion.
Nith but little reflection,
from
then,
a rather different account of culture
the run of anthropological definitions straightaMay emerges:- & culture,
or more exactly a pure culture,
advantage of this definition,
is a comprehensive socia! paradigm.
and part of its appeal,
R great
is that the hard
Mork
involved
in rectifying the notion of paradigm has already been done (e.g.
RP)
thus
and
parallel
m
the
supplied
system, i.e. on
a
logical sense;
generous
by
but
the
clean-up
Mould
that is,
an elaborate interpretation
relational
structure.
it
is
function
Naturally it is
a
theoretical
on
a
required
fai thfu1 to Mhat (the social forms, activities and so on) it models.
paradigm,
m
contrast
to
a scientific paradigm,
propositional structure delivered,
is
many
that of a social group.
sketched
take
Recall that a paradigm is explicated as a mode!.
form for culture.
precisely
structure
does not have to be repeated;
m
is a paradigm
general
to
be
Ps social
Mhere
the
the political themes and value judgements,
Group cohesiveness in fact is guaranteed in
examples of such social paradigms (several reproduced
in
the
RP)
because actual groups Mith distinctive cultures are taken; but the theoretical
explanation
goes
structure.
The
deeper
and
depends on features of
underlying
the
of propositional structure delivered
types
are
model
in
shoMn,
capsule form, in the first table of this paper contrasting parts of mainstream
other more detailed examples are reproduced
American and Philippine cultures;
in theoretical Mork
social paradigms (e.g. PP, CPE, Cotgrove and references
cited therein).
Just
expl 1 cat ion
the
as
of
paradigm
of
May
by
models
enabled
a
clarification and unification .job to be done on the giant conceptual mess that
the
of paradigm had become,
notion
facilitates a pleasing and simplifying synthesis.
how
complaint
his
Geertz
to
Consider,
about,
complains
diffusion by pointing to the
about
in
definitions of culture to similes and metaphors,
desperation,
as
...
map,
a
resort
Kluckholn
Geertz Minds
in
attempted
to the analogies ''perhaps in
mere
before a
and as a matrix'*,
as a sieve,
cu1ture
illustrate,
but in anthropology more generally, can be reduced.
especially,
up
diffusion'*
'theoretical
the
of
so the parallel explication
paragraph later, offering his OMn metaphor of culture as a web of significance
or interpretation (and model too,
its
in metaphor).
roots
though here an exact technical notion,
Rs it happens,
Geertz"'s account is not too
has
bad
a
picture of the sort of logical model involved, that is of a system, a Meb-like
structure, Mith an interpretation
imposed,
matrix
both a map and a
The other similes are hoMever more exact:
on it.
function
can
function, supplying significance or meaning
as
models (though not
usually
social
ones),
map
a
typically modelling a landscape.
Furthermore,
take up Kluckholn'* s elaboration on culture (not
to
really
'definitions' as Geertz suggests), a model is indeed '(4) "an abstraction from
behaviour'"',
thinking,
hoMever
Mhich,
and
feeling
is
not
prescriptively
Mhere
believing'" in terms of items
merely descriptive,
as,
supplies '(3) "a May of
it is a social paradigm,
'*('?)
"a
validated.
but Mill be applied
mechanism
for
the
and
normative
can
The
model
be
regulation
read
of
and "(10) "a set of techniques -tor- adjusting both to the externa!
behaviour'"'
environment and to other men"''. Such a mode!, which does correspond to '(5) "a
theory
the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a
on
peop!e m fact behave'"' and their view of the world,
orientations,
it is
. Since the social paradigm evolves over time,
'(11) "a precipitate of history'"',
of
certainly affords '(6) a
"structure of pooled learning'"' and '(7) "a set of standardized
to recurrent problems'".
group
and it does record '(2) "the social legacy
the individual Ein the society! acquires from his group"'.
three parts or levels of a culture that Conga!ton and David
The
(p.22 ff.) are similar to those Kuhn includes within a paradigm,
by
supplied
readily
a model.
They
are,
first,
the
discern
and likewise
general
rules
and
procedures characterising and controlling the behaviour of adherents; secondly
the ideas and values behind these beliefs and procedures; thirdly the products
and
exemplars
material
resulting,
e.g.
interpretation function validates both themes and rules;
of objects,
domains
The
The
newspapers.
textbooks,
as well it
including values and ideas (on both see
connection with exemplars and artefacts is less direct,
RP,
delivers
pp.12-16).
and of more than
Pt textbook may present a paradigm or, more likely, part of one; or
112
it may, like an artefact, supply or be a partial mode!ling of the paradigm.
one kind.
The
order
culture
remaining
reflect
to
has
life-forms
done.
Thus
to
of
qualifying term comprehensive is
some of the slackness of the
notion
of
culture.
cover a sufficiently comprehensive part of life
a community,
Abraham,
vague
deliberately
for one,
klhile
styles
there are varying degrees to which this
can
and
be
explains various inclusive levels of culture
(pp.12-13) before opting for the most inclusive, under which 'culture is
113
common life of the people'*
and 'includes the whole of the knowledge,
arts,
in
the
the
science, technology, religions, morality, ritual, politics, literature,
112. 6 theory normally has many models, some exact and canonical, some of
which bring out all that holds m the theory but not only what holds
there;
and, more sweepingly still, it has partial models, which
accurately depict part of the theory.
even
etiquette
and
of the mind.
includes
le
narroMer,
In this use [that again of "higher"
mastery
a
'*
scu1pture,
a
seventeenth
a
Under
use of the term however ''culture is limited to Mhat are called
comprehensive,
things
(p.12)114
'
-fashions
Abraham
(p.13).
process
of
conjectures that this use evolved
pauperisation of Mhat
and eighteenth centuries,
and could knoM (p.13).
the
educated
the age of enlightenment,
man
'as
in
a
the
stood for',
Such a person could reflect the Mhole culture in
the
more comprehensive use.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high culture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
so
it has been argued, namely attitudes to and approaches to the environment, and
so natural environments largely devoid of man-made features and influences
particular.
in
& fuller picture of environmentally-sensitive culture looks like
this:-
113. (From previous page) See p.21.
Accounts of culture of this very
inclusive, but still unnecessarily anthropic, form are common in the
literature.
Thus, for example, Harris: ''Ft culture is the total socially
acquired life-May or life-style of a group of people
(p.144), their
patterns of behaviour and thought.
Thus, Mith even less qualification,
the first of Kluckholn's eleven definitions of culture (as listed in
Geertz pp.4-5), 'the total May of life of of a people', a definition
repeated in Congalton and David, p.22.
The intended model accordingly
provides a complete representation of life-Mays of members of the
culture.
114. Ft fuller and better account Mhich gets very close to the model-theoretic
analysis, is Kumer's analogous definition of culture:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society's May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it includes
knoMledge, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is alMays perceived Mithin an evaluative
frameMork.
Similar too is Tylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a structure
again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex Mhole Mhich includes
knoMledge, belief, art, morals, laM, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. (Primitive Culture
vol. 7, p.7).
So all human societies have a culture, a generalised
paradigm.
It is better to separate out civiliza11on, hoMever, and link
it to its 'root meaning of living in cities'.
PRIORY CULTURE DIRGRRH
sense
of
"culture"',
and
intellectual
where
sociology,
in
order
culture.
artistic
the
practice
takes up the grimary
namely
dictionaries,
Concise English Dictionary),
consists
in
putJ
of
and as presented
culture of a society is said to comprise
a given culture,
state
the
as it is
tor development,
' the
of
a
in
shared
It is important to separate off *
particular, the
in
in which the culture comprises the community,
and the educa11on-der1ved sense,
the training or discipline in or
groun
or people with,
leading
in which the
to
Evidently the explication, which makes the product primary
the historical order,
so on,
in
to set aside - some derivative senses,
sharing,
culture
offered
values and beliefs' of the society.
der ived sense,
or
as
or people' (cf.
community
norms,
through social paradigms,
explication so -far,
The
a
given
reverses
the culture, like agriculture, viticulture, and
115
was first and foremost a process
, a "cultivation" of intellect and
where
115. Rs Williams explains, the early meaning of 'culture'' was as a process;
and the ''culture of the mind' was viewed as a process rather than a
product or achieved state.
In (early) modern use 'culture' became, like
'civilized'', a condition. Only with the 'fourth modern development did
culture appear as 'the whole way of life, material, intellectual and
spiritual of a given society* (p.273), i.e., as a comprehensive social
paradigm. The other forms, the first three developments, were restricted
versions of this, to respectively the individual, intellectual and moral
parts, and arts and intellectual areas.
To invert the ahistorical explanatory patten^
so to say, the inherited cu1tures of science.
scientific paradigms are,
art and technology.
However the reversal makes it easier to get some grip on
the very rich process-product complex that a culture comprises.
example, goes astray in settling for a process definition of
Bonner,
for
allied
'culture
to the education-derived senses ''By culture I mean the transfer of information
by
behavioural
particularly
most
means,
of
by the process
teaching
and
Nhile the definition certainly achieves its intended objective of
learning*',
it is, as already remarked, a quite excessively low
including animal culture^
accounting
redefinition,
such
things as semaphoring between boy
scouts
as
culture.
There is a further dimension of complexity so far largely omitted through
restriction
pure
most contemporary states are far from culturally pure, comprising a
cultures,
mixture
Mhile tribal groups may have relatively
to pure cultures.
More generally,
of peoples and cultures.
represented
an n-cultural society
by a system of n paradigms adhered to in the society.
&
multi
ft
multi
cultural
society
is thus an n-cultural society where n is
cultural
society
may
simply
Australia,
not
include
however be
very
many.
pluralistic;
it
as
may,
groups of people from different cultures
under some dominant culture which controls
in one region
together
is
in
brought
main
the
Much depends then on the type of system of paradigms
poli tical institutions.
involved, on how the paradigms are themselves interrelated and structured.
Ps
society
will
function
(cf.
Abraham,
p.lbff.,
incompatible with extreme individualism').
a variety of subcultures.
which
is
not
Characteristically
and
commonly
For culture is the glue of a group;
competing cultures.
integrative
always have a culture,
several
perhaps
it has an important
who remarks that
culture
is
society will also typically have
R subculture is a paradigm, included in a culture,
sufficiently
subcultures
comprehensive
to
rank
as
a
share norms and assumptions with some
culture.
larger
culture except where they diverge.
The
dominant
cultures
in countries like Australia and America
can
be
is
there
Subcultures
with
many
century
gentry
the
differences
terms,
11.S
tributaries.
subculture!
hong played significant parts in
have
last
Protestant
culture,
mainstream
a
example,
Transposing to river-network
as having tree structures.
reoresented
between
Catholic,
extensive immigration program,
pattern
of ethnic subcultures.
important
As a result
complex
accommodate,
and
that is, the cultural streams remain
of the
mainstream
culture
are
not
those
of
These
within
too a pluralistic (a plural paradigm) society
provided the social paradigms present
limits,
can
no
real
to overarching socio-political arrangements and the prevailing type of
threat
structure (if they should however things would have to give or
power
along
permit the relatively easy formation
assumptions
of
Australia) do however is to criticise and challenge themes of the
culture.
dominant
an
rival and alternative social paradigms (such as
k-lhat
chai 1enged.
Al ternative
critical
and
and
Australia now boasts a much more
persistence of subcultures - so long as,
subcultures
Protestant
Flexible multi-cultural arrangements,
substantial social tolerance,
with
for
of Australian colonial culture had
streams
bearing on leisure activities such as gambling (see Inglis),
its
history;
lustra!ian
change;
rival river networks are bound to alter the r*.;Xural landscape).
Cultures,
explaining
and
illustrated
that
like
paradigms,
social
inducing social change.
explanatory roles.
repudiation
nature",
important
role
on
the
that is,
For example,
in RP).
It is worth
that
it
noticing
to
Philp criticises for Foucault
prevents
him
from
consistent
explaining
in
and
human
culture can replace nature
of the human subject and the denial of a
ground
both
So much has already been shown
as regards social paradigms (e.g.
nature have been supposed mandatory;
'his
an
can also afford explanatory roles in cases where appeal
they
social
have
in
for
human
directed
IIS, A subculture of a given culture is itself a culture (i.e. a comprehensive
social paradigm) applying to a subgroup of the given wider culture,
which agrees with the wider culture on characterising (paradigmatic)
features but which may diverge, and typically does, by virtue of further
cultural features, i.e. features in its paradigm.
A subculture stands
then technically to a culture as a subalgebra stands to an algebra, etc.
resistance or social struggle tor the better,
explain
a
and justify such resistance 'requires that ^e make some commitment to
conception
of the human good and this usually rests on some vie^j of
human
The modifier 'usually* gives the game
a^ay;
nature and human subjectivity'*.
the
route can circuit through culture.
justificatory
directed
accordingly to Philp (p.17), to
to
social
good
as
under
discerned
a
The struggle
can
paradigm^
regional
be
the
c ommitmen t s c an be cultural.
The
main real ^ork of this paper,
descriptive
some
attempt
like much Mork on culture,
of relevant features of the different cultures
at
explanation
of more unexpected features
has
been
contrasted,
^ith
of
the
cultures
concerned, some criticism, and some attempt to explain some cultural traits in
terms of others.
enterprise,
cultures
only
This, like the modelling account, points to a more difficult
broached:
investigated,
namely,
the
task of providing theories of
and so perhaps explaining ^hat pulls
them
the
together,
makes them tick, gives them their distinctive shape and grip, and so on.
Contemporary scientific redeployment of human nature
APPENDIX 2:
attempts of this sort are based on the modern evolutionary synthesis, and
most
in
appear
extreme
form
in
sociobiology.
However
it
Mas
quickly
recognised that (opportunistic) sociobiol^gical attempts, such as Nilson's, to
nature
human
to rule out significant political
117
narroM social alternatives fail.
redeploy
underlying characterisation of human nature is
Nilson's
from the main socio-political tradition.
[is]
of
set
full
the
possibilities
[i.e,
innate
very
different
'In the broader sense, human nature
genetic
genetically-determinedJ
or
predispositions that characterise the human species;
behavioural
and
and in
the
narrower sense, those predispositions that affect social behaviour'* (pp.217-8,
Mith
It is certainly ahistorical,
read
disjunctively it
disease
hoMever the ambiguity in the characterisation of
nature - hardly a set,
(sub)species
patterns
conjunctively
only
since genes may mutate.
It is not constant or static,
rearrangement).
Mill include the full
humans
For if the definition
is resolved.
are liable to
set
suffer;
of
if
is
genetically-determined
read,
those every (normal) human is bound to
less
undergo
plausibly,
at
some
stage.
In any event, such sets are remote from Enlightenment political concerns,
though, like health and disease more generally, socially relevant enough;
they
hardly
alternatives.
appear
to
Moreover,
impose
they
significant
offer
constraints
on
no bulMark against racial or
and
political
cultural
and since by no means
118
everything is determined genetically e.g. languages of some cultures.
relativity,
since
races have separate gene subpools,
117. Fss this is a commonplace vieM,
Singer^, and especially Pigden.
there is no need to labour it:
see Ruse,
118. Genetic determinism is simply one, and perhaps even the Meakest, of
several
forms of determinism intended to vastly reduce
cultural
variability.
Nilson does not rely on that form exclusively, but helps
himself to other incompatible forms of determinism as suit^: see p.207.
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.^nd J,
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Sylvan (eds.),
Camb' ing—ijl
F. Capra and C. Spretnak, Green Poli tics, Hutchinson, London, 1984.
R.E. Caves and L.8. Krause, The Australian Economy:
George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1984.
N. Chomsky and E. Herman,
Press, Boston, 1979.
A M1ew from the North,
The Political Economy of Human Rights,
South c.nd
P. Cock, Alternative Australia, Quartet Books, Melbourne, 19/9.
J. Cohen and J. Rogers, On Democracy, Penguin, New York, 1984.
David,
The Individual in the Making, Wiley, Sydney,
A.A.
Congalton andA.E.
1976.
R.W.
Connell, 'Images of Australia in Social Change in Australia
Edgar), Cheshire, Melbourne, 1974.
(ed.
R. W. Connell, Ruling fl ass, Ruling Culture,
S. Cotgrove, Catastrophe or Cornucopia, Wiley, New <ork, 1?87.
G. Crough and T. Wheelwright, Australia: A Client State, Penguin, Australia,
D.
1982.
E. C^llenbach, Ecotopia Emerprng,
A.F. Davies
1985.
and S.
Encel (eds.),
lustra Han Society.,
Melbourne,
Cheshire,
A.F. Davies, S. Encel and M. Berry (eds.), lustra!!an Soci e t y. Third Edition,
Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 19777.
M.J. Dunphy, Alternative Thoughts, Total Environment Centre, Sydney, 1984.
R. Ely, 'Australian Historians on "Tall
Cultural History 3 (1984) 104-128.
Poppies":
a
survey'',
Austra - i an
B.L. Embury and N. Fodder, ''Economic Welfare in Australia' in Austral i an
Social Issues of the 70"s, (ed. P.R. Nilson), Butterworths, Sydney, 1972.
G. Gaus, The Modern Liberal Theory of 'Man. Croom Helm, London, 1983.
A. Gilbert, 'The state and nature in Australia, Australian Cultural History
1981, (eds. S. Goldberg and F.&Smith), Canberra, 1982, pp.9-28.
R.J. Goldstein,
1978.
Political Repression in Modern America,
N.K. Hancock, Austra! ia. E. 3^.^^
G.K.
Hall,
Boston,
, London, 1930.
M. Harris, Culture, People, Nature. Second edition, Cromwell, 1975.
Hays,
Conservation
and the Gospel of Efficiency:
Conservation Movement. 1390-1920. Cambridge, MA, 1959.
R. Heilbroner,
The Worldly Philosophers.
Schuster, New York, 1987.
3rd
revised
The
Progressive
edit.,
Simon
and
T. Hobbes, Levi athan( ed. M. Oakeshot^, Oxford, 1948.
I. Illich, Des-z h co ling Soc i e t y, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971.
K.S. Inglis, 'Religious behaviour'*, in A.F. Davies and S.
Australian Society. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1985, pp.43-75.
Encel
(eds.),
K.S. Inglis, 'Gambling and culture^ in Australia'' in Caldwell et.al,
B. Jones, SIeepers Awake'. Oxford University Press, 1982.
E.
Kamenka. 'Culture and Australian culture',
(1984) 7-18.
Australian Cultural History 3
T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revo1utions. Second edition, University
of Chicago Press, 1970.
K. Kumar, The Social and Cultural Impact of Transnational Enterprises, Horking
Paper No. 8, ?tRP, University of Sydney, 1979.
R.E. Lane, "Market .justice, political justice'', Hugo Nolfsen Memorial Lecture,
Melbourne, May, 1985.
N. Lini, Keynote address, Australia and the South Pacific. Proceedings of a
Conference held at the Australian National University, 1982.
//3
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Letter, Alan? (Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta) to Richard Sylvan, 9 Jun 1988 re
feedback on paper. (4 pages)
%/,y
7
Ch
/
<^/
'
C2<
*1-
7
—
On the notion of culture and cultural pluralism
APPENDIX 1:
unfortunately, with very + ew exception s,
Definitions of culture abound;
y
all
Many are too narrow,
3re bad.
cu1ture to human groups (as Kamenka's
p.7) ; some are too broad,
,
brass band) a culture.
as a trade union
(such
problems:- High
serve
connect
EaJ
as
redefinitions
with Ea peoples'] artistic achievement
culture
with (their) literature.
narrowly,
A few examples will
of
cu1ture
even
or,
more
This is high culture, at least insofar
what is included is class restricted,
to certain class-approved
products
and performances (e.g. opera, ballet, drama as opposed to reggae, punk, etc.).
low redefinitions admit too much.
"the transfer of
information
by
process of teaching and learning'
(Bonner
p.10),
because that includes much that has nothing especially to
do
the
number of bricks on a site,
transfers information by behavioural
means,
but
information of no particular cultural relevance.
By
contrast,
most definitions mark out something which roughly overlaps
Awa
'settleEsJ
for
the
definition
by
(p.2?).
"the man-made part of the environment"
Herskovi ts:
offered
this inadmissibly anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (such
Bonner
as
writers
-f&sl
studies)
imagine);
and extraterrestrial cultures (such
but
as
science-fiction
this twisted definition appears to
worse,
LL't.........
render
throughout his iconoclastic book o
L Thus , for t example, Stephenson
Australian culture.
The equation, with literary texts, like that of
paradigm
with central texts,
is useful in offering a
materia
representation of a culture. For there is something solid that can b
grasped and presented.
Similary, money, newspapers and motor cars
afford material artefacts and museum exhibits of wider popular cultures.
?5
a
deserted
town or ancient ruins a culture (rather
mining
of
manifestation
a
than
past culture) while excluding a system
physical
the
of
beliefs
and
values as a culture (unless an erroneous theory of systems of propositions
invoked).
In
is
latching onto the physical exemplification it is moreover like
Kuhn's identification of a text-book Mith a paradigm.
Indeed
there is much in common between the notion of culture and
Kuhns
one of which'gained currency
Both terms
Rnglo-&merican thought about a hundred years later than the other.
have
or
in
been used to cover an apparently diverse range of things (and criticised
dismissed for doing just that),
and both do this in
Nhat is more the
because both attempt to capture types of conceptual schema.
paradigm,
a common
been encountered and worked Mith
noti on.
then,
from
the run of anthropological definitions straightaway emerges
advan tage of this definition,
i nvo1ved
and
paral1 el
in
and part of its appeal,
is that the hard
work
would
take
in rectifying the notion of paradigm
thus
does not have to be repeated;
form for culture.
precisely
structure
6 great
is a comprehensive social paradigm
or more exactly a pure culture.
RP)
a rather different account of cu1ture
but
c1ean-up
Recal 1 that a paradigm is expli cated as a model,
is
it
the
supplied
the
by
an elaborate interpretation
function
is
a
theoretical
on
required
faithful to what (the social forms, activities and so on) it models,
paradigm,
in
contrast
to
a scientific paradigm,
proposi tional structure delivered,
is
many
that of a social group.
sketched
general
a
is a paradigm
to
be
& social
where
the
the political themes and value .judgements,
Group cohesiveness in fact is guaranteed in
examples of such social paradigms (several reproduced
in
the
RP)
because actual groups with distinctive cultures are taken; but the theoretical
96
explanation
goes
structure.
The
deeper
depends on features of
and
of propositional structure delivered
types
model
underlying
the
are
in
shoMn,
capsule form, in the first table of this paper contrasting parts of mainstream
other more detailed examples are reproduced
American and Philippine cul bares;
in theoretical Mork on social paradigms (e.g. RP, CPE, Cotgrove^and references
cited therein).
Just
as
the
of
explication
by
paradigm
May
of
models
enabled
a
clarification and unification .job to be done on the giant conceptual mess that
the
of paradigm had become,
notion
so the parallel explication
in
abou t,
but in anthropology more generally, can be reduced.
especially,
up
his
c^.\tu,rg.
Kluckholn
Geertz Minds
attempted
in
resor t
diffusion by pointing to the
about
complaint
of
and^r metaphors, to the analogies 'perhaps in
as
desperation,
a map*,
and as a matrix',
as a sieve,
before
a
mere
paragraph later, offering his OMn metaphor of culture as a Meb of significance
' ' too,
'
, though here an exact technical notion, has
or interpretation (and model
its roots in metaphor]^ Rs it happen^Geertz^/ account is not too bad a picture
of the sort of logical model involved
structure^Mith an interpretation
imposed,
typically
on it.
that is of a system, a Meb-like
function,
supplying signifi'-arn.e -r meaning
The other similes are hoMever more exact:
modelling
a
landscape.
Furthermore,
elaboration of) culture (not really 'definitions
is indeed '(4) "an abstraction from behaviour"',
paradigm,
supplies '(3) "a May of thinking,
of items validated.
to
take
ooth a map and a.
up
as Geertz suggests),
a model
Mhere it is a social
Mhich,
feeling and believing"
The model hoMever is not merely descriptive,
applied and can be read prescriptively as,
Kluckholn s
in rerm=.
but Mill be
('?) "a mechanism for the normative
regulation of behaviour"' and '(10) "a set of techniques for adjusting both to
the
external
environment
and to other
97
men'".
Such
a
model,
Mhich
does
2
to '(5) "a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the
correspond
in
group of people in fact behave'" and their vieM
a
Mhich
'*(4) a "structure of pooled learning'"' and
affords
certainly
of
standardized orientations, to recurrent problems'"'.
^ay
Morld,
the
(7) "a set
of
Since the social paradigm
it
does
1egacy the individual [in the society] acquires
from
is ''(11) "a precipitate of
history'",
and
his group'"
discern
of a culture that Conga!ton and David
three parts or
The
Kuhn includes
readily
supplied
They
a model.
by
are,
procedures characterising and controlling the behaviour of adherents; secondly
procedures; thirdly the products
and
exemplars
material
resulting,
e.g.
interpretation function validate^! both themes
The
connection Mi th exemplars and artefacts is^e^^ direct,
RP,
The
delivers
as Mel lit
including values and ideas (on both see
of objects,
domains
neMspapers.
textbooks,
pp.12-16).
and of more than
3 textbook may present a paradigm^^or^more likely, part of one; or
on^ kind.
it may, like an artefact, supply or be a partial modelling of the paradigm.
remaining
The
culture
life-forms
done.
to
has
Thus
of
qualifying term comprehensive is
cover a sufficiently comprehensive part of life
a community,
Rbraham,
vague
deliberately
styles
there are varying degrees to Mhich this
for one,
can
and
be
explains various inclusive levels of
7 '
(pp.12-13) before opting for tbe most inclusive, under Mhich 'culture is
If§'
and 'includes the Mhole of the knoMledge,
common life of the people
arts,
in
the
the
science, technology, religions, morali ty, ri tual, politics, literature,
ttTP*. & theory normally has many models, some exact and canonical, some of
__
Mhich bring, out
all that holds in the theory but not only Mhat holds
i s i ngTy stil Impartial models, Mhich ac-e a'-'_urately
there; and, more surpr -----depict part of the theory. )
98
ULk
etiquette
fashions
...'
of
eighteenth
pauperisation
centuries,
Such
(p.13).
narrower,
a
Under
In this use [that again of "higher"
of the mind.
includes a mastery of all literature,
process
(p.12)
^ess
use of the term however 'culture is limited to Mhat are caned
comprehensive,
things
and
a
of Mhat the educated man in
cou 1 d
culture
history, music, painting and sculpture,
the age of enlightenment ,
person
culture],
reflect
the
the
s even teen th
stood for',
Mho i e
culture
and
and could knoM
in
the
more
c ompr eh en s i ve u se.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high t.u = ture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
so
it has been argued, namely attitudes to and approaches to the environment, and
so natural environments largely devoid of man-made features and influences
particular.
in
R fuller picture of environmentally-sensitive culture looks like
this:11^-. (From previous page) See p.21.
Accounts of culture of
.;!i= very
inclusive, but still unnecessarily anthropic, form are common in the
. __ literature.
Thus, for example, Harris: 'A culture is the total socially
acquired life-May or life-style of a group of people*
(p.144), their
patterns of behaviour and thought.
Thus, Mith even less qualification,
the first of Kluckholn's eleven definitions of culture (as listed in
Geertz pp.4-5), 'the total may of life of of a people', a definition
repeated in Congalton and David, p.22.
The intended model accordingly
provides a complete representation of life-Mays of members of the
cul tur-e.
111^ Ft fuller and better account Mhich gets very close to the model-theoretic
analysis, is Kumer's analogous definition of culture:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society s May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it in'„lude=>
knowledge, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is always perceived Mithin an evaluative
framework.
Similar too is Tylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a structure
again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex MholeMhich includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, laM, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. (Primitive Culture
vol. 7, p.7).
So all human societies have a culture, a generalised
paradigm.
It is better to separate out civi1ization, however, and link
it to its 'root meaning of living in cities .
religions, morality, ritual, politics, literature, even etiquette and fashions
is
'culture
use
limited
to
Mhat
are called
things
of
mind.
the
In
this
[that
history,
con.jec tures
that
music,
this
painting and sculpture,/^..' (p.13),
use
evolved
'as
a
result
of
Rbraham^.
of
a / process
^7 /J
cen turles,
he age of enlightenment, stood for'', and could knoM (p.13).
Such
a per son could reflect the Mhole culture in the more comprehensive use.
The European vieM of culture, Mhich tends to concentrate on high culture,
is insufficiently comprehensive,
it
has been argued,
natural
environments
leaving out a crucial aspect of culture,
namely attitudes to and approaches to
the
largely devoid of man-made features and
so
environment,
influences
in
/Recounts of culture of this very inclusive form but still unnecessari
an thropic form, are common m the literature* ^hus^for example^Harris:
<R culture is the total socially acquired life-May or life-style of
a group of people' (p.144), their patterns of behaviour and
though t.
Thus, Mith even less qualification, the first of Kluckholn's eleven
definitions of culture ^listed m Geertz pp.4-5),
the total May of life
of a peopled a definition repeated in
and David^p.22. lhe
model ^provides a complete representation o+ life-Mays of members of the
R fuller and better account^Mhich gets very ejase to^ the model-theoretic
analysis^ ig Kiernan's analogous definition of jculturq:
The
shared
symbolic system Mhich gives meaning
to
human
interactions in a society.
It refers to a society's May of
perceiving, interpreting and expressing things ... it includes
knoMledge, belief-systems, values, norms and ideologies Mhich
enable the members of a society to perceive, organise and interpret
reality ... reality is alMays perceived Mithin an evaluative
frameMork.
Similar too is
Taylor's definition of 'culture' in terms of a
structure again: 'Culture or Civilization ... that complex Mhole Mhich
includes knoMledge, belief, art, morals, laM, customs, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society'.
(Primitive Culture vol. 7, p.7). So al 1 human societies have a culture,
a generalised paradigm.
It is better to separate out c iyi l,i zat 1 on,
hoMever, and i-t—nc-sep%'e/. +<sf? its 'root meaning of living in cities'.
PRIMARY CULTURE DIAGRAM
sense
of
"'culture'',
intellectual
sociology,
in
and
mhere
order
culture.
artistic
the
,
*
practice
takes up the primary
namely
lor development,
Con c i se English 0 i c t i on ary) ,
in
-state
put]
in
a
in
shared
"the
particular, the
group-
or people mith,
and the education-derived sense,
leading
in mhich the
to
Evidently the explication, mhich makes the product primary
a
given
reverses
like agriculture, viticulture, and
the culture,
mas first and foremost a process
of
It is important to separate off -
the training or discipline in or
mhere
of
and as presented
culture of a society is said to comprise
a given culture,
consists
"the
as it is
in mhich the culture comprises the community,
the historical order,
so on,
dictionaries,
in
to set aside - some derivative senses,
sharing,
culture
offered
values and beliefs"' of the society.
derived sense,
or
as
or people"' (cf.
community
norms,
through social paradigms,
explication so -far,
The
,
a "cultivation" of intellect and
11^ As Mi 11 iams explains, the ear 1 y meaning of "culture"' mas as a process;
and the "culture of the mind" mas viemed as a process rather than a
product or achieved state.
In (early) modern use "culture" became, like
'civilized"', a condition.
Onlp^the "fourth modern development" did
culture appear as "the mhole may of life, material, intellectual and
spiritual of a given society"' (p.273), i.e., as a comprehensive social
paradigm.
The other forms, the first three developments^mere restricted
versions of this, to respectively the individual, intellectual and moral
parts, and arts and intellectual areas.
,
r.
To invent the ahistorical explanatory pattern, scientific paradigms are,
so to say, the inherited cu1tures of science.
100
However the reversal makes it easier- to get some grip on
art and technology.
the very rich process-product complex that a culture comprises.
example, goes astray in settling for a process definition of
for
Bonner,
allied
'culture
to the education-derived sense: "'By culture I mean the transfer of information
by
means,
behavioural
by the process
particularly
most
of
and
teaching
Hhile the definition certainly achieves its intended objective of
learning'.
including (cultures'^ an7maC^g%p&,
excessively
it is,
as already
remarked,
a
accounting such things as semaphoring
loM redefinition,
quite
between
boy scouts as culture.
There is a further dimension of complexity so far largely omitted through
restriction
pure
most contemporary states are far from culturally pure, comprising a
cultures,
mixture
Nhile tribal groups may have relatively
to pure cultures.
of peoples and cultures.
represented
More generally,
an n-cultural society
by a system of n paradigms adhered to in the society.
&
multi
&
multi
cultural
society
is thus an n-cultural society Mhere n is
cultural
society
may
Australia,
simply
not
include
however be
very
many.
it
pluralistic;
as
may,
in
brought
groups of people from different cultures
under some dominant culture Mhich controls
in one region
together
is
the
main
Much depends then on the type of system of paradigms
political institutions.
involved, on hoM the paradigms are themselves interrelated and structured.
Pt
society
Mill
function
(cf.
Ptbraham,
p.l5ff.,
incompatible Mith extreme individualism ).
a variety of subcultures.
is
Mhich
not
Characteristically
and
commonly
For culture is the glue of a group;
competing cultures.
integrative
alMays have a culture,
several
perhaps
it has an important
Mho remarks that
culture
is
Pt society Mill also typically have
Pt subculture is a paradigm, included in a culture,
sufficiently
subcultures
comprehensive
to
rank
as
a
share norms and assumptions Mith some
culture.
larger
culture except Mhere they diverge.
The
dominant
cultures
in countries like Australia and Ptmerica
101
can
be
as having tree structures.
represented
a
is
there
Subcultures
century
gentry
Protestant
many
the
between
differences
terms,.
1 1^
tribu.ari!=''=.
subcultural
long played significant parts in
have
last
example,
with
culture,
mainstream
Transposing to river-network
Australian
L-athoXc,
extensive immigration program,
of ethnic subcultures.
pattern
with
critical
challenged.
and
an
o?
As a result
complex
aiong
permit the relatively easy formation
assumptions
and
that is, the cultural streams remain
of the
mainstream
culture
rival and alternative social paradigms (such as
Plhat
important
Australia now boasts a much more
persistence of subcultures - so long as,
and
Protestant
Flexible multi-cultural arrangements,
substantial social tolerance,
subcultures
f'-tr
of Australian colonial culture had
streams
bearing on leisure activities such as gambling (see Inglis?.
its
history;
are
n^t
those
of
the
Al ternative
These
culture.
dominant
accommodate,
within
too a pluralistic (a plural paradigm) society
provided the social paradigms present
limits,
r^m
no
to overarching socio-political arrangements and the prevailing type of
threat
structure (if they should however things would have to give or
P'Ower
tan
t-ha^ge,
rival river networks are bound to alter the cultural landscape).
Cultures,
explaining
and
illustrated
that
like
they
social
paradigms,
inducing social change.
'his
important
role
in RP).
It is worth
can also afford explanatory roles in cases where appeal
explanatory roles.
repudiation
nature',
an
on
the
that is,
For example,
that
it
noticing
to
Philp criticises for Foucault
prevents
him
from
i_on = i = .en.
explaining
in
and
human
culture can replace nature
of the human subject and the denial of a
ground
both
So much has already been shown
as regards social paradigms (e.g.
nature have been supposed mandatory;
social
have
in
for
numaf;
directed
11^). A subculture of a given culture is itself a culture (i.e. a comprehensive
social paradigm) applying to a subgroup of the given wider culture,
which agrees with the wider culture on characterising (paradigma.i'-)
\
features but which may diverge, and typically does, by virtue of further
cultural features, i.e. features in its paradigm.
A subculture stands
102
resistance or social struggle for the better.
explain
a
and .justify such resistance 'requires that Me make some commitment to
conception
of the human good and this usually rests on some vieM of
human
The modifier "usually"' gives the game
aMay;
nature and human subjectivity"'.
the
Accordingly to Philp tp.i7), to
route can circuit through culture.
justificatory
directed
social
to
as
good
discerned
under
a
The struggle
can
paradigm;
regional
be
the
commitments can be cultural.
has
been
descriptive of relevant fea^f tures of the different cultures
contrasted.
Mi th
some
of
The
attempt
concerned,
in
main
terms
A
Mork
at
this paper,
of
explanation
like much Mork
on
culture,
of more unexpected features
the
cu1tures
some criticism, and some attempt to explain some cu1tural
of others.
This,
like the modelling account,
points to
a
more
difficult enterprise, only broached: namely, the task of providing theories of
the
cultures formufsrfed,
and so perhaps explaining Mhat pulls them together,
makes them tick, gives them their shape and grip, and so on.
A
103
/ .<
/ /
Contemporary scientific redeployment of human nature
APPENDIX 2:
Attempts
evolutionary
of this sort are based on the moder^tn
synthesis,
and appear in most extreme form in sociobiology.
r
/e cc^"i A r
)
% Sociobioldoical attempts, such as Nilson's, to redeploy human nature to
A
j '
1
a]t I er natives fail.
rule out ^political possibilities and narroM social ajtli,
A
underlying
Wilson's
characterisation of human nature is very different
the main socio-political tradition.
the
full set of innate Ei.e.
those
sense,
and
in
nature.*- hardly
set.'
a
the
hoMever
is
(pp.217-8,
For
the
definition
if
socially
relevant
b5t
subpools,
and
or
since
cultural
relativity,
since
stage.J^ In
any
though, like health more
they hardly
significant constraints on political alternatives.
racial
disease
less plausibly, conjunctively
if read,
enough;
of
read
is
Mill inclue the full set of genetically-determined
it
It is
characterisation
^b^Vare remote from Enlightenment concerns,
against
Mith
the
those every (normal) human is bound to undergo at some
generally,
narrower
ambiguity in
resolved.
patterns humans are liable to suffer;
event,
the
It is not constant or static, since genes may mutate.
ahistorical,
only
behavioural
genetic or genetically-determinedJ
predispositions that affect social behaviour'
rearrangement).
disp^M^tively
'* In the broader- sense, human nature Ei-sJ
characterise the human species;
that
predispositions
from
appear
to
impose
Moreover, i*t—is no bulwark
races
separate
have
by no means everything is determined
gene
genetically^ e.g.
language^of some culture).
there is no need to labour it:
see Ruse,
'*1-
As this is a commonplace vieM,
Singer and especially Pigden.
11^
Genetic determinism is simply one, and perhaps^ the M^kest, of several
forms of determinism intended to vastly reduce cultural variability.
Nilson does not rely on that form exclusively: see p.207.
AtPijol/ /o
)
104
y
*
y
o
situation of certaintg such as the eLementarg choLce situationi affords,
expectation vaLues drop out. Then, as under the maximaLLtg criteri^, R is the
rat LonaL choLce under this utiLitg criterion; B cannot be^a rat LonaL oho Lee,
it
is^)--------------------
The same argument, Lf correct, ref'ute^Bages^anism. For, as Suppes c La Lms,
the Bayesian posLtLon Leads to the oversLL sLngte prLncLpLe of ra t Lona L i tg, the
principLe of maximizing expected utLLLtg: One action or decision shouLd be
chosen over another Lf^ the expected utLLLtg of the fLrst Ls at L'east as great
as that of the second, ... (p.178).^
_
(p.178)." ((The arguments
aLso eawt&r princ ip Les,
such as that
criter ia^
of
sure
thing,
appeaLed
to
in
derivations
of
maximization
Satisizing, doLng-MLth-enough, counters the orthodox rat LonaLitg axioms;
satisficing, doing-as-Meii-as-can-be-in-the-circumstances, does not. Satisficing
is constrained maximization; the satisficer, organisation man on bimon s
picture, aiMags chooses the maximum from among aLternatLves aireadg enumerated,
and so in the eLementrg diagram chooses R, not B (as satisizers mag), inere is
aLready a Literature at pains to point out that satisficing does not int^ fer^
Mith the rationatitu axioms.— though that it does not Mas^ cLear enough from
Limited rationaiitg^ Thus, for exampLe, Riker and Ordeshook
turn^g
criticisms of the principle of maximizing expected utiLitg on satisficing
qrounds, ^d bu arguing (incorrectLg) that in aLL pr^cticaL cases maximizing snd
satisficing r^^ease identicai^ appeat tMice to Simon s authoritg:
MhLLe some enthusiasts have misinterpreted hLs argument as antiratLonaL, Ln fac*^ Professor Simon does not suppose that, Mhen better
or Morse aLternatives are cieartg avaiiabie to the chooser, ne mag
reject the better for Morse, just because the worse H sat^factory
(pp.21-2). ... CertainLg Professor Simon is not asking for thLs,
because even Ln hLs termf, Lt Ls LrratLonaL to reject better for Morse.
be expected to occur
Os an LrratLonaLLtg satisficing cannot then
(p-23).
Ue need not
the enthusiasts; but Me are supposLng
Mhat S'^mon ded no t.
7
...........................
Various
Ln ./rat LonaL
^9.. Impact on paradoxes and on ratLonaL
behaviour.. L
— ---- paradoxes
]——— r*
A—t------------------------------- - ——----------- ;--------7-7%-------_______________________________
A cases paradox disapp
dLSappearaag
choLce theorg appear Ln a neM Light; in many peases
atftytt7H5etgcr> For the aLr o^ paradox derLves from competLng maximization crLterLa.
R good exampLe is provided bg NeMComb's paradox, Mhich is supposed to arise
in the foLLoMing situation^:
There are tMO boxes before gou: one transparent and one opaque. You
can see that there is $1,000 in the transparent box, and gou knoM that
there is either $1,000,000 or nothing in the opaque box. You must
choose betMeen the foLLoMing tMO acts: take the contents onig of the
opaque box or take the contents of both boxes. Furthermore, there is a
being in Mhose predictive poMers gou have enormous confidence, 3nd gou
knoM that he has aLreadg determined the contents of the opaque box
according to the foLLoMing ruLes: If he predicted that gou Mouid take
-9-
A
Take the list of characteristics Gilson considers for instance (Mhich forms in
a
curious May part of his attempt to rehabilitate a particular partisan
of humans on the strength of sociobiology:
p.22).
The list
has to be pruned
if"it is to cover the spread of knoMn human races and cultures,
vaguer
and less question-begging (e.g.
removed);
but
then
vieM
and
rendered
Mith reference to relations to numan-=>
it ceases to separate tribes of humans
from
tribes
primates or other nonhumans. [Detail and adjust.]
/f2'
7
o+
The NeM Zealand comparison:
APPENDIX 3.
Preliminary notes towards
or New
qualitative rating of mainstream New Zealand culture,
A
Zealand
data, as against an Australian (and sometimes other) goes as follows:but still high for Angloceltic world (presumably per capita
less,
Drinking:
patterns similar except for club phenomenon in Australia,
figures available);
and dry areas and prohibition proclivities in New Zealand.
Gambling:
significantly
but
less,
for
patterns similar except
important
matters of clubs and casinos.
Sport:
but less variety in New Zealand, owing to greater
similar addiction,
New Zealand emphasis on tramping,
uniformity of culture.
trail systems, not
matched in Oz.
Permissiveness:
variety.
less,
markedly
especially
concerning
sexual
issues
and
But Polynesian alternative increasingly influential in New Zealand.
Plural ism:
a
less,
more
uniform society,
with few ethnic
groupings
and
strata.
stronger, but still less so than UK.
Authori tarianism:
It is hypothesized by
Sinclair that older authority patterns in New Zealand arise from child rearing
especially
techniques,
in Oz.
counterpart
are,
the
famous
Plunkett
method,
The result was a rather up-tight
the suggestion is, more laid-back, easy-going.
which
no
had
product.
real
Australians
Vet the matter is not =o
simple, as the next items reveal.
Policing
and
opposition among the younger in New Zealand.
increasing
bushrangers,
cultural
Long-standing opposition to police
coercive methods:
etc.,
mythology.
in
New
Zealand,
in
Oz,
But no adulation of
and no Eureka Stockade
Violence perhaps less in New Zealand,
or
associated
though (at home)
neither society is very violent by American standards.
Egali tarianism:
slightly more in New Zealand, despite the Australian image.
In both Jack is as good as his master.
Pace of Life:
slower in New Zealand.
1
less in NeM
Poverty:
in NeM Zealand.
Distrust of markets
simi1 ar
less than Oz
Fraternity and mateship:
Hale chauvinism:
margina11y less (?)
Unionisation:
Mith
no
environmen tai actions.
Environmen t:
communi ties
mixed
Extensive
NeM Zealand to many i ssues
in
even
sympathy,
public
among
rural
the
An issue breakdoMn is
required
here:
better
Chemicals and Maste management:
Parks and reserves:
National ism:
(Inglis)
margina11y better,
excessively
in
Morse
both places
strong in both
It is taken as validating
consider the many memorials Mith 'they
their country' scattered around small toMns.
national ism
(or stateism)
as
a
means
and
Hi th
by political leaders).
It can be
Mar and sport
of social and national cohesion,
purpose (e.g.
died
It is sometimes suggested
is the neM secular religion
operation in those tMo related enterprises,
death
for
that
seen
in
Both have served
and have been
used
for
that
(Hars Mere a common method of obtaining
maintaining integration of large states,
improved
communications
perhaps fall into disuse)
and propaganda
netMorks,
that
method
Divisive national sport is interesting from
could
this
angle also.
Federalism
and
Australian
idea
federation:
of
adding
No experience in
NeM
NeM Zealand as a further
sympathetic consideration in NeM Zealand.
2
Zealand.
state
The
obtains
frequent
little
There Mas, and is, no loyalty to an
Australasian nation.
Communications:
Broadcasting less commercialised in Ne^j Zealand.
As a result
less H) violence, etc.
Reading:
more in Neu Zealand.
Education and Research:
opposition to theory.
(HoM much more?)
Little research done in Ne^ Zealand, but less
mixed.
Public school system better.
3
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
Letter, Alastair (University of Waikato) to Richard Sylvan, 17 April 1985 re feedback on
paper. (4 pages (2 leaves))
Letter, Tom (Philosophy Department, Massey University) to Richard Sylvan, 10 Jul 1985
re feedback on paper. (3 pages (2 leaves))
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Box 103: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics
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Text
�—
?HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND.ENVIRONMENTAL.ETHICS*
Richard and Vai Routley
/
*
.
*
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
.
moral codes - including, so it will°be argued, Western ethics.
*
A most
serious failure 6f Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropo^centricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reds&n*able, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
*
w
What is chauvinism?
$
*
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
sz^Etant^aZ-Z-z/ differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not enff-ZcZen^ justification.
Pnwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, wuZ-e chauvinism where the class is
human males, an-Z/zzaZ. chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bazf, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for a new, an environmental, ethic?', Procee^-Znps of Zz/ze XPt/z ^orZ^
Ccnpress of PTz^Z-cscp/zz/, 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 1974 at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, and at the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of Victoria, Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it'has generated much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained, though the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, and many theses remain insufficiently developed or
defended. But in order not to remove the previous and continuing
criticism, no substantial deletions have been made, even though the
paper has been raided and segments of it presented in improved form
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Routley, 'Against the inevitability
of human chauvinism', in MoraZ P/z-ZZosopTzz/ an<7 t?ze Tzjentp-F-Zrst Centnrz/
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre Dame University Press,
1979, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensive repair-kit for
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preferences CTzo^ce
an<i FaZzve, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977. However some
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to increasing the
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft, and meet
ing some of the many objections.
1
�it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple spoo-Zes loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - *Zf it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
1
out.
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. /zowo sap*Zo?zs) as zoologically defined.
There is
nothing about the characteristic of TzMwazzZZp itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans)
as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds),
Mor azzd
Morals.
-Z^Zo Z/ze zzzaZ^roat/TzozzZ of yzorz-ZzMwaMS, Gollancz,
London, 1971;
P. Singer, ?l?z-Z7na:Z f-Z^oraf-ZoM.
pzezj o^/z-Zos for OMr
of azz*Z/??aZs, Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, y/zo A7oraZ
of ^H-ZwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
�CB
objection applies against the simple
need's argument:
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
more than speciesism.^
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent. We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings — items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
creatures having a (certain sort of)^ language or a higher level of
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
2 As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
3
On next page.
3
�*3
unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
By
contrast the very many respects in which some
or sorts of animals
are
superior bo bMfnans (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, Tbe
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
4?ibmaZ Parcaptbo^, Allen, London,
of tbe Sassos.
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, for exampZ-e, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria^
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a parson (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being bz^wan - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
3 For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source
the
discussion in E.O. Wilson, SocZobboZ-opp.
Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld,
see e.q. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4p<2s_,
Penguin,New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555 59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson s discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
4 Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
�damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and t
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
u person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person
is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
agent or initiator.
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense; but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides
feature.
(or u crMc^uZ) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point,but does not even always rank humans or
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
On next page.
5
�4
why rank knowledge so highly:
for (pace Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
ratZozzaZZZp, along with the added problem that it is -very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality i^, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
almost all cases).
If it were the ability, e.g. to do ZopZc (say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis? What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in D?zat respect is it that persons - or worse, just
persons - are free.
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of parsons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very wa^z/ animals. An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
'Radical vegetarians ,
4zzstraZasZa?z JoMrzzaZ of P/zZZosop/zz/, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 in addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child s knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank t
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels,
PaaZMaZZoK of FZTzZcaZ T/zoorZes, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
�O)
Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
conscious animals that have intentions
they are sentient,
(e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts (e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
preferred food beyond the barrier).
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to wzzcTz stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g.
'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality'). This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for person as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of /zzzwczzz
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, Tzozj high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several zzozze^zz-Zz^uZezzf
characterisations of (zzatz^raZ) person - none of them equivalent to
/zzzzzzuzz - that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
^MstraZ-Zazz Lazj JozzrzzczZ, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and cZ-Z//ere?zt) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respoTzs-Zb-ZZ-Ztz/ on the part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do zzcf - exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CozzzzzzMzz-Ztz/ (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person', ProceecZ-Zzzps o/ t?ze ^r-Zs^oteZ-Zuzz Society, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
�D
The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have prefer
ences or preferred states.For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and
tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly fka skarp woraZ
ethics by philosophers and others alike,
commonly accepted m
aZZ
ofkar
a^-fmaZ speafas, Zacks a safZsfacforz/ cokarazif bcsZs.
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
among things? Yes, several divisions^ of mcraZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration fiards others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action. Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
8 There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. The
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
9 Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creature
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of t ese
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; _ u ,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better
not a
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours m a
rainbow meet.
8
*
�c-
it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
The /zuzzz^zz^ a/* pr^yerezzces
(and
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for z^/zz^s
of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze correspazz^zzy pezzaraZ
zza^ to putt afTzars
a/zZ-^pa^azz pr^zzc^pZ-e
("at/zer preyerezzce-TzuzJersJ tzzto a c%spreyerra<^ stato y*ar
zza paa<i raasazz.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a
sort of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence -
especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as /zurzzztzz^
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations ^azJarzis can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
zzat zzecassurz/ condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
�consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.*^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences; but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
belief,12 appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zjTzat it is that animals
As N Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.q. by the women's movement:
that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
11 The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
Interestingly, choices
- that animals' choices could not be rational,
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
(forthcoming)
12 See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
and R Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to anima s ,
paper'prepared for the B.Ztef conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
�believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals;
if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old. As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which
is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept
gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot be put into states they disprefer.
All
that is required for an 'interest' or 'welfare' in the broad sense is a
telos or life-goal, as possessed by living things, or an equilibrium or
system goal, as possessed by living ecosystems.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
preferred states
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
13 in this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests.
However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary). Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
�There is a general obligation principle
into the nearby ocean.
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely,
sz/sf67??s
ohjecfs <9r
^<90<i reason.
Moral
does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers. In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and
in principle at least,
value or disvalue, and so of woraZ concern.
almost any sort of object.
<2% object of
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base cZass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
towards which moral obligations (and a corresponding sort of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that
d^st^^ot^o^s
can be made
the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example,
obligations
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded. The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an
of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligationholders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-comnitted-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
�contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences: the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an excluded class,e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvinistic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5). It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory.
notion of
But dropping the
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for: taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
is the ex
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
such a criticism
of
chauvinism
is based firmly
14 According to Q. Gibson
----- ----.
.
.
.
'
"
This is simply
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles,.
___
The general argument
not so: there is no reliance on such principles,
feature -f cannot
be what justifies
the
differential
takes the form;
----- —
- . .
.
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f., Neither
Nei__.
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage.
13
�only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification. The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
W. Cobbett, E^raZ
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ rT?a%kZ%<7
arZ^ZnaZ
bz/ the
the Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in Z/zZs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their
eroded or impaired. The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as ZsoZate^ natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
�It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.)
setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
ct/zer essuz/s
(A. Leopold, A
Coz^/ztz/
New York, 1966, p.238).
/Uzzzu^zuc
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the coi^munity creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism,e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an eyz^trozi/TzeMtuZ gtTz^c, however, such traditionally
15
�permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to some moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral. The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is moral in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. S6). Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrue
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
be morally circumscribed, and in this sense the scope of morality would
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic
ethic, an
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
�notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have.
The Western ethic is not so monolithic.
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
n ,been mapped
.3 out:
4. 15 a
concerning man's relation to nature have recently
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream StoicAugustine view - it exists only for his sake^^), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Man's Fespons^btZ^^z/ for
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash, ^tZderness an^ t/ze
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg, Z)es^<yn
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
so is the resulting tone.
�environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
purposes;
/or
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
16
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement', Tr^M^rz/
(1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do zzof p<9 /ar orozz^Zz.
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
17
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for /zzzzzzor
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley,
F-z^/zt /or z^/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
�18
"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics. Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward.
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
physically interferes with others.^ It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased vn.th natural
items would not affect others (a^oT^terfereMcg assMwpf^^).
it may, the
Be this as
appears, at least for many thinkers
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier,
18 Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
19 Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of
has been
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans
but
rarely further in the West until recently.
of
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's
'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, ^nles
there is some reason for preventing him
(Benn (c), op. cit.,
in
from (a) P.605).
The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' ^e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
ofPfhe fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification
(cf (a))
the principle is dubious, especially given principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
�*
GrozjZ/z <2%^
Dgcaz/,
T/ze ^oZz^ZZc^ ^gcowgs
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
Fr^hZ^w^
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the
t^es-Zs
- the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic -Zs wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An)
spgcZyZc ethic,
is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
and a more generic notion, a
specific ethics are grouped.
under which
(As usual, a weZu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An ^Z/zZcaZ sz/sZsw s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth,
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
a
�assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that
are
sz/s^ews.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton.
Accordingly, there is logical space for a^terrzaf^re
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr^Mc^pZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super-
ethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
dominant position.
On next page.
21
�The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that <2 person's
(foes no^ ^n^er/ere zJ-^/z o^/zers,
^s perw^ss^&^e provt^e^
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Moreover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
21
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ozzZz/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of o^Zzer
people (J.S. Mill, (/^^Z^^ar^uzz^szzzj L^&gr^z/ az-z^f 7?eprese?z^az^zze
^ozz6r?z777g?z^, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /cr Cofz^ttz^uZ-z^z/, Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment; it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
�a
the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
poss^bZe others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D). Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made; then even if
the main argument does not succeed, m-z^or
succeed.
o/ t/ze zzzu^M arpz^g?^
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,24 the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as per^ss^Me Tzurzzz to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (D), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
22 Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
inq theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc.
Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
23 if merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory',
(accepted
for publication in 1974; still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
24 or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
�main argument - upon at most simple variation of the counterexamples to
be given.
Modification becomes more important in the case of standard ethical
theories which lead to principles conflicting with (D), such as utilitar
ianism does unless (D) and the maximisation principle of utilitarianism
are appropriately segregated, e.g. by severing connections at some point
in the chain connecting entitlement, permissibility, right, maximum
utility.
For, as in widely recognised, net utility may be increased in
ways that violate (D), e.g. by injustice to, or the infliction of suffer
ing upon, or harming, some individual by others.
Thus utilitarianisms in
the tradition of Mill, which both include (D) and characterise entitlement
in utilitarian terms, are inconsistent (as simple hypothetical cases show).
To avoid counterexamples it is not enough merely to distinguish higher and
lower utilities, though this is an initial step in what is required, namely
- ideally by constraints (as is explained in §5) - o/
unconstrained
Although qualification of utilitar
ianism principles to ensure (D), as a restriction (but not the orzZz/
restriction) on what is permissible,is the proper course, it is a course
not all utilitarians are prepared to follow.
To defeat
isms, it is not enough to adduce counterexamples to (D).
utilitarian
Counterexamples
to some other core principle of such utilitarianisms must be located;
otherwise the main argument fails against a quite standard, and important,
class of positions supporting chauvinism and the Dominion thesis.
Fortunately,
again,
neither a suitable core principle nor appropriate
counterexamples are hard to find.
The common utilitarian principle
provides such a core, and several of the examples directed against (D)
serve to counter it (in its various forms).
An axiological principle corresponding to (D)
(%72<i to some of its
variants) runs along these lines:
(A) Only those objects which are of use or concern to humans
(or persons), or which are the product of human (or person)
labour or ingenuity, are of value;
thus these are all that
need to be taken into account in determining best choice or
best course of action, what is good, etc.
Roughly, value consists in answering back to certain features of human (or
person) involvement.
No calculus of value or what is best need look
beyond human values.
According to a matching value-ranking thesis, item
a is better than b only if a serves human concerns more than b.
A
narrower version of principle (A) embedded in main forms of Marxism is
24
�the human labour theory of value.
25
Thus a corollary will be that
Marxism is certainly - unless severely modified - no direction in which
to seek an environmental ethic or social theory.
There may appear to be exceptions to principle (A) in such objects
But although values are assigned to works of art where
as works of art.
these may not positively affect human welfare, the basis for assigning
value is usually taken to be the human skill or ingenuity involved in
their production.
principle (A).
Hence such assignments do not extend, or violate,
Indeed the problem raised by natural objects which cost
nothing to produce and involved nothing human is very different from the
matter of valuing art objects.
objects rctse <2
problem.
There are also other important differences between natural objects and
works of art, apart from the characteristic
noninvolvement of humans,
namely those turning on the issues of replaceability and the reversibility
of destruction.
Human artefacts are always replaceable by similar objects,
e.g. modern cities, especially concrete jungles are all too similar and
replaceable, and using modern techniques paintings can be substanially
duplicated;
whereas there is no possibility of replicating, even remotely,
such as extinct species or real
damaged or destroyed natural objects
jungles (or lost or vanishing cultures).
In terms of replacement costs,
these are much more valuable than such human artefacts as material works
of art.
Thus attempts to assimilate natural objects to material works of
art break down.
There is an additional reason for rejecting a now familiar
approach to natural objects through works of art, namely that it is
premissed on the assumption that some sort of chauvinistic account of
works of art is adequate:
that is not so, as the (intermediate) situation
of objet trouve begins to reveal.
It is in connection with principles
qualification to
(D) and especially (A) that the
ethics (already required at several points)
becomes important for the argument;
for various non-Western ethics have
not adopted these principles, e.g. both American Indians and Australian
Aborigines appear to recognise clearly values in natural items which are
not reducible (simply or at all) to human values - and apparently not
essentially theistic (supra-human).
In any case Western ethics and
25 According to some Marxists, and apparently to Marx, the labour theory
is superceded when the period of accumulation is completed and the post
scarcity era reached.
But by the time this high-energy high-tech
stage is reached, if ever, irreparable and frequently irreversible
environmental damage will have been wreaked.
26
On next page.
25
�p
attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded m every such situation.
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons.
But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals; e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
�3
Q
formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy sows environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zest pgopZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
One considers the last people in
blocked any chance of reproduction.
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
28
On next page.
27
�(iii) The ^reu^ eTz^repr^KeMr example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
socket!/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
species example.
The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
28 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29 The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
�*
activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the sorts of reasons well-explained in Barkley and
Seckier, op. cit.) along the private demand curve until the blue whale
population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work.^O
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The /actorz/ /arm example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
�be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
The treatment of the animals on the farm
environmental ethic it is not.
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The
example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
sees
The prevailing
with the destruction of such
ethic
wrong
nothing
a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
(Compare the situation
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned Tzu/na??. slavery.)
30
�*
In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and so forth;
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly felt,
31
�a
but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so ezzzz*Zr<9zzwe7zfaZ.
be %%-z^MeZz/ (ie^grzzz-Zzzg^, or adopted by every valuer.
will zzct
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the elimination
of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other, valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts.As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/zz^scozzcept^oTZS on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in PpnaZ^fz/
ipz^erTzaz^ozzaZ u?Z(Z Comparative t/vrisprz/devce (ed. G. Dorsey) , Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially Ov FmotiozzaZ Presentation (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those.
The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
�environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed.
There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Althouth a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
33
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
(such as P. and
JssMss
A. Erlich's
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
34
e/zf-ZreZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
�Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said
that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
Firstly, many conventional
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
and
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions.
That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /nfure humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached. Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (non-
immediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which do take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
Example 1.
We need only consider the operation of
zJorZd, for example, the concept of damapo to a natural
item, and the associated notion of coTnpeMsafdoM for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in STzo^Zd Troes
^fuTid^Mp?
Thus
Towards LepaZ.
/"or ZVufMraZ- Objocfs (Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
�adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZuue not the
for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
Example 2.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
�Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
i
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous
or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character., and.feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
sample.
The sort of behaviour
by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different.
It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no
difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic,
/row
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
�Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
environmental ethic.
(2)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.36
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is. Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
35
Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major ecological problems:
pollution, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding a way either of altering
types of human conduct or of preventing that human conduct from
having its present consequences.
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 This implies only, that a new ethic is necessary for solving
environmental problems, and not of course that it is
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
�#
arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
ethic.
an alternative
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others) 'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'.^
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
What is not immediately evident is
persist or, more likely, intensify.
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
PtwZts to CrozjtT?,
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', Pornos IX, 1978, p.66. Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TPs CZosZ^p CZroZo, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk, T/zZs
PZo^ot, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others EZMoprZut /or F^rvZ^aZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows et aZ., op. cit.
38
O
�does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§ 4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS .
The basic - and basically mistaken - doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, ^yz i/ze sazzze /as/z^oM
as
peopZ-e, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests - a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric)
Show me a man-oriented society in which it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 see e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', Irz^z^rz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does Moi imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rafTzsr, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
�&
can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement. It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called sTzaZZozj and Fesp ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled
exploitation of
the environment — something which is compatible with denying value to
everything except man
and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a
The
gzEpZo^a^opz view, which is
first view, the long-term or
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjFss Mse oy resoMrcss', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for.a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have Fustrz^gnPaZ- value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of
to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of
e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Furvez/ py
Fcrgsz^rz/
T^FMSz^r^es.
ParP FT.
Foresfrz/ Pe^gZ.opz7?e?2^ PZ-arz. Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
�According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
Rodman reaches a similar
conclusion:
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search for
VuZzzes
a
International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and zzzMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
�instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
with examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences. Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford.43 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethos
into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers
(who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
—
The concept of zjfZ-demess too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
�value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in sofne instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation; if it is manage44
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
44 on some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
�nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use
45
...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
to the economic ethos of Resource
In contrast
Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places
(and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50, my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics:
intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
45
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
�rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone. 46 It also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold s
47
"land ethic".
In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).4^
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. Singer,
.4 ZVozJ
Random House, New York, 1975;
for (7%r
C. Stone, op. cit.
<?y
47 At least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position,
but not according to Rodman; see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented m
C. Darwin,
of Muzz, Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
4 8 On next page.
45
�1*
Then the counterexamples apply as before
last people themselves.
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
as Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
facts of experience:
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value
or sentient, objects).
derives from experience (of experiential,
A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one time, etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others. Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
�standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
50 See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3.
But Rodman overstates his case m
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For , as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate; and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
�*
relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
'p.119)7*
"
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:-
(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
The mistaken treatment of them
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
�In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness.
It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
For a
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
�w
as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes (given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
51
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out.
For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51 His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
�G.
$
legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
have a niche'
(p.97).
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted;
and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another.
Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction,
'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
�W-
The first disjunct yields
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
form:
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things) ;
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
, 52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52 Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts.
So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
*
�C
Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life' (p.103 and note 66). But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
yrow TVozj/zgre, and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally
by God,
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course) , and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively. When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (T<2<9 T6
, #18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
are also unavoidable;^ for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable) "is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality;
it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather: that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted)
to delay "the war against nature".
53
�V
alternative situations;
*
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality — as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind; which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly, what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle.
procedure points in the direction to be pursued:
The
replacement of the over-
simple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors. After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility -
requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined,
�*
through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as
natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is athreat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further
microcosm:
afield, and resorts to the myth of
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of seZ/, without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
account of the
it is an
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),
but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
�w
For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.^ The metaphysics deepens,
then, the reasons for resistance.
A resister 'does not stand over against
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
he is an
integral part of [it]' ((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
__ By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole.
an esthetic religiosity have
niches
Economics, morality, and
in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield f/z-fs pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false. Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are verz/ limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative. A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
S'? it is but a short step to the ; fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
�§5.
THE VIABILITY OF THE SORT OF ALTERNATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC SELECTED
It is not necessary for an environmental ethic to take a set position
on all the issues so far raised for environmental ethics (or others, such
as whether, and if so which, ecological principles should be integrated
for example, it does not
with the ethical system) ;
to decide exactly
But it can hardly avoid determining
which items do or can have rights.
some of the boundaries in a way different from conventional ethics if it
is to count as an environmental ethic.
In particular, the issues of what
sort of items have or carry noninstrumental value, and how they obtain it,
cannot be escaped indefinitely.
Without the assignment of (intrinsic)
value to some items independent of the states and conditions of humans,
an ethic would remain within the confines of human chauvinism.
But how,
it is all too often asked, is such an assignment possible, or rational?
In any case, the environmental examples already relied upon (in §3) pre
suppose
items.
the assignment of intrinsic value to nonhuman, and to nonsentient
So a theory of value is not only unavoidable but owed.
that can be adopted on an environmental
Of the many accounts of
ethic, the following has much to recommend it:-
Some values are instru
mental, i.e. a means or an instrument to something else that has value,
and some are not, but are non-instrumental or intrinsic.
Some values at
least must be intrinsic, some objects valuable in themselves and not as a
means to other ends.
not, however, imply
That a value is (reckoned to be) intrinsic does
that
it
is
absolute
or system independent;
the
values that are intrinsic on one ethical theory may be instrumental or
relative on another. More controversially, values may be
in one
way or another, on other things, on other values or, importantly, on non
values (such as experiences or felt needs, or facts or natural objects);
but while some values are reducible to others, others are not but are
That is, contrary to naturalism and to other forms of
For
reductionism such as subjectivism, some values are irreducible.
analogues of the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies, formulated in
irreducible.
terms of 'valuable', are fallacies.
In particular, evaluative judgments,
such as those as to what is valuable, are not deducible from nonvaluative
judgments, such as those as to what is conventionally valued or what is
58
experienced.
That values in natural items are intrinsic does not imply
that they are naturalistic.
eliminating
or
Indeed intrinsic value cannot - on pain of
- amount to being natural, or reduce
to the experiences of humans or of sentient creatures, to their suffering
or happiness or preferences.
58
On next page.
57
�w
Although some of these things, some of these experiences,
some do not, but have no value, or a negative value or disvalue;
value,
59
and
some things, e.g. some experiences or some natural objects, have more
value (are more valuable) than others.
of value, but by no means everything is.
Almost anything can be an object
Value is distributed unevenly
throughout the universe in something the way that electrical charge is;
some items have positive quantities of varying degrees of intensity (e.g.
a thundercloud may carry a positive charge, and have positive value), some
negative, and some none.
There are however important differences:
elect
rical charge is a quantitative notion, value a qualitative, comparative,
one;
charges are always commensurable, values less certainly or straight
forwardly so;60 and the distribution of values (and especially of
intrinsic values) is much more theory (system, or viewpoint) relative than
.the di^sbributtdn of charges.
For example, on an environmental view, matiy
of the plants Mr Last Man eliminates have (intrinsic) value, whereas on
animal liberation (usual animal chauvinist) views the plants have no value
if no animals remain:
there would be no similar disagreement about
whether the plants were electrically charged.
Evaluative features such
as worth, merit, beauty are features which behave in rather the way that
philosophers of science now mistakenly suppose that
behave:
empirical features
they do not have a hard observational basis but are decidedly
theory-dependent, though the theories involved are evaluative in character
and not empirical.
To assert that value or redness or remoteness is distributed through
the universe is not to imply that these features, value or redness or
For an outline of how this nondeducibility thesis, which yields a
nondefinability thesis, may be proved (in limited contexts), see the
final section of R. and V. Routley, 'The semantics of first degree
entailment', ZVoMS, 6 (1972), pp. 335-59.
A simpler argument against naturalistic reducibility of values is a
consequence of the intensionality of values and the fact that intensional notions cannot be extensionally analysed (syntactically), which
is what naturalistism characteristically assumes.
Strictly the account of instrumental value should be widened if
disvalues as well as (positive) values are to be taken proper account
of.
That is, mcrg
may be at best a partial order, and so an
inadequate basis on which to define total utility functions, and on
which to rationally reconstruct modern economic theory.
If this is so,
as Godfrey Smith has suggested, and the orderings cannot be completed,
applications of the optimistisation models subsequently introduced will
have to work with partial functions.
58
�remoteness, exist,
or are to be found in the universe.
undermines much criticism of nonsubjective values;
The point alone
for example, Mackie's
empiricist case is premissed on the false assumption that the existence
of values
is necessary to objectivism, which he does not distinguish
from nonsubjectivism.
Mackie's "argument from queernessis similarly
broken at the outset:
since values are not entities at all, they are not
strange sorts of entities.
To see how unpersuasive Mackie's argument
should be, replace '(objective) values' throughout by, e.g.,
ordinals'.
universe;
'transfinite
They too would be 'utterly different from'anything in Mackie's
but that does not show that there are no transfinite ordinals.
Thus too, since values are not entities, the account of value being
developed is Met a reaZ-Zst one (in the ordinary sense).62
Values, of one sort or another, are features objects may have or
lack;
they are not subjective, they are not features which reduce to
states or conditions of subjects or valuers.
But no more are they object
ive features, natural or empirical features of objects, features entirely
detached from valuers.
A largely unquestioned false dichotomy between
subjective and objective ethical theories has served to rule out important
options (it has been helped by a connected false dichotomy between
instrumental and detached accounts of value:
see Routley (b)).
In simplest terms, an objective account of value has values "located"
in objects entirely independently of valuers, in the way that (inertial)
mass is located in physical objects independently of observers;
more
satisfactorily, objects have values and masses irrespective of valuers or
observers.
Objectivism forces intuitionism, when it is inquired how
values are apprehended or known;
thus a fuller objective theory is almost
always accompanied by an account, so far always unsatisfactory,
61 The position is that for properties and relations argued in (e)
R. Routley,
EepcTX'd, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1979.
Such objects do not exist, but they have
important theoretical, explanatory, and other roles.
62 j.c. Mackie, Ft/zZcs.
especially pp.38-9.
F-ZpTzt
Penguin, 1977;
see
62 So undermining 0K6 part of D. Mannison's claim that we
want to defend a reaZ-Zst theory of values, i.e. a theory of values
that accounts for the truth of "x has value" with no ineliminable
reference to the interests and concerns of the evaluating group
('Critique of a proposal for an "environmental ethic'", this
volume).
The further parts of Mannison's claim are assessed in what immediately
follows. We are indebted to Mannison for forcing us to try to work
out what is wrong and right about detached value theses.
59
�3
characteristically modelled on sense perception, of the way in which
64
values are intuited or apprehended.
It is also regularly assumed on
objective accounts that values exist, in the world;
noneism) that is a separable assumption.
but evidently (given
By contrast, a subjective
account finds values in, or not independent of, actual subjects, and
commonly as linked with the pyschological states of valuers.
Although
subjectivism, like objectivism, comes in a variety of forms, it is always
required that where an item is valued there exists, at sometime or other,
a valuer who values it:
"no values without a valuer" holds, in a strong,
an excessively strong,implausible and erroneous, form;
namely, a world
without existing valuers in it is, by that very fact, a world without
values.
Fortunately - since both objectivisms and subjectivisms suffer
from serious, and mostly well-known, defects - the positions are not
exhaustive.
The way between is perhaps best revealed in terms of alter
native worlds.65 Although values in a world (more precisely, that items
in that world a have evaluative features) always depend upon a valuer
existing in sows world, the valuer may not exist in the world of the
values
(i.e. the valuer may not exist in a).
For example, our claim that
a certain world without valuers, e.g. a pure plant world of botanically
rich form, is a fine world, depends on our existing in this world (in
order to make the claim, in fact);
"make sense"
but it does not demand in order to
(of course the claim is significant) or to be true, what is
ex hypothesis ruled out, the existence of valuers in the pure plant world.
That the world is a fine one, is dependent on a valuer in some world (and
that valuer's assessments of value and, if you like, theory or overview
of what is valuable and not);
by contrast, that the world contains only
plants of this or that leaf type, biomass or colour, does not depend upon
a perceiver.66 since values are not entirely independent of a valuer in
the way that empirical properties are independent of an observer, the
An important corollary is that
resulting account is not objective.
transworld evaluation does not require objectivism, nor (as we shall see)
intuitionism.
Call the resulting account, which is neither objective nor,
(short for, neither objective nor
as is evident, subjective,
subjective:
the term is ugly but memorable).
For a fuller account and worthwhile criticism, see N. Smith,
Penguin, 1954.
The use of worlds in ethical theorising, which is old, soon leads into
world semantical analyses of ethical notions, which is newer but will
also be taken for granted: it is ^problematic.
On next page.
60
�The replacement of the (no detachable values) thesis,
(1)
There are no values without a valuer,
by the revised thesis,
(1°) There are no values which are entirely independent of a valuer,
still affords the requisite semantical connections between values and
valuers subjectivists have been at pains to maintain, still allows for
the requisite theory dependence and cultural relativity of values, and
still avoids the extravagances of objectivism.
The replacement enables
the defeat of various sophistical arguments designed to show, in virtue
of the conceptual character of evaluative terms, that the case so far
presented against human (or person) chauvinism collapses.
argument of this sort
runs thus:
A simple
Objectivism is untenable;
but that
leaves subjectivism, which validates (1), as the only alternative; and
subjectivism undermines the counterexamples to chauvinism.6&
One defect
of this argument lies in the assumption that a theory can just dispose of
counterexamples, when commonly examples are harder data than any theory.
Note that the difference between evaluative and empirical properties
is not adequately explained counterfactually:
if an appropriate valuer
- it cannot be an arbitrarily chosen valuer - were placed in the world
it would rate the world fine, to be sure; but equally a suitable
observer would perceive perceptual properties.
Both these things
objectivism can quite well allow. Partly for this reason Rescher's
attempt to maintain his initially subjectivist thesis that value must
be benefit-oriented, while admitting Moore's comparison of unoccupied
worlds, is unsuccessful.
Rescher's thesis really gets modified to:
value must be potential-benefit-oriented - with which an objectivist
might well agree, since it becomes a truism if 'benefit' is construed
sufficiently widely (e.g. as 'value'), once unscrambled counterfactually
thus:the unseen sunset has aesthetic value because of the potential
benefits it affords ... [i.e.]
someone were placed on to such a
world, he
be able to appreciate and enjoy this sunset.
(N. Rescher,
Prentice Hill, 1969 ,
pp.136-37.)
But insofar as Rescher wants to suggest that value comes down to
potential-benefit-orientation, that the unseen sunset has value jMst
because of the potential benefits, which are entirely captured counter
factually, objectivists will rightly object; even if no one were
placed in this world, the sunset which delivered no benefits
the
world, would still have value, still be beautiful.
In short, a counterfactually-extended subjectivism remains inadequate.
The requisite relation of entire independence is explained semantically
in terms of worlds.
The truth of A is not entirely independent of b
iff, in every model, for every world of the model in which A holds
there is some world of the model in which b exists.
The valuer of (1°)
need not exist; it is only required (in each model) that it exist in
some world.
Such an argument appears, in essentials, in R. Elliot,
species?', this publication.
61
'Why preserve
�9
Such a procedure is methodologically unsound.
In this case the examples
tell against subjectivism, and point to another defect in the theoretical
argument, namely the reliance on the false objective/subjective dichotomy.
It has been objected 69 that the nonjective way between subjective and
objective is unsatisfactory, for the reason that (1°) results in
unacceptible assignments of value.
But the objection depends upon under
standing 'a valuer' in (1°) not in the intended way, as 'a certain (or
definite) valuer' , the determination of valuer being
MpoM the
values concerned, but as a choice term, as 'an arbitrarily chosen valuer',
or 'some valuer or other (you choose)' - which would require, what can
never happen, that every hypothetical valuer agrees in the values assigned.
A precisely similar misunderstanding of (1) likewise gives strange results:
namely that any state of affairs, however environmentally appalling, is
valuable because we can find a valuer, e.g. a spokesman for your local
development association., who would account it valuable.
understood yields no such bizarre results:
But (1) properly
all it guarantees is that,
where a state of affairs has a value then there is a certain valuer
(zj/z^cT? depending upon the state of affairs and the value assigned, i.e.
the choice is heavily constrained) who assigns that value to that state.
Similarly in the case of (1°) choice of appropriate valuers is a dependent
choice, not an arbitrary one.
There are several, deeper (because metaphysically grounded),
sophistical arguments that conclude on the basis of (1) among other
70
things, that human, or at least person, chauvinism is unavoidable.
These arguments too fail with (1).
It is simply a (common) mistake to
think that values and rights do not have a meaning, or an application,
outside the human context or situation:
to establish this point (on
which Moore rightly insisted) it is enough to point out again that
(hypothetical) valuers, not necessarily human or persons, can assign
69
For example by R. Elliot op. cit.
Elliot's objection depends on a
misconstrual.
The original draft of this paper pointed out that
principle (1)
is strictly mistaken: it would be a little more accurate to assert
that there are no values without possible valuers. A world in which
there are no valuers extant may still contain valuable items.
It does not follow from this, what Elliot infers, that 'a state of
affairs has value if it is such that it would be valued by some
sentient individual if such an individual were to exist', with 'some'
read 'some or other'.
70 These arguments are examined in detail in Routley (a), and found
wanting.
The objections there lodged apply equally against variations
of the arguments built on (1°) . What follows in the text on sorne of
these arguments is largely a condensation of some of the points
developed more fully there.
62
�C
Q
values with respect to situations and worlds devoid of humans and of
persons altogether.
But though these deeper arguments strictly fail
with the demise of (1), they can be readily restated in terms of (1°),
which can equally be taken (given further assumptions) to support the
thesis that persons (or preference-havers)
are the primary items of
value or, more strongly, that persons are the ozzZ-y items of intrinsic
value.
One of these arguments relies on the idea that persons are the
source of value.
But the argument trades on an ambiguity.
A person is
the source of value-judgements and values in one sense, i.e. s/he is the
valuer;
but not in another, namely s/he is not responsible for valued
item having its valued properties.
Nor is there any licence for reducing
the values assigned to those that serve the interests of the valuer.
The
argument is likely to be given the following sort of initial elaboration:
By (1°), whatever has a value has its value in virtue of an assignment
from certain valuers.
But valuers are always persons.
The argument is however
ever has a value gets its value from persons.
defective.
Therefore what
For even if values were always assigned by persons the items
their values from persons
assigned values do not thereby yet or
(or those of persons).
They have what value they have partly in virtue
of features of their own.
Nonetheless, the argument continues, the empirical features of
objects valued are relevant because they are taken into account in
preference rankings on which valuers base their assignments.
By (1°)
(or
a derivative) values are relational properties not properties simpliciter
as objectivism would have it.
They are relational properties which
depend on certain features of the related item.
Which features, of values?
Well, obviously, preferences and interests of valuers.
So, it is con
cluded, values answer to, or reduce to, interests of persons:
no alternative to chauvinism.
there is
Rather similar arguments lead to such
(mistaken) conclusions as that rights are interest-oriented, that
71
obligations must answer to people's interests,
etc. etc.
The arguments
can furthermore - in case the transit seemed excessively swift - be
filled out, for example as follows:
By (1°),
Thus, e.g. K. Baier, T/ze AforczZ Po^yzt o/
Ithaca, 1958.
63
Cornell University Press,
�-B.
Values depend upon valuers, upon their value assignments
or rankings.
-A.
These value rankings depend upon valuers' preference
rankings.
A.
Hence
Values depend upon, or are determined through, the preference
rankings of valuers.
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers'
interests.
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
Therefore
D.
Values are determined through, or depend upon, human [or
72
persons'] interests.
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human,
interest, there is no rational or feasible alternative to doing so:
any
alternative to chauvinism is simply incoherent.
With the replacement of (1) by (1°), premiss (C) is rendered
implausible unless 'human' is supplanted by 'person'
(where the variable
'person' is so characterised that all valuers are persons, something some
accounts of person would rule out).
Thus, without (1), the argument
leads at best to person chauvinism.
Nor does -B follow from (1°):
"not
entirely independent of" does not imply "dependent upon", but at best
"partially dependent upon".
However it does seem that values are, in a
sense, determined through value assignments - assignments made certainly
in virtue of features of the objects valued and of preference rankings of
valuers, that is having dual factual and attitudinal bases - but assign
ments nevertheless.
Accordingly, the central part of the argument can be
reformulated, in a way which locates the main source of damage, thus
A'.
Values are determined through value assignments [preference
rankings] of valuers.
B'.
The value assignments [preference ranking] of valuers are
determined through valuers' interests.
In order to reach what amounts to chauvinism
73
from B', however,
'interest'
has to be narrowly construed, after the fashion of egoism, as 'own, self-
centred or selfish, interest'.
D'.
Otherwise the conclusion,
Values are determined through valuers' interests,
Many variations on this argument are considered in Routley (a); and
obviously there are yet other variations, e.g. value assignments could
be directly linked with interests.
On next page.
64
�c
Q
is innocuous;
valuers.
it does nothing to confine what determines value, to
For valuers' interests may concern almost anything, and in
particular may include the interests of nonvaluers(as in 'its interest
is among my interests') and the welfare of natural systems.
understood, is no more chauvinistic than:
D', so
Values are value-centred.
To
succeed the argument has to narrow the elements assessed in determining
value to features of the base class of persons [or humans];
their interests and welfare alone.
e.g. to
For if we have to look beyond this
class to assess value - even to determine interests and welfare - then
the argument to chauvinism fails. Thus the argument has, in order to suc
ceed, to rely upon assumptions either of egoism - valuers' interests are
restricted to their own (perhaps enlightened) self-interest - or of a
group analogue - valuers' interests are restricted to those of the group,
the base class - where (to indicate the final trick in the argument)
there is, in each case, a slide on the elastic term 'interests', e.g.
from ^?z) f/z^r ozjzz
ozjyz Mses or purposes.
to
t/z^^r ozjzz u^urztape., or
t/ze^r
It is evident enough that in order to succeed the
argument has to assume one of the very points at issue, that interests,
which are progressively restricted to chauvinistic interests, are so
restricted.74 But consider, to expose the character of the assumptions
made, parallel arguments to egoism and groupism, i.e. group egoism:
AE.
Persons always act (in freely chosen cases, or rational cases)
in the way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accord with their
(revealed) preference rankings.
BE.
Individual [group] preference rankings are always determined
through (reflect) self [group] interest.
71 What amounts to chauvinism; for if a position were reached in
this
way by a sound argument, then the position would not be chauvinistic,
being justified. For this reason, it is absurd for a rational creature
to present itself (as some philosophers have) as a human chauvinist or
a person chauvinist.
There is however a descriptive analogue of chauvinism, in which the
justificatory clause is omitted; and this use of 'chauvinism' we have
resorted to ourselves (as the astute reader will have observed) as an
interim step.
In the end of course such descriptive-chauvinism is
chauvinism, since the discrimination involved is unwarranted.
74 The claim generalises: it is not possible to mount an argument for
person [or human] chauvinism on the basis of the meaning, or analysis,
of such notions as, o^Z^pa^o/z or r^pTzf or
without assuming, in
the analysis or the course of the argument, the very points at issue.
This is an outcome of the viability of nonchauvinistic analyses of
these notions, together with the content preservation character of
genuine deductive arguments.
65
�Therefore
DE.
Individual persons [groups of persons] always act in ways
determined in their own self [group] interests (or that
reflect their own interest^).
Thereafter follows the slide from "in their own interests" to "to their
own advantage", or "for their own uses or purposes".
The eventual con
clusion of egoism, again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not
only that the egoistic position is perfectly in order and thoroughly
rational, but that there are no alternatives;
least ought to be, no other way of acting,
that is, there is, or at
'that men can only choose to
do what is in their own interests or that it is only rational to do
Thus,person or (human) chauvinism, as based.on the central argument,
3
stands revealed as like group selfishness, "group egoism" one might
almost say.
Likewise the criticisms of the
as we shall now call the argument through D or D', parallel those of
egoism;
in particular, premiss B'
to those that defeat premiss BE.
(or B) succumbs to similar objections
Group selfishness is no more acceptable
than egoism, since it depends on exactly the same set of confusions
between values, preferences, interests, and advantages (encouraged by
slippery terms such as 'interests' and 'self-interest') as the arguments
on which egoism rests.
Briefly, because one may discern or select one's own preference or
value rankings, it does not follow that these rankings are set up or
selected in one's own selfish (or enlightened self) interests;
similarly
in group cases, because a group determines its own rankings, it does not
follow that it determines them in its own interests;
the group includes environmental individuals.
certainly not if
Thus just as BE is refuted,
at least prima facie, by a range of examples where preference, and value,
rankings run counter to self-regarding interest, e.g. cases of otherregarding interest or altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by
examples where value, and also overall preference rankings, vary from
group interests, e.g. cases of group altruism and extra-group-regarding
interests, as in resistance movements, environmental action groups, and
so on.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish because
pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip mine
the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but ecological resistance workers
Nowell Smith, op. cit., p.140. Nowell-Smith's very appealing critique
of egoism (pp.140-44) may, by simple paraphrase, be converted into a
critique of group selfishness.
This is obvious once B' and BE are
compared.
66
�who oppose doing so are commonly not acting just out of (their own or)
human intragroup interests, but out of direct concern for the environment
and its welfare.
But, just as BE is not demolished by such counterexamples of
apparently other-regarding and altruistic action, neither is B:
in each
case it can be made out that further selfish (i.e. self-regarding) inter
ests are involved, e.g., in the case of B, that an agent did what he did,
an altruistic action, because he
in the egoism case,
doing it.
As Nowell-Smith explains
'interest' is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE true at the cost, however, of trivial-
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a
further sort of "interest"; whatever valuers value that does not seem to
ising them.
be in their interests is said to provide a further interest, either the
value itself or an invented value surrogate;
for example, the environ
mentalist who works to retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be
said to be so acting only because he has an interest in or derives
benefit or advantage from just knowing it exists, just as he would be
said to in the egoist case.
"retained";
By such strategies the theses can be
for then a valued item really is in valuers' interests, in
the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously incon
venienced by it, i.e. even if it is Mot in their narrow interests in the
customary sense.
Thus B, like BE, is preserved by stretching the
elastic term 'interests', in a way that it too readily admits, to include
values, or value surrogates, among interests.
Then however the conclus
ion of the Group Selfishness argument loses its intended force, and
becomes the platitude that values are determined through valuers' values,
just as egoism, under the extension which makes us all covert egoists,
loses its sting and becomes a platitude.
Human chauvinism in this form,
like egoism, derives its plausibility from vacillation on the sense of
'interests', with a resulting fluctuation between a strong false thesis
when interests are narrowed through group interests to group restricted
interests - the real face of human chauvinism - and a trivial analytic
thesis, between paradox and platitude.
To reject the reductionist conclusion D, or D', is by no means to be
committed to the view that the valuers and their preference rankings play
%<? role in determining values and that values are a further set of
In the sense of Wisdom's (meta)philosophy.
The technique of rescuing
philosophical theses by shifts, which begin with natural extensions of
terms, enforced by accompanying redefinitions of terms - including the
thesis "We're all selfish really" - is delightfully explained in
J. Wisdom, dt/zer
Blackwell, Oxford, 1952, especially chapter 1.
67
�mysterious independent items somehow perceived by valuers through a
special (even mystical and non-rational) moral sense.
An intuitionist
theory of value is not required, and is not lurking in the background.
One can simply admit that valuers' preference rankings play an important
role in evaluation;
one is not thereby committed to D unless one assumes
- what amounts to premiss B - that these preference rankings reflect, or
can be reduced to, valuers'
(narrow) interests.
Even so important
problems remain unresolved, in particular, precisely what role valuers'
preference-rankings play, and how this role enables the damaging features
of intuitionism to be avoided.
The arguments against genuinely environmental ethics from the
character of
are sometimes followed up by the objection that such
a ethic can be given no, or no satisfactory, theory of value (or metaethic, to.use the current, but questionable, jargon transferred from
logical theory).
It is true that several theories of value are quickly
ruled out, including mainstream noncognitive theories, which are objection
ably chauvinistic, allowing no non-instrumental value to any non-sentient
natural items.
While an environmental ethic, like almost any other
normative ethic, ca?? be supplied with an intuitionist theory of value,
an environmental ethic, unlike most other ethics, wa?/ appear to have no
option to such a theory, though the theory is unsatisfactory and causes
especial problems for the ethic. 75 The unsatisfactoriness of intuitionism
is in part for the usual reasons:
apart from the perceptual comparison
which is problematic in several ways (e.g. evaluative properties are not
like perceptual properties, the moral sense is rather different from
other senses), the theory is (like a purely axiomatic theory) too much of
a black box, which gives no explanation of many things that call for
explanation, e.g. the semantics of value, how value judgements are based
on factual and emotional or attitudinal bases;
but it is in part because
intuitionism provides little guidance or assistance in accounting for the
intrinsic value of environmental objects.
These difficulties can be evaded and the problems largely resolved
through a semantical theory of value, and more generally of ethical terms.
Thus D. Mannison, 'the "new environmental ethic" is ... irredeemably
intuitionistic' (op. cit.), and H.J. McCloskey:
As far as I can see of the known, plausible meta-ethics, the only
one available ... is an intuitionist one.
... [There] would still
be ... the problem of associating it with a non-human-centred
normative ethic, one which did not locate all values in human
capacities states, goods, but accorded to environmental phenomena
value in their own right. ('Ecological ethics and its justification:
a critical appraisal', this volume.)
68
�For the truth-conditions, 7 8 and resulting interpretation conditions,
will supply an account of meaning not only of axiological expressions
but also of deontic expressions, and moreover in a way that is plainly
nonchauvinistic;
e.g., it enables natural items to be awarded intrinsic
value in much the way that states or conditions of humans are on
chauvinistic theories.
Something of the shape and character of the semantical analyses
emerges from the evaluation rules for important axiological and deontic
79
functions.
The semantics are set within the framework of the semantics
of entailment:
in this way several paradoxes possible world semantics
induces in deontic (and axiological) theory are automatically removed.
The semantical analyses of the central axiological functor,
'that ... is
better than that __ ', abbreviated 'Bt', and the key deontic predicate
'that ... is permissible', abbreviated 'P', restricted to sentential
terms, take respectively the following forms:
I(A Bt B, a) = 1 iff [B]
i.e.
[A], where [C] = {c e K:
I(C, c) =1},
[C] is the range of C, the class of situations where C holds, some
times called the proposition C expresses.
In short, that A is better
than that B holds in world a iff from the perspective of a, the proposition
B expresses is less preferable than the proposition A expresses, where
the ordering relation is spelt out in terms of a preference ranking.
I(PA, a) = 1 iff, for some world b such that Tab, I(A, b) = 1;
i.e., that A is permissible holds in a iff for some world b permitted as
far as a is concerned, A holds in b - where the relation T is spelt out in
terms of a relative permittedness relation.
Enough of the semantical theory has been exposed to indicate some
important features.
Firstly, betterness - and something the same holds
for other value terms - is assessed semantically in terms of a world-
relativised preference ranking.
In the simplest case, where betterness is
assessed as to truth (rather than interpretation, or meaning), i.e. at
actual world T, the assessment just is in terms of a preference ranking
(so validating a form of premiss B above, for a technical sense of
70
Ethical judgements, both axiological and deontic, have truth values,
relative to their context of occurrence. By use of context, objections,
e.g. from relativity, to the attribution of truth-values to such
judgements can be straightforwardly avoided.
79 Full details of the semantics are presented elsewhere, in Routley (c),
and in R. Routley, R.K. Meyer, and others, PeZevuzzf
TZzeZr
P-ZfaZs, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
69
�'determined').
Secondly, the semantics of
can be given in
descriptive terms; similarly for deontic terms such as
The
semantical analysis bridges the fact-value gap, by a functional linkage,
without however closing it.
preferential basis.
For it provides no
of value to its
The linkage enables a simple explanation of how
environmental considerations can count:
criteria may be preferred.
worlds satisfying environmental
Sets of worlds where human interests or needs
are not met but ecosystems are maintained may, for example, be prefer
entially ranked above worlds where human needs are met at the expense of
ecosystems.
The way in which the factual basis, which includes environ
mental facts - the descriptive better-making characteristics - enters into
the evaluative judgments of quality, is in outline as follows:
factual
criteria delimit preference rankings on worlds in the same way that
descriptive features of objects delimit preference rankings of these
objects.
It is not the case, then, that we are unable to explain zj?zz/ a natural
item is valuable if we cannot point to some human interest or purpose
which is served.
This again assumes mistakenly, that because a valuer
relative preference-ranking is involved, the evaluation must somehow be
reducible to the interests or purposes of the valuer.
That there is an
allusion in the semantical unpacking of value to the preference system of
a certain valuer no more requires that the items valued are valuable only
insofar as they serve the valuer's interests or preferences than it does
in more familiar cases such as valuing a work of art, a library or an old
building.
Valuers can and do value items because they perceive in them
properties they take to be valuable, and in the interests of other things
whose interests are their own, and not simply for what they can get out of
them or how far they serve their own interests.
The answer to the question
'Why is it valuable?', for a natural item, will not always be, as it must
always be on the instrumental view,
'Because it is good for such and such
purpose or end of the valuer or those of his group', but may be:
'Because
it has properties A, B and C which the valuer holds to be valuable in virtue
of considered preferences, including iterated (second order) preferences
which reflect the preferences of other preference-havers.
In the end, then, environmental value systems are
cvz different
How a seTnaTzt-fcaZ analysis - as distinct from a
analysis may make bridges without involving a reduction - but leaving everything
as it is - is more fully explained in R. Routley 'The semantical meta
morphosis of metaphysics',
JoMruaZ
P/z^Zosop/zz/, 54 (1976),
187-205. For more on how the fact/value gap is semantically bridged
see Routley (c).
70
�preference rankings, which take into account different facts from the
chauvinistic systems they are beginning to compete with and aim to
supplant - a different group preference ranking and network (emanating
from the valuer and those like her) which is grounded in a different
perception and emotional presentation of nature.
The semantical meta-ethic is not as neutral as an intuitionistic
meta-ethic:
for the preference-rankings involved require a valuer, i.e.
thesis (1°) is applied, thereby excluding objective theories.
The fact
that the semantical theory will work (perhaps after minor adaptions) for
a range of normative theories is no serious objection.
not have to be precisely tailored to a given ethic:
A meta-ethic does
the same (sort of)
metalogic may work satisfactorily for many different logics.
It is not merely that the distinctiveness of the meta-ethic may be
what is more serious is that the
contested;
(normative) ethic, even
newness
of
the
within Western traditions, may be challenged.
It has been suggested, for instance, that such ethics are but versions
or minor variants of ideal utilitarianism
McCloskey, op. cit.).
(cf. Elliot, op. cit.;
To assess this claim, and to reveal how much the
preferred environmental ethic has in common with such utilitarianism and
how much it differs, considering what counts as ideal utilitarianism is
unavoidable.
In indicating what does count, there is real point in going
back to Rashdall's original explanation:
... all moral judgements are ultimately judgements as to the
value of ends.
This view of Ethics, which combines the utilitarian
principle that Ethics must be teleological with a non-hedonistic
view of the ethical end I propose to call Ideal Utilitarianism.
According to this view actions are right or wrong according as they
tend to produce for all mankind an ideal end or good, which includes
but is not limited to pleasure.
... The right action is always that
which (so far as the agent has means of knowing) will produce the
greatest amount of good upon the whole.
(H- Rashdall, TTze T/zeorz/ o/
Fzz-z^Z, Oxford University Press, 1907, p.184.)
Ideal utilitarianism is thus, according to Rashdall, nonhedonistic
utilitarianism, and so conforms to the core theses of utilitarianism,
namely:
(i) The ethical or ideal end (the good) is determined simply by
maximisation of net utility or value of certain factors or ends, typically
(but not invariably) experiences or states of consciousness such as
pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction of desires or preferences
71
�!*
(ii) The ends or experiences are those of some given base class,
e.g. mankind, present persons, sentient creatures (Pase <?Zass r^Z-az^z^sut-Zczz);
and
(iii) Other ethical notions, right in particular, are defined as
determined in terms of the ethical end (^eZeoZ-c^-ZcuZ re^zzc^-Zozz-Zsw).
A corollary of the reductionist assumption - which can take various forms,
e.g. act, rule, average utilitarianism - is that maximisation is uncon
strained by deontic requirements.
The core principles are also readily
discerned in that other paradigmatic ideal utilitarian, Moore,
who like
Rashdall, objects to (hedonistic) utilitarianism on the grounds of its
hedonistic principle (e.g. p.184), and accordingly widens the ends
admitted in (i), and, again like Rashdall, takes the base class to
consist of humans.
as assessed through its
paradigm exponents *Zs thus chauvinistic, and zzo
e^zz-ZrczzwezztuZ.
sc/zewa /or azz
Human chauvinism is in fact integral to both
Rashdall'sand Moore's work.
For example, Rashdall characterises r-z^TzZ; in
terms of good for mankind, and endorses a strong form of the greater value
assumption (p.215).
And Moore
not only identifies the best poss-ZbZe
state of things in this world with Human Good (p.183), but considers 'by
far the most valuable things we can know or -z^azy-Z/ze, are certain states of
consciousness', Zzzz?n<27z consciousness (p.188, my italics).
Each one of the core theses of utilitarianism is false (the case is
argued in detail in Routley (b)).
Contrary to (i) optimisation needs to
be constrained, deontically constrained, else serious injustices to and
ill-treatment of objects within the base class and, more important,
objects outside that class, are all too likely.
But, as against (iii)
this destroys prospects of successful deontic reductions, which are, on
independent grounds, improbable.
To avoid the chauvinism, typically built
See Pr-Zpzc-Zp-Zu Ez^/z^cu, Cambridge University Press, 1903, chapters V and
VI.
Moore does say (p.188) that
No one, probably, ... who has asked himself the question, has even
doubted that personal affection and appreciation of what is beautiful
in Art or Nature, are good in themselves.
But 'appreciation of what is beautiful' reduces, on Moore's account, to
'enjoyment of beautiful objects'; and any independent value in what is
beautiful is 'so small as to be negligible in comparison with that
which attaches to the cozzsu^ozzszzess of beauty', (p.189).
Moore's chauvinistic account thus appears open to familiar objections e.g. those based on enjoyment machines (cf. the wilderness experience
machine discussed above), and on beautiful worlds lacking conscious
beings-which help show that beauty is what counts and not just, or
primarily, experiences of beauty. Moore was not, however, entirely
unaware of such points:
cf. pp.194-95.
72
*
�into (ii),
(i) requires restatement in terms of factors which avoid base
class relativisation;
then clause (ii) is eliminated.
The need for con
straints in optimisation modellings of utilitarian or economic sorts can
be seen from the phenomena of interrelated interests and preferences:
that my interests include, or depend upon, yours, means that these cannot
vary independently, but are interrelated.
Repairing the defects of ideal utilitarianism results in more
adequate optimisation modelling.
notion of
The recipe elementary analysis of the
item leads to is, in essence, as follows:
Maximise a
weighted function (e.g. a sum) of the factors that value a determines
subject to appropriate constraints:
symbolically, maximise n-place
function E = E(x) subject to constraining relations Rj(x)
and x = <x^,...,x^>).
(with j an index,
Special cases of such optimisation modellings are
familiar from engineering and economic applications (e.g. determination
of optimal social welfare in concave programming). What is more general
82
about the model indicated,
is, in particular, the form of constraints
permitted, which can include
that ... Xi ... X2 ..."
bounds for optimals).
deontic constraints, e.g. "It is forbidden
(which has the effect of putting a subspace out of
Since there is nothing to prevent moral prohibitions,
requirements of fairness, and the like, from appearing among the constraints
ethics, economics, and practical reasoning can in principle be success
fully amalgamated.
The optimisation modelling of general value theory differs
significantly from that of (ideal) utilitarianism.
Although maximization
is fundamental in both, in utilitarianism value is characteristically
replaced by net utility, measured usually in terms of experiential units
of some sort, whereas in general value theory this reduction is rejected.
In each case there is a
of an ethical calculus, but the currency
is different, being values in one case and base class or individual
utilities (units of utility) in the other;
but in both cases the calculus
is so far (equally) unworkable except in very special cases.
In each
case there is an analysis into components of the objective (function)
maximized, but the analysis is very different.
In utilitarianism net
utility is broken down into individual utilities of members of some base
class.
In general value theory such a reduction is rejected (except
perhaps where appropriate hypothetical valuers are admitted);
analysis into factors that carry value is made.
instead an
(But in Moore's ideal
The general model is motivated, explained, illustrated, applied and
defended in Routley (b) and (d) and also in R. Routley, 'The choice of
logical foundations: nonclassical choices and the ultralogical choice',
L<9<2"f<?a, 38 (1979).
73
�utilitarianism, unlike utilitarianism proper, the way is opened for
factors, such as beauty, which carry intrinsic value and are not reducible
to features of the base class or its members.)
In utilitarianism deontic
notions, such as right, are analysed in terms of the value theory;
general value theory deontic notions are taken as given
constraints are imposed on optimisations.
but in
and deontic
Whereas the maximisations of
utilitarianisms proper are (single element) unconstrained maximisations
(hence the injustice, unfairness, and ill-treatment such ethics condone),
general value theory optimisations are constrained.
in principle
While there is room
for constraints in ideal utilitarianism, as there is for a
switch to factors which are base-class independent - though the theory has
never been elaborated to the point where these things are done - deontic
constraints cannot be noncircularly imposed, given the teleological
reduction thesis (so the problems of unfairness and ill-treatment remain).
It is a fairly evident corollary of the differences that general
value theory removes leading objections to utilitarianisms.
It is not
perhaps so evident, however, how it applies to environmental cases or
what the factors of environmental relevance are.
To expose some of the
factors - and to indicate just how far an environmental ethics is dis
tanced even from a comparatively liberal ethic like Moore's ideal
utilitarianism
- consider the very difficult optimisation problems as to
the determination of the Ideal.
Moore distinguishes (1) The Ideal,
from, what is more interesting,
state of things
the best possZbZe state of things in this world',
toward which our action should be directed'
absolute ideal'
(KI)
and (2)
'the
(2)
'the MZtZ/naZe end
(p.183).
Call (1)
'The
'the T ideal' or 'the this world ideal'
(TI).
A crucial difference between the two problems lies in the constraints:
determination of TI is constrained by features - many of them unknown -
of the actual world T (now and in the immediate future), by its populations
of humans and of various species of living things on its various earths,
by its natural features, by its physical and technological resources,
limitations of which will impose characteristic scarcity constraints.
By
That does not imply that no analyses can be given of deontic notions.
Although axiological reductions are ruled out, others are not.
Certainly semantical analysis, like that already sketched for permissib
ility, can be supplied and elaborated.
Moore's teleological ethic is not far removed from Aristotle's ethic
more than 2000 years earlier (which exhibits features of ideal
utilitarianism) . From the point of view of this long relativelyunchanged base line, environmental ethics are not merely new and
radical, but represent a paradigm shift.
74
�-
contrast, KI is presumably not constrained by resources or technology
(in relation to populations);
this is just one reason why Leibnitz's
equations of TI with KI and with things as at present fails.
theless constrained.
8S
KI is none
There will, for example, be constraints forbidding
unfair or ill-treatment of various sorts (given that such treatment is
possible), and there will be constraints interrelating factors that are
not independent.
The factors entering into the modelling will no doubt represent, in
some way, many of the positive goods, such as enjoyment of the "meritor
ious" sorts that Moore managed to discern - positively weighted - and
many of the evils he found - but negatively weighted (but some of these
things are better represented through constraints). There remain,
86
however, many features
of ecological importance that Moore never con
templated;
for example, diversity of systems and creatures, naturalness,
o7
integrity of systems, stability of systems, harmony of systems.
Optimising a mix of factors, which are mutually constrained, meets
constant reproaches made against such ecological values as diversity.
The objections take the form that enhancement of diversity as a sole
factor can lead to undesirable ecological results, indeed can diminish
Op
net value and so be wrong on utilitarianism grounds.
On the multiple
factor model diversity is constrained by naturalness and stability, for
example;
thus net value is not going to be increased through increasing
the diversity of a simple temperate rainforest by felling some of its
trees and replacing them with exotic species.
On the other hand, diver
sity will be increased by planting the banks of a stream, eroded through
excess clearing and overgrazing, with suitable exotic species - then birds
Perhaps, moreover, there are no limiting natural laws, such as con
servation principles, but the universe operates according to beneficient natural laws.
There are distinctions here between worlds and
physically possible worlds which Moore did not make.
There may also be, at least in the case of KI, as Moore observed,
factors that we are unaware of - at least under the intended construal
of 'conceivable'.
Rough and ready measures of such factors as diversity are not so
difficult to come by, and, in important respects, present fewer problems
than obtaining measures of pleasure that encompass, in ways that take
account of interspecies and interindividual comparisons, all sentient
creatures.
Compare the objections made in §4 to Rodman's reliance on the single
criteria of diversity; and also Passmore's points in (a) against
diversity as a single criterion in arguments for preservation.
75
�and other animals will increase as well as plant diversity - and in such
a case stability will also be increased in the longer term and natural
ness not diminished (since already removed);
thus overall value will be
increased (it may also be increased by the enjoyment of conservationists
formerly appalled by the stream landscape).
Diversity,though (like enjoy
ment or pleasure) good in itself, is (again like hedonistic values) not an
unconstrained value (compare, e.g., enjoyment obtained through secret
maltreatment of animals or by impoverishment of an unvisited streamside).
The multiple factor model also solves the problem of how to combine
traditional values, such as the virtues and creature enjoyment with what
many in the West are only beginning to discern, environmental values;
namely, by a constrained optimisation which takes due (i.e. weighted)
account of them
Thus in moving to an environmental (or nonchauvinist)
ethic one is not
ordinarily acknowledged welfare values for persons
or humans, but simply recognising a further set of values to which such
welfare values should be added.
welfare values are retained;
Nor is one
humans, for human
one is simply aiming to remove - through
constraints which may reduce assignments to human values in favour of
other values - the unwarranted privilege and chauvinism of the displaced
Western super-ethic.
One would not have come very far if, despite the claim to have
recognised environmental values, one assumed that wherever there is con
flict between natural values and human values, the latter must always
prevail.
This would be equivalent to assigning them very low weight, or
even zero value, in all serious conflict cases.
One would not have
advanced far past rejection of axiological principle (A) if one then
accepted, in assessments as to how things should be done, the yreafer
namely that even though other things may have intrinsic
value, people or humans are more valuable than anything else, and rank
more highly (no matter how large their number).To allow that sows
in human welfare values may sometimes - or even often,
especially with increasing human populations - have to be accepted in
cases of conflict is an essential part of assigning a genuine positive
value to nonhuman factors.
Sometimes humans, their states and conditions,
do not come first:
the greater value assumption should be rejected.
Such an assumption - in popular form, that people come first - is
extrgTMgZ-z/ widespread and is even included in animal liberation theory;
cf. Singer, op. cit.
For striking examples of the damaging assumption
at work, see the (chauvinistic) resolutions of the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment.
�o
4
There are many kinds of examples.
Conspicuous examples are provided by
recognisedly evil people (there are, under current social arrangements,
plenty), whose welfare, or even lives, do not rank above, for example,
valuable natural items, or the welfare of future persons.
More con
troversial are evaluations which rank the preservation of an animal
species, such as the tiger, above the increase (or even retention) of
human population in given areas.91 But, for the most part, the compar
ative value of humans as opposed to other creatures and things has been
greatly exaggerated.
The arguments used in support of the greater value assumption are
but variations of those for human chauvinism already considered, and
largely rejected (in §1).
Thus, for instance, Keller argues for a greater
value thesis on the ground that a 'human being is the most complex thing
which we know; its depth and range of experience far transcend that of
any other known living thing'
(p.209)
Ecological Concern', Zz/^o/z, vol.6
(J.A. Keller,
(1971), pp.197-209).
complexity the claim is almost certainly false:
are much more complex.
'Types of Motives for
As regards pure
tropical forest ecosystems
The claim about range of experience is open to
doubt, even for "normal" humans, since many animals have a much wider
range of such sensory experiences as smells; and it is false of many
humans.
More important, range and "depth" of experience, of certain
have) , does not, on its own,
select sorts (those that normally
establish greater value in any routine or regular way.
Often enough it
is no good basis for assigning greater value.
The generalised optimisation model will commonly give way, in
applications less sweeping and more feasible than that of the determining
TI, to such special cases of it as Bayesian decision theory and cost
benefit analysis, where these analyses allow properly for environmental
values and duly incorporate ethical constraints (see Routley (a)).
90
91
It
The fact of the matter is that prevailing unqualified attitudes to
human welfare or the "sanctity" of human life - as opposed to other
life - are shot through with inconsistency. For instance, despite
common claims that human life is sacrosanct, neither the largely
unquestioned military ethics nor medical ethics nor the state or "the
law" take such a position: most individual humans are regarded as
expendible, replaceable, and not particularly or uniquely valuable.
On the prevailing ethic quite a different evaluation is taken for
granted: e.g.
It would be unrealistic to agree, of course, that preservation of
wildlife should take precedence over providing for human needs.
(S. Richardson, writing in T/ze CuTZ&erru
November 29, 1974 ,
p.12)
On an environmental ethic, while it might not be politically expedient,
it would not be at all "unrealistic", to so agree.
77
�&
is these more special methods that should normally be applied in trying
to determine a best course of action in a range of difficult decision
cases thrown up for an environmental ethics, especially cases where there
is a conflict (i.e. constraining conditions) between retention of natural
values (e.g. preserving a wilderness or a national park) and maintenance
of humanistic values (e.g. keeping some humans alive, commonly reckoned
one of the highest human-values).
But for a cost-benefit weigh-up to be
attempted such cases have to be described in
more detail
usually provided by chauvinistic philosophers who
than is
to direct such
examples against environmental evaluations - as if furthermore, the
examples were quite conclusive, when they almost always presuppose from
the very beginning what is in dispute, a greater value assumption.
In
connection with such intended counterexamples to properly environmental
ethics, two further points are worth recording:
firstly, resort to such
analytical methods is the rational procedure in such cases (unless a time
urgency intrudes, as seldom happens, or should happen, in philosophy);
secondly, an environmental ethic should not, any more than other ethics
or economics, be expected to provide a decision procedure for any and
every case that may arise:
the theory (and accompanying intuitions) may
have to be developed to resolve some cases, while other cases may go
(cheerfully) undecided.
On similar test or decision cases, e.g. one
group of starving people versus another group in a situation of limited
resources, or quality of life versus number of humans, conventional ethical
theories may offer no quick, or clearcut, resolutions, etc.
The optimisation model indicates, among many other things, how
axiological principle (A) is to be modified.
For best choice and best
course of action are now determined by taking account of the further
range of values, not just those that are human-based.
Then (A) vanishes
into the truism that only those objects that are of intrinsic value are
of intrinsic value, or need be taken into account in the values of the
optimisation model.
How to rectify the deontic principle (D) is rather less obvious than
how to adjust (A).
An obvious strategy, is, however, to add further
92 Even when a case is more fully described there will, of course be
(unavoidable) difficulties in quantifying some of the values, e.g.
those of "intangible" factors; but these difficulties are not sub
stantially worse than those already encountered in routine business
accounting in quantifying such assets as good-will and such matters as
wage relativities for different work.
As L. Tribe has pointed out
(in 'Ways not to think about plastic trees:
new foundations for
environmental law', YaZ-e AuzJ
vol.83 (1974) , pp.1315-1348) the
difficulties of transferring or adapting rather standard methods of
assessment, such as decision theory and cost-benefit analyses, to pro
vide rational decision methods in the case of environmental matters has
been much exaggerated, to the detriment of the environment.
78
*
�provisos.
way;
But it is unsatisfactory to do this in a piecemeal sort of
it hardly suffices, for example, to simply add further riders
excluding unnecessary cruelty to animals, speciescide, etc.
What has to
is unwarranted interference with other preference
be ruled out
havers (and goal-possessors)
and the degrading of items of value.
A
revised principle appears then to go something like this:-
DN.
One is free to act as one wishes provided that (i) one does not
unwarrantedly interfere with other preference-havers, and
(ii) one does not damage or ill-treat or devalue anything of
value.
Though the revised principle has a rather more complex and restrictive
character than freedom principle (D) and Western variants thereon, it
still does the requisite task (D) set out to do, namely to state that out
side certain prescribed areas one is free, that select behaviour is
permissible.93 it is simply that the proscribed area is far larger than
inadequate homocentric ethics have envisaged.
But perhaps the whole conception underlying (D), and the way it
fixes onus of proof, should be stood on its head.
On the view behind (D),
one starts from an unlimited position permitting unlimited interference
and exploitation;
restrictions are added primarily because other ones
(again ones of the privileged class) are also starting from a similar
unlimited position whose freedom of action may be (impermissibly) curtailed
by one's own.
So results the initial position, e.g. of (D).
For inter
ference in others' projects (no matter how exploitative) beyond this
"evident" initial position,good reasons have always to be offered.
alternative thoroughgoing
On the
respect view, which is illustrated by various
nonexploitative non-Western ethics, one starts from a restricted position,
a position of no interference and no exploitation, a position at peace with
the natural world so to say, and allows interference - not as on
thinking, restricts interference - for good reasons.
thus entirely inverted:
stop interference.
Western
The onus of proof is
good reasons are required y<2r interference, not
The good reasons include the collecting of fruit
and nuts (and other natural "produce") for life support purposes, but not,
for example, the collection of a substantial surplus of forest orchids on
whim or in the hope that they may be sold at a profit.
A theory of value like that outlined, though it takes it for granted,
93 The revised freedom principle is not incompatible with, but can be
combined with and supplemented by, a bill of rights, charter or catechism specifying positively types of rights and of permissible
conduct.
79
�A
in the constraints imposed in optimisation, that there are deontic
principles limiting what is done to many objects other than persons,
leaves main deontic issues open, and in particular does not thereby imply
that such objects have rights.
For woraZ
forbidding certain
actions with respect to an object (fo not, in general,
that object a
94
corretattle r-^p/zt.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given oak or
landscape painting does not entail that the tree or painting has a correl
ative right not to be mutilated - without (what has a point) stretching
the notion of r^p*7z^.
An environmental ethic like the respect ethic being
advanced does not automatically commit one to the view that natural
objects or artifacts sometimes have rights.
It is sometimes held that some such objects do have rights, e.g.
under the influence of pantheism.
But construed literally, pantheism is
false, since artefacts, and other inanimate objects, are not alive.
The
view that the class of right-holders extends beyond the class of
preference-havers can however be placed on bases less extravagant than
pantheism - most obviously in terms of a suitable deontic analysis of
r^p?zt, for instance along the following lines:
others
d has a right to
iff
(obligation-holders) are not entitled to interfere with d's cj)ing
(if d (f)'s or were to (j)).
Under this account, of
which
emerges straight-forwardly from modern analyses of r^p/zt, a painting or a
tree may indeed have "rights", such as to continue existing.
Although
the term 'right' can no doubt be 6^ctezz<ie(i along some such lines, the
analysis leaves out essential elements of the normal notion, namely the
involvement of choice.
There are, once again, various competing environ
mental ethics, some simple extensions of Western ethics which extrapolate
the notion of r^p/zt, some not, some rationalistic, some not, and so on.
Environmental positions can - but need not - adhere to the familiar
assumption that rights divide into the following two broad classes:First, there are rights held by those (persons, in o?z6 sense) who can
duly claim their rights themselves, a class which excludes many humans
So rejected also is the s^rozz^ correlation thesis, presented e.g. in
S.I. Benn and R.S. Peters, Pocz^aZ Pr^Tzc^pZes a7z<i ^Tze Pew<9<?r<2^<?
Allen and Unwin/1959, pp.89-9, according to which 'right and duty are
different names for the same normative relation, according to the point
of view from which it is regarded' (thereby also elevating what is at
best a coentailment into a stronger identity relation).
For example,
that d has a duty to look after the painting does not entail that the
painting has a right to be looked after by d, in any sense of 'right'
Benn and Peters are prepared to acknowledge.
The weaker correlation thesis - that d has a right to R entails that
at least someone else has a duty with respect to R - is not at issue.
80
&
�and (so far as we know) almost all nonhuman animals.
Such rights are
often supposed to carry with them various responsibilities.
Secondly,
there are rights held by certain other (sometime sentient) creatures;
though the extent of this subclass of right-holders is a controversial
matter, it is generally taken to include at least infants, mentally
defective humans, dead humans, and some animals.
These rights do not
carry corresponding responsibilities, though they are, of course, the
However the assumption that certain rights -
ground for various claims.
the really central rights - are restricted to those who can claim them on
their OM% behalf, seems to be based on the faulty idea of private (or
separable) individuals as the basic metaphysical units.
In a community
of socio-environmental individuals there is no reason why one creature's
rights should not be claimed, as infants' and animals' rights frequently
are, by another:
these rights are others' responsibilities.
right-holder has itself no specific responsibilities.
Often a
Moreover the
supposed division leaves it quite vague what responsibilities "central"
often, it seems, they have none that
right-holders are supposed to have;
connect relevantly with their rights.
be put on the alleged division:
a primary nonderivative way).
Accordingly but little weight will
any preference-haver can hold rights (in
That any preference-haver can hold rights
is a consequence of the account of rt<y72t that usage of 'right to' appears
to lead to, namely for very many (action-type) predicates cj), d has a
right to
iff, for every other (obligation-holder) z, z is not entitled
to interfere with d if d chooses or would choose to <&.
Thus that d holds
rights requires of d only that it be the sort of creature that can make
choices, that it be a preference-haver.
The result holds good generally.
Consider the other main case, where the right is to some object b:
d has
a right to b iff, for certain ot (a class of obligation holders, which may
consist of a single person), members of a have an obligation to cede b to
d if a chooses or would choose (to have) b (cf. Benn and Peters, op. cit.,
p.89).
To be sure, there are other cases where rights to are attributed,
but these appear to reduce to the cases given;
which seems to amount to something like:
to work.
e.g. a has a right to work,
a has a right to an opportunity
Similar analyses - again with significance restrictions on the
class of (])S and bs - apply to rights ??ot to, e.g. an animal has a right
not to be kept in a cage.
Rights of this sort can likewise be held by any
preference-haver (but once again such rights
be extended beyond this
class to all natural objects).
Not every right-holder bears responsibilities or carries obligations :
infants for instance do not.
Responsibility-bearers and obligation
holders are a very proper subclass of humans and may only overlap the
81
�A
t*
class of humans, and likewise the class of potential responsibility
bearers only overlaps the class of humans.
Thus more demanding deontic
notions afford no point of access for human chauvinism.
To be responsible
for something requires more than ability to have preferences or capacity to
make choices;
it implies liability to be called to account for the thing,
answerability for it.
Similarly, the undertaking of obligations involves
entering into binding relations which imply answerability.
Responsibility
bearers and obligation-holders are thus a subclass of preference-havers,
in accord with the annular theory.
For answerability and accountability
involve some level of linguistic competence - at the very least an ability
to answer, in some language (usually presumed
to be translatable, easily?,
into some human language) - which many preference-havers do not possess.
But responsibility and obligation lead a kind of a double life.
For a
creature that does not have responsibilities, may nonetheless be responsible
for various things, in the sense of having done them, and sometimes done
them deliberately;
as, e.g., the wallaby who breaks down protecting
netting and branches time and again is responsible for the demise of a
Japanese plumtree.
Rather similar oz^p/zf-statements hold true of subjects
who do not carry obligations;
consider, e.g., "wombats ought to be more
careful in crossing roads".
The upshot is that an environmental ethic can - despite its very
different value theory - retain, in large measure, and sharpen, rather
standard accounts of, and distinctions concerning, rights and obligations.
It is in this respect, however, that the sort of environmental ethic being
advanced differs markedly from alternative environmental ethics, e.g.
those which would, implausibly, confer rights to trees, assign obligations
to the soil, and so on.
JM<?7z 6J?fe?zs^o?z pos^f^o/zs, of which Leopold's
would be a leading example,
^Tzaf <2% eM^iro^z/??6?zfaZ ef/z^c
znz^sf yoZZozJ i/zg paffgru cy hosier?? ef/z^<?s
&ase <?^uss.
orzZz/
a zzzzzcTz
The way to a satisfactory, environmental, ethic is to reject
the pattern of the Western super-ethic, not to simply extend it.
The way
is through some sort of annular theory which recognises categorial distinc
tions between different sorts of things, not through a theory which would
delete the legitimate distinctions between the sorts of things.
latter mistaken way is unnecessary.
The
For example, in order to reject the
instrumental view of value, and to assign natural objects intrinsic value,
it is unnecessary to take Leopold's course of viewing all natural objects
as having r^p/zfs in the same way as persons and preference-havers are
regarded as having rights, or of persons as having obligations
natural
objects such as trees in the same sort of way as to other persons.
Thus too there is no need to see the rejection of the instrumental
82
�<!
view as mystical or anti-rational, or as reverting to the view that
trees and other natural items house spirits (a view which in any case may
have simply been a way of expressing an allotment of value to natural
items), and hence as gross superstition.
An environmental ethic can be as
tough, practical, rational and secular as prevailing Western ethics.
so such an ethics will
lose much
Even
if it loses contact with its felt bases
in natural things and appreciation of natural things.
An environmental ethic will be much the poorer too if it limits
itself to the moral terminology, and variations of the categories, of
chauvinistically shaped ethics.
There will much more as to care, concern
and respect in the presentation and main principles of such an ethic than,
what occupies standard Western ethics, duties, obligations and rights.
In
this way too, further problems and puzzles for environmental ethics can
be resolved.
For example, the view that ethical concepts can apply to the
non-human world in an irreducible way is often seen as very puzzling.
Much of this puzzlement is generated by attempting to transfer intact a
strongly legalistic and person-oriented category of moral concepts, such
as rights, moral obligations, duties, and so on, to items in the natural
world where they give rise to such apparg^tZ-y problematic questions as
'Do stones have rights?', 'What are our moral obligations to trees?', and
so on.
If we attempt instead to apply a broader, less legalistic class of
moral concepts, such as care, concern, responsibility and respect, much of
the puzzling character of these still essentially moral attributions
vanishes.
There is no great problem for example about how we can legitimately
apply notions such as respect to natural items, once a few distinctions
are made.
The view that the land, animals, and the natural world should
be treated with respect was a common one in many hunting and gathering
societies, and it is clear that this respect was not seen as generated
merely by moral obligations to other persons.
dimension to relations
with
Respect adds a moral
the natural world.
Respect - or the lack of
it - comes out in everyday actions concerning the natural world.
The
following passage contrasts the Western treatment of the land which lacks
respect with the careful and respectful treatment of some American
Indians:
The White people never cared for land or dear or bear.
we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up.
little holes.
When we dig roots we make
When we built houses, we make little holes.
burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things.
acorns and pinenuts.
dead wood.
When
We don't chop down the trees.
When we
We shake down
We only use
But the White people plow up the ground, pull down the
83
�St
trees, kill everything
(Tozzck ike Furik,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Tonck ike Forik, p.15)What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of eiiker use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour, Tke Cowpiete Rook
of
Faber, London, 1976).
A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
�would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for ZrZz?ZuZ human ends.
But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever
alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely
amoral (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
�systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration :of things' human,', of .'the species. ,-;Eveh the. ti.RfeLy herw,eYnphas.is,
for instance of the counterculture, on-human relations (a-s opposed to selfcontained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'contract',
'responsibility', 'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as z)oZ-Me, cZzotce, interference and (Zowa^e reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as nctnraZ- ri^/zt, ^ronn^Z of ri^Zzt^ and perznissib-
iZitz/., especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e);
and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, TZze Lopic of Cipnificonce an^Z Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
�0
46
positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of TzuZ^ruZ rZpTzZ^
zzzoruZ-Ztz/-,
and
ucf-Zczz will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons
Hart,
(H.L.A.
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZ-ZZ-ZcuZ
P/z-fZoscpZzz/,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle.
Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of woruZ-ZZy, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishes
96
among ZzMzzzu?z actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
97
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistically based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, AfcruZ-Ztp; 24% P^z^rodMcf-Zo^ fo Ff/z-Zcs^
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 See, for example, P.R. Foot, TZzeor'Zes
Ft/z-Zcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967, and G.J. Warnock, Ccwfewporurz/ AforuZ P/z-ZZosop/zz/,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also TZzg
o.f MoraZ-Zfz/, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
�t*
chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
s-
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria).
It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environ
mental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising a^naZf^z/ and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity^98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
in the philosophy of actdan, which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking.
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
And
98 Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in SacZaZ JnstZae
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, 'The idea of equality' in P^Zasap/zz^., PaZfZfcs and
JacZafz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 see, e.g.^T. Nagel, T/ze Pass-Z&'ZZ'Ztz/ a/ ^ZZrnZszzz, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1970.
88
�even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational" economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction.
But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness.
Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity,
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to west going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian—type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
�between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;^00 while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them: that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences.
One
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider <9722 option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another.
To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice' , P/z^Zcsop/ztcczZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233); they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton,
AforuZ P<2M, Hutchinson, London,
1947) . And, firstly, such maxims are s^ppast?^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
�-4
property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities, international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
For much of economics is squarely founded
but still far from negligible.
on chauvinism.
less,
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fs^s
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p.14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
�The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
.
102
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the s^rz^g^raZ. c/zaMgre
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further Controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider,e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which m turn influences the foundations of such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
4ZZ-es
value.
Me?zs<?/ze?zzjgr^, all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre, TTza P/z^Zosop/ztes c/ S'c^eyzcg, Oxford University Press,
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
�*****
assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal—directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects. Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.104 Such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics)
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)). At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Renaissance,
the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of theRenaissance,with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half-divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature ...'.1°5
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
104 As Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed m his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Roz/aZ
of PTz^oscp/zy Lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West : on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
105 goth quotations are from T^ze
<?y tTzg 7?e7z<2^ss(2%<3g (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
�was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hpld:,
religious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position JhT the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or ^on
whether there exist
perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation ir^ micr<^-
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other*
*
True, most of these positions are defeated on t^e
basis of other considerations anyway; but it is an immediate and fur,t^ier
philosophical sphere.
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman)
consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
�
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—
?HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND.ENVIRONMENTAL.ETHICS*
Richard and Vai Routley
/
*
.
*
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
.
moral codes - including, so it will°be argued, Western ethics.
*
A most
serious failure 6f Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropo^centricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reds&n*able, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
*
w
What is chauvinism?
$
*
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
sz^Etant^aZ-Z-z/ differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not enff-ZcZen^ justification.
Pnwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, wuZ-e chauvinism where the class is
human males, an-Z/zzaZ. chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bazf, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for a new, an environmental, ethic?', Procee^-Znps of Zz/ze XPt/z ^orZ^
Ccnpress of PTz^Z-cscp/zz/, 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 1974 at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, and at the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of Victoria, Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it'has generated much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained, though the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, and many theses remain insufficiently developed or
defended. But in order not to remove the previous and continuing
criticism, no substantial deletions have been made, even though the
paper has been raided and segments of it presented in improved form
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Routley, 'Against the inevitability
of human chauvinism', in MoraZ P/z-ZZosopTzz/ an<7 t?ze Tzjentp-F-Zrst Centnrz/
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre Dame University Press,
1979, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensive repair-kit for
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preferences CTzo^ce
an<i FaZzve, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977. However some
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to increasing the
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft, and meet
ing some of the many objections.
1
it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple spoo-Zes loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - *Zf it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
1
out.
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. /zowo sap*Zo?zs) as zoologically defined.
There is
nothing about the characteristic of TzMwazzZZp itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans)
as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds),
Mor azzd
Morals.
-Z^Zo Z/ze zzzaZ^roat/TzozzZ of yzorz-ZzMwaMS, Gollancz,
London, 1971;
P. Singer, ?l?z-Z7na:Z f-Z^oraf-ZoM.
pzezj o^/z-Zos for OMr
of azz*Z/??aZs, Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, y/zo A7oraZ
of ^H-ZwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
CB
objection applies against the simple
need's argument:
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
more than speciesism.^
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent. We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings — items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
creatures having a (certain sort of)^ language or a higher level of
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
2 As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
3
On next page.
3
*3
unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
By
contrast the very many respects in which some
or sorts of animals
are
superior bo bMfnans (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, Tbe
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
4?ibmaZ Parcaptbo^, Allen, London,
of tbe Sassos.
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, for exampZ-e, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria^
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a parson (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being bz^wan - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
3 For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source
the
discussion in E.O. Wilson, SocZobboZ-opp.
Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld,
see e.q. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4p<2s_,
Penguin,New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555 59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson s discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
4 Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and t
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
u person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person
is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
agent or initiator.
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense; but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides
feature.
(or u crMc^uZ) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point,but does not even always rank humans or
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
On next page.
5
4
why rank knowledge so highly:
for (pace Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
ratZozzaZZZp, along with the added problem that it is -very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality i^, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
almost all cases).
If it were the ability, e.g. to do ZopZc (say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis? What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in D?zat respect is it that persons - or worse, just
persons - are free.
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of parsons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very wa^z/ animals. An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
'Radical vegetarians ,
4zzstraZasZa?z JoMrzzaZ of P/zZZosop/zz/, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 in addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child s knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank t
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels,
PaaZMaZZoK of FZTzZcaZ T/zoorZes, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
O)
Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
conscious animals that have intentions
they are sentient,
(e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts (e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
preferred food beyond the barrier).
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to wzzcTz stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g.
'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality'). This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for person as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of /zzzwczzz
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, Tzozj high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several zzozze^zz-Zz^uZezzf
characterisations of (zzatz^raZ) person - none of them equivalent to
/zzzzzzuzz - that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
^MstraZ-Zazz Lazj JozzrzzczZ, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and cZ-Z//ere?zt) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respoTzs-Zb-ZZ-Ztz/ on the part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do zzcf - exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CozzzzzzMzz-Ztz/ (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person', ProceecZ-Zzzps o/ t?ze ^r-Zs^oteZ-Zuzz Society, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
D
The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have prefer
ences or preferred states.For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and
tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly fka skarp woraZ
ethics by philosophers and others alike,
commonly accepted m
aZZ
ofkar
a^-fmaZ speafas, Zacks a safZsfacforz/ cokarazif bcsZs.
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
among things? Yes, several divisions^ of mcraZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration fiards others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action. Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
8 There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. The
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
9 Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creature
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of t ese
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; _ u ,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better
not a
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours m a
rainbow meet.
8
*
c-
it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
The /zuzzz^zz^ a/* pr^yerezzces
(and
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for z^/zz^s
of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze correspazz^zzy pezzaraZ
zza^ to putt afTzars
a/zZ-^pa^azz pr^zzc^pZ-e
("at/zer preyerezzce-TzuzJersJ tzzto a c%spreyerra<^ stato y*ar
zza paa<i raasazz.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a
sort of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence -
especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as /zurzzztzz^
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations ^azJarzis can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
zzat zzecassurz/ condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.*^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences; but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
belief,12 appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zjTzat it is that animals
As N Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.q. by the women's movement:
that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
11 The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
Interestingly, choices
- that animals' choices could not be rational,
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
(forthcoming)
12 See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
and R Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to anima s ,
paper'prepared for the B.Ztef conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals;
if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old. As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which
is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept
gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot be put into states they disprefer.
All
that is required for an 'interest' or 'welfare' in the broad sense is a
telos or life-goal, as possessed by living things, or an equilibrium or
system goal, as possessed by living ecosystems.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
preferred states
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
13 in this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests.
However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary). Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
There is a general obligation principle
into the nearby ocean.
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely,
sz/sf67??s
ohjecfs <9r
^<90<i reason.
Moral
does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers. In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and
in principle at least,
value or disvalue, and so of woraZ concern.
almost any sort of object.
<2% object of
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base cZass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
towards which moral obligations (and a corresponding sort of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that
d^st^^ot^o^s
can be made
the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example,
obligations
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded. The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an
of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligationholders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-comnitted-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences: the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an excluded class,e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvinistic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5). It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory.
notion of
But dropping the
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for: taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
is the ex
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
such a criticism
of
chauvinism
is based firmly
14 According to Q. Gibson
----- ----.
.
.
.
'
"
This is simply
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles,.
___
The general argument
not so: there is no reliance on such principles,
feature -f cannot
be what justifies
the
differential
takes the form;
----- —
- . .
.
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f., Neither
Nei__.
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage.
13
only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification. The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
W. Cobbett, E^raZ
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ rT?a%kZ%<7
arZ^ZnaZ
bz/ the
the Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in Z/zZs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their
eroded or impaired. The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as ZsoZate^ natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.)
setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
ct/zer essuz/s
(A. Leopold, A
Coz^/ztz/
New York, 1966, p.238).
/Uzzzu^zuc
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the coi^munity creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism,e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an eyz^trozi/TzeMtuZ gtTz^c, however, such traditionally
15
permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to some moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral. The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is moral in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. S6). Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrue
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
be morally circumscribed, and in this sense the scope of morality would
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic
ethic, an
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have.
The Western ethic is not so monolithic.
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
n ,been mapped
.3 out:
4. 15 a
concerning man's relation to nature have recently
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream StoicAugustine view - it exists only for his sake^^), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Man's Fespons^btZ^^z/ for
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash, ^tZderness an^ t/ze
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg, Z)es^<yn
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
so is the resulting tone.
environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
purposes;
/or
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
16
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement', Tr^M^rz/
(1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do zzof p<9 /ar orozz^Zz.
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
17
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for /zzzzzzor
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley,
F-z^/zt /or z^/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
18
"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics. Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward.
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
physically interferes with others.^ It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased vn.th natural
items would not affect others (a^oT^terfereMcg assMwpf^^).
it may, the
Be this as
appears, at least for many thinkers
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier,
18 Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
19 Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of
has been
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans
but
rarely further in the West until recently.
of
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's
'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, ^nles
there is some reason for preventing him
(Benn (c), op. cit.,
in
from (a) P.605).
The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' ^e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
ofPfhe fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification
(cf (a))
the principle is dubious, especially given principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
*
GrozjZ/z <2%^
Dgcaz/,
T/ze ^oZz^ZZc^ ^gcowgs
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
Fr^hZ^w^
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the
t^es-Zs
- the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic -Zs wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An)
spgcZyZc ethic,
is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
and a more generic notion, a
specific ethics are grouped.
under which
(As usual, a weZu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An ^Z/zZcaZ sz/sZsw s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth,
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
a
assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that
are
sz/s^ews.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton.
Accordingly, there is logical space for a^terrzaf^re
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr^Mc^pZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super-
ethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
dominant position.
On next page.
21
The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that <2 person's
(foes no^ ^n^er/ere zJ-^/z o^/zers,
^s perw^ss^&^e provt^e^
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Moreover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
21
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ozzZz/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of o^Zzer
people (J.S. Mill, (/^^Z^^ar^uzz^szzzj L^&gr^z/ az-z^f 7?eprese?z^az^zze
^ozz6r?z777g?z^, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /cr Cofz^ttz^uZ-z^z/, Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment; it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
a
the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
poss^bZe others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D). Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made; then even if
the main argument does not succeed, m-z^or
succeed.
o/ t/ze zzzu^M arpz^g?^
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,24 the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as per^ss^Me Tzurzzz to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (D), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
22 Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
inq theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc.
Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
23 if merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory',
(accepted
for publication in 1974; still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
24 or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
main argument - upon at most simple variation of the counterexamples to
be given.
Modification becomes more important in the case of standard ethical
theories which lead to principles conflicting with (D), such as utilitar
ianism does unless (D) and the maximisation principle of utilitarianism
are appropriately segregated, e.g. by severing connections at some point
in the chain connecting entitlement, permissibility, right, maximum
utility.
For, as in widely recognised, net utility may be increased in
ways that violate (D), e.g. by injustice to, or the infliction of suffer
ing upon, or harming, some individual by others.
Thus utilitarianisms in
the tradition of Mill, which both include (D) and characterise entitlement
in utilitarian terms, are inconsistent (as simple hypothetical cases show).
To avoid counterexamples it is not enough merely to distinguish higher and
lower utilities, though this is an initial step in what is required, namely
- ideally by constraints (as is explained in §5) - o/
unconstrained
Although qualification of utilitar
ianism principles to ensure (D), as a restriction (but not the orzZz/
restriction) on what is permissible,is the proper course, it is a course
not all utilitarians are prepared to follow.
To defeat
isms, it is not enough to adduce counterexamples to (D).
utilitarian
Counterexamples
to some other core principle of such utilitarianisms must be located;
otherwise the main argument fails against a quite standard, and important,
class of positions supporting chauvinism and the Dominion thesis.
Fortunately,
again,
neither a suitable core principle nor appropriate
counterexamples are hard to find.
The common utilitarian principle
provides such a core, and several of the examples directed against (D)
serve to counter it (in its various forms).
An axiological principle corresponding to (D)
(%72<i to some of its
variants) runs along these lines:
(A) Only those objects which are of use or concern to humans
(or persons), or which are the product of human (or person)
labour or ingenuity, are of value;
thus these are all that
need to be taken into account in determining best choice or
best course of action, what is good, etc.
Roughly, value consists in answering back to certain features of human (or
person) involvement.
No calculus of value or what is best need look
beyond human values.
According to a matching value-ranking thesis, item
a is better than b only if a serves human concerns more than b.
A
narrower version of principle (A) embedded in main forms of Marxism is
24
the human labour theory of value.
25
Thus a corollary will be that
Marxism is certainly - unless severely modified - no direction in which
to seek an environmental ethic or social theory.
There may appear to be exceptions to principle (A) in such objects
But although values are assigned to works of art where
as works of art.
these may not positively affect human welfare, the basis for assigning
value is usually taken to be the human skill or ingenuity involved in
their production.
principle (A).
Hence such assignments do not extend, or violate,
Indeed the problem raised by natural objects which cost
nothing to produce and involved nothing human is very different from the
matter of valuing art objects.
objects rctse <2
problem.
There are also other important differences between natural objects and
works of art, apart from the characteristic
noninvolvement of humans,
namely those turning on the issues of replaceability and the reversibility
of destruction.
Human artefacts are always replaceable by similar objects,
e.g. modern cities, especially concrete jungles are all too similar and
replaceable, and using modern techniques paintings can be substanially
duplicated;
whereas there is no possibility of replicating, even remotely,
such as extinct species or real
damaged or destroyed natural objects
jungles (or lost or vanishing cultures).
In terms of replacement costs,
these are much more valuable than such human artefacts as material works
of art.
Thus attempts to assimilate natural objects to material works of
art break down.
There is an additional reason for rejecting a now familiar
approach to natural objects through works of art, namely that it is
premissed on the assumption that some sort of chauvinistic account of
works of art is adequate:
that is not so, as the (intermediate) situation
of objet trouve begins to reveal.
It is in connection with principles
qualification to
(D) and especially (A) that the
ethics (already required at several points)
becomes important for the argument;
for various non-Western ethics have
not adopted these principles, e.g. both American Indians and Australian
Aborigines appear to recognise clearly values in natural items which are
not reducible (simply or at all) to human values - and apparently not
essentially theistic (supra-human).
In any case Western ethics and
25 According to some Marxists, and apparently to Marx, the labour theory
is superceded when the period of accumulation is completed and the post
scarcity era reached.
But by the time this high-energy high-tech
stage is reached, if ever, irreparable and frequently irreversible
environmental damage will have been wreaked.
26
On next page.
25
p
attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded m every such situation.
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons.
But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals; e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
3
Q
formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy sows environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zest pgopZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
One considers the last people in
blocked any chance of reproduction.
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
28
On next page.
27
(iii) The ^reu^ eTz^repr^KeMr example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
socket!/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
species example.
The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
28 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29 The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
*
activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the sorts of reasons well-explained in Barkley and
Seckier, op. cit.) along the private demand curve until the blue whale
population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work.^O
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The /actorz/ /arm example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
The treatment of the animals on the farm
environmental ethic it is not.
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The
example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
sees
The prevailing
with the destruction of such
ethic
wrong
nothing
a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
(Compare the situation
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned Tzu/na??. slavery.)
30
*
In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and so forth;
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly felt,
31
a
but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so ezzzz*Zr<9zzwe7zfaZ.
be %%-z^MeZz/ (ie^grzzz-Zzzg^, or adopted by every valuer.
will zzct
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the elimination
of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other, valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts.As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/zz^scozzcept^oTZS on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in PpnaZ^fz/
ipz^erTzaz^ozzaZ u?Z(Z Comparative t/vrisprz/devce (ed. G. Dorsey) , Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially Ov FmotiozzaZ Presentation (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those.
The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed.
There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Althouth a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
33
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
(such as P. and
JssMss
A. Erlich's
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
34
e/zf-ZreZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said
that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
Firstly, many conventional
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
and
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions.
That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /nfure humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached. Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (non-
immediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which do take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
Example 1.
We need only consider the operation of
zJorZd, for example, the concept of damapo to a natural
item, and the associated notion of coTnpeMsafdoM for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in STzo^Zd Troes
^fuTid^Mp?
Thus
Towards LepaZ.
/"or ZVufMraZ- Objocfs (Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZuue not the
for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
Example 2.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
i
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous
or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character., and.feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
sample.
The sort of behaviour
by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different.
It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no
difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic,
/row
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
environmental ethic.
(2)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.36
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is. Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
35
Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major ecological problems:
pollution, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding a way either of altering
types of human conduct or of preventing that human conduct from
having its present consequences.
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 This implies only, that a new ethic is necessary for solving
environmental problems, and not of course that it is
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
#
arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
ethic.
an alternative
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others) 'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'.^
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
What is not immediately evident is
persist or, more likely, intensify.
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
PtwZts to CrozjtT?,
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', Pornos IX, 1978, p.66. Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TPs CZosZ^p CZroZo, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk, T/zZs
PZo^ot, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others EZMoprZut /or F^rvZ^aZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows et aZ., op. cit.
38
O
does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§ 4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS .
The basic - and basically mistaken - doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, ^yz i/ze sazzze /as/z^oM
as
peopZ-e, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests - a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric)
Show me a man-oriented society in which it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 see e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', Irz^z^rz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does Moi imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rafTzsr, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
&
can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement. It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called sTzaZZozj and Fesp ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled
exploitation of
the environment — something which is compatible with denying value to
everything except man
and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a
The
gzEpZo^a^opz view, which is
first view, the long-term or
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjFss Mse oy resoMrcss', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for.a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have Fustrz^gnPaZ- value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of
to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of
e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Furvez/ py
Fcrgsz^rz/
T^FMSz^r^es.
ParP FT.
Foresfrz/ Pe^gZ.opz7?e?2^ PZ-arz. Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
Rodman reaches a similar
conclusion:
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search for
VuZzzes
a
International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and zzzMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
with examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences. Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford.43 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethos
into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers
(who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
—
The concept of zjfZ-demess too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in sofne instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation; if it is manage44
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
44 on some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use
45
...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
to the economic ethos of Resource
In contrast
Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places
(and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50, my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics:
intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
45
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone. 46 It also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold s
47
"land ethic".
In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).4^
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. Singer,
.4 ZVozJ
Random House, New York, 1975;
for (7%r
C. Stone, op. cit.
<?y
47 At least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position,
but not according to Rodman; see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented m
C. Darwin,
of Muzz, Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
4 8 On next page.
45
1*
Then the counterexamples apply as before
last people themselves.
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
as Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
facts of experience:
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value
or sentient, objects).
derives from experience (of experiential,
A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one time, etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others. Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
50 See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3.
But Rodman overstates his case m
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For , as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate; and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
*
relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
'p.119)7*
"
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:-
(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
The mistaken treatment of them
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness.
It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
For a
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
w
as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes (given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
51
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out.
For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51 His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
G.
$
legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
have a niche'
(p.97).
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted;
and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another.
Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction,
'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
W-
The first disjunct yields
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
form:
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things) ;
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
, 52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52 Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts.
So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
*
C
Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life' (p.103 and note 66). But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
yrow TVozj/zgre, and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally
by God,
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course) , and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively. When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (T<2<9 T6
, #18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
are also unavoidable;^ for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable) "is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality;
it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather: that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted)
to delay "the war against nature".
53
V
alternative situations;
*
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality — as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind; which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly, what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle.
procedure points in the direction to be pursued:
The
replacement of the over-
simple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors. After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility -
requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined,
*
through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as
natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is athreat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further
microcosm:
afield, and resorts to the myth of
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of seZ/, without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
account of the
it is an
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),
but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
w
For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.^ The metaphysics deepens,
then, the reasons for resistance.
A resister 'does not stand over against
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
he is an
integral part of [it]' ((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
__ By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole.
an esthetic religiosity have
niches
Economics, morality, and
in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield f/z-fs pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false. Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are verz/ limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative. A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
S'? it is but a short step to the ; fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
§5.
THE VIABILITY OF THE SORT OF ALTERNATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC SELECTED
It is not necessary for an environmental ethic to take a set position
on all the issues so far raised for environmental ethics (or others, such
as whether, and if so which, ecological principles should be integrated
for example, it does not
with the ethical system) ;
to decide exactly
But it can hardly avoid determining
which items do or can have rights.
some of the boundaries in a way different from conventional ethics if it
is to count as an environmental ethic.
In particular, the issues of what
sort of items have or carry noninstrumental value, and how they obtain it,
cannot be escaped indefinitely.
Without the assignment of (intrinsic)
value to some items independent of the states and conditions of humans,
an ethic would remain within the confines of human chauvinism.
But how,
it is all too often asked, is such an assignment possible, or rational?
In any case, the environmental examples already relied upon (in §3) pre
suppose
items.
the assignment of intrinsic value to nonhuman, and to nonsentient
So a theory of value is not only unavoidable but owed.
that can be adopted on an environmental
Of the many accounts of
ethic, the following has much to recommend it:-
Some values are instru
mental, i.e. a means or an instrument to something else that has value,
and some are not, but are non-instrumental or intrinsic.
Some values at
least must be intrinsic, some objects valuable in themselves and not as a
means to other ends.
not, however, imply
That a value is (reckoned to be) intrinsic does
that
it
is
absolute
or system independent;
the
values that are intrinsic on one ethical theory may be instrumental or
relative on another. More controversially, values may be
in one
way or another, on other things, on other values or, importantly, on non
values (such as experiences or felt needs, or facts or natural objects);
but while some values are reducible to others, others are not but are
That is, contrary to naturalism and to other forms of
For
reductionism such as subjectivism, some values are irreducible.
analogues of the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies, formulated in
irreducible.
terms of 'valuable', are fallacies.
In particular, evaluative judgments,
such as those as to what is valuable, are not deducible from nonvaluative
judgments, such as those as to what is conventionally valued or what is
58
experienced.
That values in natural items are intrinsic does not imply
that they are naturalistic.
eliminating
or
Indeed intrinsic value cannot - on pain of
- amount to being natural, or reduce
to the experiences of humans or of sentient creatures, to their suffering
or happiness or preferences.
58
On next page.
57
w
Although some of these things, some of these experiences,
some do not, but have no value, or a negative value or disvalue;
value,
59
and
some things, e.g. some experiences or some natural objects, have more
value (are more valuable) than others.
of value, but by no means everything is.
Almost anything can be an object
Value is distributed unevenly
throughout the universe in something the way that electrical charge is;
some items have positive quantities of varying degrees of intensity (e.g.
a thundercloud may carry a positive charge, and have positive value), some
negative, and some none.
There are however important differences:
elect
rical charge is a quantitative notion, value a qualitative, comparative,
one;
charges are always commensurable, values less certainly or straight
forwardly so;60 and the distribution of values (and especially of
intrinsic values) is much more theory (system, or viewpoint) relative than
.the di^sbributtdn of charges.
For example, on an environmental view, matiy
of the plants Mr Last Man eliminates have (intrinsic) value, whereas on
animal liberation (usual animal chauvinist) views the plants have no value
if no animals remain:
there would be no similar disagreement about
whether the plants were electrically charged.
Evaluative features such
as worth, merit, beauty are features which behave in rather the way that
philosophers of science now mistakenly suppose that
behave:
empirical features
they do not have a hard observational basis but are decidedly
theory-dependent, though the theories involved are evaluative in character
and not empirical.
To assert that value or redness or remoteness is distributed through
the universe is not to imply that these features, value or redness or
For an outline of how this nondeducibility thesis, which yields a
nondefinability thesis, may be proved (in limited contexts), see the
final section of R. and V. Routley, 'The semantics of first degree
entailment', ZVoMS, 6 (1972), pp. 335-59.
A simpler argument against naturalistic reducibility of values is a
consequence of the intensionality of values and the fact that intensional notions cannot be extensionally analysed (syntactically), which
is what naturalistism characteristically assumes.
Strictly the account of instrumental value should be widened if
disvalues as well as (positive) values are to be taken proper account
of.
That is, mcrg
may be at best a partial order, and so an
inadequate basis on which to define total utility functions, and on
which to rationally reconstruct modern economic theory.
If this is so,
as Godfrey Smith has suggested, and the orderings cannot be completed,
applications of the optimistisation models subsequently introduced will
have to work with partial functions.
58
remoteness, exist,
or are to be found in the universe.
undermines much criticism of nonsubjective values;
The point alone
for example, Mackie's
empiricist case is premissed on the false assumption that the existence
of values
is necessary to objectivism, which he does not distinguish
from nonsubjectivism.
Mackie's "argument from queernessis similarly
broken at the outset:
since values are not entities at all, they are not
strange sorts of entities.
To see how unpersuasive Mackie's argument
should be, replace '(objective) values' throughout by, e.g.,
ordinals'.
universe;
'transfinite
They too would be 'utterly different from'anything in Mackie's
but that does not show that there are no transfinite ordinals.
Thus too, since values are not entities, the account of value being
developed is Met a reaZ-Zst one (in the ordinary sense).62
Values, of one sort or another, are features objects may have or
lack;
they are not subjective, they are not features which reduce to
states or conditions of subjects or valuers.
But no more are they object
ive features, natural or empirical features of objects, features entirely
detached from valuers.
A largely unquestioned false dichotomy between
subjective and objective ethical theories has served to rule out important
options (it has been helped by a connected false dichotomy between
instrumental and detached accounts of value:
see Routley (b)).
In simplest terms, an objective account of value has values "located"
in objects entirely independently of valuers, in the way that (inertial)
mass is located in physical objects independently of observers;
more
satisfactorily, objects have values and masses irrespective of valuers or
observers.
Objectivism forces intuitionism, when it is inquired how
values are apprehended or known;
thus a fuller objective theory is almost
always accompanied by an account, so far always unsatisfactory,
61 The position is that for properties and relations argued in (e)
R. Routley,
EepcTX'd, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1979.
Such objects do not exist, but they have
important theoretical, explanatory, and other roles.
62 j.c. Mackie, Ft/zZcs.
especially pp.38-9.
F-ZpTzt
Penguin, 1977;
see
62 So undermining 0K6 part of D. Mannison's claim that we
want to defend a reaZ-Zst theory of values, i.e. a theory of values
that accounts for the truth of "x has value" with no ineliminable
reference to the interests and concerns of the evaluating group
('Critique of a proposal for an "environmental ethic'", this
volume).
The further parts of Mannison's claim are assessed in what immediately
follows. We are indebted to Mannison for forcing us to try to work
out what is wrong and right about detached value theses.
59
3
characteristically modelled on sense perception, of the way in which
64
values are intuited or apprehended.
It is also regularly assumed on
objective accounts that values exist, in the world;
noneism) that is a separable assumption.
but evidently (given
By contrast, a subjective
account finds values in, or not independent of, actual subjects, and
commonly as linked with the pyschological states of valuers.
Although
subjectivism, like objectivism, comes in a variety of forms, it is always
required that where an item is valued there exists, at sometime or other,
a valuer who values it:
"no values without a valuer" holds, in a strong,
an excessively strong,implausible and erroneous, form;
namely, a world
without existing valuers in it is, by that very fact, a world without
values.
Fortunately - since both objectivisms and subjectivisms suffer
from serious, and mostly well-known, defects - the positions are not
exhaustive.
The way between is perhaps best revealed in terms of alter
native worlds.65 Although values in a world (more precisely, that items
in that world a have evaluative features) always depend upon a valuer
existing in sows world, the valuer may not exist in the world of the
values
(i.e. the valuer may not exist in a).
For example, our claim that
a certain world without valuers, e.g. a pure plant world of botanically
rich form, is a fine world, depends on our existing in this world (in
order to make the claim, in fact);
"make sense"
but it does not demand in order to
(of course the claim is significant) or to be true, what is
ex hypothesis ruled out, the existence of valuers in the pure plant world.
That the world is a fine one, is dependent on a valuer in some world (and
that valuer's assessments of value and, if you like, theory or overview
of what is valuable and not);
by contrast, that the world contains only
plants of this or that leaf type, biomass or colour, does not depend upon
a perceiver.66 since values are not entirely independent of a valuer in
the way that empirical properties are independent of an observer, the
An important corollary is that
resulting account is not objective.
transworld evaluation does not require objectivism, nor (as we shall see)
intuitionism.
Call the resulting account, which is neither objective nor,
(short for, neither objective nor
as is evident, subjective,
subjective:
the term is ugly but memorable).
For a fuller account and worthwhile criticism, see N. Smith,
Penguin, 1954.
The use of worlds in ethical theorising, which is old, soon leads into
world semantical analyses of ethical notions, which is newer but will
also be taken for granted: it is ^problematic.
On next page.
60
The replacement of the (no detachable values) thesis,
(1)
There are no values without a valuer,
by the revised thesis,
(1°) There are no values which are entirely independent of a valuer,
still affords the requisite semantical connections between values and
valuers subjectivists have been at pains to maintain, still allows for
the requisite theory dependence and cultural relativity of values, and
still avoids the extravagances of objectivism.
The replacement enables
the defeat of various sophistical arguments designed to show, in virtue
of the conceptual character of evaluative terms, that the case so far
presented against human (or person) chauvinism collapses.
argument of this sort
runs thus:
A simple
Objectivism is untenable;
but that
leaves subjectivism, which validates (1), as the only alternative; and
subjectivism undermines the counterexamples to chauvinism.6&
One defect
of this argument lies in the assumption that a theory can just dispose of
counterexamples, when commonly examples are harder data than any theory.
Note that the difference between evaluative and empirical properties
is not adequately explained counterfactually:
if an appropriate valuer
- it cannot be an arbitrarily chosen valuer - were placed in the world
it would rate the world fine, to be sure; but equally a suitable
observer would perceive perceptual properties.
Both these things
objectivism can quite well allow. Partly for this reason Rescher's
attempt to maintain his initially subjectivist thesis that value must
be benefit-oriented, while admitting Moore's comparison of unoccupied
worlds, is unsuccessful.
Rescher's thesis really gets modified to:
value must be potential-benefit-oriented - with which an objectivist
might well agree, since it becomes a truism if 'benefit' is construed
sufficiently widely (e.g. as 'value'), once unscrambled counterfactually
thus:the unseen sunset has aesthetic value because of the potential
benefits it affords ... [i.e.]
someone were placed on to such a
world, he
be able to appreciate and enjoy this sunset.
(N. Rescher,
Prentice Hill, 1969 ,
pp.136-37.)
But insofar as Rescher wants to suggest that value comes down to
potential-benefit-orientation, that the unseen sunset has value jMst
because of the potential benefits, which are entirely captured counter
factually, objectivists will rightly object; even if no one were
placed in this world, the sunset which delivered no benefits
the
world, would still have value, still be beautiful.
In short, a counterfactually-extended subjectivism remains inadequate.
The requisite relation of entire independence is explained semantically
in terms of worlds.
The truth of A is not entirely independent of b
iff, in every model, for every world of the model in which A holds
there is some world of the model in which b exists.
The valuer of (1°)
need not exist; it is only required (in each model) that it exist in
some world.
Such an argument appears, in essentials, in R. Elliot,
species?', this publication.
61
'Why preserve
9
Such a procedure is methodologically unsound.
In this case the examples
tell against subjectivism, and point to another defect in the theoretical
argument, namely the reliance on the false objective/subjective dichotomy.
It has been objected 69 that the nonjective way between subjective and
objective is unsatisfactory, for the reason that (1°) results in
unacceptible assignments of value.
But the objection depends upon under
standing 'a valuer' in (1°) not in the intended way, as 'a certain (or
definite) valuer' , the determination of valuer being
MpoM the
values concerned, but as a choice term, as 'an arbitrarily chosen valuer',
or 'some valuer or other (you choose)' - which would require, what can
never happen, that every hypothetical valuer agrees in the values assigned.
A precisely similar misunderstanding of (1) likewise gives strange results:
namely that any state of affairs, however environmentally appalling, is
valuable because we can find a valuer, e.g. a spokesman for your local
development association., who would account it valuable.
understood yields no such bizarre results:
But (1) properly
all it guarantees is that,
where a state of affairs has a value then there is a certain valuer
(zj/z^cT? depending upon the state of affairs and the value assigned, i.e.
the choice is heavily constrained) who assigns that value to that state.
Similarly in the case of (1°) choice of appropriate valuers is a dependent
choice, not an arbitrary one.
There are several, deeper (because metaphysically grounded),
sophistical arguments that conclude on the basis of (1) among other
70
things, that human, or at least person, chauvinism is unavoidable.
These arguments too fail with (1).
It is simply a (common) mistake to
think that values and rights do not have a meaning, or an application,
outside the human context or situation:
to establish this point (on
which Moore rightly insisted) it is enough to point out again that
(hypothetical) valuers, not necessarily human or persons, can assign
69
For example by R. Elliot op. cit.
Elliot's objection depends on a
misconstrual.
The original draft of this paper pointed out that
principle (1)
is strictly mistaken: it would be a little more accurate to assert
that there are no values without possible valuers. A world in which
there are no valuers extant may still contain valuable items.
It does not follow from this, what Elliot infers, that 'a state of
affairs has value if it is such that it would be valued by some
sentient individual if such an individual were to exist', with 'some'
read 'some or other'.
70 These arguments are examined in detail in Routley (a), and found
wanting.
The objections there lodged apply equally against variations
of the arguments built on (1°) . What follows in the text on sorne of
these arguments is largely a condensation of some of the points
developed more fully there.
62
C
Q
values with respect to situations and worlds devoid of humans and of
persons altogether.
But though these deeper arguments strictly fail
with the demise of (1), they can be readily restated in terms of (1°),
which can equally be taken (given further assumptions) to support the
thesis that persons (or preference-havers)
are the primary items of
value or, more strongly, that persons are the ozzZ-y items of intrinsic
value.
One of these arguments relies on the idea that persons are the
source of value.
But the argument trades on an ambiguity.
A person is
the source of value-judgements and values in one sense, i.e. s/he is the
valuer;
but not in another, namely s/he is not responsible for valued
item having its valued properties.
Nor is there any licence for reducing
the values assigned to those that serve the interests of the valuer.
The
argument is likely to be given the following sort of initial elaboration:
By (1°), whatever has a value has its value in virtue of an assignment
from certain valuers.
But valuers are always persons.
The argument is however
ever has a value gets its value from persons.
defective.
Therefore what
For even if values were always assigned by persons the items
their values from persons
assigned values do not thereby yet or
(or those of persons).
They have what value they have partly in virtue
of features of their own.
Nonetheless, the argument continues, the empirical features of
objects valued are relevant because they are taken into account in
preference rankings on which valuers base their assignments.
By (1°)
(or
a derivative) values are relational properties not properties simpliciter
as objectivism would have it.
They are relational properties which
depend on certain features of the related item.
Which features, of values?
Well, obviously, preferences and interests of valuers.
So, it is con
cluded, values answer to, or reduce to, interests of persons:
no alternative to chauvinism.
there is
Rather similar arguments lead to such
(mistaken) conclusions as that rights are interest-oriented, that
71
obligations must answer to people's interests,
etc. etc.
The arguments
can furthermore - in case the transit seemed excessively swift - be
filled out, for example as follows:
By (1°),
Thus, e.g. K. Baier, T/ze AforczZ Po^yzt o/
Ithaca, 1958.
63
Cornell University Press,
-B.
Values depend upon valuers, upon their value assignments
or rankings.
-A.
These value rankings depend upon valuers' preference
rankings.
A.
Hence
Values depend upon, or are determined through, the preference
rankings of valuers.
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers'
interests.
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
Therefore
D.
Values are determined through, or depend upon, human [or
72
persons'] interests.
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human,
interest, there is no rational or feasible alternative to doing so:
any
alternative to chauvinism is simply incoherent.
With the replacement of (1) by (1°), premiss (C) is rendered
implausible unless 'human' is supplanted by 'person'
(where the variable
'person' is so characterised that all valuers are persons, something some
accounts of person would rule out).
Thus, without (1), the argument
leads at best to person chauvinism.
Nor does -B follow from (1°):
"not
entirely independent of" does not imply "dependent upon", but at best
"partially dependent upon".
However it does seem that values are, in a
sense, determined through value assignments - assignments made certainly
in virtue of features of the objects valued and of preference rankings of
valuers, that is having dual factual and attitudinal bases - but assign
ments nevertheless.
Accordingly, the central part of the argument can be
reformulated, in a way which locates the main source of damage, thus
A'.
Values are determined through value assignments [preference
rankings] of valuers.
B'.
The value assignments [preference ranking] of valuers are
determined through valuers' interests.
In order to reach what amounts to chauvinism
73
from B', however,
'interest'
has to be narrowly construed, after the fashion of egoism, as 'own, self-
centred or selfish, interest'.
D'.
Otherwise the conclusion,
Values are determined through valuers' interests,
Many variations on this argument are considered in Routley (a); and
obviously there are yet other variations, e.g. value assignments could
be directly linked with interests.
On next page.
64
c
Q
is innocuous;
valuers.
it does nothing to confine what determines value, to
For valuers' interests may concern almost anything, and in
particular may include the interests of nonvaluers(as in 'its interest
is among my interests') and the welfare of natural systems.
understood, is no more chauvinistic than:
D', so
Values are value-centred.
To
succeed the argument has to narrow the elements assessed in determining
value to features of the base class of persons [or humans];
their interests and welfare alone.
e.g. to
For if we have to look beyond this
class to assess value - even to determine interests and welfare - then
the argument to chauvinism fails. Thus the argument has, in order to suc
ceed, to rely upon assumptions either of egoism - valuers' interests are
restricted to their own (perhaps enlightened) self-interest - or of a
group analogue - valuers' interests are restricted to those of the group,
the base class - where (to indicate the final trick in the argument)
there is, in each case, a slide on the elastic term 'interests', e.g.
from ^?z) f/z^r ozjzz
ozjyz Mses or purposes.
to
t/z^^r ozjzz u^urztape., or
t/ze^r
It is evident enough that in order to succeed the
argument has to assume one of the very points at issue, that interests,
which are progressively restricted to chauvinistic interests, are so
restricted.74 But consider, to expose the character of the assumptions
made, parallel arguments to egoism and groupism, i.e. group egoism:
AE.
Persons always act (in freely chosen cases, or rational cases)
in the way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accord with their
(revealed) preference rankings.
BE.
Individual [group] preference rankings are always determined
through (reflect) self [group] interest.
71 What amounts to chauvinism; for if a position were reached in
this
way by a sound argument, then the position would not be chauvinistic,
being justified. For this reason, it is absurd for a rational creature
to present itself (as some philosophers have) as a human chauvinist or
a person chauvinist.
There is however a descriptive analogue of chauvinism, in which the
justificatory clause is omitted; and this use of 'chauvinism' we have
resorted to ourselves (as the astute reader will have observed) as an
interim step.
In the end of course such descriptive-chauvinism is
chauvinism, since the discrimination involved is unwarranted.
74 The claim generalises: it is not possible to mount an argument for
person [or human] chauvinism on the basis of the meaning, or analysis,
of such notions as, o^Z^pa^o/z or r^pTzf or
without assuming, in
the analysis or the course of the argument, the very points at issue.
This is an outcome of the viability of nonchauvinistic analyses of
these notions, together with the content preservation character of
genuine deductive arguments.
65
Therefore
DE.
Individual persons [groups of persons] always act in ways
determined in their own self [group] interests (or that
reflect their own interest^).
Thereafter follows the slide from "in their own interests" to "to their
own advantage", or "for their own uses or purposes".
The eventual con
clusion of egoism, again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not
only that the egoistic position is perfectly in order and thoroughly
rational, but that there are no alternatives;
least ought to be, no other way of acting,
that is, there is, or at
'that men can only choose to
do what is in their own interests or that it is only rational to do
Thus,person or (human) chauvinism, as based.on the central argument,
3
stands revealed as like group selfishness, "group egoism" one might
almost say.
Likewise the criticisms of the
as we shall now call the argument through D or D', parallel those of
egoism;
in particular, premiss B'
to those that defeat premiss BE.
(or B) succumbs to similar objections
Group selfishness is no more acceptable
than egoism, since it depends on exactly the same set of confusions
between values, preferences, interests, and advantages (encouraged by
slippery terms such as 'interests' and 'self-interest') as the arguments
on which egoism rests.
Briefly, because one may discern or select one's own preference or
value rankings, it does not follow that these rankings are set up or
selected in one's own selfish (or enlightened self) interests;
similarly
in group cases, because a group determines its own rankings, it does not
follow that it determines them in its own interests;
the group includes environmental individuals.
certainly not if
Thus just as BE is refuted,
at least prima facie, by a range of examples where preference, and value,
rankings run counter to self-regarding interest, e.g. cases of otherregarding interest or altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by
examples where value, and also overall preference rankings, vary from
group interests, e.g. cases of group altruism and extra-group-regarding
interests, as in resistance movements, environmental action groups, and
so on.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish because
pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip mine
the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but ecological resistance workers
Nowell Smith, op. cit., p.140. Nowell-Smith's very appealing critique
of egoism (pp.140-44) may, by simple paraphrase, be converted into a
critique of group selfishness.
This is obvious once B' and BE are
compared.
66
who oppose doing so are commonly not acting just out of (their own or)
human intragroup interests, but out of direct concern for the environment
and its welfare.
But, just as BE is not demolished by such counterexamples of
apparently other-regarding and altruistic action, neither is B:
in each
case it can be made out that further selfish (i.e. self-regarding) inter
ests are involved, e.g., in the case of B, that an agent did what he did,
an altruistic action, because he
in the egoism case,
doing it.
As Nowell-Smith explains
'interest' is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE true at the cost, however, of trivial-
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a
further sort of "interest"; whatever valuers value that does not seem to
ising them.
be in their interests is said to provide a further interest, either the
value itself or an invented value surrogate;
for example, the environ
mentalist who works to retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be
said to be so acting only because he has an interest in or derives
benefit or advantage from just knowing it exists, just as he would be
said to in the egoist case.
"retained";
By such strategies the theses can be
for then a valued item really is in valuers' interests, in
the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously incon
venienced by it, i.e. even if it is Mot in their narrow interests in the
customary sense.
Thus B, like BE, is preserved by stretching the
elastic term 'interests', in a way that it too readily admits, to include
values, or value surrogates, among interests.
Then however the conclus
ion of the Group Selfishness argument loses its intended force, and
becomes the platitude that values are determined through valuers' values,
just as egoism, under the extension which makes us all covert egoists,
loses its sting and becomes a platitude.
Human chauvinism in this form,
like egoism, derives its plausibility from vacillation on the sense of
'interests', with a resulting fluctuation between a strong false thesis
when interests are narrowed through group interests to group restricted
interests - the real face of human chauvinism - and a trivial analytic
thesis, between paradox and platitude.
To reject the reductionist conclusion D, or D', is by no means to be
committed to the view that the valuers and their preference rankings play
%<? role in determining values and that values are a further set of
In the sense of Wisdom's (meta)philosophy.
The technique of rescuing
philosophical theses by shifts, which begin with natural extensions of
terms, enforced by accompanying redefinitions of terms - including the
thesis "We're all selfish really" - is delightfully explained in
J. Wisdom, dt/zer
Blackwell, Oxford, 1952, especially chapter 1.
67
mysterious independent items somehow perceived by valuers through a
special (even mystical and non-rational) moral sense.
An intuitionist
theory of value is not required, and is not lurking in the background.
One can simply admit that valuers' preference rankings play an important
role in evaluation;
one is not thereby committed to D unless one assumes
- what amounts to premiss B - that these preference rankings reflect, or
can be reduced to, valuers'
(narrow) interests.
Even so important
problems remain unresolved, in particular, precisely what role valuers'
preference-rankings play, and how this role enables the damaging features
of intuitionism to be avoided.
The arguments against genuinely environmental ethics from the
character of
are sometimes followed up by the objection that such
a ethic can be given no, or no satisfactory, theory of value (or metaethic, to.use the current, but questionable, jargon transferred from
logical theory).
It is true that several theories of value are quickly
ruled out, including mainstream noncognitive theories, which are objection
ably chauvinistic, allowing no non-instrumental value to any non-sentient
natural items.
While an environmental ethic, like almost any other
normative ethic, ca?? be supplied with an intuitionist theory of value,
an environmental ethic, unlike most other ethics, wa?/ appear to have no
option to such a theory, though the theory is unsatisfactory and causes
especial problems for the ethic. 75 The unsatisfactoriness of intuitionism
is in part for the usual reasons:
apart from the perceptual comparison
which is problematic in several ways (e.g. evaluative properties are not
like perceptual properties, the moral sense is rather different from
other senses), the theory is (like a purely axiomatic theory) too much of
a black box, which gives no explanation of many things that call for
explanation, e.g. the semantics of value, how value judgements are based
on factual and emotional or attitudinal bases;
but it is in part because
intuitionism provides little guidance or assistance in accounting for the
intrinsic value of environmental objects.
These difficulties can be evaded and the problems largely resolved
through a semantical theory of value, and more generally of ethical terms.
Thus D. Mannison, 'the "new environmental ethic" is ... irredeemably
intuitionistic' (op. cit.), and H.J. McCloskey:
As far as I can see of the known, plausible meta-ethics, the only
one available ... is an intuitionist one.
... [There] would still
be ... the problem of associating it with a non-human-centred
normative ethic, one which did not locate all values in human
capacities states, goods, but accorded to environmental phenomena
value in their own right. ('Ecological ethics and its justification:
a critical appraisal', this volume.)
68
For the truth-conditions, 7 8 and resulting interpretation conditions,
will supply an account of meaning not only of axiological expressions
but also of deontic expressions, and moreover in a way that is plainly
nonchauvinistic;
e.g., it enables natural items to be awarded intrinsic
value in much the way that states or conditions of humans are on
chauvinistic theories.
Something of the shape and character of the semantical analyses
emerges from the evaluation rules for important axiological and deontic
79
functions.
The semantics are set within the framework of the semantics
of entailment:
in this way several paradoxes possible world semantics
induces in deontic (and axiological) theory are automatically removed.
The semantical analyses of the central axiological functor,
'that ... is
better than that __ ', abbreviated 'Bt', and the key deontic predicate
'that ... is permissible', abbreviated 'P', restricted to sentential
terms, take respectively the following forms:
I(A Bt B, a) = 1 iff [B]
i.e.
[A], where [C] = {c e K:
I(C, c) =1},
[C] is the range of C, the class of situations where C holds, some
times called the proposition C expresses.
In short, that A is better
than that B holds in world a iff from the perspective of a, the proposition
B expresses is less preferable than the proposition A expresses, where
the ordering relation is spelt out in terms of a preference ranking.
I(PA, a) = 1 iff, for some world b such that Tab, I(A, b) = 1;
i.e., that A is permissible holds in a iff for some world b permitted as
far as a is concerned, A holds in b - where the relation T is spelt out in
terms of a relative permittedness relation.
Enough of the semantical theory has been exposed to indicate some
important features.
Firstly, betterness - and something the same holds
for other value terms - is assessed semantically in terms of a world-
relativised preference ranking.
In the simplest case, where betterness is
assessed as to truth (rather than interpretation, or meaning), i.e. at
actual world T, the assessment just is in terms of a preference ranking
(so validating a form of premiss B above, for a technical sense of
70
Ethical judgements, both axiological and deontic, have truth values,
relative to their context of occurrence. By use of context, objections,
e.g. from relativity, to the attribution of truth-values to such
judgements can be straightforwardly avoided.
79 Full details of the semantics are presented elsewhere, in Routley (c),
and in R. Routley, R.K. Meyer, and others, PeZevuzzf
TZzeZr
P-ZfaZs, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
69
'determined').
Secondly, the semantics of
can be given in
descriptive terms; similarly for deontic terms such as
The
semantical analysis bridges the fact-value gap, by a functional linkage,
without however closing it.
preferential basis.
For it provides no
of value to its
The linkage enables a simple explanation of how
environmental considerations can count:
criteria may be preferred.
worlds satisfying environmental
Sets of worlds where human interests or needs
are not met but ecosystems are maintained may, for example, be prefer
entially ranked above worlds where human needs are met at the expense of
ecosystems.
The way in which the factual basis, which includes environ
mental facts - the descriptive better-making characteristics - enters into
the evaluative judgments of quality, is in outline as follows:
factual
criteria delimit preference rankings on worlds in the same way that
descriptive features of objects delimit preference rankings of these
objects.
It is not the case, then, that we are unable to explain zj?zz/ a natural
item is valuable if we cannot point to some human interest or purpose
which is served.
This again assumes mistakenly, that because a valuer
relative preference-ranking is involved, the evaluation must somehow be
reducible to the interests or purposes of the valuer.
That there is an
allusion in the semantical unpacking of value to the preference system of
a certain valuer no more requires that the items valued are valuable only
insofar as they serve the valuer's interests or preferences than it does
in more familiar cases such as valuing a work of art, a library or an old
building.
Valuers can and do value items because they perceive in them
properties they take to be valuable, and in the interests of other things
whose interests are their own, and not simply for what they can get out of
them or how far they serve their own interests.
The answer to the question
'Why is it valuable?', for a natural item, will not always be, as it must
always be on the instrumental view,
'Because it is good for such and such
purpose or end of the valuer or those of his group', but may be:
'Because
it has properties A, B and C which the valuer holds to be valuable in virtue
of considered preferences, including iterated (second order) preferences
which reflect the preferences of other preference-havers.
In the end, then, environmental value systems are
cvz different
How a seTnaTzt-fcaZ analysis - as distinct from a
analysis may make bridges without involving a reduction - but leaving everything
as it is - is more fully explained in R. Routley 'The semantical meta
morphosis of metaphysics',
JoMruaZ
P/z^Zosop/zz/, 54 (1976),
187-205. For more on how the fact/value gap is semantically bridged
see Routley (c).
70
preference rankings, which take into account different facts from the
chauvinistic systems they are beginning to compete with and aim to
supplant - a different group preference ranking and network (emanating
from the valuer and those like her) which is grounded in a different
perception and emotional presentation of nature.
The semantical meta-ethic is not as neutral as an intuitionistic
meta-ethic:
for the preference-rankings involved require a valuer, i.e.
thesis (1°) is applied, thereby excluding objective theories.
The fact
that the semantical theory will work (perhaps after minor adaptions) for
a range of normative theories is no serious objection.
not have to be precisely tailored to a given ethic:
A meta-ethic does
the same (sort of)
metalogic may work satisfactorily for many different logics.
It is not merely that the distinctiveness of the meta-ethic may be
what is more serious is that the
contested;
(normative) ethic, even
newness
of
the
within Western traditions, may be challenged.
It has been suggested, for instance, that such ethics are but versions
or minor variants of ideal utilitarianism
McCloskey, op. cit.).
(cf. Elliot, op. cit.;
To assess this claim, and to reveal how much the
preferred environmental ethic has in common with such utilitarianism and
how much it differs, considering what counts as ideal utilitarianism is
unavoidable.
In indicating what does count, there is real point in going
back to Rashdall's original explanation:
... all moral judgements are ultimately judgements as to the
value of ends.
This view of Ethics, which combines the utilitarian
principle that Ethics must be teleological with a non-hedonistic
view of the ethical end I propose to call Ideal Utilitarianism.
According to this view actions are right or wrong according as they
tend to produce for all mankind an ideal end or good, which includes
but is not limited to pleasure.
... The right action is always that
which (so far as the agent has means of knowing) will produce the
greatest amount of good upon the whole.
(H- Rashdall, TTze T/zeorz/ o/
Fzz-z^Z, Oxford University Press, 1907, p.184.)
Ideal utilitarianism is thus, according to Rashdall, nonhedonistic
utilitarianism, and so conforms to the core theses of utilitarianism,
namely:
(i) The ethical or ideal end (the good) is determined simply by
maximisation of net utility or value of certain factors or ends, typically
(but not invariably) experiences or states of consciousness such as
pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction of desires or preferences
71
!*
(ii) The ends or experiences are those of some given base class,
e.g. mankind, present persons, sentient creatures (Pase <?Zass r^Z-az^z^sut-Zczz);
and
(iii) Other ethical notions, right in particular, are defined as
determined in terms of the ethical end (^eZeoZ-c^-ZcuZ re^zzc^-Zozz-Zsw).
A corollary of the reductionist assumption - which can take various forms,
e.g. act, rule, average utilitarianism - is that maximisation is uncon
strained by deontic requirements.
The core principles are also readily
discerned in that other paradigmatic ideal utilitarian, Moore,
who like
Rashdall, objects to (hedonistic) utilitarianism on the grounds of its
hedonistic principle (e.g. p.184), and accordingly widens the ends
admitted in (i), and, again like Rashdall, takes the base class to
consist of humans.
as assessed through its
paradigm exponents *Zs thus chauvinistic, and zzo
e^zz-ZrczzwezztuZ.
sc/zewa /or azz
Human chauvinism is in fact integral to both
Rashdall'sand Moore's work.
For example, Rashdall characterises r-z^TzZ; in
terms of good for mankind, and endorses a strong form of the greater value
assumption (p.215).
And Moore
not only identifies the best poss-ZbZe
state of things in this world with Human Good (p.183), but considers 'by
far the most valuable things we can know or -z^azy-Z/ze, are certain states of
consciousness', Zzzz?n<27z consciousness (p.188, my italics).
Each one of the core theses of utilitarianism is false (the case is
argued in detail in Routley (b)).
Contrary to (i) optimisation needs to
be constrained, deontically constrained, else serious injustices to and
ill-treatment of objects within the base class and, more important,
objects outside that class, are all too likely.
But, as against (iii)
this destroys prospects of successful deontic reductions, which are, on
independent grounds, improbable.
To avoid the chauvinism, typically built
See Pr-Zpzc-Zp-Zu Ez^/z^cu, Cambridge University Press, 1903, chapters V and
VI.
Moore does say (p.188) that
No one, probably, ... who has asked himself the question, has even
doubted that personal affection and appreciation of what is beautiful
in Art or Nature, are good in themselves.
But 'appreciation of what is beautiful' reduces, on Moore's account, to
'enjoyment of beautiful objects'; and any independent value in what is
beautiful is 'so small as to be negligible in comparison with that
which attaches to the cozzsu^ozzszzess of beauty', (p.189).
Moore's chauvinistic account thus appears open to familiar objections e.g. those based on enjoyment machines (cf. the wilderness experience
machine discussed above), and on beautiful worlds lacking conscious
beings-which help show that beauty is what counts and not just, or
primarily, experiences of beauty. Moore was not, however, entirely
unaware of such points:
cf. pp.194-95.
72
*
into (ii),
(i) requires restatement in terms of factors which avoid base
class relativisation;
then clause (ii) is eliminated.
The need for con
straints in optimisation modellings of utilitarian or economic sorts can
be seen from the phenomena of interrelated interests and preferences:
that my interests include, or depend upon, yours, means that these cannot
vary independently, but are interrelated.
Repairing the defects of ideal utilitarianism results in more
adequate optimisation modelling.
notion of
The recipe elementary analysis of the
item leads to is, in essence, as follows:
Maximise a
weighted function (e.g. a sum) of the factors that value a determines
subject to appropriate constraints:
symbolically, maximise n-place
function E = E(x) subject to constraining relations Rj(x)
and x = <x^,...,x^>).
(with j an index,
Special cases of such optimisation modellings are
familiar from engineering and economic applications (e.g. determination
of optimal social welfare in concave programming). What is more general
82
about the model indicated,
is, in particular, the form of constraints
permitted, which can include
that ... Xi ... X2 ..."
bounds for optimals).
deontic constraints, e.g. "It is forbidden
(which has the effect of putting a subspace out of
Since there is nothing to prevent moral prohibitions,
requirements of fairness, and the like, from appearing among the constraints
ethics, economics, and practical reasoning can in principle be success
fully amalgamated.
The optimisation modelling of general value theory differs
significantly from that of (ideal) utilitarianism.
Although maximization
is fundamental in both, in utilitarianism value is characteristically
replaced by net utility, measured usually in terms of experiential units
of some sort, whereas in general value theory this reduction is rejected.
In each case there is a
of an ethical calculus, but the currency
is different, being values in one case and base class or individual
utilities (units of utility) in the other;
but in both cases the calculus
is so far (equally) unworkable except in very special cases.
In each
case there is an analysis into components of the objective (function)
maximized, but the analysis is very different.
In utilitarianism net
utility is broken down into individual utilities of members of some base
class.
In general value theory such a reduction is rejected (except
perhaps where appropriate hypothetical valuers are admitted);
analysis into factors that carry value is made.
instead an
(But in Moore's ideal
The general model is motivated, explained, illustrated, applied and
defended in Routley (b) and (d) and also in R. Routley, 'The choice of
logical foundations: nonclassical choices and the ultralogical choice',
L<9<2"f<?a, 38 (1979).
73
utilitarianism, unlike utilitarianism proper, the way is opened for
factors, such as beauty, which carry intrinsic value and are not reducible
to features of the base class or its members.)
In utilitarianism deontic
notions, such as right, are analysed in terms of the value theory;
general value theory deontic notions are taken as given
constraints are imposed on optimisations.
but in
and deontic
Whereas the maximisations of
utilitarianisms proper are (single element) unconstrained maximisations
(hence the injustice, unfairness, and ill-treatment such ethics condone),
general value theory optimisations are constrained.
in principle
While there is room
for constraints in ideal utilitarianism, as there is for a
switch to factors which are base-class independent - though the theory has
never been elaborated to the point where these things are done - deontic
constraints cannot be noncircularly imposed, given the teleological
reduction thesis (so the problems of unfairness and ill-treatment remain).
It is a fairly evident corollary of the differences that general
value theory removes leading objections to utilitarianisms.
It is not
perhaps so evident, however, how it applies to environmental cases or
what the factors of environmental relevance are.
To expose some of the
factors - and to indicate just how far an environmental ethics is dis
tanced even from a comparatively liberal ethic like Moore's ideal
utilitarianism
- consider the very difficult optimisation problems as to
the determination of the Ideal.
Moore distinguishes (1) The Ideal,
from, what is more interesting,
state of things
the best possZbZe state of things in this world',
toward which our action should be directed'
absolute ideal'
(KI)
and (2)
'the
(2)
'the MZtZ/naZe end
(p.183).
Call (1)
'The
'the T ideal' or 'the this world ideal'
(TI).
A crucial difference between the two problems lies in the constraints:
determination of TI is constrained by features - many of them unknown -
of the actual world T (now and in the immediate future), by its populations
of humans and of various species of living things on its various earths,
by its natural features, by its physical and technological resources,
limitations of which will impose characteristic scarcity constraints.
By
That does not imply that no analyses can be given of deontic notions.
Although axiological reductions are ruled out, others are not.
Certainly semantical analysis, like that already sketched for permissib
ility, can be supplied and elaborated.
Moore's teleological ethic is not far removed from Aristotle's ethic
more than 2000 years earlier (which exhibits features of ideal
utilitarianism) . From the point of view of this long relativelyunchanged base line, environmental ethics are not merely new and
radical, but represent a paradigm shift.
74
-
contrast, KI is presumably not constrained by resources or technology
(in relation to populations);
this is just one reason why Leibnitz's
equations of TI with KI and with things as at present fails.
theless constrained.
8S
KI is none
There will, for example, be constraints forbidding
unfair or ill-treatment of various sorts (given that such treatment is
possible), and there will be constraints interrelating factors that are
not independent.
The factors entering into the modelling will no doubt represent, in
some way, many of the positive goods, such as enjoyment of the "meritor
ious" sorts that Moore managed to discern - positively weighted - and
many of the evils he found - but negatively weighted (but some of these
things are better represented through constraints). There remain,
86
however, many features
of ecological importance that Moore never con
templated;
for example, diversity of systems and creatures, naturalness,
o7
integrity of systems, stability of systems, harmony of systems.
Optimising a mix of factors, which are mutually constrained, meets
constant reproaches made against such ecological values as diversity.
The objections take the form that enhancement of diversity as a sole
factor can lead to undesirable ecological results, indeed can diminish
Op
net value and so be wrong on utilitarianism grounds.
On the multiple
factor model diversity is constrained by naturalness and stability, for
example;
thus net value is not going to be increased through increasing
the diversity of a simple temperate rainforest by felling some of its
trees and replacing them with exotic species.
On the other hand, diver
sity will be increased by planting the banks of a stream, eroded through
excess clearing and overgrazing, with suitable exotic species - then birds
Perhaps, moreover, there are no limiting natural laws, such as con
servation principles, but the universe operates according to beneficient natural laws.
There are distinctions here between worlds and
physically possible worlds which Moore did not make.
There may also be, at least in the case of KI, as Moore observed,
factors that we are unaware of - at least under the intended construal
of 'conceivable'.
Rough and ready measures of such factors as diversity are not so
difficult to come by, and, in important respects, present fewer problems
than obtaining measures of pleasure that encompass, in ways that take
account of interspecies and interindividual comparisons, all sentient
creatures.
Compare the objections made in §4 to Rodman's reliance on the single
criteria of diversity; and also Passmore's points in (a) against
diversity as a single criterion in arguments for preservation.
75
and other animals will increase as well as plant diversity - and in such
a case stability will also be increased in the longer term and natural
ness not diminished (since already removed);
thus overall value will be
increased (it may also be increased by the enjoyment of conservationists
formerly appalled by the stream landscape).
Diversity,though (like enjoy
ment or pleasure) good in itself, is (again like hedonistic values) not an
unconstrained value (compare, e.g., enjoyment obtained through secret
maltreatment of animals or by impoverishment of an unvisited streamside).
The multiple factor model also solves the problem of how to combine
traditional values, such as the virtues and creature enjoyment with what
many in the West are only beginning to discern, environmental values;
namely, by a constrained optimisation which takes due (i.e. weighted)
account of them
Thus in moving to an environmental (or nonchauvinist)
ethic one is not
ordinarily acknowledged welfare values for persons
or humans, but simply recognising a further set of values to which such
welfare values should be added.
welfare values are retained;
Nor is one
humans, for human
one is simply aiming to remove - through
constraints which may reduce assignments to human values in favour of
other values - the unwarranted privilege and chauvinism of the displaced
Western super-ethic.
One would not have come very far if, despite the claim to have
recognised environmental values, one assumed that wherever there is con
flict between natural values and human values, the latter must always
prevail.
This would be equivalent to assigning them very low weight, or
even zero value, in all serious conflict cases.
One would not have
advanced far past rejection of axiological principle (A) if one then
accepted, in assessments as to how things should be done, the yreafer
namely that even though other things may have intrinsic
value, people or humans are more valuable than anything else, and rank
more highly (no matter how large their number).To allow that sows
in human welfare values may sometimes - or even often,
especially with increasing human populations - have to be accepted in
cases of conflict is an essential part of assigning a genuine positive
value to nonhuman factors.
Sometimes humans, their states and conditions,
do not come first:
the greater value assumption should be rejected.
Such an assumption - in popular form, that people come first - is
extrgTMgZ-z/ widespread and is even included in animal liberation theory;
cf. Singer, op. cit.
For striking examples of the damaging assumption
at work, see the (chauvinistic) resolutions of the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment.
o
4
There are many kinds of examples.
Conspicuous examples are provided by
recognisedly evil people (there are, under current social arrangements,
plenty), whose welfare, or even lives, do not rank above, for example,
valuable natural items, or the welfare of future persons.
More con
troversial are evaluations which rank the preservation of an animal
species, such as the tiger, above the increase (or even retention) of
human population in given areas.91 But, for the most part, the compar
ative value of humans as opposed to other creatures and things has been
greatly exaggerated.
The arguments used in support of the greater value assumption are
but variations of those for human chauvinism already considered, and
largely rejected (in §1).
Thus, for instance, Keller argues for a greater
value thesis on the ground that a 'human being is the most complex thing
which we know; its depth and range of experience far transcend that of
any other known living thing'
(p.209)
Ecological Concern', Zz/^o/z, vol.6
(J.A. Keller,
(1971), pp.197-209).
complexity the claim is almost certainly false:
are much more complex.
'Types of Motives for
As regards pure
tropical forest ecosystems
The claim about range of experience is open to
doubt, even for "normal" humans, since many animals have a much wider
range of such sensory experiences as smells; and it is false of many
humans.
More important, range and "depth" of experience, of certain
have) , does not, on its own,
select sorts (those that normally
establish greater value in any routine or regular way.
Often enough it
is no good basis for assigning greater value.
The generalised optimisation model will commonly give way, in
applications less sweeping and more feasible than that of the determining
TI, to such special cases of it as Bayesian decision theory and cost
benefit analysis, where these analyses allow properly for environmental
values and duly incorporate ethical constraints (see Routley (a)).
90
91
It
The fact of the matter is that prevailing unqualified attitudes to
human welfare or the "sanctity" of human life - as opposed to other
life - are shot through with inconsistency. For instance, despite
common claims that human life is sacrosanct, neither the largely
unquestioned military ethics nor medical ethics nor the state or "the
law" take such a position: most individual humans are regarded as
expendible, replaceable, and not particularly or uniquely valuable.
On the prevailing ethic quite a different evaluation is taken for
granted: e.g.
It would be unrealistic to agree, of course, that preservation of
wildlife should take precedence over providing for human needs.
(S. Richardson, writing in T/ze CuTZ&erru
November 29, 1974 ,
p.12)
On an environmental ethic, while it might not be politically expedient,
it would not be at all "unrealistic", to so agree.
77
&
is these more special methods that should normally be applied in trying
to determine a best course of action in a range of difficult decision
cases thrown up for an environmental ethics, especially cases where there
is a conflict (i.e. constraining conditions) between retention of natural
values (e.g. preserving a wilderness or a national park) and maintenance
of humanistic values (e.g. keeping some humans alive, commonly reckoned
one of the highest human-values).
But for a cost-benefit weigh-up to be
attempted such cases have to be described in
more detail
usually provided by chauvinistic philosophers who
than is
to direct such
examples against environmental evaluations - as if furthermore, the
examples were quite conclusive, when they almost always presuppose from
the very beginning what is in dispute, a greater value assumption.
In
connection with such intended counterexamples to properly environmental
ethics, two further points are worth recording:
firstly, resort to such
analytical methods is the rational procedure in such cases (unless a time
urgency intrudes, as seldom happens, or should happen, in philosophy);
secondly, an environmental ethic should not, any more than other ethics
or economics, be expected to provide a decision procedure for any and
every case that may arise:
the theory (and accompanying intuitions) may
have to be developed to resolve some cases, while other cases may go
(cheerfully) undecided.
On similar test or decision cases, e.g. one
group of starving people versus another group in a situation of limited
resources, or quality of life versus number of humans, conventional ethical
theories may offer no quick, or clearcut, resolutions, etc.
The optimisation model indicates, among many other things, how
axiological principle (A) is to be modified.
For best choice and best
course of action are now determined by taking account of the further
range of values, not just those that are human-based.
Then (A) vanishes
into the truism that only those objects that are of intrinsic value are
of intrinsic value, or need be taken into account in the values of the
optimisation model.
How to rectify the deontic principle (D) is rather less obvious than
how to adjust (A).
An obvious strategy, is, however, to add further
92 Even when a case is more fully described there will, of course be
(unavoidable) difficulties in quantifying some of the values, e.g.
those of "intangible" factors; but these difficulties are not sub
stantially worse than those already encountered in routine business
accounting in quantifying such assets as good-will and such matters as
wage relativities for different work.
As L. Tribe has pointed out
(in 'Ways not to think about plastic trees:
new foundations for
environmental law', YaZ-e AuzJ
vol.83 (1974) , pp.1315-1348) the
difficulties of transferring or adapting rather standard methods of
assessment, such as decision theory and cost-benefit analyses, to pro
vide rational decision methods in the case of environmental matters has
been much exaggerated, to the detriment of the environment.
78
*
provisos.
way;
But it is unsatisfactory to do this in a piecemeal sort of
it hardly suffices, for example, to simply add further riders
excluding unnecessary cruelty to animals, speciescide, etc.
What has to
is unwarranted interference with other preference
be ruled out
havers (and goal-possessors)
and the degrading of items of value.
A
revised principle appears then to go something like this:-
DN.
One is free to act as one wishes provided that (i) one does not
unwarrantedly interfere with other preference-havers, and
(ii) one does not damage or ill-treat or devalue anything of
value.
Though the revised principle has a rather more complex and restrictive
character than freedom principle (D) and Western variants thereon, it
still does the requisite task (D) set out to do, namely to state that out
side certain prescribed areas one is free, that select behaviour is
permissible.93 it is simply that the proscribed area is far larger than
inadequate homocentric ethics have envisaged.
But perhaps the whole conception underlying (D), and the way it
fixes onus of proof, should be stood on its head.
On the view behind (D),
one starts from an unlimited position permitting unlimited interference
and exploitation;
restrictions are added primarily because other ones
(again ones of the privileged class) are also starting from a similar
unlimited position whose freedom of action may be (impermissibly) curtailed
by one's own.
So results the initial position, e.g. of (D).
For inter
ference in others' projects (no matter how exploitative) beyond this
"evident" initial position,good reasons have always to be offered.
alternative thoroughgoing
On the
respect view, which is illustrated by various
nonexploitative non-Western ethics, one starts from a restricted position,
a position of no interference and no exploitation, a position at peace with
the natural world so to say, and allows interference - not as on
thinking, restricts interference - for good reasons.
thus entirely inverted:
stop interference.
Western
The onus of proof is
good reasons are required y<2r interference, not
The good reasons include the collecting of fruit
and nuts (and other natural "produce") for life support purposes, but not,
for example, the collection of a substantial surplus of forest orchids on
whim or in the hope that they may be sold at a profit.
A theory of value like that outlined, though it takes it for granted,
93 The revised freedom principle is not incompatible with, but can be
combined with and supplemented by, a bill of rights, charter or catechism specifying positively types of rights and of permissible
conduct.
79
A
in the constraints imposed in optimisation, that there are deontic
principles limiting what is done to many objects other than persons,
leaves main deontic issues open, and in particular does not thereby imply
that such objects have rights.
For woraZ
forbidding certain
actions with respect to an object (fo not, in general,
that object a
94
corretattle r-^p/zt.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given oak or
landscape painting does not entail that the tree or painting has a correl
ative right not to be mutilated - without (what has a point) stretching
the notion of r^p*7z^.
An environmental ethic like the respect ethic being
advanced does not automatically commit one to the view that natural
objects or artifacts sometimes have rights.
It is sometimes held that some such objects do have rights, e.g.
under the influence of pantheism.
But construed literally, pantheism is
false, since artefacts, and other inanimate objects, are not alive.
The
view that the class of right-holders extends beyond the class of
preference-havers can however be placed on bases less extravagant than
pantheism - most obviously in terms of a suitable deontic analysis of
r^p?zt, for instance along the following lines:
others
d has a right to
iff
(obligation-holders) are not entitled to interfere with d's cj)ing
(if d (f)'s or were to (j)).
Under this account, of
which
emerges straight-forwardly from modern analyses of r^p/zt, a painting or a
tree may indeed have "rights", such as to continue existing.
Although
the term 'right' can no doubt be 6^ctezz<ie(i along some such lines, the
analysis leaves out essential elements of the normal notion, namely the
involvement of choice.
There are, once again, various competing environ
mental ethics, some simple extensions of Western ethics which extrapolate
the notion of r^p/zt, some not, some rationalistic, some not, and so on.
Environmental positions can - but need not - adhere to the familiar
assumption that rights divide into the following two broad classes:First, there are rights held by those (persons, in o?z6 sense) who can
duly claim their rights themselves, a class which excludes many humans
So rejected also is the s^rozz^ correlation thesis, presented e.g. in
S.I. Benn and R.S. Peters, Pocz^aZ Pr^Tzc^pZes a7z<i ^Tze Pew<9<?r<2^<?
Allen and Unwin/1959, pp.89-9, according to which 'right and duty are
different names for the same normative relation, according to the point
of view from which it is regarded' (thereby also elevating what is at
best a coentailment into a stronger identity relation).
For example,
that d has a duty to look after the painting does not entail that the
painting has a right to be looked after by d, in any sense of 'right'
Benn and Peters are prepared to acknowledge.
The weaker correlation thesis - that d has a right to R entails that
at least someone else has a duty with respect to R - is not at issue.
80
&
and (so far as we know) almost all nonhuman animals.
Such rights are
often supposed to carry with them various responsibilities.
Secondly,
there are rights held by certain other (sometime sentient) creatures;
though the extent of this subclass of right-holders is a controversial
matter, it is generally taken to include at least infants, mentally
defective humans, dead humans, and some animals.
These rights do not
carry corresponding responsibilities, though they are, of course, the
However the assumption that certain rights -
ground for various claims.
the really central rights - are restricted to those who can claim them on
their OM% behalf, seems to be based on the faulty idea of private (or
separable) individuals as the basic metaphysical units.
In a community
of socio-environmental individuals there is no reason why one creature's
rights should not be claimed, as infants' and animals' rights frequently
are, by another:
these rights are others' responsibilities.
right-holder has itself no specific responsibilities.
Often a
Moreover the
supposed division leaves it quite vague what responsibilities "central"
often, it seems, they have none that
right-holders are supposed to have;
connect relevantly with their rights.
be put on the alleged division:
a primary nonderivative way).
Accordingly but little weight will
any preference-haver can hold rights (in
That any preference-haver can hold rights
is a consequence of the account of rt<y72t that usage of 'right to' appears
to lead to, namely for very many (action-type) predicates cj), d has a
right to
iff, for every other (obligation-holder) z, z is not entitled
to interfere with d if d chooses or would choose to <&.
Thus that d holds
rights requires of d only that it be the sort of creature that can make
choices, that it be a preference-haver.
The result holds good generally.
Consider the other main case, where the right is to some object b:
d has
a right to b iff, for certain ot (a class of obligation holders, which may
consist of a single person), members of a have an obligation to cede b to
d if a chooses or would choose (to have) b (cf. Benn and Peters, op. cit.,
p.89).
To be sure, there are other cases where rights to are attributed,
but these appear to reduce to the cases given;
which seems to amount to something like:
to work.
e.g. a has a right to work,
a has a right to an opportunity
Similar analyses - again with significance restrictions on the
class of (])S and bs - apply to rights ??ot to, e.g. an animal has a right
not to be kept in a cage.
Rights of this sort can likewise be held by any
preference-haver (but once again such rights
be extended beyond this
class to all natural objects).
Not every right-holder bears responsibilities or carries obligations :
infants for instance do not.
Responsibility-bearers and obligation
holders are a very proper subclass of humans and may only overlap the
81
A
t*
class of humans, and likewise the class of potential responsibility
bearers only overlaps the class of humans.
Thus more demanding deontic
notions afford no point of access for human chauvinism.
To be responsible
for something requires more than ability to have preferences or capacity to
make choices;
it implies liability to be called to account for the thing,
answerability for it.
Similarly, the undertaking of obligations involves
entering into binding relations which imply answerability.
Responsibility
bearers and obligation-holders are thus a subclass of preference-havers,
in accord with the annular theory.
For answerability and accountability
involve some level of linguistic competence - at the very least an ability
to answer, in some language (usually presumed
to be translatable, easily?,
into some human language) - which many preference-havers do not possess.
But responsibility and obligation lead a kind of a double life.
For a
creature that does not have responsibilities, may nonetheless be responsible
for various things, in the sense of having done them, and sometimes done
them deliberately;
as, e.g., the wallaby who breaks down protecting
netting and branches time and again is responsible for the demise of a
Japanese plumtree.
Rather similar oz^p/zf-statements hold true of subjects
who do not carry obligations;
consider, e.g., "wombats ought to be more
careful in crossing roads".
The upshot is that an environmental ethic can - despite its very
different value theory - retain, in large measure, and sharpen, rather
standard accounts of, and distinctions concerning, rights and obligations.
It is in this respect, however, that the sort of environmental ethic being
advanced differs markedly from alternative environmental ethics, e.g.
those which would, implausibly, confer rights to trees, assign obligations
to the soil, and so on.
JM<?7z 6J?fe?zs^o?z pos^f^o/zs, of which Leopold's
would be a leading example,
^Tzaf <2% eM^iro^z/??6?zfaZ ef/z^c
znz^sf yoZZozJ i/zg paffgru cy hosier?? ef/z^<?s
&ase <?^uss.
orzZz/
a zzzzzcTz
The way to a satisfactory, environmental, ethic is to reject
the pattern of the Western super-ethic, not to simply extend it.
The way
is through some sort of annular theory which recognises categorial distinc
tions between different sorts of things, not through a theory which would
delete the legitimate distinctions between the sorts of things.
latter mistaken way is unnecessary.
The
For example, in order to reject the
instrumental view of value, and to assign natural objects intrinsic value,
it is unnecessary to take Leopold's course of viewing all natural objects
as having r^p/zfs in the same way as persons and preference-havers are
regarded as having rights, or of persons as having obligations
natural
objects such as trees in the same sort of way as to other persons.
Thus too there is no need to see the rejection of the instrumental
82
<!
view as mystical or anti-rational, or as reverting to the view that
trees and other natural items house spirits (a view which in any case may
have simply been a way of expressing an allotment of value to natural
items), and hence as gross superstition.
An environmental ethic can be as
tough, practical, rational and secular as prevailing Western ethics.
so such an ethics will
lose much
Even
if it loses contact with its felt bases
in natural things and appreciation of natural things.
An environmental ethic will be much the poorer too if it limits
itself to the moral terminology, and variations of the categories, of
chauvinistically shaped ethics.
There will much more as to care, concern
and respect in the presentation and main principles of such an ethic than,
what occupies standard Western ethics, duties, obligations and rights.
In
this way too, further problems and puzzles for environmental ethics can
be resolved.
For example, the view that ethical concepts can apply to the
non-human world in an irreducible way is often seen as very puzzling.
Much of this puzzlement is generated by attempting to transfer intact a
strongly legalistic and person-oriented category of moral concepts, such
as rights, moral obligations, duties, and so on, to items in the natural
world where they give rise to such apparg^tZ-y problematic questions as
'Do stones have rights?', 'What are our moral obligations to trees?', and
so on.
If we attempt instead to apply a broader, less legalistic class of
moral concepts, such as care, concern, responsibility and respect, much of
the puzzling character of these still essentially moral attributions
vanishes.
There is no great problem for example about how we can legitimately
apply notions such as respect to natural items, once a few distinctions
are made.
The view that the land, animals, and the natural world should
be treated with respect was a common one in many hunting and gathering
societies, and it is clear that this respect was not seen as generated
merely by moral obligations to other persons.
dimension to relations
with
Respect adds a moral
the natural world.
Respect - or the lack of
it - comes out in everyday actions concerning the natural world.
The
following passage contrasts the Western treatment of the land which lacks
respect with the careful and respectful treatment of some American
Indians:
The White people never cared for land or dear or bear.
we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up.
little holes.
When we dig roots we make
When we built houses, we make little holes.
burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things.
acorns and pinenuts.
dead wood.
When
We don't chop down the trees.
When we
We shake down
We only use
But the White people plow up the ground, pull down the
83
St
trees, kill everything
(Tozzck ike Furik,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Tonck ike Forik, p.15)What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of eiiker use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour, Tke Cowpiete Rook
of
Faber, London, 1976).
A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for ZrZz?ZuZ human ends.
But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever
alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely
amoral (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration :of things' human,', of .'the species. ,-;Eveh the. ti.RfeLy herw,eYnphas.is,
for instance of the counterculture, on-human relations (a-s opposed to selfcontained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'contract',
'responsibility', 'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as z)oZ-Me, cZzotce, interference and (Zowa^e reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as nctnraZ- ri^/zt, ^ronn^Z of ri^Zzt^ and perznissib-
iZitz/., especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e);
and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, TZze Lopic of Cipnificonce an^Z Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
0
46
positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of TzuZ^ruZ rZpTzZ^
zzzoruZ-Ztz/-,
and
ucf-Zczz will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons
Hart,
(H.L.A.
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZ-ZZ-ZcuZ
P/z-fZoscpZzz/,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle.
Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of woruZ-ZZy, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishes
96
among ZzMzzzu?z actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
97
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistically based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, AfcruZ-Ztp; 24% P^z^rodMcf-Zo^ fo Ff/z-Zcs^
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 See, for example, P.R. Foot, TZzeor'Zes
Ft/z-Zcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967, and G.J. Warnock, Ccwfewporurz/ AforuZ P/z-ZZosop/zz/,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also TZzg
o.f MoraZ-Zfz/, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
t*
chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
s-
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria).
It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environ
mental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising a^naZf^z/ and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity^98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
in the philosophy of actdan, which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking.
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
And
98 Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in SacZaZ JnstZae
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, 'The idea of equality' in P^Zasap/zz^., PaZfZfcs and
JacZafz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 see, e.g.^T. Nagel, T/ze Pass-Z&'ZZ'Ztz/ a/ ^ZZrnZszzz, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1970.
88
even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational" economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction.
But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness.
Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity,
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to west going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian—type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;^00 while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them: that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences.
One
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider <9722 option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another.
To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice' , P/z^Zcsop/ztcczZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233); they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton,
AforuZ P<2M, Hutchinson, London,
1947) . And, firstly, such maxims are s^ppast?^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
-4
property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities, international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
For much of economics is squarely founded
but still far from negligible.
on chauvinism.
less,
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fs^s
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p.14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
.
102
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the s^rz^g^raZ. c/zaMgre
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further Controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider,e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which m turn influences the foundations of such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
4ZZ-es
value.
Me?zs<?/ze?zzjgr^, all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre, TTza P/z^Zosop/ztes c/ S'c^eyzcg, Oxford University Press,
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
*****
assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal—directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects. Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.104 Such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics)
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)). At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Renaissance,
the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of theRenaissance,with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half-divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature ...'.1°5
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
104 As Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed m his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Roz/aZ
of PTz^oscp/zy Lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West : on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
105 goth quotations are from T^ze
<?y tTzg 7?e7z<2^ss(2%<3g (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hpld:,
religious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position JhT the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or ^on
whether there exist
perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation ir^ micr<^-
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other*
*
True, most of these positions are defeated on t^e
basis of other considerations anyway; but it is an immediate and fur,t^ier
philosophical sphere.
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman)
consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
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Printout of draft, undated. Handwritten on attached leaf to paper: 57-85 Taken out for age. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1980) 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics', in Mannison DS, McRobbie, MA, Routley R (eds) Environmental philosophy, Dept. of Philosophy, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
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�HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
*
Richard and Vai Routley
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
moral codes - including, so it will be argued, Western ethics.
A most
serious failure of Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropocentricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reasonable, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
What is chauvinism?
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not
justification. PLzwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, zzzuZe chauvinism where the class is
human males,
chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bud, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
*
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for d ew, an environmental, ethic?',
of f/ze XVfb VorZd
P3 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 19
he University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, an
t the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of
Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it h
ed much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained,
the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, an
theses remain insufficiently developed or
e the previous and continuing
defended.
But in order
have been made, even though the
criticism, no substanti
paper has been raided and segments o it presented in improved form
'Against the inevitability
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Rou
of human chauvinism', in MoruZ P/zfZosopbz/
e University Press,
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre
1978, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensiv
, Choice
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on
some
u?zd VuZz^g, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977.
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to incre
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft,
ing some of the many objections.
1
�v'
it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple species loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - i/ it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
'x
out. 1
'X
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. Zzcmo sup^e^s) as zoologically defined.
nothing about the characteristic of
There is
itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans) as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds), 4^iwcZs^
and*
Morals.
4%
<?y
Gollancz,
London, 1971; P. Singer,
4 net.)
/or
cy
Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, 7'Zie
-Staffs <?y 4^iwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
�Meeds argument:
objection applies against the simple
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
2
more than speciesism.
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent.
We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings - items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
language or a higher level of
creatures having a (certain sort of)
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
On next page.
3
�unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
By
contrast the very many respects in which some uvimuT-s or sorts of animals
are corsftierabZi/ s^pericr to /zMwars (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, T^e
Mayic o/
*
t^e Senses.
/VeM Diseorerfes tn ^nfmat Perception, Allen, London,
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, /or example, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
hcfMccv humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
4
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a pgrscyz (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being /zvmuTZ - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source - the
discussion in E.O. Wilson,
TZze ZVetJ SpvtTzesis, Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld;
see, e.g. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4pes^ Mev
Lavpvupe,
Penguin, New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555-59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson's discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
�damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and to
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
a person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person c^unrin^sm is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
agent or initiator.
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense;
but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides f/zg (or a ur^c-Lai!-) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point, 6 but does not even always rank humans or
feature.
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
.6 on next page.
5
�why rank knowledge so highly:
for (paca Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
along with the added problem that it is very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality is, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
If it were the ability, e.g. to do
(say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
almost all cases).
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis?
What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in
persons - are free.
respect is it that persons - or worse, just
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of persons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very /nanp animals.
An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
/iMstraZasfar
'Radical vegetarians',
PAfZosopTip, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 In addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b" is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child's knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters, how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank the
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels, TZze
6>y FZ^fcaZ Y'/ieorfgs, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
�Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
they are sentient,
conscious animals that have intentions (e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts
preferred food beyond the barrier).
(e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to
stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g. 'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality').
This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for pgrscvz as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, TzozJ high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several KOHegtcZvaZenf
characterisations of (%afMruZ) person - none of them equivalent to
- that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
LazJ <7a^r?za:Z, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and (Ziy/greuf) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respcHsfbiZitp on bhe part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do
- exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CowwL/yrZfp (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person',
c/ thg
PocZefp, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
�The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have preferg
ences or preferred states.
For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and traded tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly
sk<2rp nzoraZ
commonly accepted in
ethics by philosophers and others alike, hgfzjggzz uZZ Tztzwuzzs
Zacks a satfs/cctcr^ cokcrcrzt basfs.
anZmaZ
aZZ ofker
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
9
among things? Yes, several divisions of wcrcZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration
others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action.
Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. These
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a "quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creatures
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of these
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; but,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better - not as
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours in a
rainbow meet.
8
�it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
of preferences (and
The
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for
sort of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze corresponding penerut defecsihZe odtipution principle is
not to pnt others ("ot/zer pre/erence-Zzurers? into a dispre/erred state for
no pood reason.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a certain serf of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as Jzurminp
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations towards can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
-not necessary condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
�consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.^^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,H that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences;
but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
12
belief,
appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zj/zuf it is that animals
As N. Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.g., by the women's movement: that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
- that animals' choices could not be rational.
Interestingly, choices
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
(forthcoming)
and R. Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to animals',
paper prepared for the FeZig/ conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
�believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals; if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old.
As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which concept is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept" gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot strictly be harmed or have their welfare
affected, in that they can be put into states they disprefer.
Nor do
empathy and analogical considerations extend beyond preference-having
creatures:
for only these can care about how they are treated.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have 'preferred states'
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.
For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
In this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests. However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary).
Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
�into the nearby ocean.
There is a general obligation principle
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely, z-zat fa jaaparjise tTze zJaHhefzzp a_f ?zatzzraZ abjaafs or
sz/sfews zjft/zaz^t paad reasor.
Moral coroerr does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers.
In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and arzp abjact car., in principle at least, be ar object a/
value or disvalue, and so of morat corcerr.
corcerrfry almost any sort of object.
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base c^ass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
hazards which moral obligations (and a corresponding serf of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that %a dfsfizzcfiazzs
can be made zjffbfrz the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example, cazifracfzzaT- obligations -
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded.
The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an ann^Zar pfcfzzra of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligation
holders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-committed-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
�contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences:
the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an exluded class, e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvin-
istic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5).
It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist.
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory. But dropping the
notion of
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for:
taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
. .
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
is the
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
14 According to Q. Gibson such a criticism of chauvinism is based firmly
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles. This is simply
not so:
there is no reliance on such principles. The general argument
takes the form;
feature f cannot be what justifies the differential
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f. Neither
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage. Moreover Western equality principles - at least as convention
ally formulated - are in serious doubt, especially with the rejection
of human chauvinism (see further §6).
13
�only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification.
The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
W. Cobbett,
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ
bub by tbe
o/ ZTzg Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in fbbs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their uaZ^e
eroded or impaired.
The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as -ZsoZufgb natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
�It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.) setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
(A. Leopold,
SuTzd"
zlZ-muzzur? zjvt/z
ot/zer essays on Conservation, New York, 1966, p.238).
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism, e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an erzvvroHwgutaZ. et/zvc, however, such traditionally
15
�permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to seme moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral.
The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is mcraZ in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. §6).
Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrued
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
sense the scope of morality would
be morally circumscribed, and in
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic, an
ethic
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
�notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have. The Western ethic is not so monolithic
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
15
concerning man's relation to nature have recently been mapped out:
a
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases
(since - at least on the mainstream Stoic16
Augustine view - it exists only for his sake ), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Afurz's
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash,
Affzzd, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg,
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
17
so is the resulting tone.
�environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
/ur
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement',
16 (1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do
^<9 /ar
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley, T/ze
/or f/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
�"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics.
Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward:
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
19
physically interferes with others. " It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
20
items would not affect others (a?2CMfnfcr/cre?Ycc cssz^npffcyz).
Be this as
it may, the wcdfyfeti
pcsfffoz? appears, at least for many thinkers,
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic
Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of others has been progress
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans - but
rarely further in the West until recently.
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's principle of
rzo^-i^fcrycrcuce, 'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, unless
there is some reason for preventing him' (Benn (c), op. cit.;
inset
from (a), p.605). The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' (e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
of the fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification'
(cf.(a)), the principle is dubious, especially cyiven principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
19
�Pggg:2/,
Grczjf??
T^g S
c7Mf7c??
*
f-ggcwgs f/zg PrchZgw^
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the Dowz'nic?? t??gsis - the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic 7s wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An) gf^7g is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
spgcffiu ethic, and a more generic notion, a SMpgr-gf^fg, under which
specific ethics are grouped.
(As usual, a wgfu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An
sz/sfgm s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth.
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
�assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that t/zgre are Z^z/iz-z-ZteZz/ wary gf/zZcuZ sz/stezns.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton. . Accordingly, there is logical space for aZferratire
ratiaraZ etTzies.
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr-ZzzcZpZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the superethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
dominant position. A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
21
On next page.
21
�The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that a pgrscu's action is
<ioos not intor/ere zjit/z others,
profide<i if
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Mo'reover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ouZi/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of
people (J.S. Mill,
f-Zbgrfy
Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /or
Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment;
it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
�the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
possible others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
22
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D).
Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made;
then even if
the main argument does not succeed, minor oarianfs a/ fba main argument
zjiZ^ snccooti.
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary"
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as permissible harm to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (0), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
ing theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc. Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
If merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', /Vaas (accepted
for publication in 1974;
still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
Or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
�attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded in every such situation.
'
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons. But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
T/zefr
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals;
e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
�formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy seme environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zusf pecpZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction.
One considers the last people in
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
2 8 On next page.
27
�(iii) The grreat e^frgpre^gz/r example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
sociefz/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
example. The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
2 8 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29
The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
�activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the tragedy-of-the-privatised-commons type
reasons well-explained in Barkley and Seckier, op. cit.) along the
private demand curve until the blue whale population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work. 30
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The fuufory farw example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
�be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
environmental ethic it is not.
The treatment of the animals on the farm
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The MiZderness example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
The prevailing ethic sees nothing wrong
with the destruction of such a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned
30
(Compare the situation
slavery.)
�In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
and so forth;
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly fel,t,
31
�but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so enoironwontuZ gt/zios will not
be nnip^otp detorwZng<i, or adopted by every valuer.
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the determination of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts. 31
As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/Tztsoonooptions on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in FpnoZZtp arid Freedom.
*
JntornutZonoZ and Comparattvo c/nr-Zoprz/donoo (ed. G. Dorsey), Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially
FwotZonaZ Prosentatton (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those. The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
�environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed. There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Although a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
wap??/ environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
Tssz^gs
A. Erlich's
(such as P. and
FuoZ-Ctyz/,
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
erzf-freZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.^4
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
�Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said - that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
Firstly, many conventional
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
and
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions. That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /Izf^re humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached.
Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (nonimmediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which dr take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
We need only consider the operation of irtersioraZ- corcepfs
Example 1.
Mif/zizz
uctz^^Z- zjerZ-d, for example, the concept of duwupe to a natural
item, and the associated notion of campezzsaffrr for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in S/za^Zd Trees #are Sfardirp?
Tdp^fs /dr /Vaf^raZ. dhj^efs
Thus
Tabards L^pcZ
(Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
�adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZaue not the ozjyzer, for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
Example 2.
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
�Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous /gZt or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character, and feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
The sort of behaviour uurrarzteti by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different. It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
sample.
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no reaZ practical difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic, t/ze
arpMwezzt yrcm
problems,
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
�Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
(2)
environmental ethic.
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is.
Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
3 5 Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major
pollution, the exhaustion of resources,
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding
types of human conduct or of preventing
having its present consequences.
ecological problems:
the destruction of
a way either of altering
that human conduct from
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 Here and elsewhere, 'environmental'
less interchangeably.
and 'ecological' are used more or
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
�arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
an alternative
ethic.
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others)
'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'. 39
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
persist or, more likely, intensify.
What is not immediately evident is
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific 'types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others, T/ze Limits fa GrgzjfZz,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', FVozncs IX, 1978, p.66.
Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TTze CZrsizzy Circle, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk,
PZuzzef, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others
/or SMrrfzJuZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows of uZ-., op. cit.
38
�does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC
The basic-and basically mistaken-doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, iz? t/ze same /as/ziazz
as CzzaZzza^Ze? peapZe, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests-a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric):-
Show me a man-oriented society inwhich it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 See e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', IzzgMfrz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does z?ot imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rather, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
�can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement.
It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called
and Teep ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled topper-term exploitation of
the environment - something which is compatible with denying value to
42
...
everything except man ' and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a Ttf^erept uttitp(7e to Mature.
The
first view, the long-term or erttpbteped e^ptoitatior view, which is
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjfse pse of resources', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have frstr^meptut value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of pse to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely because
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of copseraotiop, e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Sprrep of
/Ipstrotfap Forestry and tVood-Fused Ipd^strfes.
Part PT. Prodpcttop
Forestry Peretopmept PZup.
Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
�According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
conclusion:
Rodman reaches a similar
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search /or
i?? a
^orZ-d^ International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and TnMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
�instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
With examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences.
Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford. 4 3 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethics into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers (who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
The concept of
too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
�value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in seme instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation;
if it is manage4
4
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
On some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
�nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic, f/zat
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use 4 5 ...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
In contrast
to the economic ethos of Resource Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places (and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50^ my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics: intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
�rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone.it also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold's
"land ethic". 4 7 In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. singer,
*??;
E-ZEerafZc
/VeD
Random House, New York, 1975;
C. Stone, op. cit.
47 at least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position:
but not according to Rodman;
see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented in
C. Darwin,
Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
48 On next page.
45
�last people themselves. Then the counterexamples apply as before
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
facts of experience:
as.Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value 49 derives from experience (of experiential,
or sentient, objects). A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one
time,
*
etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others.
Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
�standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3. But Rodman overstates his case in
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For, as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate;
and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
�relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the SsZZ-onf thesis:
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
p.119).
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
The mistaken treatment of them
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
�In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness. It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
Fora
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
�as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes
(given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out. 51 For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51
His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
�legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
(p.97).
have a niche'
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted; and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil -
occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another. Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction, 'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
�The first disjunct yields
form:
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things);
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52
Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts. So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
�Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies -
which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life'
(p.103 and note 66).
But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
/row
and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
by God,
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally"
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course), and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively.
When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (Tac Te
#18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
55
are also unavoidable; *
for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable)
"is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
53 The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality; it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
54 Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather:
that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
55 Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted),
to delay "the war against nature".
53
�alternative situations;
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality - as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind, which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly,
what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle. The
procedure points in the direction to be pursued: replacement of the oversimple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors.
After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined
�through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as c/fe?? natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is a threat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further afield, and resorts to the myth of
microcosm:
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e'. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of
without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
it is an
account of the
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),56 but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
�For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
57
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.
The metaphysics deepens,
A resister 'does not stand over against
then, the reasons for resistance.
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
integral part of [it]'
he is an
((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
... By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole. Economics, morality, and
an esthetic religiosity have niches in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield
pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false.
Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are
limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative.
A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
It is but a short step to the 'fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:'
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
�trees, kill everything
f/xe Farf/z,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Farf/z, p.15)-
What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of edf/zer use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour,
CompZtsfe
Faber, London, 1976). A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
�would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for
human ends. But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever, alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely amoral, (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
�systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial'reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration of things human, of the species. Even the timely new emphasis,
for instance of the counterculture, on human relations (as opposed to self-
contained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'responsibility',
'contract',
'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as
and
-
reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as natural right, ground of right, and permissib
ility, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
gr
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e); and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, T/ze
py
urui Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
�positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of nutMruZ
wcrcZZtpj jMst-Zce and cctfc?? will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons (H.L.A.
Hart,
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZZticuZ
PbiZoscpbp,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of .^ercZ'Ztp, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishe
96
among
actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness
or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistic-
ally based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, ^eruZitz/.- Xx
tc Effies,
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 see, for example, P.R. Foot, Tbecries cf FtZrZcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967,and G.J. Warnock, Oc^tewpcrcrp McraZ PhZZcscpbp,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also The Object cf AfcrcZZty, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
�chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria). It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environmental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising eguuZitp and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity,98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
in the philosophy of
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking,
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
go
And
Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in JooiuZ
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, ' The idea of equality' in P^i^osoph^, Pacifies artJ
Jpcietz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 gee, e.g. T. Nagel, TTns PossiM7-7fi/ of
Oxford, 1970.
88
Clarendon Press,
�even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational
economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness. Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to mosf going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian-type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
�between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them:
that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
One
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider one option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another. To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
100 Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice', PkiZcscphicuZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233);
they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
10^ While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton, TPe
Hutchinson, London,
1947. And, firstly, such maxims are s^pp<9se^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
�property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities,-international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
less,
but still far from negligible. For much of economics is squarely founded
on chauvinism.
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fses
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p-14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
�The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so.that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
102 .
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically'
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the sfrzzcfLzraZ-
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider, e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which in turn influences the foundations or such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
AZZes
value.
isf AfeyzscZzoMMor^., all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theory, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre,
P/zi^osop?zies of
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
Oxford University Press,
�assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal-directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects.
Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.^^4 such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics).
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)).
At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Rennaissance, the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of the Renaissance, with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half—divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature . ..'.^O-^
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
404
Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed in his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Poz/aZ. Irzstitz^te
P/ziZ-csopTzz/ lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West': on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
104 goth quotations are from ?7ze
<9/ t/z<3 Pgrzaissa^cg (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
�was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hold:
reli.gious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position in the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or on
whether there exist <2722/ perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation in micro
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other
philosophical sphere.
True, most of these positions are defeated on the
basis of other considerations anyway;
but it is an immediate and further
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
'the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman) consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
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HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
*
Richard and Vai Routley
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
moral codes - including, so it will be argued, Western ethics.
A most
serious failure of Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropocentricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reasonable, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
What is chauvinism?
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not
justification. PLzwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, zzzuZe chauvinism where the class is
human males,
chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bud, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
*
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for d ew, an environmental, ethic?',
of f/ze XVfb VorZd
P3 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 19
he University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, an
t the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of
Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it h
ed much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained,
the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, an
theses remain insufficiently developed or
e the previous and continuing
defended.
But in order
have been made, even though the
criticism, no substanti
paper has been raided and segments o it presented in improved form
'Against the inevitability
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Rou
of human chauvinism', in MoruZ P/zfZosopbz/
e University Press,
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre
1978, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensiv
, Choice
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on
some
u?zd VuZz^g, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977.
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to incre
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft,
ing some of the many objections.
1
v'
it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple species loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - i/ it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
'x
out. 1
'X
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. Zzcmo sup^e^s) as zoologically defined.
nothing about the characteristic of
There is
itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans) as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds), 4^iwcZs^
and*
Morals.
4%
<?y
Gollancz,
London, 1971; P. Singer,
4 net.)
/or
cy
Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, 7'Zie
-Staffs <?y 4^iwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
Meeds argument:
objection applies against the simple
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
2
more than speciesism.
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent.
We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings - items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
language or a higher level of
creatures having a (certain sort of)
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
On next page.
3
unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
By
contrast the very many respects in which some uvimuT-s or sorts of animals
are corsftierabZi/ s^pericr to /zMwars (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, T^e
Mayic o/
*
t^e Senses.
/VeM Diseorerfes tn ^nfmat Perception, Allen, London,
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, /or example, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
hcfMccv humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
4
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a pgrscyz (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being /zvmuTZ - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source - the
discussion in E.O. Wilson,
TZze ZVetJ SpvtTzesis, Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld;
see, e.g. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4pes^ Mev
Lavpvupe,
Penguin, New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555-59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson's discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and to
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
a person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person c^unrin^sm is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
agent or initiator.
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense;
but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides f/zg (or a ur^c-Lai!-) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point, 6 but does not even always rank humans or
feature.
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
.6 on next page.
5
why rank knowledge so highly:
for (paca Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
along with the added problem that it is very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality is, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
If it were the ability, e.g. to do
(say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
almost all cases).
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis?
What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in
persons - are free.
respect is it that persons - or worse, just
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of persons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very /nanp animals.
An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
/iMstraZasfar
'Radical vegetarians',
PAfZosopTip, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 In addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b" is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child's knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters, how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank the
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels, TZze
6>y FZ^fcaZ Y'/ieorfgs, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
they are sentient,
conscious animals that have intentions (e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts
preferred food beyond the barrier).
(e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to
stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g. 'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality').
This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for pgrscvz as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, TzozJ high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several KOHegtcZvaZenf
characterisations of (%afMruZ) person - none of them equivalent to
- that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
LazJ <7a^r?za:Z, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and (Ziy/greuf) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respcHsfbiZitp on bhe part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do
- exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CowwL/yrZfp (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person',
c/ thg
PocZefp, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have preferg
ences or preferred states.
For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and traded tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly
sk<2rp nzoraZ
commonly accepted in
ethics by philosophers and others alike, hgfzjggzz uZZ Tztzwuzzs
Zacks a satfs/cctcr^ cokcrcrzt basfs.
anZmaZ
aZZ ofker
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
9
among things? Yes, several divisions of wcrcZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration
others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action.
Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. These
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a "quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creatures
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of these
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; but,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better - not as
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours in a
rainbow meet.
8
it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
of preferences (and
The
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for
sort of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze corresponding penerut defecsihZe odtipution principle is
not to pnt others ("ot/zer pre/erence-Zzurers? into a dispre/erred state for
no pood reason.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a certain serf of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as Jzurminp
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations towards can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
-not necessary condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.^^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,H that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences;
but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
12
belief,
appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zj/zuf it is that animals
As N. Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.g., by the women's movement: that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
- that animals' choices could not be rational.
Interestingly, choices
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
(forthcoming)
and R. Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to animals',
paper prepared for the FeZig/ conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals; if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old.
As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which concept is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept" gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot strictly be harmed or have their welfare
affected, in that they can be put into states they disprefer.
Nor do
empathy and analogical considerations extend beyond preference-having
creatures:
for only these can care about how they are treated.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have 'preferred states'
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.
For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
In this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests. However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary).
Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
into the nearby ocean.
There is a general obligation principle
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely, z-zat fa jaaparjise tTze zJaHhefzzp a_f ?zatzzraZ abjaafs or
sz/sfews zjft/zaz^t paad reasor.
Moral coroerr does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers.
In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and arzp abjact car., in principle at least, be ar object a/
value or disvalue, and so of morat corcerr.
corcerrfry almost any sort of object.
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base c^ass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
hazards which moral obligations (and a corresponding serf of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that %a dfsfizzcfiazzs
can be made zjffbfrz the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example, cazifracfzzaT- obligations -
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded.
The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an ann^Zar pfcfzzra of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligation
holders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-committed-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences:
the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an exluded class, e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvin-
istic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5).
It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist.
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory. But dropping the
notion of
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for:
taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
. .
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
is the
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
14 According to Q. Gibson such a criticism of chauvinism is based firmly
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles. This is simply
not so:
there is no reliance on such principles. The general argument
takes the form;
feature f cannot be what justifies the differential
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f. Neither
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage. Moreover Western equality principles - at least as convention
ally formulated - are in serious doubt, especially with the rejection
of human chauvinism (see further §6).
13
only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification.
The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
W. Cobbett,
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ
bub by tbe
o/ ZTzg Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in fbbs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their uaZ^e
eroded or impaired.
The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as -ZsoZufgb natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.) setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
(A. Leopold,
SuTzd"
zlZ-muzzur? zjvt/z
ot/zer essays on Conservation, New York, 1966, p.238).
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism, e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an erzvvroHwgutaZ. et/zvc, however, such traditionally
15
permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to seme moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral.
The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is mcraZ in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. §6).
Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrued
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
sense the scope of morality would
be morally circumscribed, and in
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic, an
ethic
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have. The Western ethic is not so monolithic
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
15
concerning man's relation to nature have recently been mapped out:
a
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases
(since - at least on the mainstream Stoic16
Augustine view - it exists only for his sake ), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Afurz's
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash,
Affzzd, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg,
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
17
so is the resulting tone.
environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
/ur
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement',
16 (1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do
^<9 /ar
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley, T/ze
/or f/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics.
Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward:
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
19
physically interferes with others. " It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
20
items would not affect others (a?2CMfnfcr/cre?Ycc cssz^npffcyz).
Be this as
it may, the wcdfyfeti
pcsfffoz? appears, at least for many thinkers,
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic
Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of others has been progress
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans - but
rarely further in the West until recently.
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's principle of
rzo^-i^fcrycrcuce, 'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, unless
there is some reason for preventing him' (Benn (c), op. cit.;
inset
from (a), p.605). The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' (e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
of the fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification'
(cf.(a)), the principle is dubious, especially cyiven principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
19
Pggg:2/,
Grczjf??
T^g S
c7Mf7c??
*
f-ggcwgs f/zg PrchZgw^
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the Dowz'nic?? t??gsis - the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic 7s wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An) gf^7g is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
spgcffiu ethic, and a more generic notion, a SMpgr-gf^fg, under which
specific ethics are grouped.
(As usual, a wgfu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An
sz/sfgm s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth.
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that t/zgre are Z^z/iz-z-ZteZz/ wary gf/zZcuZ sz/stezns.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton. . Accordingly, there is logical space for aZferratire
ratiaraZ etTzies.
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr-ZzzcZpZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the superethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
dominant position. A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
21
On next page.
21
The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that a pgrscu's action is
<ioos not intor/ere zjit/z others,
profide<i if
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Mo'reover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ouZi/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of
people (J.S. Mill,
f-Zbgrfy
Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /or
Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment;
it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
possible others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
22
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D).
Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made;
then even if
the main argument does not succeed, minor oarianfs a/ fba main argument
zjiZ^ snccooti.
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary"
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as permissible harm to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (0), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
ing theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc. Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
If merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', /Vaas (accepted
for publication in 1974;
still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
Or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded in every such situation.
'
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons. But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
T/zefr
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals;
e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy seme environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zusf pecpZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction.
One considers the last people in
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
2 8 On next page.
27
(iii) The grreat e^frgpre^gz/r example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
sociefz/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
example. The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
2 8 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29
The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the tragedy-of-the-privatised-commons type
reasons well-explained in Barkley and Seckier, op. cit.) along the
private demand curve until the blue whale population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work. 30
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The fuufory farw example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
environmental ethic it is not.
The treatment of the animals on the farm
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The MiZderness example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
The prevailing ethic sees nothing wrong
with the destruction of such a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned
30
(Compare the situation
slavery.)
In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
and so forth;
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly fel,t,
31
but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so enoironwontuZ gt/zios will not
be nnip^otp detorwZng<i, or adopted by every valuer.
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the determination of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts. 31
As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/Tztsoonooptions on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in FpnoZZtp arid Freedom.
*
JntornutZonoZ and Comparattvo c/nr-Zoprz/donoo (ed. G. Dorsey), Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially
FwotZonaZ Prosentatton (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those. The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed. There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Although a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
wap??/ environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
Tssz^gs
A. Erlich's
(such as P. and
FuoZ-Ctyz/,
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
erzf-freZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.^4
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said - that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
Firstly, many conventional
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
and
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions. That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /Izf^re humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached.
Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (nonimmediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which dr take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
We need only consider the operation of irtersioraZ- corcepfs
Example 1.
Mif/zizz
uctz^^Z- zjerZ-d, for example, the concept of duwupe to a natural
item, and the associated notion of campezzsaffrr for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in S/za^Zd Trees #are Sfardirp?
Tdp^fs /dr /Vaf^raZ. dhj^efs
Thus
Tabards L^pcZ
(Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZaue not the ozjyzer, for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
Example 2.
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous /gZt or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character, and feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
The sort of behaviour uurrarzteti by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different. It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
sample.
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no reaZ practical difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic, t/ze
arpMwezzt yrcm
problems,
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
(2)
environmental ethic.
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is.
Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
3 5 Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major
pollution, the exhaustion of resources,
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding
types of human conduct or of preventing
having its present consequences.
ecological problems:
the destruction of
a way either of altering
that human conduct from
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 Here and elsewhere, 'environmental'
less interchangeably.
and 'ecological' are used more or
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
an alternative
ethic.
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others)
'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'. 39
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
persist or, more likely, intensify.
What is not immediately evident is
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific 'types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others, T/ze Limits fa GrgzjfZz,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', FVozncs IX, 1978, p.66.
Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TTze CZrsizzy Circle, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk,
PZuzzef, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others
/or SMrrfzJuZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows of uZ-., op. cit.
38
does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC
The basic-and basically mistaken-doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, iz? t/ze same /as/ziazz
as CzzaZzza^Ze? peapZe, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests-a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric):-
Show me a man-oriented society inwhich it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 See e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', IzzgMfrz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does z?ot imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rather, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement.
It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called
and Teep ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled topper-term exploitation of
the environment - something which is compatible with denying value to
42
...
everything except man ' and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a Ttf^erept uttitp(7e to Mature.
The
first view, the long-term or erttpbteped e^ptoitatior view, which is
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjfse pse of resources', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have frstr^meptut value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of pse to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely because
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of copseraotiop, e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Sprrep of
/Ipstrotfap Forestry and tVood-Fused Ipd^strfes.
Part PT. Prodpcttop
Forestry Peretopmept PZup.
Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
conclusion:
Rodman reaches a similar
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search /or
i?? a
^orZ-d^ International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and TnMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
With examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences.
Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford. 4 3 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethics into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers (who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
The concept of
too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in seme instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation;
if it is manage4
4
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
On some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic, f/zat
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use 4 5 ...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
In contrast
to the economic ethos of Resource Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places (and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50^ my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics: intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone.it also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold's
"land ethic". 4 7 In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. singer,
*??;
E-ZEerafZc
/VeD
Random House, New York, 1975;
C. Stone, op. cit.
47 at least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position:
but not according to Rodman;
see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented in
C. Darwin,
Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
48 On next page.
45
last people themselves. Then the counterexamples apply as before
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
facts of experience:
as.Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value 49 derives from experience (of experiential,
or sentient, objects). A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one
time,
*
etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others.
Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3. But Rodman overstates his case in
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For, as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate;
and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the SsZZ-onf thesis:
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
p.119).
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
The mistaken treatment of them
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness. It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
Fora
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes
(given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out. 51 For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51
His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
(p.97).
have a niche'
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted; and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil -
occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another. Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction, 'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
The first disjunct yields
form:
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things);
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52
Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts. So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies -
which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life'
(p.103 and note 66).
But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
/row
and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
by God,
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally"
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course), and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively.
When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (Tac Te
#18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
55
are also unavoidable; *
for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable)
"is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
53 The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality; it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
54 Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather:
that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
55 Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted),
to delay "the war against nature".
53
alternative situations;
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality - as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind, which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly,
what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle. The
procedure points in the direction to be pursued: replacement of the oversimple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors.
After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined
through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as c/fe?? natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is a threat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further afield, and resorts to the myth of
microcosm:
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e'. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of
without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
it is an
account of the
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),56 but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
57
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.
The metaphysics deepens,
A resister 'does not stand over against
then, the reasons for resistance.
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
integral part of [it]'
he is an
((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
... By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole. Economics, morality, and
an esthetic religiosity have niches in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield
pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false.
Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are
limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative.
A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
It is but a short step to the 'fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:'
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
trees, kill everything
f/xe Farf/z,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Farf/z, p.15)-
What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of edf/zer use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour,
CompZtsfe
Faber, London, 1976). A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for
human ends. But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever, alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely amoral, (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial'reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration of things human, of the species. Even the timely new emphasis,
for instance of the counterculture, on human relations (as opposed to self-
contained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'responsibility',
'contract',
'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as
and
-
reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as natural right, ground of right, and permissib
ility, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
gr
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e); and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, T/ze
py
urui Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of nutMruZ
wcrcZZtpj jMst-Zce and cctfc?? will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons (H.L.A.
Hart,
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZZticuZ
PbiZoscpbp,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of .^ercZ'Ztp, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishe
96
among
actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness
or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistic-
ally based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, ^eruZitz/.- Xx
tc Effies,
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 see, for example, P.R. Foot, Tbecries cf FtZrZcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967,and G.J. Warnock, Oc^tewpcrcrp McraZ PhZZcscpbp,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also The Object cf AfcrcZZty, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria). It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environmental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising eguuZitp and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity,98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
in the philosophy of
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking,
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
go
And
Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in JooiuZ
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, ' The idea of equality' in P^i^osoph^, Pacifies artJ
Jpcietz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 gee, e.g. T. Nagel, TTns PossiM7-7fi/ of
Oxford, 1970.
88
Clarendon Press,
even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational
economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness. Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to mosf going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian-type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them:
that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
One
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider one option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another. To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
100 Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice', PkiZcscphicuZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233);
they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
10^ While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton, TPe
Hutchinson, London,
1947. And, firstly, such maxims are s^pp<9se^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities,-international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
less,
but still far from negligible. For much of economics is squarely founded
on chauvinism.
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fses
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p-14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so.that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
102 .
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically'
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the sfrzzcfLzraZ-
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider, e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which in turn influences the foundations or such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
AZZes
value.
isf AfeyzscZzoMMor^., all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theory, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre,
P/zi^osop?zies of
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
Oxford University Press,
assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal-directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects.
Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.^^4 such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics).
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)).
At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Rennaissance, the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of the Renaissance, with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half—divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature . ..'.^O-^
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
404
Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed in his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Poz/aZ. Irzstitz^te
P/ziZ-csopTzz/ lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West': on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
104 goth quotations are from ?7ze
<9/ t/z<3 Pgrzaissa^cg (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hold:
reli.gious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position in the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or on
whether there exist <2722/ perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation in micro
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other
philosophical sphere.
True, most of these positions are defeated on the
basis of other considerations anyway;
but it is an immediate and further
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
'the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman) consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
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Text
Styles of Environmental Philosophy: Eastern and Western Modes, Values and
Sources
In a provocative article, Holmes Rolston III challenges those trying to develop an
environmental philosophy from traditional Eastern sources to put up or shut up. Rolston's
challenge (the precise details of which we'll get to) matters, because it sets down what many
have thought but few have dared to say so publicly. It gets t-he dispute out in the open.
Eastern philosophy, like Continental philosophy, is largely garbage, and not worth bothering
about: that is what many in the Anlgo-American scientistic line of philosophical business
really think.
Styles of Philosophizing:
Philosophy
Contrasting Features of Different
Styles of
Historicality. Continental philosophy is characteristically attempted in an evident
historical setting. It is not sharply separated from history of ideas. Analyticaly philosophy is
typically ahistorical.
This historicality posture is one of several that pushes analytic philosophy in a scientific
direction, so that it is carried on like a modern science; continental philosophy is much more
in the humanities tradition, and thus lies on the other side of the "two cultures" divide.
Systematicness. Continental philosophy is much concerned with system building, mainly
varying the traditions, e.g. Kantianism. Analytic philosophy attacks small problems in a
piecemeal way. (It is not without a background systematic framework, this is an unquestioned
framework).
The "speculative"
character of continental
philosophy derives from its
systematicness; from its attempt to cover a very broad sweep, e.g.. eventually all
philosophical ground. A result is that it is often very up in the air, not so often getting down
to concrete details, and the "hard" work analytical philosophy prides itself upon (but doesn't
that often do).
Pontifical philosophy, pronouncements from on high by elevated established figures, is a
____I
variety of continental philosophy in the speculative mode.
It is a variety presently well
practiced in the Soviet Union.
Triviality of analytic and language philosophies as seen from article, continental
Erudition/educati"on.
analytic philosophies are not educatted in the traditions, only a bit
- - - - - --- ---
�2
more than essentials. Erudition matters in continental philosphy, not in analytic. Analytic
can be a young person's game, part of the youth culture of the dominent Western paradigm.
[Thus analytic philosophy seems almost a dilett':1-nte's sport, indulged in by glib young men
with quickness of wit rather than solidness of foundational knowledge. This is not to say that
analytic philosophy does not clarify concepts and solve ancient philosophical chestnuts, but
once the concepts have been clarified and the chestnuts cracked, there is no place for them.
They do not fit into a system or even form a piece of a larger conundrum or add to
philosophic wisdom (for wisdom is not part of the analytic method or a purpose for its results.
On the other hand, Eastern philosophies, for instance Tao, does not c1arify the concepts nor
solve the puzzles, instead it sketches a system. Tao outlines, but does not fill in the picture as
continental philosophies would do. If these three systems were compared to art, painting or
drawing, then analytic philosophy is a clever and detailed thumbnail sketch. It is the
preparatory drawing. It is the student's exercise. It serves a purpose, but it is not fulfilling,
nor satisfactorily revealing. Continental philosophy is the grand masterpiece never finished.
The large picture is begun, but not completed. More and more is constantly added to the
canvas, but the canvas is too large or too complex to finish. Eastern philosophy, Tao, is the
working sketch. It is gives the master plan without giving the detail or the finished product. It
is like a pencil sketch awaiting each individual to fill in the colour. The positions of things are
given but not their significance to the overall work nor their fulness revealed. Yet it must be
kept in mind that Eastern philosophy cannot be represented by a single branch or example.]
No monolithic contrast exists between Eastern and Western styles. Chinese philosophy
differs from Indian philosophy as much as continental philosophy does from analytic
philosophy.
INSERT: In contrast to the mass of fiddly, piecemeal arguments of analytic philosophy,
Tao, for instance, presents little or no argument and little logic. Instead it presents an array
of paradoxes. These form a broad picture on a large scale, that in a fashion similar to
continental philosophy is an almost complete philosophy, but in contrast to continental
philosophy there is no mass of detail. There is almost no detail at all. It is left to the reader
to fill out the picture.
Like continental philosophy Tao requires participant involvement.
---------------
�3
Thus the object is not to fill in all the spaces but to give the broad picture so that the
individual can fil] in the details as appropriate. It is a pluralistic framework which allows
scope for expansion and within which the individual can deal with the paradoxes of life.
Unlike Western philosophies that emphasize various sorts of atomistic approaches,
Taoism works from the whole down rather than the atomic up.
Various sorts of atomistic
Western philosophies have a subject-object distinction or division (ontology); instead Tao has
a different metaphysics based on process or events. If a dynamic system is not determined by
individual processes, then it is better if you descend.
-------------- The opening gambit about language makes a point, but the real point is that
unless an idea adopted from another culture is both desirable for and compatible with the
adopting culture, then it is senseless in the first case and useless in the second case to adopt
the idea. However, centuries of ideological imperialism have shown that an idea can be forced
upon another culture, even if only in a corrupted form, whether or not it is desirable for or
compatible with the 'adopting' culture.
As for the evaluating of scientific description, HR III has made the point that it is an
embarrassment to science that it .cannot teach us to value. Thus it may in some sense be the
wrong approach to attempt to make Taoist thought compatible with scientific description. It
is obvious from the work of Capra that Eastern and Western metaphysics can be made
compatible. Of course, Western science has a 'loaded metaphysical agenda', and it seems to
be a misconception about the nature of that loading that causes so many problems in
accepting value judgments. Here is the old problem that science is supposedly 'value-free' and
'objective' coming to mean that scientific interpretation is merely descriptive and 'value-free'.
However, what is happening is that the hypothetico-reductive paradigm is replacing less
'rigorous' paradigms. etc. etc.
As for the reverence. for life, is it that there are no reasons for revering or respecting life
in biology or is it that biologists are not looking for reasons to revere or respect life? When an
ability like tool use is found in a creature like an assassin bug, the bug is not promoted up
some scale of moral regard, but tool use is dropped from the the list of items warranting
moral regard.
�4
Also there is the point that reverence for life can be directed towards either the abstract
concept of life or towards particular holders of life. To save a species from extinction is to
save the individuals of that species from death, but there is a difference between saying that
life is sacred {in some manner morally considerable) and anything possessing life should be
entitled to respect or regard or not killed. In the way that life is treated in most Western
societies, it is wrong to kill humans in most cases, but it is alright to kill a bull for food unless
that bull is a prize breeding bull or a child's pet or for some other such reason. That is, life is
not revered but the lives of certain creatures are valued because of other constraints. Life in
these latter cases takes on value for instrumental reasons that have nothing to do with
reverence for life in the abstract. Thus if science finds that the cacto-blastis is good for ·
destroying prickly pear, then regard for the life of this caterpiller goes up. A reason is found
for respecting its life. Yet the individual cacto-blastis is still of no consequence and the regard
for the species is coterminous with the need for the species.
---------------Eastern thought is in direct conflict with the dominant social paradigm and lends
substance to various alternatives.
Holmes Rolston III has confused Tao with binary opposition theory. He states, and
correctly so, that the "mystic force binding opposites" will not take you very far. But other
elements will. Tao has many facets and is not limited to binary opposition. It is a relatively
late import to Tao.
While binary opposition is useful concept and has some explanary
purposes, its powers of explanation should not be called upon to bear loads that it was never
meant to carry. Binary opposition is doing too much work in Holmes Rolston III's
understanding. It is like tryijng to base all science on Newton's third law. It is a confusion
between Tao and Yany /Yin. Because Tao is much more than something like the Third Law
means that much of what Rolston has said is irrelevant.
{Richard, these notes are still in a rough and ready form.}
There is a monolithic tendency in the treatment of Eastern philosophy that is very like
the United States' attitude towards nuclear disarmament.
On the one side you have the
West, i.e. the US, and on the other side you have the East, i.e. USSR. Although these two
�5
nations are prominent in the debates they are not the be all, end all of nuclear disarmament
or the sole viewpoint for each side, even if there were only two sides, which there are not.
Eastern philosophy can be broken into Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, etc. In turn,
Indian philosophy can be broken into three brands: 1) net-diamond image or candle image; 2)
Buddhism; 3) Hinduism.
Holmes Rolston III is demanding that Eastern philosophy provide a complete value
inventory, and unless it can meet this requirement then it is not acceptable. This requirement
is too stringent. In looking at the history of philosophy and the history of ideas this stringent
a condition is not demanded. Rolston is unwi11ing to look at an idea or theory unless it gives
a complete account and a formal decision theory, but other ideas have been accepted into our
culture in a piecemeal fashion (indeed the most fashionable philosophical style in our culture
is piecemeal).
Holmes Rolston III spends most of his time setting up paper people or straw tigers. For
example, binary opposition is a peripheral feature of Tao and certainly not as central as
Rolston would have us believe.
�
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Title
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Draft Papers
Description
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Styles of Environmental Philosophy: Eastern and Western Modes, Values and
Sources
In a provocative article, Holmes Rolston III challenges those trying to develop an
environmental philosophy from traditional Eastern sources to put up or shut up. Rolston's
challenge (the precise details of which we'll get to) matters, because it sets down what many
have thought but few have dared to say so publicly. It gets t-he dispute out in the open.
Eastern philosophy, like Continental philosophy, is largely garbage, and not worth bothering
about: that is what many in the Anlgo-American scientistic line of philosophical business
really think.
Styles of Philosophizing:
Philosophy
Contrasting Features of Different
Styles of
Historicality. Continental philosophy is characteristically attempted in an evident
historical setting. It is not sharply separated from history of ideas. Analyticaly philosophy is
typically ahistorical.
This historicality posture is one of several that pushes analytic philosophy in a scientific
direction, so that it is carried on like a modern science; continental philosophy is much more
in the humanities tradition, and thus lies on the other side of the "two cultures" divide.
Systematicness. Continental philosophy is much concerned with system building, mainly
varying the traditions, e.g. Kantianism. Analytic philosophy attacks small problems in a
piecemeal way. (It is not without a background systematic framework, this is an unquestioned
framework).
The "speculative"
character of continental
philosophy derives from its
systematicness; from its attempt to cover a very broad sweep, e.g.. eventually all
philosophical ground. A result is that it is often very up in the air, not so often getting down
to concrete details, and the "hard" work analytical philosophy prides itself upon (but doesn't
that often do).
Pontifical philosophy, pronouncements from on high by elevated established figures, is a
____I
variety of continental philosophy in the speculative mode.
It is a variety presently well
practiced in the Soviet Union.
Triviality of analytic and language philosophies as seen from article, continental
Erudition/educati"on.
analytic philosophies are not educatted in the traditions, only a bit
- - - - - --- ---
2
more than essentials. Erudition matters in continental philosphy, not in analytic. Analytic
can be a young person's game, part of the youth culture of the dominent Western paradigm.
[Thus analytic philosophy seems almost a dilett':1-nte's sport, indulged in by glib young men
with quickness of wit rather than solidness of foundational knowledge. This is not to say that
analytic philosophy does not clarify concepts and solve ancient philosophical chestnuts, but
once the concepts have been clarified and the chestnuts cracked, there is no place for them.
They do not fit into a system or even form a piece of a larger conundrum or add to
philosophic wisdom (for wisdom is not part of the analytic method or a purpose for its results.
On the other hand, Eastern philosophies, for instance Tao, does not c1arify the concepts nor
solve the puzzles, instead it sketches a system. Tao outlines, but does not fill in the picture as
continental philosophies would do. If these three systems were compared to art, painting or
drawing, then analytic philosophy is a clever and detailed thumbnail sketch. It is the
preparatory drawing. It is the student's exercise. It serves a purpose, but it is not fulfilling,
nor satisfactorily revealing. Continental philosophy is the grand masterpiece never finished.
The large picture is begun, but not completed. More and more is constantly added to the
canvas, but the canvas is too large or too complex to finish. Eastern philosophy, Tao, is the
working sketch. It is gives the master plan without giving the detail or the finished product. It
is like a pencil sketch awaiting each individual to fill in the colour. The positions of things are
given but not their significance to the overall work nor their fulness revealed. Yet it must be
kept in mind that Eastern philosophy cannot be represented by a single branch or example.]
No monolithic contrast exists between Eastern and Western styles. Chinese philosophy
differs from Indian philosophy as much as continental philosophy does from analytic
philosophy.
INSERT: In contrast to the mass of fiddly, piecemeal arguments of analytic philosophy,
Tao, for instance, presents little or no argument and little logic. Instead it presents an array
of paradoxes. These form a broad picture on a large scale, that in a fashion similar to
continental philosophy is an almost complete philosophy, but in contrast to continental
philosophy there is no mass of detail. There is almost no detail at all. It is left to the reader
to fill out the picture.
Like continental philosophy Tao requires participant involvement.
---------------
3
Thus the object is not to fill in all the spaces but to give the broad picture so that the
individual can fil] in the details as appropriate. It is a pluralistic framework which allows
scope for expansion and within which the individual can deal with the paradoxes of life.
Unlike Western philosophies that emphasize various sorts of atomistic approaches,
Taoism works from the whole down rather than the atomic up.
Various sorts of atomistic
Western philosophies have a subject-object distinction or division (ontology); instead Tao has
a different metaphysics based on process or events. If a dynamic system is not determined by
individual processes, then it is better if you descend.
-------------- The opening gambit about language makes a point, but the real point is that
unless an idea adopted from another culture is both desirable for and compatible with the
adopting culture, then it is senseless in the first case and useless in the second case to adopt
the idea. However, centuries of ideological imperialism have shown that an idea can be forced
upon another culture, even if only in a corrupted form, whether or not it is desirable for or
compatible with the 'adopting' culture.
As for the evaluating of scientific description, HR III has made the point that it is an
embarrassment to science that it .cannot teach us to value. Thus it may in some sense be the
wrong approach to attempt to make Taoist thought compatible with scientific description. It
is obvious from the work of Capra that Eastern and Western metaphysics can be made
compatible. Of course, Western science has a 'loaded metaphysical agenda', and it seems to
be a misconception about the nature of that loading that causes so many problems in
accepting value judgments. Here is the old problem that science is supposedly 'value-free' and
'objective' coming to mean that scientific interpretation is merely descriptive and 'value-free'.
However, what is happening is that the hypothetico-reductive paradigm is replacing less
'rigorous' paradigms. etc. etc.
As for the reverence. for life, is it that there are no reasons for revering or respecting life
in biology or is it that biologists are not looking for reasons to revere or respect life? When an
ability like tool use is found in a creature like an assassin bug, the bug is not promoted up
some scale of moral regard, but tool use is dropped from the the list of items warranting
moral regard.
4
Also there is the point that reverence for life can be directed towards either the abstract
concept of life or towards particular holders of life. To save a species from extinction is to
save the individuals of that species from death, but there is a difference between saying that
life is sacred {in some manner morally considerable) and anything possessing life should be
entitled to respect or regard or not killed. In the way that life is treated in most Western
societies, it is wrong to kill humans in most cases, but it is alright to kill a bull for food unless
that bull is a prize breeding bull or a child's pet or for some other such reason. That is, life is
not revered but the lives of certain creatures are valued because of other constraints. Life in
these latter cases takes on value for instrumental reasons that have nothing to do with
reverence for life in the abstract. Thus if science finds that the cacto-blastis is good for ·
destroying prickly pear, then regard for the life of this caterpiller goes up. A reason is found
for respecting its life. Yet the individual cacto-blastis is still of no consequence and the regard
for the species is coterminous with the need for the species.
---------------Eastern thought is in direct conflict with the dominant social paradigm and lends
substance to various alternatives.
Holmes Rolston III has confused Tao with binary opposition theory. He states, and
correctly so, that the "mystic force binding opposites" will not take you very far. But other
elements will. Tao has many facets and is not limited to binary opposition. It is a relatively
late import to Tao.
While binary opposition is useful concept and has some explanary
purposes, its powers of explanation should not be called upon to bear loads that it was never
meant to carry. Binary opposition is doing too much work in Holmes Rolston III's
understanding. It is like tryijng to base all science on Newton's third law. It is a confusion
between Tao and Yany /Yin. Because Tao is much more than something like the Third Law
means that much of what Rolston has said is irrelevant.
{Richard, these notes are still in a rough and ready form.}
There is a monolithic tendency in the treatment of Eastern philosophy that is very like
the United States' attitude towards nuclear disarmament.
On the one side you have the
West, i.e. the US, and on the other side you have the East, i.e. USSR. Although these two
5
nations are prominent in the debates they are not the be all, end all of nuclear disarmament
or the sole viewpoint for each side, even if there were only two sides, which there are not.
Eastern philosophy can be broken into Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, etc. In turn,
Indian philosophy can be broken into three brands: 1) net-diamond image or candle image; 2)
Buddhism; 3) Hinduism.
Holmes Rolston III is demanding that Eastern philosophy provide a complete value
inventory, and unless it can meet this requirement then it is not acceptable. This requirement
is too stringent. In looking at the history of philosophy and the history of ideas this stringent
a condition is not demanded. Rolston is unwi11ing to look at an idea or theory unless it gives
a complete account and a formal decision theory, but other ideas have been accepted into our
culture in a piecemeal fashion (indeed the most fashionable philosophical style in our culture
is piecemeal).
Holmes Rolston III spends most of his time setting up paper people or straw tigers. For
example, binary opposition is a peripheral feature of Tao and certainly not as central as
Rolston would have us believe.
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Box 79: Logic
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/181810b7c7449d4d292188b3898281ac.pdf
dda615262b03a61d2b045bf2adff5a5e
PDF Text
Text
issue of nuclear power raises many basic issues in ethics.
The
By means of an example,
we argue
sorts of
transfers of costs,
benefits
from a
illegitimacy of certain
the
for
transfers
from one party who obtains
given course of action,
onto other parties who do
The inadequate methods currently available
not.
nuclear power
wastes mean
that
transfer of
serious
could permit
risks onto
costs and
the arguments
for
future
these crucial ethical
ignore
the i)7pra 1
to
Social Dimensions
Ethical and
Nuclear Power
are
not
the acceptability of
by
the
fact
such an illegitimate
future people.
that
Many of
such risks on
imposing
transfer
the
We argue
issues.
that
transfer principles give rise
constraints on action such
removed
for storing nuclear
those affected
future and
are
not present people.
The nuclear
issue and associated arguments also raise in a
highly
topical w3y
really
’need'
allow for,
or are
and
all
is
such needs
framework?
many basic issues in
the consumer
in part
theory.
items nuclear power is
it authoritarian or wrong
to
Are existing democratic mechanisms
framework adequate,
and
excessive
question
prevent
what
lives?
The approach to all
are
these basic elements pure
or do we
need
to assume both,
alterable social
the answer to
kinds of social
changes would
framework and over
social
their own
crucially on
intera ction are conceived
they social wholes,
individuals,
are
distinct and
irreducible,
argue?
R.
the
allow for more adequate
these questions depends
how the underlying elements of
to
If
such.concentrations of power and
control by people over the social
supposed
they give inadequate control
or do
concentrations of power?
is affirmative,
people
for control over
I
last
Do
frustrate such needs,
imposed by a particular,
the social
permit
social
Routley
as we
shall
�NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL,
■•MB
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ptMENSIONS
Wl/,
I.
COMPETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE.
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really
lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a
debate about values ...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.
Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily
one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do
They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the
2
lines of competing paradigms.
According to the entrenched paradigm discerned,
to others.
that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant
Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm),
economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of
individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief
in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering
around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes
best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are
necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of
labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise.
In particular,
there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of
scientists in particular. ...
there is an emphasis on quantification.
The rival world viewT, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists,
in ways summarised in the following table
A
Dominant Social Paradigm
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth, progress and development)
Natural environment valued as resource
Alternative Environmental
Paradigm
Domination over nature
Non-material (self-realisation)
Natural environment intrinsically
valued
Harmony with nature
ECONOMY*
Market forces
Risk and reward
Rewards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
POLITY
Authoritative structures (experts influential)
Hierarchical
Law and order
Action through official institutions
Participative structures (citizen/
worker involvement)
Non-hierarchical
Liberation
Direct action
SOCIETY
Centralised
Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Decentralised
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth's resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs
as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced
system by a command system). But since there is virtually no debate
confines of state socialism,
that minor variant on the Old Paradigm
from the Old Paradigm really only
by central planning (a market
over a nuclear future within the
need not be delineated here.
�2
No doubt t’ne competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple
(and
subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements:
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm).
Nonetheless it is empirically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed.
Large-
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to
the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic
practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details:
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irrational.
Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails.
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism.
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
main parts?:-
There are two
It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project
selection).
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
�3
the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian means to predetermined ends.)
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues -
whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical
8
or legal or mathematical details.
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many interrelated problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
before assembled:
establishment, on a massive scale, of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive
wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and
economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for
its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and
restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is
the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both passengers and freight.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the
�4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
All of
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will, that the world needs his product and it is
his duty to supply it, and
that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it.
These
sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a ’’responsible” businessman, puts his workers’ health
context.
or other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is his own and others’ pressing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a
by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
especially.
Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case.
progresses.
How fitting the
analogy is will become apparent as the argument
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
9
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
�5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
may require
and which, some have estimated,
million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem.
Serious problems
have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage,
even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last
twenty years.Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter
vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human
affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock
deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain
suitably isolated from human environment.^ In short, the best present storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
damaging their environment ,
Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance, none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may
�well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
provide a rigorous guarantee of
Only a method that could
safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe
long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage
sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons-
grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year
storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways,
an article of faith.
It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no
limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that
cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always
immediately economically feasible).
The assumption has played
part in development plans and practice.
technological optimism (not to say hubris
an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution
is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems^); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk
analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed
below).
The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would
provide unlimited energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power').
shattered.
and nuclear
That dream soon
The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power,
fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power.
�The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
are, then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could
be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of .10 generations
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an
with it.
over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents’ dreams of global
industrialisation are realised, more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life,
are in a run-down condition.
Such points
tell against the idea that future
people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least
indirect beneficiaries.
It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only)
by nuclear power.
The'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits.
The ’’solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
�8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum
stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case.
Just as in the case of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the question of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop
ment.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
Ill
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the
effect of our actions on
future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive.
Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or
entitlement.
People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
enforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly, there
are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement.
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them.
�10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has little or no sympathy.
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).
Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable.
Consider, for example, a scientific group which, tor no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
�the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
result of the action.
direct and predictable
The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is
an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately
criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to future people.
the following sort
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable
of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants,
will
over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests,
without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as
well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the
unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such
counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many
of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligation is rather that- future people can look after
themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally
independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counter
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so
thereby acquire many Of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to
take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be
careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
�12.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired
or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or
assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which
require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone,
and for which no act of acquisition is required.
There is a considerable
difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved.
In the first case
one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g.
have loves, synpathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises
as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable
consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied.
They apply as a result
of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably
predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not
(yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist.
While
it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed
obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make
special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
from harming them.
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
�13.
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package on the train.
The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both
to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something
which has to be assumed or required.
The conflation is encouraged by reductionist
positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly
endeavour to collapse all obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral
constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter
examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;
there are in practice no obligations to the distant future.
17
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through
the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which
each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the
succeeding generation.
account.
There are at least three objections to this chain
First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future
as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of
constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals
can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create
individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire
generation.
Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the
responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility.
Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to
the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be
adequate, as examples again show.
For the picture is unable to explain several
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to Influence matters.
�14.
Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of
disadvantages to people of the more distant future.
Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances
be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors.
Such
cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases
of environmental exploitation might be seen as of just this type. e.g. not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the
long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overuse.
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While there are grave difficulties for the
unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future.
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people.
The
attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position.
objectionable in such an approach is that
What is
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are.
There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
�15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
18
the waste problem.
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations
may well not
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
can carry much weight.
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
developments as nuclear power.
sacrifice argument.
That is, it depends on the already scotched
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economically - costs much less now than later.
Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes,
what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into
monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss
of life.
There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species.
In fact
the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed:
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
19
monetarily,
but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value.
It is also
presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
�16.
are bound to apply discounting.
This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and
discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly
inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined
and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.).
20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrained position.
If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a
sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints.
In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of
discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
21
more than about 15 years,
and application of such rates would simply beg
the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method
of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral
constraints.
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.
The distant
future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate
future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching
or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.
But
then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying
them against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people
where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of conflict
between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much
lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent
risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity
to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy
use.
And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted,
�17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit, he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision
problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some,
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from
it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way
related to a person’s extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability
argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes,
and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway.
reveals,
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments.
�18.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to
distant future.
take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of
separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments are mistaken, the first
on a Priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument
is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to
the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can
obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable,
fuzzy and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should
act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain
able about the present which would indicate different action.
Therefore we must
regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
More formally and
crudely:
One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the
distant future.
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations' by
'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to
considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with
respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which
is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present
and with respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest
a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we
suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant
future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those
things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
We can
and constantly do act on the basis of such "unreliable" information, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic
proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future.
In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for certain that the
container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not even have
to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consigner's action.
risk of harm in this sort of case.
It is enough that there is a significant
It does not matter if the decreased well
being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable".
But if we do not require
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why
�should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration
can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference
between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them.
this way:-
The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every
(action) x”, then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
information about future actions which would enable us to detach the
antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the
It is
wrong to do x” type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about
how to act.
on action.
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
�20,
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, 'especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or
that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
�21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a
sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there
is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are
morally committed to.
Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that
future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be
Even if one is
morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines.
prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration — what we are being handed in such arguments
as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal—pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that
future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such cases before such actions could
�22.
be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action.
A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the
application of moral constraints.
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form?
The question is raised
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
�23.
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and
representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest.
It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve
or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict
cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular,
there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of
interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then:
are. there any features of
future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or
reduce their claims to such below those of present people?
principle None.
The answer is :
in
Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike,
in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present:
in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white
skinned) humans, etc.
The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way.
These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determination of best probable or' practical course of action given only
present information).
In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort
being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain
information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
24
consideration;
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
�23a,
universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as
to the present;
and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them
and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
Uncertainty
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
�harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide, adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII.) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the. tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORP: MELTDOWN. The
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
another state’s or region’s yard or waters?
When that region receives no due
compensation (whatever that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the
arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive
wastes upon future people.
But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan
cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can
discount, people of two centuries hence.
(But what this consideration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can
be discounted over time .)
Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only
the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the
assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of
those in the neighbourhood of reactors, and, differently, as regards the
distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations.
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that
reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant,
25
�25.
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor.
An
immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any
ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The ’’normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers
and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over
the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under
what conditions?
Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into
decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an
26
acceptable level of risk/safety for the public.
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner
working in summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
compensate for the agony of cancer.
The point is that the costs to one party
are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being
imposed.
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a
�26.
particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults).
In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly,
for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent
majority).
Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even
under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that tiie imposition of
radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable.
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission,^ is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population
has
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely
to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course,
so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-
effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being,
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose.
Furthermore, the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Public policy is determined not so
as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered.
public pacifier
while
�27.
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’.
But such accidents can happen,
3
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the
result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages
would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
31
these conservative US government figures are given :
the consequences of a
similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still.
The consigner in risking the lives, well-being and property of the
passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly.
Does a government-sponsored
private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners’ action is, as we would ordinarily
sible.
suppose, inadmissible and irrespon
The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
Indeed in the
32
influential Rassmussen report “ - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible.
The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself.
These
assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents
and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual,
a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear
�28.
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof
and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different.
But we do not live in such a world.
According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodologically sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and
"reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as
not
credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are otherworldly.
In fact the methodology and data of the report
33
has been soundly and decisively criticized.
And it has been shown that there
is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater
order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
here we
encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment
models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off
models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to
different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
34
therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the. likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional
and other relevant aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical
assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or
�29,
primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other
parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of
the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a
comparison on such a basis would be valid.
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes
in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk,
etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant
activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
A risk that is ethically
acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify
nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i)
and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the
nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the
costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing.
It is
a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and
already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to
the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g.
it can be substituted for or done without.
Thus, for instance, one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
oneself.
Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
service, on the train, to the next village.
The inhabitants of this village are
then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult
disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else
leaving the village and their livelihoods.
transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
Most of us would see this kind of
�30.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world
countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one
of its most objectionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the l_ramsmission.
principle.
For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories).
VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from?the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material,
and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have
parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating
power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ^the same risk of
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".38 Furthermore, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location
I
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive
material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation, with where
one already lives things are very different.
The uranium-miner s choice of
occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific
Islander’s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue of arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations.
�31.
Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more irdtimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of
large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a
specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio
active lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many large
industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown).
Though theft of material from more
dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at
large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such
massive explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it£ vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to
information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information,
formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil
liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it
answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
■JLhee-e- developments^in the IJnd t^d
—and worjc in West Gcmafiy-ji presage
along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences
tells heavily against it.
�32.
Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct
connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is fortunately true that
ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war
is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances -
are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however,
the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and
chances of, nuclear engagement.
Since nuclear wars are never accountable
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread
of nuclear power accordingly
expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself
undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also
undesirable.
The details and considerations that fill out this argument,
from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many.
They are firstly
technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to
make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear power plant? secondly political,
that nuclear engagements once instituted
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants
do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagement (up to ’’strategic nuclear strikes” at least); and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is.
Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted
than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations.
The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself
undesirable.
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular of the gross
uncertainties involved in nuclear development.
In cases of this type the
appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each
alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst
consequences (this is a pretty uncontroversial part of the maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences).
The
nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable
alternative.
�33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT.
As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed,
the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments,
such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more
prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed.
The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious
risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
particular, applied to the nuclear case.
For this reason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote
nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity
utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct ~ it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and
will ensue.
For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his
village will starve.
It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others,
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm.
The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
�34.
to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than
the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments
as well.
In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of
false dichotomies.
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination
either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally
poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.^ The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists
and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its
feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission
systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into
the system.
Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised
entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political
41
structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy
is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course
mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the
westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these
countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes.
It
is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
�35.
The poverty argument is then a fraud.
help the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries
there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of
developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better
prospects for helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear
development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap,
procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development.
And there are various
alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar
options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
42
each possibly in combination with conservation measures.
Despite the availability
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups).
Such an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickledown argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
runs:-
For the argument
Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing)
affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
development benefits the poor.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy'
is substituted for ’nuclear’.
It has also to be shoum, what the next major
argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
alternatives in increasing affluence.
The second assumption, that affluence
Inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical
data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and
developed, and through economic models which reveal how ’affluence” can increase
without redistribution occurring.
Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set
of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have,
it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions
which our culture has developed.
Unless our high-technology, high energy
industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and
traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth
it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
4:
�36.
The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller
examination, can be avoided.
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
It assumes that technologic
society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse.
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish -
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technological
society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so — after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technologic^
restructuring and consumption modification.
If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could
be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction,
lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather,
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things.
While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at
�37.
present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
44
consumption which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the
lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
the Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear
45
situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable
aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high technology-
nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
�38,
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
appeal to futurity, closed.
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other arguments — from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future.
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market-
centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice.
Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy.
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic
ends.
Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission
research and development, in marked contrast to other newer rival sources or
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, publicly
economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real
reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social.
control.
�The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth.
valuable!):-
Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is
A6
part of US energy policy,
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
unrest, etc.).
economics textbooks.
But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified
economic growth.More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less
vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards.
For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alternatives.
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically
best’ being filled out as 'most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things
a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done.
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can^ be assembled to show as much.
Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments.
Virtually all available data
concerns the USA; in Europe, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly^
controlled” nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants.
Romanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
49
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985.
And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants.
rather decisively
Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators.
Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were
designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design
capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more
�40.
expensive than estimated.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an actual capacity factor of 55%
produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
reliability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nuclear power.
These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account.
The main subsidies are through research and development, by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
Act^), in enrichment, and in waste management.
It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more).
When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public
costs involved in producing nuclear power.
For example, the analyses ignore
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently
what the costs involved are.
But even using actual waste handling costs (while
wastes await storage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuclear.
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in
favour of alternatives to nuclear and
against nuclear power.
In short, even on
proper Old Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been
kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public
subsidization, of several types.
In USA, to take a main example where
information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, .th«xugh the
Price-Anderson Act^ which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear
development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all
radioactive wastes.
While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical
developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for
uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
social welfare.
Duly admitting social welfare and some
equity
principles
�41.
in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leadsjtne modern
version of the Old Paradigm, called the-Modified Old Paradigm.
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated
or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism).
Now it
has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power
is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example,
aparL^from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap
electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance
brown-outs and the like.1
use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
Since
4^
alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve s^me ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argument has again to show that the
choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite
respects, in serving the public interest.
Such an argument is a matter for
decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives
also fall as special cases.
Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice
between alternatives; it is presented as the
theory which
deals with the^
problem of choosing one. course of action among several possible courses .
Thus the choice of alternative modes of energy production, the energy choice
problem, becomes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nuclear choice is
often’justified” in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory.
But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put
to work in such practical cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronted with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic
theory.
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one
important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where
uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the
expected utility model.
The general model for best choice among alternatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may
include
ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given
conditions.
Expected utility
models demote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate
constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a
high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless).
Thus, in
�particular,
ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage
sustained.
Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical)
economic
assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of
everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms ■ everything worth accounting has a price), and as to the legitimacy
of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty.
It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable),
because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them.
Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core meltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development :
widespread radio
active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain.
The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy
choice, maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended.
In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected.
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same
rejections for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected.
All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option.
A further convergence can be effected
also, because the best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). Under these
o
conditions complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Horwicz rule) which take
---- ----------outcomes
------------ ------4^-^
account of both best possible and ^ost- possible
under
reduce to the maximin
rule.
each option
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substantially better
than that of the nuclear
option (just, consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear
dream, is realised).
Further application of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects
on the earth’s climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels.
�43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with
position several rivals to maximin
each
proposed,
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
rules, such as the risk- added
which ’assesses
maximin
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of
the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears to
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
What will be argued, or rather
dubious,
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option.
For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility
(not an entirely unquestionable rule
rule
’of strictly limited applicability’)
excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibility ... ’’One cannot
the
way one can abandon
simply abandon
a coal-fired plant"’
(p.506).
a nuclear reactor
The compare-the-
alternatives rule* in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit
assessments, which,
as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule,
which ’directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net
benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
sources’, ruling out the nuclear option.
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoidance and protecting-the-
vulnerable. also yield/ the same nuclear-excluding results.
Harm-avoidance,
in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable"
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
(p.442).
the result is the same, a
standards.
nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with
probabilities duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut: nor does its Modification.
The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached.
It is, in any case,
sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical economic
�theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social
theory.
democratic
There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one:
corporations so committed are understandably
keen to realise returns on capital already invested.
There are also typical
self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on.
There are.
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief
in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith
in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular,
so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
governing and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs.
along with its state
It is then, contemporary corporate
enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure, corporate
capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice.
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the national
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
US? and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible.
the
Eastern bloc is
which had in 1977 only
nuclear plants.
By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
small
about
one -sixth
the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else
where to any great extent.
American technology has.
�45.
The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
These companies were
encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlled or influenced reasons:-
Firstly, owing to
governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one.
Secondly,
the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively
encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development.
In particular, state
limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear
accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear
investment.
In the 70s, though the state subsidization
continued, the private
’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
cO
,
factors and poor reliability have wiped out the iyst advantage that nuclear power
picture changed :
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few
corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly
and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies,
Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
55
technology. '
These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for
Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology,
research, enriched uranium and financial capital.
’The US offered a Estate
subsidized] nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the
British could not compete*.
In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common
Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies
held
dudlJug with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for
example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel,
Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa,
Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam.
The US proceeded,
Spain,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic
Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations,
but most of whose *budget and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
activities’.
�46.
A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors.
Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safety regulations
are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition
is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[For]
... the US has considerable leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support.
Many of those same regimes
are now^ pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons.
It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor
proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and five social Modification, but that the practices (or
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable, whether
percepts;
for principles such as
by older, modified, or alternative
thos
and self-determination are grossly violated.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated
phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the
despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use
in meeting very high projected consumption figures.
Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
.
i
58
and replacement.
To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroelectricity.
The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both
conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet
�47.
given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter
of examining the goals.
That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates
them.
It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.)
Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are
superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed
on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of
electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and
contemplated by many other energy organisations).
While few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of ’’solar energy'
or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world s
already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'.
Many forests are
in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values.
In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced.
It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future.
The adaition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must
regard with alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
�48.
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid
regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural
ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one
poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any
more basic structural and social change is inadequate.
Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved.
It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear
program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely
given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring
nuclear
development.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and
an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force,
are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control
and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive
very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods
and services.
A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction
in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to oe
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non-
genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of
adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the
move away
from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism
and materialist values.
The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does
question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The conventional
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
�49.
be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
It is commonly argued by representatives
The point is readily illustrated.
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying
these wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level
(e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual
choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social framework as a major
factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel,
and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
corporate and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of reasons than
such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
62
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective , a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option represents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such
far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is
imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a. little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
compare also
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue both, from one’s own position against the other, and in the
other’s own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
what, suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclusion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g.,
�2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
11a.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation, unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology,
[ability to manage technology represents the past]
14.
On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes
other.
on the
Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81.
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
necessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p. 34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
15a.
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
.
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
.
’What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed’ (Barry, p.243).
Therefore, a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice.
�3
16.
For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers’
positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a).
17.
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls’ position.
18.
For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
Goodin, pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p).
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error”.
Furthermore the different
more appropriate rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of
"possible" outcomes.
are really two points.
Goodin’s point can be alternatively stated however.
There
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternatives
cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is
at that point that applications of the models breaks down.
The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making
under risk.
Secondly, many influential applications of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible
alternatives from their modellings.
21.
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, EcOYiorri'icsi 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1967, p.351.
22.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
23.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
The contrast is with mere logical possibility.
�4
24.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawls (p.293).
How
the principle is argued for will depend
heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the
Poverty argument.
26.
SF, p. 27.
Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that ’whoever affirms or
denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree,
symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and cultural
norms’
27.
(p. 28).
The example parallels the sorts of counterexamples often advanced to
utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible
lynching
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
of an innocent person because
For the more general case
against utilitarianism, see ...
28.
US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of
Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29.
As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail.
As she remarks,
... since standards need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the
licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them,
current policy allows government regulators to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparent] good
intentions of the promotors of technology.
[Such]
good intentions have never been known to be sufficient
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very
demanding, and
the alliance of regulators with those they are supposed to be
regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just
of (nuclear) pollution control.
30.
�31.
The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report:
possibilities and consequences of major
'Theoretical
accidents in large nuclear plants’,
USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957.
This report was requested in the first place because the Commission
bn Atomic Energy
wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the
private insurance companies" so that they would provide
coverage for the nuclear industry.
Since even the
conservative statistics of the report were alarming it
was
suppressed and its data were not made public until
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of
the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9).
32.
Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of
Accident Risks in US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C., 1975.
This report, the only allegedly complete study,
concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the
public.
Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant
organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew
its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive
analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government.
32a.
Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy.
33.
34.
Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected.
35.
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against
numbers such as probabilities.
In this way risks, construed as probable
costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment.
(Alternatively, risks may
be assessed through such familiar methods as insurance.)
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii’)a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b
and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which
the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
�in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and
p. 288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other applications b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii’).
The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissible conventional character.
For look at the origin of b: b may be
socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially
What
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced.
is required in (ii’), for instance, for the argument to begin to look, convincing
is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with
the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features,
involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an uncon
strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation:
see R. and
V. Routley ’An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’.
37.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
15, where references are also cited.
Energy, Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner
On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well E18], p. 23. On the employment issues, see too H.E. Daly in L9 J, p.
149.
�A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of
what the poor need.
41.
For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher,
Small is Beautiful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973.
As to the capital and
other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and also [7] and
[9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy
technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see
the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited
J.H. Winslow), Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977.
42.
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not
Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs,
October 1976); see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p. 233 ff, and Schumacher, op. cit.
43.
An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources.
In Passmore this argument
for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned
by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of the present and immediate future.
The argument has all
the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commoner.
45.
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil
liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White,
Nuclear Prospects.
A comment on the individual, the State
and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
46.
'US energy policy, for example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act, has been that nuclear power is necessary to provide ”an economical
and reliable basis”
needed "to sustain economic growth” (SF, p.lll, and
references there cited).
�There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the
literature.
For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms
of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see
Routley (b), and also Berkley and Seckier.
To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion
of some discussions of nuclear power, c.f. Elster, is to leave out
alternatives; the contraction
crucial
of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial
interests in main nuclear
involved companies.
Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehensive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptions made
concerning the measurement of plant performance
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49.
50.
See Kalmanoff, p.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF onargument
from ignorance etc.
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
54.
A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision
On decision theory see also,
theory and risk analysis can be universally applied.
The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines.
In any case, even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, and few (and
widely diverging) figures for,the probability of a reactor core meltdown,
and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation.
Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that 'such uncertainties plague energy theories'
as to 'render expected utility calculations impossible’.
55.
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff., from which presentation of the
international story is adapted.
�7
56.
Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
57.
For elaboration of some of the important
and Hermann.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old
Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many
people
can
respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism.
58.
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and
limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as coal, but in
presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic
social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such
measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an
equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production.
Other
(sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should
also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers
to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and
power industries.
59.
Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did
the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than
they already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g.
the argument in L.R.B. Mann ‘Some difficulties with energy farming for portable
fuels’, and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
60.
For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee.
61.
The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), Baran and
Sweezy.
62.
The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised
by Naess.
For its environmental importance see Routley (c)
further references are cited).
(where
�/bU/
REFERENCES.
In order to contain references to a modest length, reference
to
primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sources.
For those parts of
the text that overlap Routley (a), fuller references will be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E. Goodin,
’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne,
1977.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant
sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47.
United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report
to the President, Washington.
29442)
(Dept, of Energy) 1979.
(Ref. No. El. 28. TID-
(cited as US(a)).
A.B. Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975.
R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in
honour of Paul Weingartner,
(ed. E. Morscher), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duekworth, London, 19 74.
�2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1971.
P.W. Berkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, New York, 1972.
J. Elster, ’Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information
18 (3)
(1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry,
'Circumstances of Justice and future generations’ in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.T. Sikora and B. Barry), Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 1978.
II. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London, 1962 (reissue).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979.
J. Woodmansee, The World of a Giant Corporation, North Country Press, Seattle,
Washington, 1975.
P.A. Bd\ran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, 'The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement.
A summary’, Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
�
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issue of nuclear power raises many basic issues in ethics.
The
By means of an example,
we argue
sorts of
transfers of costs,
benefits
from a
illegitimacy of certain
the
for
transfers
from one party who obtains
given course of action,
onto other parties who do
The inadequate methods currently available
not.
nuclear power
wastes mean
that
transfer of
serious
could permit
risks onto
costs and
the arguments
for
future
these crucial ethical
ignore
the i)7pra 1
to
Social Dimensions
Ethical and
Nuclear Power
are
not
the acceptability of
by
the
fact
such an illegitimate
future people.
that
Many of
such risks on
imposing
transfer
the
We argue
issues.
that
transfer principles give rise
constraints on action such
removed
for storing nuclear
those affected
future and
are
not present people.
The nuclear
issue and associated arguments also raise in a
highly
topical w3y
really
’need'
allow for,
or are
and
all
is
such needs
framework?
many basic issues in
the consumer
in part
theory.
items nuclear power is
it authoritarian or wrong
to
Are existing democratic mechanisms
framework adequate,
and
excessive
question
prevent
what
lives?
The approach to all
are
these basic elements pure
or do we
need
to assume both,
alterable social
the answer to
kinds of social
changes would
framework and over
social
their own
crucially on
intera ction are conceived
they social wholes,
individuals,
are
distinct and
irreducible,
argue?
R.
the
allow for more adequate
these questions depends
how the underlying elements of
to
If
such.concentrations of power and
control by people over the social
supposed
they give inadequate control
or do
concentrations of power?
is affirmative,
people
for control over
I
last
Do
frustrate such needs,
imposed by a particular,
the social
permit
social
Routley
as we
shall
NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL,
■•MB
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ptMENSIONS
Wl/,
I.
COMPETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE.
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really
lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a
debate about values ...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.
Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily
one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do
They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the
2
lines of competing paradigms.
According to the entrenched paradigm discerned,
to others.
that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant
Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm),
economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of
individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief
in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering
around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes
best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are
necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of
labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise.
In particular,
there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of
scientists in particular. ...
there is an emphasis on quantification.
The rival world viewT, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists,
in ways summarised in the following table
A
Dominant Social Paradigm
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth, progress and development)
Natural environment valued as resource
Alternative Environmental
Paradigm
Domination over nature
Non-material (self-realisation)
Natural environment intrinsically
valued
Harmony with nature
ECONOMY*
Market forces
Risk and reward
Rewards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
POLITY
Authoritative structures (experts influential)
Hierarchical
Law and order
Action through official institutions
Participative structures (citizen/
worker involvement)
Non-hierarchical
Liberation
Direct action
SOCIETY
Centralised
Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Decentralised
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth's resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs
as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced
system by a command system). But since there is virtually no debate
confines of state socialism,
that minor variant on the Old Paradigm
from the Old Paradigm really only
by central planning (a market
over a nuclear future within the
need not be delineated here.
2
No doubt t’ne competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple
(and
subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements:
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm).
Nonetheless it is empirically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed.
Large-
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to
the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic
practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details:
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irrational.
Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails.
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism.
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
main parts?:-
There are two
It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project
selection).
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
3
the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian means to predetermined ends.)
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues -
whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical
8
or legal or mathematical details.
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many interrelated problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
before assembled:
establishment, on a massive scale, of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive
wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and
economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for
its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and
restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is
the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both passengers and freight.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the
4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
All of
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will, that the world needs his product and it is
his duty to supply it, and
that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it.
These
sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a ’’responsible” businessman, puts his workers’ health
context.
or other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is his own and others’ pressing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a
by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
especially.
Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case.
progresses.
How fitting the
analogy is will become apparent as the argument
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
9
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
may require
and which, some have estimated,
million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem.
Serious problems
have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage,
even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last
twenty years.Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter
vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human
affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock
deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain
suitably isolated from human environment.^ In short, the best present storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
damaging their environment ,
Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance, none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may
well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
provide a rigorous guarantee of
Only a method that could
safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe
long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage
sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons-
grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year
storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways,
an article of faith.
It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no
limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that
cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always
immediately economically feasible).
The assumption has played
part in development plans and practice.
technological optimism (not to say hubris
an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution
is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems^); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk
analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed
below).
The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would
provide unlimited energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power').
shattered.
and nuclear
That dream soon
The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power,
fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
are, then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could
be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of .10 generations
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an
with it.
over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents’ dreams of global
industrialisation are realised, more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life,
are in a run-down condition.
Such points
tell against the idea that future
people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least
indirect beneficiaries.
It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only)
by nuclear power.
The'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits.
The ’’solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum
stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case.
Just as in the case of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the question of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop
ment.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
Ill
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the
effect of our actions on
future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive.
Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or
entitlement.
People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
enforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly, there
are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement.
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them.
10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has little or no sympathy.
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).
Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable.
Consider, for example, a scientific group which, tor no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
result of the action.
direct and predictable
The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is
an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately
criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to future people.
the following sort
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable
of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants,
will
over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests,
without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as
well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the
unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such
counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many
of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligation is rather that- future people can look after
themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally
independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counter
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so
thereby acquire many Of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to
take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be
careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
12.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired
or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or
assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which
require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone,
and for which no act of acquisition is required.
There is a considerable
difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved.
In the first case
one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g.
have loves, synpathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises
as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable
consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied.
They apply as a result
of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably
predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not
(yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist.
While
it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed
obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make
special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
from harming them.
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
13.
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package on the train.
The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both
to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something
which has to be assumed or required.
The conflation is encouraged by reductionist
positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly
endeavour to collapse all obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral
constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter
examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;
there are in practice no obligations to the distant future.
17
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through
the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which
each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the
succeeding generation.
account.
There are at least three objections to this chain
First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future
as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of
constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals
can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create
individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire
generation.
Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the
responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility.
Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to
the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be
adequate, as examples again show.
For the picture is unable to explain several
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to Influence matters.
14.
Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of
disadvantages to people of the more distant future.
Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances
be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors.
Such
cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases
of environmental exploitation might be seen as of just this type. e.g. not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the
long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overuse.
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While there are grave difficulties for the
unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future.
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people.
The
attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position.
objectionable in such an approach is that
What is
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are.
There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
18
the waste problem.
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations
may well not
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
can carry much weight.
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
developments as nuclear power.
sacrifice argument.
That is, it depends on the already scotched
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economically - costs much less now than later.
Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes,
what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into
monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss
of life.
There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species.
In fact
the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed:
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
19
monetarily,
but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value.
It is also
presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
16.
are bound to apply discounting.
This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and
discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly
inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined
and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.).
20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrained position.
If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a
sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints.
In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of
discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
21
more than about 15 years,
and application of such rates would simply beg
the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method
of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral
constraints.
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.
The distant
future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate
future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching
or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.
But
then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying
them against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people
where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of conflict
between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much
lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent
risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity
to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy
use.
And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted,
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit, he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision
problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some,
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from
it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way
related to a person’s extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability
argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes,
and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway.
reveals,
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments.
18.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to
distant future.
take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of
separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments are mistaken, the first
on a Priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument
is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to
the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can
obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable,
fuzzy and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should
act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain
able about the present which would indicate different action.
Therefore we must
regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
More formally and
crudely:
One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the
distant future.
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations' by
'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to
considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with
respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which
is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present
and with respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest
a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we
suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant
future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those
things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
We can
and constantly do act on the basis of such "unreliable" information, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic
proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future.
In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for certain that the
container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not even have
to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consigner's action.
risk of harm in this sort of case.
It is enough that there is a significant
It does not matter if the decreased well
being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable".
But if we do not require
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration
can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference
between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them.
this way:-
The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every
(action) x”, then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
information about future actions which would enable us to detach the
antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the
It is
wrong to do x” type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about
how to act.
on action.
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
20,
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, 'especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or
that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a
sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there
is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are
morally committed to.
Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that
future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be
Even if one is
morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines.
prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration — what we are being handed in such arguments
as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal—pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that
future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such cases before such actions could
22.
be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action.
A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the
application of moral constraints.
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form?
The question is raised
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
23.
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and
representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest.
It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve
or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict
cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular,
there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of
interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then:
are. there any features of
future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or
reduce their claims to such below those of present people?
principle None.
The answer is :
in
Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike,
in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present:
in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white
skinned) humans, etc.
The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way.
These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determination of best probable or' practical course of action given only
present information).
In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort
being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain
information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
24
consideration;
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
23a,
universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as
to the present;
and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them
and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
Uncertainty
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide, adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII.) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the. tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORP: MELTDOWN. The
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
another state’s or region’s yard or waters?
When that region receives no due
compensation (whatever that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the
arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive
wastes upon future people.
But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan
cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can
discount, people of two centuries hence.
(But what this consideration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can
be discounted over time .)
Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only
the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the
assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of
those in the neighbourhood of reactors, and, differently, as regards the
distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations.
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that
reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant,
25
25.
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor.
An
immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any
ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The ’’normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers
and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over
the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under
what conditions?
Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into
decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an
26
acceptable level of risk/safety for the public.
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner
working in summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
compensate for the agony of cancer.
The point is that the costs to one party
are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being
imposed.
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a
26.
particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults).
In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly,
for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent
majority).
Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even
under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that tiie imposition of
radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable.
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission,^ is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population
has
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely
to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course,
so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-
effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being,
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose.
Furthermore, the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Public policy is determined not so
as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered.
public pacifier
while
27.
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’.
But such accidents can happen,
3
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the
result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages
would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
31
these conservative US government figures are given :
the consequences of a
similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still.
The consigner in risking the lives, well-being and property of the
passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly.
Does a government-sponsored
private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners’ action is, as we would ordinarily
sible.
suppose, inadmissible and irrespon
The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
Indeed in the
32
influential Rassmussen report “ - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible.
The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself.
These
assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents
and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual,
a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear
28.
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof
and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different.
But we do not live in such a world.
According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodologically sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and
"reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as
not
credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are otherworldly.
In fact the methodology and data of the report
33
has been soundly and decisively criticized.
And it has been shown that there
is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater
order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
here we
encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment
models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off
models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to
different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
34
therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the. likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional
and other relevant aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical
assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or
29,
primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other
parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of
the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a
comparison on such a basis would be valid.
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes
in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk,
etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant
activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
A risk that is ethically
acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify
nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i)
and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the
nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the
costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing.
It is
a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and
already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to
the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g.
it can be substituted for or done without.
Thus, for instance, one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
oneself.
Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
service, on the train, to the next village.
The inhabitants of this village are
then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult
disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else
leaving the village and their livelihoods.
transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
Most of us would see this kind of
30.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world
countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one
of its most objectionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the l_ramsmission.
principle.
For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories).
VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from?the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material,
and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have
parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating
power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ^the same risk of
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".38 Furthermore, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location
I
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive
material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation, with where
one already lives things are very different.
The uranium-miner s choice of
occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific
Islander’s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue of arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations.
31.
Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more irdtimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of
large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a
specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio
active lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many large
industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown).
Though theft of material from more
dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at
large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such
massive explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it£ vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to
information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information,
formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil
liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it
answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
■JLhee-e- developments^in the IJnd t^d
—and worjc in West Gcmafiy-ji presage
along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences
tells heavily against it.
32.
Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct
connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is fortunately true that
ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war
is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances -
are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however,
the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and
chances of, nuclear engagement.
Since nuclear wars are never accountable
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread
of nuclear power accordingly
expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself
undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also
undesirable.
The details and considerations that fill out this argument,
from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many.
They are firstly
technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to
make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear power plant? secondly political,
that nuclear engagements once instituted
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants
do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagement (up to ’’strategic nuclear strikes” at least); and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is.
Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted
than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations.
The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself
undesirable.
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular of the gross
uncertainties involved in nuclear development.
In cases of this type the
appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each
alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst
consequences (this is a pretty uncontroversial part of the maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences).
The
nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable
alternative.
33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT.
As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed,
the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments,
such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more
prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed.
The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious
risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
particular, applied to the nuclear case.
For this reason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote
nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity
utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct ~ it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and
will ensue.
For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his
village will starve.
It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others,
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm.
The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
34.
to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than
the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments
as well.
In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of
false dichotomies.
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination
either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally
poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.^ The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists
and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its
feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission
systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into
the system.
Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised
entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political
41
structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy
is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course
mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the
westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these
countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes.
It
is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
35.
The poverty argument is then a fraud.
help the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries
there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of
developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better
prospects for helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear
development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap,
procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development.
And there are various
alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar
options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
42
each possibly in combination with conservation measures.
Despite the availability
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups).
Such an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickledown argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
runs:-
For the argument
Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing)
affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
development benefits the poor.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy'
is substituted for ’nuclear’.
It has also to be shoum, what the next major
argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
alternatives in increasing affluence.
The second assumption, that affluence
Inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical
data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and
developed, and through economic models which reveal how ’affluence” can increase
without redistribution occurring.
Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set
of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have,
it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions
which our culture has developed.
Unless our high-technology, high energy
industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and
traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth
it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
4:
36.
The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller
examination, can be avoided.
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
It assumes that technologic
society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse.
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish -
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technological
society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so — after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technologic^
restructuring and consumption modification.
If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could
be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction,
lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather,
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things.
While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at
37.
present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
44
consumption which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the
lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
the Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear
45
situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable
aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high technology-
nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
38,
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
appeal to futurity, closed.
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other arguments — from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future.
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market-
centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice.
Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy.
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic
ends.
Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission
research and development, in marked contrast to other newer rival sources or
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, publicly
economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real
reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social.
control.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth.
valuable!):-
Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is
A6
part of US energy policy,
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
unrest, etc.).
economics textbooks.
But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified
economic growth.More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less
vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards.
For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alternatives.
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically
best’ being filled out as 'most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things
a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done.
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can^ be assembled to show as much.
Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments.
Virtually all available data
concerns the USA; in Europe, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly^
controlled” nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants.
Romanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
49
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985.
And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants.
rather decisively
Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators.
Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were
designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design
capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more
40.
expensive than estimated.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an actual capacity factor of 55%
produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
reliability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nuclear power.
These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account.
The main subsidies are through research and development, by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
Act^), in enrichment, and in waste management.
It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more).
When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public
costs involved in producing nuclear power.
For example, the analyses ignore
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently
what the costs involved are.
But even using actual waste handling costs (while
wastes await storage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuclear.
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in
favour of alternatives to nuclear and
against nuclear power.
In short, even on
proper Old Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been
kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public
subsidization, of several types.
In USA, to take a main example where
information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, .th«xugh the
Price-Anderson Act^ which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear
development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all
radioactive wastes.
While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical
developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for
uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
social welfare.
Duly admitting social welfare and some
equity
principles
41.
in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leadsjtne modern
version of the Old Paradigm, called the-Modified Old Paradigm.
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated
or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism).
Now it
has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power
is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example,
aparL^from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap
electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance
brown-outs and the like.1
use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
Since
4^
alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve s^me ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argument has again to show that the
choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite
respects, in serving the public interest.
Such an argument is a matter for
decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives
also fall as special cases.
Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice
between alternatives; it is presented as the
theory which
deals with the^
problem of choosing one. course of action among several possible courses .
Thus the choice of alternative modes of energy production, the energy choice
problem, becomes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nuclear choice is
often’justified” in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory.
But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put
to work in such practical cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronted with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic
theory.
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one
important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where
uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the
expected utility model.
The general model for best choice among alternatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may
include
ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given
conditions.
Expected utility
models demote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate
constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a
high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless).
Thus, in
particular,
ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage
sustained.
Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical)
economic
assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of
everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms ■ everything worth accounting has a price), and as to the legitimacy
of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty.
It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable),
because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them.
Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core meltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development :
widespread radio
active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain.
The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy
choice, maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended.
In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected.
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same
rejections for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected.
All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option.
A further convergence can be effected
also, because the best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). Under these
o
conditions complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Horwicz rule) which take
---- ----------outcomes
------------ ------4^-^
account of both best possible and ^ost- possible
under
reduce to the maximin
rule.
each option
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substantially better
than that of the nuclear
option (just, consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear
dream, is realised).
Further application of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects
on the earth’s climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels.
43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with
position several rivals to maximin
each
proposed,
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
rules, such as the risk- added
which ’assesses
maximin
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of
the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears to
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
What will be argued, or rather
dubious,
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option.
For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility
(not an entirely unquestionable rule
rule
’of strictly limited applicability’)
excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibility ... ’’One cannot
the
way one can abandon
simply abandon
a coal-fired plant"’
(p.506).
a nuclear reactor
The compare-the-
alternatives rule* in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit
assessments, which,
as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule,
which ’directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net
benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
sources’, ruling out the nuclear option.
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoidance and protecting-the-
vulnerable. also yield/ the same nuclear-excluding results.
Harm-avoidance,
in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable"
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
(p.442).
the result is the same, a
standards.
nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with
probabilities duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut: nor does its Modification.
The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached.
It is, in any case,
sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical economic
theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social
theory.
democratic
There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one:
corporations so committed are understandably
keen to realise returns on capital already invested.
There are also typical
self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on.
There are.
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief
in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith
in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular,
so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
governing and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs.
along with its state
It is then, contemporary corporate
enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure, corporate
capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice.
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the national
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
US? and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible.
the
Eastern bloc is
which had in 1977 only
nuclear plants.
By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
small
about
one -sixth
the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else
where to any great extent.
American technology has.
45.
The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
These companies were
encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlled or influenced reasons:-
Firstly, owing to
governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one.
Secondly,
the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively
encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development.
In particular, state
limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear
accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear
investment.
In the 70s, though the state subsidization
continued, the private
’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
cO
,
factors and poor reliability have wiped out the iyst advantage that nuclear power
picture changed :
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few
corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly
and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies,
Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
55
technology. '
These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for
Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology,
research, enriched uranium and financial capital.
’The US offered a Estate
subsidized] nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the
British could not compete*.
In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common
Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies
held
dudlJug with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for
example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel,
Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa,
Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam.
The US proceeded,
Spain,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic
Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations,
but most of whose *budget and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
activities’.
46.
A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors.
Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safety regulations
are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition
is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[For]
... the US has considerable leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support.
Many of those same regimes
are now^ pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons.
It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor
proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and five social Modification, but that the practices (or
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable, whether
percepts;
for principles such as
by older, modified, or alternative
thos
and self-determination are grossly violated.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated
phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the
despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use
in meeting very high projected consumption figures.
Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
.
i
58
and replacement.
To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroelectricity.
The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both
conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet
47.
given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter
of examining the goals.
That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates
them.
It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.)
Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are
superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed
on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of
electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and
contemplated by many other energy organisations).
While few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of ’’solar energy'
or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world s
already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'.
Many forests are
in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values.
In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced.
It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future.
The adaition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must
regard with alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
48.
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid
regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural
ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one
poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any
more basic structural and social change is inadequate.
Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved.
It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear
program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely
given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring
nuclear
development.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and
an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force,
are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control
and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive
very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods
and services.
A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction
in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to oe
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non-
genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of
adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the
move away
from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism
and materialist values.
The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does
question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The conventional
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
49.
be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
It is commonly argued by representatives
The point is readily illustrated.
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying
these wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level
(e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual
choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social framework as a major
factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel,
and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
corporate and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of reasons than
such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
62
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective , a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option represents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such
far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is
imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train.
FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a. little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
compare also
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue both, from one’s own position against the other, and in the
other’s own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
what, suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclusion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g.,
2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
11a.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation, unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology,
[ability to manage technology represents the past]
14.
On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes
other.
on the
Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81.
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
necessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p. 34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
15a.
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
.
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
.
’What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed’ (Barry, p.243).
Therefore, a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice.
3
16.
For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers’
positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a).
17.
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls’ position.
18.
For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
Goodin, pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p).
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error”.
Furthermore the different
more appropriate rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of
"possible" outcomes.
are really two points.
Goodin’s point can be alternatively stated however.
There
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternatives
cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is
at that point that applications of the models breaks down.
The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making
under risk.
Secondly, many influential applications of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible
alternatives from their modellings.
21.
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, EcOYiorri'icsi 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1967, p.351.
22.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
23.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
The contrast is with mere logical possibility.
4
24.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawls (p.293).
How
the principle is argued for will depend
heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the
Poverty argument.
26.
SF, p. 27.
Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that ’whoever affirms or
denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree,
symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and cultural
norms’
27.
(p. 28).
The example parallels the sorts of counterexamples often advanced to
utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible
lynching
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
of an innocent person because
For the more general case
against utilitarianism, see ...
28.
US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of
Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29.
As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail.
As she remarks,
... since standards need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the
licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them,
current policy allows government regulators to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparent] good
intentions of the promotors of technology.
[Such]
good intentions have never been known to be sufficient
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very
demanding, and
the alliance of regulators with those they are supposed to be
regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just
of (nuclear) pollution control.
30.
31.
The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report:
possibilities and consequences of major
'Theoretical
accidents in large nuclear plants’,
USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957.
This report was requested in the first place because the Commission
bn Atomic Energy
wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the
private insurance companies" so that they would provide
coverage for the nuclear industry.
Since even the
conservative statistics of the report were alarming it
was
suppressed and its data were not made public until
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of
the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9).
32.
Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of
Accident Risks in US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C., 1975.
This report, the only allegedly complete study,
concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the
public.
Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant
organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew
its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive
analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government.
32a.
Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy.
33.
34.
Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected.
35.
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against
numbers such as probabilities.
In this way risks, construed as probable
costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment.
(Alternatively, risks may
be assessed through such familiar methods as insurance.)
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii’)a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b
and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which
the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and
p. 288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other applications b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii’).
The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissible conventional character.
For look at the origin of b: b may be
socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially
What
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced.
is required in (ii’), for instance, for the argument to begin to look, convincing
is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with
the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features,
involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an uncon
strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation:
see R. and
V. Routley ’An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’.
37.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
15, where references are also cited.
Energy, Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner
On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well E18], p. 23. On the employment issues, see too H.E. Daly in L9 J, p.
149.
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of
what the poor need.
41.
For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher,
Small is Beautiful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973.
As to the capital and
other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and also [7] and
[9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy
technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see
the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited
J.H. Winslow), Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977.
42.
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not
Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs,
October 1976); see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p. 233 ff, and Schumacher, op. cit.
43.
An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources.
In Passmore this argument
for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned
by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of the present and immediate future.
The argument has all
the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commoner.
45.
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil
liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White,
Nuclear Prospects.
A comment on the individual, the State
and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
46.
'US energy policy, for example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act, has been that nuclear power is necessary to provide ”an economical
and reliable basis”
needed "to sustain economic growth” (SF, p.lll, and
references there cited).
There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the
literature.
For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms
of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see
Routley (b), and also Berkley and Seckier.
To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion
of some discussions of nuclear power, c.f. Elster, is to leave out
alternatives; the contraction
crucial
of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial
interests in main nuclear
involved companies.
Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehensive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptions made
concerning the measurement of plant performance
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49.
50.
See Kalmanoff, p.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF onargument
from ignorance etc.
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
54.
A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision
On decision theory see also,
theory and risk analysis can be universally applied.
The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines.
In any case, even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, and few (and
widely diverging) figures for,the probability of a reactor core meltdown,
and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation.
Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that 'such uncertainties plague energy theories'
as to 'render expected utility calculations impossible’.
55.
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff., from which presentation of the
international story is adapted.
7
56.
Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
57.
For elaboration of some of the important
and Hermann.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old
Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many
people
can
respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism.
58.
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and
limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as coal, but in
presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic
social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such
measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an
equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production.
Other
(sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should
also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers
to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and
power industries.
59.
Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did
the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than
they already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g.
the argument in L.R.B. Mann ‘Some difficulties with energy farming for portable
fuels’, and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
60.
For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee.
61.
The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), Baran and
Sweezy.
62.
The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised
by Naess.
For its environmental importance see Routley (c)
further references are cited).
(where
/bU/
REFERENCES.
In order to contain references to a modest length, reference
to
primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sources.
For those parts of
the text that overlap Routley (a), fuller references will be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E. Goodin,
’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne,
1977.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant
sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47.
United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report
to the President, Washington.
29442)
(Dept, of Energy) 1979.
(Ref. No. El. 28. TID-
(cited as US(a)).
A.B. Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975.
R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in
honour of Paul Weingartner,
(ed. E. Morscher), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duekworth, London, 19 74.
2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1971.
P.W. Berkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, New York, 1972.
J. Elster, ’Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information
18 (3)
(1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry,
'Circumstances of Justice and future generations’ in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.T. Sikora and B. Barry), Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 1978.
II. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London, 1962 (reissue).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979.
J. Woodmansee, The World of a Giant Corporation, North Country Press, Seattle,
Washington, 1975.
P.A. Bd\ran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, 'The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement.
A summary’, Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
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Box 106: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics [War and Peace]
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Text
NUCLE AR POWER -
I.
ETHIC AL,
SOC I AL AND POLltt AAL DI MiN S I ONS
COMPETING PARADIGMS AN D THE NU CLEAR DEBAT E.
1870
One ha rdly needs initia t i on i nt o the dark my s te ri e s of
nucl ear ph ys i cs to contribu te use f ully t o t he debat e no w
wid e l y r anging ov e r nuc lear powe r . While ma ny i mpo r tan t
empi rica l que stions ar e s t i ll unr e s olved, t hese do not r e a lly
l i e a t th e ce nt r e of t he con t r ove rsy. In st e ad, it is a
de ba t e about val ue s . ..
ma ny of the que s tions ~hi ch a ri s e are s oc i al an d et hica l one s . 1
Socio logical inves tigation s have conf i rme d that th e n ucl ea r deba t e is primaril
y
one ove r what is wor th having or pursuing and over what we a re ent i t l ed to do
to o th e rs .
They ha ve also confirme d tha t t he debate i s polaris ed a lon g t he
li nes o f compe ting paradigm s. 2 Accordin g to the entre nc he d parad i gm dis ce rn e
d,
that conste llation of value s , attitude s and be liefs o fte n ca ll e d t he Domi nan t
So ci a l Pa radigm (hereaft er the Old Paradigm ),
economic criteria be come the be nchmark by whi ch a wi de ran ge of
individu al and social action is judged and e va luat e d . And be li e f
in the market and marke t mechan isms is quit e ce ntral . Clust e rin g
around this core belief is the convicti on th a t e nt e r p r i s e flou r is hes
bes t i n a system of r isks and rewards, that di ffe r e nti als a r e
neces sary ..• , and in the nece ssity for some fo r m o f di vis i on of
labour, and a hi e rarchy of skills and exper t is e . In pa rt i cul a r,
t here i s a be li e f in th e comp e t e nce o f e xperts i n gener a l and of
sci entis t s in pa r ticular .
the re is an empha s i s on q uantif i ca t ion . 3
The ri v a l world view , sometime s c all e d t he Alte rnative Environm e ntal Par ad igm
(the New Paradi gm) dif f ers on almos t e ve ry pcint , and, acco rdin g t o so ciologi
sts ,
in ways summari sed i n th e fo llowing t a bl e 4 Domi nant Socia l Para digm
CORE VALUES
Ma te r i a l (e conomic growth , progress an d dev elopmen t )
Na tu ra l env ironment va lu e d as resourc e
Dom i nat i on over na t ur e
Al t e rn a tive Env ir onme nt al
Pa rad igm
Non-ma terial (se l f -r eali sa t io n)
Na t ural e nvir onm e nt i ntrin s i cally
valu ed
Ha r mo ny with na tu r e
ECONOMY*
Ma rket forces
Ri s k a nd rewa r d
Rewa r ds for ach i evemen t
Diff e rent i a l s
Individ ua l se lf-help
Public i nte r es t
Sa fety
Incomes r elat ed t o nee d
Egali t a r ian
Co ll ective/soc i al provi s i on
PO LITY
Authori t at iv e s t ru c t ures (e xp e r t s in flue ntia l)
Hi e r a r ch1.c a l
Law and order
Ac t io n through o ffi c ia l i nst it ut io ns
Pa rtic ip a tive s t ruc t ur e s ( ci ti zen/
wo r ke r invo lveme n t )
No n- hi era r chical
Liberation
Di r ec t a c ti o n
SOCIETY
Ce ntr a lised
La r ge-s ca le
As socia tional
Or der ed
Dece ntr a l ised
Small - s ca l e
Communa l
Flexib l e
NATURE
Ampl e rese r ves
Nature host il e/ ne u t r a l
Envi r onmen t cont roll a ble
Earth ' s r esou r c e s lim i ted
Nature be nign
Na t ure de l i ca t el y ba l a nc ed
KNOWLEDGE
Co nf idence in sc i ence and t ec hnology
Ra t i onal i t y of mea ns (only)
Li mit s t o sc i e nce
Rati ona lit y of en ds
*Stat e
socia l ism , as pr a ctised i n mo s t of t he " Eastern b l oc" , di ffers
as to eco nomi c o r ganisation , t he ma r ket i n pa r ticula r be i ng rep l ac ed
sys tem hy ~ comma nd sy st e m) . Bu t sin c e t he r e i s v irt ual l y no debate
r·o ni i nes 'l l s r a t <! ., ociali sm , 5 that mJnnr va riant on th e Old Para digm
from t he Ol d Pa rad i gm r eall y on ly
by cen t ral planning (a ma r ke t
over o nu c lea r futu r e within t he
ne ed no t be de lineat ed he r e .
�2
No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple (and
subs equently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old econ omic assumptions with social welfa r e requirements :
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather count erpa radigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm) .
Nonetheless it is empi rically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focuss ed .
Large -
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world ,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Pa radigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nucl ear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the recei ved paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, th e nuclear debate is confined to
the tenns of the narrow utilitarianism up on which contemporary economic
practice is p r emisse d, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details :
whatever falls outside these terms is ( dismissed as)
.
.
1.6
irrationa
Furthermore, nuclear development rece ive s its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption frame.work of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails .
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimat ely fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by th e ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism .
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
.
7
main parts : -
There are two
It is argue d, firstl y , from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e . g . co sts of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and crite ria for project
selection) .
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of th e
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
�3
th e place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within th e
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory argume nts, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian me ans to predetermined ends . )
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear deb a te is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whe th e r over minutiae and contingenci es of present techno l ogy o r ove r medical
or legal or mathematical details. 8
The double approach can be applied as regards each of t he main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many i nte rr ela t ed problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nucle ar power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
befo re assembled :
establishment, on a massive scale , of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
p roduction possible catastrophe , which delivers as a by-product rad ioactive
wastes which require up to a million years' storage but for which no sound and
e conomic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which r equires for
i t s operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of informa tion and
r es trictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in orde r
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, supper½ and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological develo pmen t, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
e thical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power que st i on s , is
th e unreso l ved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II . THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE .
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both pass e ngers and fr e i gh t.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someon e con signs as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a high ly toxic and exp losive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain th e gas for the
�4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if th e train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
o r deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
All of
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while othe r s could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will , that the world needs his pr~uct and it is his duty to supply it , and
that in a ny case he is not responsible for th e train or the people on it. These
sorts of excuses however wo uld norrrally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
context . What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a "responsible" b usin essman , puts his workers ' health
or other peoples ' welf are at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is hi s own and otherd press ing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls,which produces the material as a
by-product , is in bad financia l straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails , he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and th e whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effe ct, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
espe cially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification .
Even where there are serious risks and costs to ones e lf or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not t o be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they a ri se from one's own, or one's group 's, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case . How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as th e argument
progresses . There is no known proven safe way to package th e highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around th e world as
large- scale nuclear development goes ahead. 9 The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
�5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average , annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb .
Much of this waste is extremely t oxic .
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer .
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
the ir expected life times of perhaps 40 years , and which, some have estimated,
may require l½ million years to reach saf e levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environ ment fo r
th e ir entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period
a ve rages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million yea r storage problem . Serious problems
have aris en with both short-term and proposed long-t erm methods of storage,
e ven with th e comparatively small quantities of waste produced ove r th e last
10
twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human in t e rven tion, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human i nterference and risk of leakage through non-human factors .
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose flu ctua tion s
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages , could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human
affa irs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years . Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already pro ved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the r e sult in multilayered metal containe rs before rock
deposit , simulation mo dels reveal that radioactive material may not rema in
suitably is ola ted from human environment . 11 In short, the best pres ent storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
.
h .
.
lla
d amaging t eir environment.
Given the heavy costs which could be involve d fo r the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodological ly unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance , none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly test e d, and they may
�6.
well prove to involve unforeseen difficultie s and risks when an attemp t is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could
provide a rigorous guaran t ee of safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future µuman factors . But even if an economicall y viable, rigorously safe
long t e rm storage method could be devised , there is the problem of gua rantee ing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economicall y and politically ) seems to p r esuppose a level of efficiency,
pe rfection and concern for the f u ture which has not previously been e ncountere d
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nucl ea r industry. 12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long t e rm storage
sites through pe rhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weaponsgrade radioactive material will be accessible , over much of the million year
storage peri od, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
Th e assumption that a way will nonetheless be found , before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorag e problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumpti ons of way s ,
an article of faith . It is an assunption supplied by the Old Par adigm, a no
limitations ass ump tion , that there are really no (developmen t) problems that
cannot be solved technologic ally (if not in a fash i on that is always
immediately economi cally feasible).
The assumption has played
an important
part in development plans and pra ctic e.
It has not only encouraged an unwarrant e d
technolog ical optimism (not to say hubris 13 ), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish , es pe cially through science ; it has led t o the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactor ily solved or a solution
is even in sight , and it has led to th e idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled .
It has also led, not surprisingl y, to disasters .
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which a r e becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems 14 ); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technologic al development s often fail to take due account of (risk
a nalysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discuss e d
below) . The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fissi on would
provide unlimi t ed energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power '). That dr e am soon
shattered. The nu clear industry apparently remains a net consume r of power,
and nuclear fission will be but a quite shor t-t erm supplier of power. 15
�)
7.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclea r development
are , then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder r eactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be se riously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of futur e people could
be fo rced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people o f 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials th e only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the fu ture .
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem , that of making a transition t o renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably , again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it .
For they may well have to face the change to renewable res ources in an
over- populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global
industrialisation are realised , more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associat ed technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it .
It will , moreover, probably be a world which is larg ely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which su ch r enewable r eso urces as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life ,
15a
are in a run-down condition. Such points
tell against th e idea th a t future
people mGst be , if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy , at least
indirect beneficiaries .
It is for such reasons th at the train pa rabl e cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for exampl e , the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (onl y)
by nuclear power.
The 'solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems .
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to ge t itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of e conomies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits .
The " solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
�8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
cl e ar alternatives to · this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them .
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived , the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
of t en not in fact ) in the contemporary wo rld, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
15a
th e future .
There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear pa rcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least whe re the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case .
Just as in the cas e of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in th e present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the ques tion of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear development.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
III
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e . non-immediat e) fut ure, the futur e with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obliga tions to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass , and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democra ti c and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that th ere are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next gene ration .
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on a ct ing or failing to act deriving from the
ef fect of our actions on future people . Of those philosophers who say , or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity .
Th us moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time ( o r sometimes in space) . Fo r example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive . Among su ch suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
r eq uirements on moral obligation , which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these :- Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his r ights or
en titlement . People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
e nforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly , there
a re those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement .
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there couid be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them .
�10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the cont ex t of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rul e out th e
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive r ela tions
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent ) people in the far distant futu r e about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has l ittle or no sympa th y .
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
peop l e ; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
some thing acquired, either individually or institutionally , something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. pa rticipatin g
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e . g . love, sympathy, empathy). 16 Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice wh e ther or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable. Consider, for example , a scientific group which, for no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch . No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
...
�11.
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictab le
result of the action. The unconstra ined position clearly implies that this is
an acceptabl e moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might legitimat ely
criticize in the scientis ts' experimen t, perhaps its being ove r-e xpensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to futu re people . The unconstra ined position also endorses as morally acceptabl e
the following sort
of policy: -
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining , processin g and manufactu ring a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendan ts, will
over a pe ri od of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous ep idemi c of cancer among the inhabitan ts of the earth at that time .
According to the unconstra ined view the firm is free to act in its own interests ,
without any considera tion for the harm it does r emote future people.
Such counterex amples to the unconstra ined view, which are easily vari e d
and multiplie d , might seem childii>hl y obvious. Yet the unconstra ined position
concernin g the future f rom which they follow is far from being a straw man ; not
only have several philosoph ers endorsed this position, but it is a cl e ar
implicati on of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligatio n, as
well as of prevailin g e conomic theory. It seems that those who opt for the
unconstra ined position have not considere d such examples , despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstra ined position admits such
counterex amples , that being free to act implies among other thin gs being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstra ined
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many
of those who have put forward the unconstra ined position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligatio n is rather that · future people can look after
themselve s, that we are not responsib le for their lives. The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causal l y
independe nt of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself .
Present people are influenci ng it , and in doing so
thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsi bilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obli gation to
tak e accoun t i n what they do of people affected and their interests , to be
care ful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probabili ty of their
actions causing harm, and to see that th ey do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
�12.
Furth e rmore, to say that we are not respon s ible f o r th e lives o f future
people does not amount to th e same thing as sayin g t hat we are fr ee to do as we
like with r es pe ct to them , that there are no moral constraints on our act io n
involving th e m. In just th e same way , th e fact that on e does no t hav e o r ha s not
acquired an obliga tion to some stran ge r with whom one has ne ver been i nvolved , that
on e has no responsibil ity for his life, does not imply that on e is fr ee t o do
what on e like s with respect to him, for e xample to r ob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to on e self which could s e riously ha rm him.
These difficultie s for the uncons trained position arise in part from the
(sometime s deliberate) failure to make an important distinction betwe e n acquired
or assume d obligation toward somebody , for which some act of acquisition or
a s sumption is required as a qualifying condition , and moral constraints , which
require, for example, that one should not act so as t o damage or harm someone ,
a n d for which no act of acquisition is required.
There i s a conside rable
di ffer ence in the level and kind of responsibil ity involved. In the first cas e
on e must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e . g.
have loves, sy!ll)athy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibil it y arises
as a r e sult of being a causal agent who is aware of the cons eque nces o r probable
consequence s of his action, and thus does not have to be es pecially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latt e r class , moral c onstra ints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult o r i mpossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfi e d . They appl y a s a result
o f th e abil i t y to produce causal effects on the distant future of a r eas onably
pr e dict a ble nature .
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what do e s not
(ye t) e xist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist . Wh ile
it may pe rhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or a ssume d
ob liga tion in order for it to be claimed that contemporar y people mus t make
special sacrifices f or future people of an heroic kind, or even to he lp them
e s pe cially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrain e d
from harming them . Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigne r cannot
argue in justificatio n of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
re s ponsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
l ove or sympathy for th em and that t hey are not part of his moral community , in
short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one ne eds to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case , is that there are mo ral
constrain ts against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibil ity for the live s of people involved .
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinction s between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogat ion this is just
�13 .
to misrep resent the positio n of these obliga tions. For exampl e, one
is no more
engagin g in heroic self-sa crifice by not forcing future people into
an unviab le
life positio n or by refrain ing from causing then direct harm than
the consign er
is resorti ng to heroic self-sa crifice in re frainin g from placing his
dangero us
package on the train.
The conflat ion of moral restrai nts with acquire d obliga tion, and the
attemp t there~ ith to view all constra ints as acquire d and to write
off nonacq uired
constr aints, is facilit ated through the use of the term ' moral obligat
ion ' both
to signify any type of deontic constra ints and also to indicat e r athe
r someth ing
which has to be assumed or require d . The conflat ion is encoura ged
by reduct ionist
positio ns which, in attemp ting to accoun t for obligat ion in genera
l, mistake nly
endeavo ur to collaps e all obligat ions . Hence the equa ti on , and some
main roots
of the uncons trained positio n, of the erron eous belief that there
are no moral
constr aint s concern ing the distant future.
The uncons trained view tends to give way , under the weight of counte
rexampl es , to more qualifi ed, and sometim es ambiva lent, positio ns ,
for example
the positio n that
our obliga tions are to immedi ate poster ity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immedi ate succes sors in a better conditi on, and that is all; 17
there are in practic e no obliga tions to the distan t futur e . A main
argume nt
in favour of the latter theme is that such obliga tions would in practic
e be
otiose . Everyth ing that needs to be accoun ted for can be en compass
ed through
the chain picture of obliga tion as linking succes sive genera tions,
under which
each genera tion has obliga tions, based on loves or sympath y , only
to the
succeed ing genera tion . The re are at least three objecti ons to this
chain
accoun t. First, it is inadeq uate to treat constr aints concern ing
the future
as if they applied only between genera tions, as if there were no questio
n of
constr aints on individ uals as opposed to whole genera tions, since
individ uals
can create causal effects , e . e. harm, on the future in a way which
may create
individ ual respon sibility , and which often cannot be sheeted home
to an e ntire
genera tion .
Nuclea r power and its wastes , for exampl e, are strictl y the
respon sibility of small groups of power- hol ders, not a genera tional
respon
sibility .
Second ly, such chains, since non-tr ansitiv e, cannot yield direct obligat
ions to
the distan t future . But for this very r eason the chain pict ure cannot
be
adeq uate, as exampl es again show. For the pic ture is unable to explain
severa l
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the exampl es already
discuss ed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distan t future
withou t
affecti ng the next genera tion, who may not even be able to influen
ce matters .
�14.
Thirdly, improvement s fo r immediate successors may be achieved at th e expense of
disadvantag es to people of the more distant future . Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstanc es
be most easily achieved by , ruining it for less immediate successors . Such
cases can hardly be written off as "ne ver- never land" examples since many cases
of environment al exploitatio n might be seen as of just this type. e . g . not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewab le resources and the
long- term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overus e .
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from th e
fa vouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed ove r time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests .
IV . ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE: ECONOMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficultie s for the
unconstrain ed position, qualificatio n leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we a r e not entirely unconstrain ed
with respe ct to the distant future , there are obligations , but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the pres ent and immediate
future . The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, coun t for
very much l ess than the interests of present people. Hence such thin gs as nuclear
development and various exploitativ e activities which benefi t present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewha t) disadvantag ed by them .
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories , where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate , so dis counting costs and risks to future people.
a t tempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingl y common , can lead then to the qualified position. What is
objectionab le in such an approach is that
The
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints , just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints , not detennine what those constraints are. There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
�15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
th e waste problem. 18 Since there is mounting evidence that future ge ne rations
may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argume nt for discounting the interest s of future gcncrntionfl on thi s
can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
biH:1i. B
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporar ies would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
development s as nuclear power .
That is, it depends on the already scotched
sacrifice argument .
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimatel y bequeathed to the future gene rations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be , not just better off , but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs. It is argued , from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immedia te future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources . Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalizatio n of monetary
value, that compensatio n - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economica lly - costs much less now th an later . Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g . in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least , insurmounta ble practical difficultie s about
applying such discounting , e . g . how to de t ermine appropriate future discount rates .
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes ,
what is false, that compensatio n, like value, can always be converted into
monetary e quivalents , that peo ple (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, i n cluding cancer and loss
of life . There is no compensatin g a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact
the argument presupposes a do uble reduction neither part of which can succeed :
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
monetarily , 19 but (as against utilitariani sm, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to mat t ers of value . It is also
presupposed that all decision me thods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
�16.
are bound to apply discounti ng . This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropria te decision rules do not allow discounti ng, and
discounti ng only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-bene fit and benefit-r isk analyses) , which are, he contends strictly
inapplica ble for nuclear choices (since no t all outcomes can be duly determine d
and assigned probabil ities, in the way that applicatio n of the rules requires. ). 20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounti ng move often has the same
result as the unconstra ined position . If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensa tion, it is evident that over a
sufficien tly long period of time discounti ng at curren t prices would lead to the
conclusio n that there are no recoverab le damages and so , in economic terms, no
constrain ts . In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the applicatio n of
discoun t rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about 15 years, 21 and applicati on of such rates would simply beg
the question against the i.nterests and rights of future pe ople . Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example , the whole method
of discounti ng is simply inapplica ble, and its use would violate moral
constrain ts .
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids th e objection s
from cases of certain damage, comes from probabili ty considera tions. The distant
future, it is argued , is much more uncertain than t he present and itillue diate
fut ure, so that probabili ties are consequen tly lower, perhaps even approachi ng
or coincidin g with zero for any hypothesi s concernin g the distant future. But
then if we take ac count of probabil iti es in the obvious way , by simply multiplyi ng
th e m against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people , except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty ,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbour ing people
where (much ) high~r probabil ities are attached. So in the case of confl ict
between the present and the future where it i s a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediat e future against a much
lower probabili ty of indetenni nate costs to an indetermi nate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved . But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nucle ar case, especial ly if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years , with consequen t
risk of serious harm to thousands of ge nerations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportuni ty
to maintain corporati on profitabi lity or to continue unnecess arily high energy
use.
And even if the costs an d benefits were comparabl e or
evenly weighted,
�"
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner's action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
s ufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefi t or risk-benefi t approach to moral and decision
problems , with o r without the probability frills , is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintu itive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large ga in from
it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferabl e in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly rais e moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefi t approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of tran sfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptabili ty of the nuclea r
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking . In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelmin g extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved . In contrast the users and supposed beneficiari es
of nuclear energy will be r isking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-benefic iaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any dire ct way
related to a person ' s extent of use .
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian ' s
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introductio n of p r obability consideratio ns - as in utilita r ian de cision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis . One might further object to the probability
argument that probabiliti es involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes ,
and that the outcomes of some morai prob l ems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway .
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
reveals , that a significant risk is created ; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments .
�18 .
Uncerta inty argumen ts in various forms are the most common and importan t
ones used by philo s ophers, economi sts and others to argue f or the position that
we
cannot be expe cted to
distant future .
take serious ac count of the effects of our actions on th e
There are two strands to the uncertai nty argumen t, capable of
s eparatio n , but frequen tly tangled up. Both argumen ts are mistaken , the first
on a priori grounds, the second on a posterio ri grounds. The first argumen t
is a gene ralised uncerta inty argumen t which runs as fol lows :- In contras t to
the exa ct informa tion we can obtain about the present, the informa tion we can
obtain about the effects of our a-ctions on the di s tant future is unreliab le,
fuzzy and highly specula tive. But we cannot base assessm ents of how we shoul
d
act on informa tion of this kind, especia lly when accurate informa tion is obtainable about the present which would indicate differen t act ion. Therefo re we must
r eg retfully ignore the uncertai n effects of our actions on the distant fut ure.
More formally and crudely: One only has obligati ons to the futur e if t hese
obliga tions are based on reliable in forma tion at present as regards th e
distant future. Therefo re one has no obligati ons to the distant future. This
first argumen t is essentia lly a variant on a sceptica l argwnen t in epistemo logy
concerni ng our knowledg e of the future (formall y, replace 'obligat ions ' by
'knowled ge' in the crude stateme nt of the argumen t above). The main ploy is
to
conside rably overesti mate and oversta te the degree of certaint y availabl e with
r es pect to the present and immedia t e future, and the degree of certaint y which
is required as the basis fo r moral conside ration with r espect to the present
and with respect to the f uture.
Associa ted with thi s is the attempt to sugges t
a sharp division as regards certaint y between the present and immedia te future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other . We shall not find, we
suggest , that there is any such sharp or simple divi sion between the distant
future and the adjacen t future and the present, at l east with re spect to those
things in th e pres e nt which are normally subject to moral constra ints. We can
and constan tly do act on the basis of such "unrelia ble " informa tion, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveni ently labels "unce rta i nty"; for scepticproof certaint y is rarely, or never, availab le with respect to much of the
present and immedia te future . In moral situatio ns in the pres e nt, action
often takes acco unt of risk and probabi lity , even quite low probab iliti es .
Conside r again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the
containe r will break and the lethal gas escape . In fact it does not even have
to be probable , in the relevan t sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consign er's action. It is enough that there is a signific ant
risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decrease d wellb eing of the consigne r is certain and that the prospec ts of the passeng ers
quite uncertai n, the resoluti on of the problem is neverth eless clearly in fa
vour
of the so-calle d "specul ative" and "unrelia ble". But if we do not require
certaint y of action to apply moral constra ints in cont emporary affairs, why
�19.
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, ep istemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral act ion concerning the present and adjacent futur e does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consi deration
ca n be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining th e difference
between the present and the future a nd to justify ignoring future peoples'
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
e ach class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical unc e rtainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account becaus e uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross th a t we canmot determine what the lik ely
cons equences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rati onal ground for
ch oosing between them.
this way : -
The seco!ld uncertainty argume nt can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for eve r y
(action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
info rmation about future actions which would enable us to detach the
an tecedent of the implication .
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain cl ear
conclusions or dire ctions concerning contemporary action action of th e "It is
wrong to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
th e distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what th e effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to th e
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain an y clea r conclusions about
how to act.
on action .
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate .
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future , but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
�"
20 .
argument has to assume .
There are some areas where un certainty is not so grea t as
to ex clude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point ,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certain ty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncerta inty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally r e levant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
t o moral is sues .
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavour s of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, espe cially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what peop le there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unli ke our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or ge netic defec ts, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the ear th of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place .
For this sort of r eason ,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of orde r as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
prope r consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncer taint y
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves .
For example, we may be told that we cannot r eally
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that th ey will exis t or
that their tast es and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
�21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon compl e t e ce r taint y of a
sort be yond what is required for the pre sent and imme diate future, whe r e there
i s also commonly no guarantee that some disast e r will not overtake t hose we are
mo rally cowmi tted to. Again we may be told that th e r e i s no guarant ee that
future peopl e will be worthy of any e fforts on our part, because th ey may be
mo rons or for ever plugged into enjoyme nt or other machin es . Even if on e is
prepare d t o accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or int e ll e ctual standards a r e
e ligible for moral consideration - what we are being han de d in such ar guments
as a serious defeating consideration is a gain a mere outside possibility li ke the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is pe rhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular r e ason for doing so, but bec ause he
hasn't looked around the back , drilled holes in it, etc. etc .
Ne ith e r the
cont emporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleas ure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
th e se me re logical possibilities the very real historically supportab l e risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty argume n t s of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succee d in showing th a t it is
a c ce ptab l e to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
,
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste cas e .
This is the argument that
future p eople may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage me thod for
nuclear was tes before they are damaged by escaped waste material . Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not) .
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible . In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer : that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logi cal possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible . The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
s orts were admissible only j_f what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it . In such cases before such actions could
�22.
be conside r e d admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect th emselves .
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example wh ere the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of th e effec t of his actions on
the passengers b ec ause they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g . the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positi ve r eason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner's taking account of the passengers' welf are and th e
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the re al possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly r eq uired high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strate gy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat th e
application of moral constraints .
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future .
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example , with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present .
Since th e ir numbers are
ind eterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is rais ed
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latte r are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
�23,
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributio nal problems as large and
representat ive of a class of moral prob lems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indetermina cy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be othe r conflict
cases where the level of indetermina cy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e . g . the train example which is a conflict case of a t ype . In particular,
th e re will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numb ers , n umbers of
interests, or whatever , cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteris tics of future people .
The crucial question which emerges is then :
are there any features of
futu re people which would disqualify them from full moral consideratio n o r
r e duce thei r claims to such below those of present people? The answe r is:
in
principle None .
Prima facie, moral principles are universalis able , and lawlike,
in that they ap ply independent ly of position in space or in time, for examp le.
But universalis ability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
whi ch are capable of dealing satisfactor ily with the pres ent : in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards th e present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e .g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (whit e skinned) humans , etc .
The only candidates for characteris tics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indetermina cy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see thes e features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determinatio n of best probable of practical course of action given only
present information ) . In particular, they do not affect cases of th e so~t
be ing considered, nuclear development , where highly determinate or certain
infonnation about the numbers and characteris tics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universaliz ability
principle is not required: it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideratio n; 24
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminat e morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position . As a result of this
�.
23a.
universalizabi lity, there are the same general obligations to future peo ple as
to the present; and thus there i s the same obligation to take account of them
and thei r interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage , and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life . Uncertainty
and inde t e rminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
�24.
harm in the future case under conside ration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceed ing with the action, thus discri mina ting
against future people.
Accordin gly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity , the conclusi on already tentativ ely reached, that proposa ls for nuclear
developm ent in the present and likely future state of technolo gy and practice
s
for future waste disposa l are immoral.
Before we conside r (in section VII) the remainin g escape route from this
conclusi on, through appeal to overridi ng circumst ances , it is importan t to
pick up th e further case (which heavily r einforce s the tentativ e conclusi on)
against nuclear developm ent, since much of it relies on ethical princip les
similar to those that underlie obligati ons to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenua ting ci rc umstanc es.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN . The
eth ical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to futur e creature
s.
Just as remoten ess in time does not erode obligati ons or enti tl emen ts t o just
treatmen t, neither does location in spac e , or a particu lar geograp hical position
.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposa l rais es serious question s
of
distribu tive justice not only across time, across generat i ons, but also across
space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioac tive polluti on in
another state's or region's yard or water s? When that region receives no due
compens ation (whateve r that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and
the
argumen ts underpin ning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentativ e conclusi on concerni ng the injustic e of imposing radioac tive
wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and
Japan
cannot endeavo ur to discoun t peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioac tive pollutio n in quite the same way the y can
discoun t people of two centurie s hence . (But what this conside ration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitl ement to just treatmen t can
be discoun ted over time.)
Ethical issues of distribu tive justice, as to equity , concen1 not only
the spatio-t emporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewher e in the
assessm ent of nuclear developm ent; in particu lar, a s regards the treatmen t of
those in the neighbou rhood of reactors , and, dif fe rently, as regards the
•
distribu tion of (alleged ) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. 25
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks : firstly, radioac tive pollutio n, due to the fact that
reactors discharg e radioac tive materia ls into the air and water near the plant,
�25 .
and secondly catast rop hic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor .
immediate question is whether such costs an d risks can be imposed, with any
An
eth ical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs" of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with otl1er largescale polluting industry, where local participation and que stions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional det ermination and popular sovereignty , are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The "normal" emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
car ri es carcinogenic and mutagenic costs .
While the re are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely numbe r of cancers
and precise ex tent of genetic damage induced by exp os ure to such rad iation , over
the local health costs involved. Under t he Old Paradigm, whi ch (ill egi timately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the e thical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nucl ear power, and under
what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is th en translat e d into
decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation' and ' how to determine what is an
acceptab le level of risk/safe ty for the public. 26
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage . An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal th ey have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air con ditioner
working in summer . Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
comp ensate for the agony of cancer . 27 The point is that the costs to one party
a r e not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alte rnatively obtained without such awful costs , and morally indef ensible , being
imposed .
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant . (Children , for example, are in a
�26.
particularl y vulnerable position, since they are severa l times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligi ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, all egedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear powe r production (allegedly,
for th e real reasons for nucl e ar development do not concern this silent
majority) . Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, e ve n
unde r the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that t he re are alternative ,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of deliveri ng the r eal benefi ts
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of
r adia tion on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serio us
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One ch eape r trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission, 28 is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a pop ulation
has
received with apparently negligible consequence s, th e argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural" level) is also likely
to have negligible consequence s.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted no rmal, and, of course,
so it is th en claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. None of the steps
in this argument is sound.
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no illeffects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affe ct a person's well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, unde r such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal,
e . g. two murde rs or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptabl e .
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits ra diation emissions very
sub s tantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than me re consideratio n of the standards would disclose. Furthermore , the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to th e nuclear op erators
themselves, scarcely disintereste d parties . Public policy is determin ed no t so
as to guarantee public he alth, but rather to serve as a ' public pacifier' wh ile
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered . 29
�2 7.
While radioacti ve emissions are nn ordinary feature of react o r op e ration,
breakdown is, hopefully , not: an accident of magnitude is accounted , by official
definitio n, an 'extraord inary nuclear occurrenc e'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island). 30
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
30a
r e actors ,
then the core melts and 'containm ent failure' is likely, with the
r e sult that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioacti vely contamina ted .
I n the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident , prope rt y da mages
would exceed $1 7 billion and an area the size of Pennsylva nia would be destroyed .
Mod e rn nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
.
.
31
t h ese conservat ive
Us governmen t f'igures are given
t he con s equences of a
s imilar accident with a modern reactor would according l y be much great e r still.
Th e consigner in risking the lives, we ll-being and property of the
passenger s on the train has acted inadmissi bly. Does a governme nt-sponsor ed
private utility act in a way that is anything other th an much less responsib le
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community , in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigner s ' action is , as we would ordinaril y ·suppo se , inadmissi ble and i rrespon-
sible.
The proponent s of nuclear power have in effect argued to the cont rary,
while at the same time endeavour ing to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technolog ical dispute as to means (in accordanc e with the Old Paradigm) .
It has been contended , firstly, what con trasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibili ty of a catas trophic nuclear accident . Indeed in the
influenti al Rassmusse n report 32 - which was extensive ly used to support public
confidenc e in US nuc lear fission technolog y - an even stronger, an incredibl y
strong , improbab ility claim was stated: n amely , the likelihoo d of a catastrop hic
nucle ar accident is so remote as to be '3.lmost) impossi.bl e. The main argument for
this claim de rives from the assumptio ns and estimates of the report i.tself . These
assumptio ns like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents , incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathemat ical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technolog ical limitatiom s and human error, of waste leakage and r eactor inciden t s
and quite possibly accidents , not in an ideal world far removed from the actual ,
a technolog ical dream world whe re there is no real possibili ty of a nuclear
�28,
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclea r world, wh e re wa s t e disposal we r e fool-proof
and reactors we re accident-proof, thin gs would no doubt be morally different.
But we do no t live in s u ch a world .
According to the Rasmuss en r e port its calc ulat ion of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological a ssumptions
and is methodo logically sound.
This is ve ry far from being the cas e .
The under-
ly ing mathematical methods, variousl y called "fault tree analysis " and
"reliability estimating techniques", a r e unsound, because they exclude as "not
credible" po s sibilities or as "not significant" branches that are re a l
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are othe rworldly .
In fact the me thodology and dat a of the report
· · 1 y cr1.t1.c1.ze
h as b een soun dl y an d d ec1.s1.ve
. · ·
d . JJ And 1.t
. h as b een s h own t1at
I
t he r e
is a real possibili t y, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident .
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negli gib l e
prob abi li ty of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, be ing of no greater
orde r than risks of accidents t hat ar e already socially accepted.
Here we
enco unt e r agai n that insidious e ngin e ering approach to morality built into
mod e ls of an e conomic cast, e.g. benefit - cost balance s heets , risk assessment
mode ls, et c.
Risk assessment, a sophistica ti on of trans ac tion or tr ade -off
mode ls, pur.-ports to p ro vide a compari s on between th e relative ri sks at tach ed to
different options, e . g . e nergy options, which settl es th e ir ethical status .
The fo llowing lines of argume nt are encountered in a risk assessme nt as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii )
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries , etc .) which is less than th at of option b, which is already accepted;
there for e op tion a is acceptable . 34
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accident s , which a r e
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable .
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argt.mlent involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
I t is far too simple -minded, and it ignores distrib ut ional
and other r e l e vant aspect s of the context.
In o rde r to ob tain an ethical
assessment we s hould need a much fuller pi cture and we sho uld nee d to know at
least t he s e thin gs :- do the costs and benef it s go to th e same parti es ; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also t he person who receives the benefits or
�29.
primar ily, as in driving or cigare tte smokin g, or are the costs impos
e d on other
parties who do not benefi t? It is only if the parties are the same
in the case of
th e options compar ed, and there are no such distrib utiona l problem
s, that a
compar ison on such a basis would be val.id. 35 This is rarely the cas
e , and it is
not so in the case of risk assessm ents of energy options . Second
ly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activit y which he knowin gly
underta kes
in a situati on where he has a r easona ble choice, knowing it entails
the risk,
etc ., and is the level of risk in propor tion to the le~el of the
rel evant
ac tivity, e.g. as in smoking ? Thirdly , for what reason is the risk
imposed :
is it for a s e rious or a relativ ely trivial reason? A risk that is
e thica lly
accepta ble for a serious reason may not be ethica lly accepta ble for
a trivial
reason. Both the argume nts (i) and (ii) are often employe d in trying
to justify
nuclea r power. The second argume nt (ii) involve s the fallaci es of
th e firs t (i)
and an additio nal set , namely that of forgett ing that the health risks
in the
36
nuclea r s e nse are cumula tive , and already high if not , some say ,
too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefi ts you have to accept th e costs "
is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefi ts then you have to accept
the
costs (or some of them at least)" is anothe r and very differe nt thin
g . It is
a widely accepte d moral princip le, already argued for by way of exampl
es and
already invoked , that one is not, in genera l, entitle d to simply
transfe r cos ts
of a signifi cant kind arising fron an activit y which benefi ts onesel
f onto other
parties who are not involve d in the activit y and are not benefi ciaries 37
.
This
transfe r princip le is especi ally clear in cases where the signifi cant
costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof , and where
the benefi t to
the benefi tting par ty :is of a noncru cial or dispen sible nature , becaus
e, e . g.
it can be substit uted for or done withou t. Thus, for instanc e , one
is not
usually entitle d to harm , or risk harmin g, anot her in the process
of be nefitti ng
onesel f . Suppose , for anothe r example , we consid er a village which
produc es, as a
result of an indust rial process by which it lives, a noxious waste
materi al which
is expens ive and difficu lt to dispose of and yet creates a risk to
life and health
if undispo sed of. Instead of giving up thei r i.ndus trial process and
turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surroun ding
country side,
they persis t with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way
deliver y
service , on the train, to the next village . The inhabi tants of this
village are
then forced to face the problem either of under taking the expens ive
and difficu lt
dispos al process oor of sustain ing risks to thei r own lives and health
or else
leaving the village and their livelih oods. Most of us would see
this kind of
transfe r of co s ts as morally unacce ptable .
�JO.
From this arises a necessary condition for ene rgy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the trans fer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its us e .
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
vil lages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors , especially, as in third world
co untries, neighbours who are not nuclear powe r users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain wide spread and serious forms of pollution, a nd is one
of its most obje ctionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we sho ul d not hand the world on t o
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - t he tramsmission
principle.
For if we did then that would be a signi ficant transfe r of costs .
(The corollary can be independerltly argued for on the basis of certain e t hic al
theories) .
VI . OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discuss ed by no means exhaus t the
envi ronme ntal, health and safety risks and costs in or arising from th e nuclea r
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle include s man y sta ges both before and after
r eacto r operation , apart from waste disposal, namely mining , milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and trans po rtati on of
materials.
Seve ral of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionab le material,
and of the further prolife ration of nuclear armaments - thes e hazard s have
parallels, if not exact equival ents, in other very polluting method s of generating
power, e . g. "workers in the uranium mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of
38
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".
Furth ermo re, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resultin g from location,
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in workin g with radio a ctive
material are now known in advance of choice of such a n occupation: with where
one al re ady lives things are very different.
The uranium mine r's choice of
occup ation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice, whe r eas t he Pacific
Islander ' s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue o f arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportuni ti es and often a t l east ease peo ple
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, i s not an i ssue newly produced by nuclear associated occupa tions .
�31.
Other social and environm ental problems - though endemic where large-sca le
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalita rian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more imtimatel y linked with the nucle ar power
cycle.
Though pollu tion is a common and generally undesirab le component of
large-sca le industria l operation , radioacti ve pollution , such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especiall y a legacy of nuclear developme nt, and a
specially undesirab le one , as enormous rectifica tion estimates for de ad radioactive lands and waterways reveal .
Though sabotage is a threat t o many large
industrie s , so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentra tion
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequen ces, of a different order of magnitude from most industria l sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown) . Though theft of material from more
dubious enterpris es such as munitions works can pose threa ts to populatio ns at
large and can assist terrorism , no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterp rises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionab le material . No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabricatio n into such
massive explosive s.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerabl e on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it, vulnerab ility, in part because of its long and
continuin g associati on with military activitie s, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourage s, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies , crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of associati on and of expressio n, and free access to
informati on . These practices include secrecy , restricti on of infonnati on,
formation of speci al police and guard forces, espionage , curtailme nt of civil
lib e rties.
Already operators of nuclear installat ions are given extraordi nary
powers, in vetting employees , to investiga t e the backgroun d and
activitie s not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installati ons themselve s
become armed camps, which especiall y offends British sensibili ties.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constable s) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installat ions and made it
answerabl e ..• to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority . 39
These developme nts in the United Kingdom, and worse in West Germany, presage
along with nuclear developme nt increasin gly authorita rian and anti-demo cratic
societies . That nuclear developme nt a ppears to force such political consequen ces
tells heavily against it.
�32.
Nuclear developme nt is further indicted political ly by the dire ct
connectio n of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunate ly true that
e thical questions concernin g nuclear war - for example, whether a nucle ar war
is justified , or just, under any circumsta nces , and if so what circums tances are distingui shable from those concernin g nuclear power. Undoubted ly , however,
t he spread of nuclear powe r is substanti ally increasin g the technical me ans
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportuni ty for , and
chances of, nuclear engagemen t.
Since nuclear wars are neve r account able
positive goods , but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirab le .
The spread
of nuclear power according ly
expands the opportuni ty for, and chances of, highly undesirab le consequen ces.
Finally the la tt e r, so increasin g thes e chances and opportun ities, is itself
undesirab le, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear developme n t, is also
undesirab le .
The details and considera tions that fill out this argume nt,
from nuclea r war against nuclear developme n t, are many. They are fir stly
technical , that it is a relativel y straightfo rward and inexpensi ve matte r to
make nuclear explosive s given access to a nuclear powe r plant, secondly political ,
that nuclear engagemen ts once institute d
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or different ly are likely to force access to) nuclear power plant s
do not shrink from nuclear confronta tion and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagemen t (up to "strategi c nuclear strikes" at least) , and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariabl y have immoral consequen ces, such as mas sive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justifica tion is.
Nucl ea r wars are certain to be considera bly worse as regards damage inflicted
than any pr e vious wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars p ut together) , because of th e enormous destructi ve power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioacti ve effec ts, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversi bility of any such confronta tions .
The supportin g considera tions are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
a r e designed to show that the chances of such undesirab l e out comes is itself
und e sirable .
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborate d in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternativ e options is
a case of de ci sion making under uncertain ty , because in particula r of th e gross
uncertain ties involved in nuclear developme nt. In cases of this type the
ap propriate rational procedure is to compare worst cons equences of each
alternati ve, to reject those alternati ves with th e wor s t of these worst
consequen ces (this is a pretty uncontrov ersial part of th e maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternati ve with the best worst consequen ces) . The
nuclear alternati ve has, in particula r because of the r e al possibili ty of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequen ce~ and is according ly a particula rly undesirab le
alternati ve.
�33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS,AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT. As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development , only one justificatory route r emains open, that of app e al to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed ,
the consigne r's action cannot be justifi ed by purely economistic argume nts,
such as that his profits would ris e , the firm or the village would be more
prosperous , or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitl ed to cre ate a serious
risk to othe rs for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
parti cular, applied to the nuclear case. For this r eason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under th e Old Paradi gm to promote
nuclear development - e .g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electri city
utilities, and the need otherwise fo r uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these econornistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristica lly derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vic e versa .
What do have to be considered are however moral confli ct arguments, that is
arguments to the effe ct that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alt e rnative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and will ensue . For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may a rgue that his action is justified becaus e unless it is take n his
village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others;
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcu t, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral confl i ct are based on competin f
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligatio ns to future people .
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impos e on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and e xhaustive set of
alternatives (or a t ].east practical alternatives ) and upon showing that the only
alterna tives to admittedly mo rally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in th e argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
�to starvi ng or to the sendin g off of the parce l, name l y ea
rning a liv ing in some
other way - then the argum ent is defect ive and cannot r eadily
be patche d . Just
s uch a suppre ssion of practi cable altern atives has occurr ed
in the argum ent
design ed to show that the altern atives to the nuclea r option
are even worse than
the option itself , and that there are other factua l defect
s in thes e argum ents
as well. .In short, the argum ents depend essen tially on the
presen tation of
false dichot omies .
A first argum ent, the povert y argum ent , is that there is
an ove rridin g
ob li gation to the poor , both the poor of the third world
and the poor of
indus trialis ed countr ies . Failur e to develo p nuclea r energy
, it is often claime d,
would amoun t to denyin g them the oppor tunity to reach the
standa rd of afflue nce
we curren tly enjoy and would create unemp loymen t and povert
y in th e indus triali s e d
n a tions.
The unemp loymen t and povert y argume nt does not stand up to
exami nati on
eithe r for t he poor of th e indus trial countr ies or for thos
e of th e thir d world.
The re is good eviden ce that large- scale nuclea r energy will
help to increa se
unemp loymen t and povert y in the indus trial world, throug h
the divers i on of very
much availa ble capita l into an indust ry which is not only
an excep tional ly
poo r provi der of di rect employ ment , but also helps to reduce
availa bl e jobs throug h
encour aging substi tution o f energy use for labour use. 40
The argume n t that nuclea r
ene rgy is needed for the third world is even less convin cing.
Nuclea r energy is
both politi cally and econom ically inapp ropria te for th e third
world, since it
requir es massiv e amoun ts of capita l , requir es numbe rs of
import ed sci en tists
and engine ers, but create s neglig ible local employ ment, and
depend s for its
feasib ility upon, what is largel y lackin g , establ ished electr
icity transm ission
system s and back-u p facili ties and suffic ient electr ical
applia nce s to plug into
the system . Politi cally it increa ses foreig n depend ence,
adds to ce ntrali sed
entren ched power and reduc es the chance for change in the
oppres sive politi cal
struct ures which are a large part of the proble m . 41 The
fa c t that nuclea r energy
is not in the intere sts of the people of t he third world
does not of course
mean that it is not in the intere sts of, and wanted by, their
rulers , the
wester nised and often milita ry elites in whose intere sts
the econom ies of thes e
countr ies are usuall y organi sed, and wanted often for milita
ry purpos es . It
is not patern alistic to examin e critic ally the demand s these
ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
�35 .
The po verty argume nt is then a fraud. Nuclear ene r gy will not be used t o
help th e poor. Both for the third world and for the industr ialised co untrie
s
there are well-kno wn energy-c onservin g alternat ives and the practi cal option
of
developi ng oth e r energy sources, alternat ives some of which offer f a r bette r
prospec ts for helping the poor .
It can no longer be pretende d that there is no alt e rnative to nuclear
de velopme nt: indeed nuclear de velopme nt is itself but a bridging , or stop-gap
,
procedu re on route to solar or perhap s fusion deve lopment . And there a r e various
alternat ives : coal and other fossil fuels, geotherm al, and a range of solar
op tions (includi ng as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
each po ss ibly in combina tion with cons e rvation measures ~ 2 Despit e the availab
ility
of alterna tives, it may still be pre t e nde d that nuclea r deve lopment is ne cess
ary
fo r affluenc e (what will emerge is that it is advantag eous for the power and
aff luence of ce rtain select groups ) . Such an assumpt ion really und erlies part
o f t he pover ty argumen t, which thus amounts to an elabora tion of th e trickledown argumen t (much f avoured within the Old Paradigm se tting) . For the a rgument
runs : - Nuc l ea r developm ent is necessar y for (continu ing an d in c r eas in g)
affluenc e.
Affluenc e inevitab ly tr i ckl es down to th e poor. Th e r e for e nuclear
developm ent benefits the poor . First, the argumen t does not on i ts own sh ow
a nything specific about nuclear power : for it works equally well if ' ene r gy '
is substitu ted f or ' nuclear ' .
It has also to be shown , what the next major
argumen t will try to claim, that nuclear developm ent is unique among e ne rgy
alternat ives in increasi ng affluenc e . The second assumpt ion , that affluenc e
inevitab ly trickles down, has now been roundly refuted , both by r ecent historic
al
da ta, which show increasi ng affluenc e ( e .g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
co upled with increasi ng poverty in several countrie s, both developi ng and
de veloped , and th r ough economic models which reveal how "affluen ce" can increase
withou t r e dist ribution occur ring .
Another maj o r argumen t a dvanced to show moral conflic t app eals to a set
of suppos e dly ove rr iding and competin g obligati ons to future people . We have,
it is said , a du ty to pass on the immense ly valuable things and institut ions
which our culture has develope d .
Unless our high-tec hnology , high ene r gy
industr ial society is continue d and fo s tered, our valuab l e institut ion s and
tra ditions will fall into de cay or be swept away. The ar gument is essentia lly
th a t without nuclear powe r, withou t th e conti n ued level of materia l wealth
43
it alone is assumed to make possible , the li gh ts of our civiliza ti on wil l go
out.
Fut ure people will be th e los e rs.
�36,
The lights-goin g-out argument doe s rais e quest ions as to what is valuable
in o ur society, and of what characteris tics are necess ary for a good society .
But for the most part th ese large questions, which deserve much full e r
ex amination , can be avoided .
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
un critical position with re spe ct to present high-techno logy societi es , apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable . It assumes that technologi c
society is unmodifiabl e , that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conse rvation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of ene rgy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is a ll eged t o furnish ar e essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technologic al
so c ie ty's energy patterns are unmodifiabl e is especially so - after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have r equired major social and technologic a
r es tructuring and consumption modificatio n. If western society ' s demands for energy
a re totally unmodifiabl e without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction , but one might ask what use its culture co uld
be to future people who would very likely , as a consequence of this destruction ,
lack the resource base which th e argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporar y society.
There is also difficulty with th e assumption of uniform valuablene ss;
but if this is rejected the question be comes not: what is necessary to maintain
exis ting high-techno logical society and its political institution s, but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and th e political
institution s which are needed to maintain those valuable things . While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to a rgu e that it
is e ssential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a du ty to pass .on to the fut ure.
The evidence, for instan ce from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
The re is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But e ve n
if a radical change in these di rec tions is independent ly desirable, as we should
arg ue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out a rgument a re wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-b e ing is required to consume less energy than at
�37.
present , and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
consumption which is assumed in the usu al economic case for nucl ear energy . 44
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to preven t the
lights going out in west e rn civilisation , but to enable th e lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
th e Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high e nergy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, es pecially if e nergy
is obtained by nuclear fission means , be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an ext remely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susce ptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably t e nd to become
autho ritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat pos ed by dissident groups in the nuclea r
.
.
situation.
45
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of th e worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valua ble
asp e cts, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
p ersonal and collective autonomy which exist , would be lost or diminish e d:
political freedom , for example, is a high price to pay for consume ri sm and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technologynuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rath e r, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argumen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
�38 .
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
appeal to fut urity, closed.
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scal e nuclear developmen t i s a crime agains t
the future is inevitable .
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other ar_guments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future .
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The arg ument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has r elied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for examp l e,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounte d (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of marketcentred economic theory ), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the cas e, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice .
Large-scale nucl ear developme nt is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy .
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alt ernatives to given economic
ends.
Admi t tedly so much capital has already been invested in nucle ar fission
research and development, in marka:l. contrast to other newer rival sources of
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(ou t) , and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, pub l icly
eco nomic (in that they are app roved for public consumption), and th e r ea l
r ea s ons , which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social
control.
�39.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going -out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
valuable!): - Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e . g. to increas e the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistributi on problems, and connected social
unr e st, e tc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is
part of US energy policy, 46 and the second premiss is supplied by standard
economics textbooks . But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmen tal costs carried by unqualified
47
economi c growth .
More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rath e r an appropriate and less
vulne rabl e restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alt e rnatives .
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of th e premiss
Nuc lear power is the economicall y best way to sustain economic growth, 'economicall y
best' being filled out as ' most efficient', 'cheapest ' , 'having most favourable
benefit-cos t ratio', etc.
Unfortunate ly for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively, unless
a goo d deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. Much data, beginning with
th e cancellatio n of nuclear plant orders, can't be assembled to show as much. Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to b e permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public ( governmenta l)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments . Virtually all available data
concen1s the USA; in EuroZS, West and East, true cos ts of uniformly "publicly=
controlled" nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants .
Komanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26 % in 1985. 49 And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell rather decisively
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants . Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators . Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the elect ricit y th ey were
designed to produ ce , and that when Atomic Energy Commis sion estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both opera t ed at 80% of design
capacity , were adjusted accordingly , nuclear generated power proved to be far more
�40.
.
h
.
d 50
expensive
tan
estimate.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an ac tual capacity factor of 55 %
produced electricity at a cost about 25% high e r than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers' projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (p e r kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
r e liability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of ef ficienc y and product production costs , against nuclear powe r .
Thes e unfavourable assessments are from a privat e (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account .
The main subsidies are through research and development , by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
51
Act ), in en richme n 4 and in waste management . It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nucl ea r power by at least 25% ( and probably much more) .
Wh en official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is f ound that they inadmissibly omit seve ral of the public
costs i nvolve d in producing nuclear power .
For example, the analyses igno re
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known curren tly
wha t t he costs involved are .
But even using actual waste handling cos t s (while
wastes await s torage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuc l ear . 52
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage , are dul y taken into account, the balance is swung stil l further i n
favo ur of al te rnatives to nuclear and
aga i nst nuclear power .
In short , eve n on
proper Old Par a digm accounting, the nu c l ear alte rn at iv e s hould be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly se ems ; it has b een
kept going n~ through its clear economic v iability, but by massive pub li c
s ubsidization , of s e vera l types .
In USA, to take a main examp le where
information is available , nuclear developme nt is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or somet i mes free research and development , thro ugh the
Price-Anderson Act, which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i . e . wh ich in ef fe ct p rovided t he insurance subsidy making corporat e nuclear
development e conomicall y f e asibl e, and through government ag r eement to handle all
r adioactive wastes .
While the Old Paradigm str ictly construed c annot sup port un economical
developments, cont empo rary liberalisation of the Paradigm do e s allow fo r
un economi c projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
soc ial welfare.
Duly admitting s ocial welfare and some
equity
pr i nciples
�41,
i n th e dist ribut ion of wealt h (not necessa rily of pol l ution) l e ads the modern
version of the Old Paradigm , called the Mo dified Old Paradigm .
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic facto rs, e . g . individual self-he lp is down- played , wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g . through t:axation , market forces are re gulated
or disp la ced (not in principle eliminat e d, as with stat e s ocialism).
Now it
has been cont ended - outrageous though it should now se e m - that nuclear powe r
is i n the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example ,
apart from those already mentioned suc h as energy fo r growth and che ap
e l ect ricity, and such as plantiful powe r f or heating and cooking a nd app lian ce
use , avoidan ce of shortages , rat ioning ,
brown-outs and the like .
Since
alternative power sources, such as coal, could s e rve some ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argumen t has aga in to show that t he
cho ice of nucle ar power over other a lterna tives is best in the requ isite
respects, in s erving the public interes t.
Such a n ar gumen t is a matter for
decision theory, unde r which head cost -bene f i t analyse s which rank alternatives
a l so fall as special cases .
Decision theory purports to cover th eo r e tically the field of choice
b e tween alte rnatives; it is present ed as the theory which ' dea l s with t he
.
pro bl em o f c h oosing
one cours e o f acti. on among s e vera 1 poss1'bl. e cou r ses 1 . 53
Th us the choice of alt e rnati~ modes of energy pro duc ti on, t he ene r gy choice
problem, be comes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nucl ea r choice is
often ''.justi f ied" in Old Paradigm terms t h rough app e al to decision t heo ry.
But though decision theory is in principle comp rehens ive , as soon as it is put
to work in such practi cal cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronte d with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to confo r m with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream e conomic
theory .
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comp a ring , to take one
imp ortant example , a general optimisation model for decision (wh ere
uncertainty is not gross) with comparab le decision the ory methods, such as th e
expe cted uti lity model.
The general model for best choice among alte rnatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constrain ts, which may
include
et hical constraints ex clud ing cert a in alt e rnati ves under gi ven
cond itions .
Expected utility
models dEmote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference prop e rt ies t hat may not obtain, and elimina te
constraints altoget her (absorbing what is fo rbidden, fo r examp le , as having a
hi gh dis u tili ty, but one that can be compensate d for none th eless ).
Thus , in
�42.
particula r,
e thical constrain ts against nuclear developme nt are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensat ion for damage
sustained . Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled , so no longer at issue are the defective (nee-clas sical)
economic assumptio ns made in the theory, for example as to the assessmen t of
everythin g t o be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms : everythin g worth accountin g has a price), and as to the legitimac y
of transferr ing with limited compensat ion risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework , a case of decision under uncertain ty . It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicabl e),
be cause some possible outcomes are so unce rtain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective ) quantifia ble probabil ities can be assigned to them.
It ems that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core me ltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear de velopment : 54
widesprea d radioactive pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain .
The correct rule for decision under uncertain ty is, in the case of energy
ch oice , maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended .
In fact, on ce again, it is unnecessa ry for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected .
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same rejection s for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergen ce in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected . All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option .
A further convergen ce can be effected
also , because the best possible (economic ) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelec tric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elabo rated). Unde r these
condition s complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Hor wicz rule) which take
account of both best possible and most possible outcomes under each option
reduce to the maximin
rule .
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substanti ally better
than that of the nuclear
option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare , not th e nuclear
dream, is realised) . Further applicati on of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predomin antly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effe cts
on the earth 's climate from burning massive quantitie s of such fuels .
�43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with maximin
position several rivals to maximin
proposed,
each
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
Some of these
rules , such as the risk- added reasonin g criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
which 'assesses
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existin g in the status quo, rather than in te rms of
th e absolute value of the risk associated with the policy' are decidedly
dubious,
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears t o
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
~~at will be argued, or rather
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option .
For example , the keep -options-op en or allow-for-r eversibility
(not an entirely unquestiona ble rule
rule
'of strictly limited applicabili ty')
e xcludes the nuclear option because 'nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibi lity ... " One cannot simply abandon
a nuclear reactor
the way one can abandon
a coal-fired plant"' (p.506). The compare-the alt e rnatives rule, in ordinary application , leads back to th e cost -b e nefit
assessments , which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-s ustainable-b enefits rule,
which ' directs us to opt for th e policy producing the highest level of net
b enefits which can be sustained indefinitel y', 'decisively favours r e newable
sources ', ruling out the nuclear option.
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoida nce and protecting- thevulnerable als o yields th e same nuclear-exc luding results. Harm-avoida nce,
in particular, points
1
decisively in favour of "alt ernative" and "renewable "
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy cons ervation'
(p.442) .
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
the result is the same, a nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
standards . Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefi t analyses,wi th
probabiliti es duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-b enefit co nsideration s, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut : nor does its Modificatio n. The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case,
sufficientl y evident that contemporar y e conomic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with nee-classic al economic
....
�44.
th eory nor, to consider the main modification , with social democratic
th eory .
There are , firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one :
corporations so committed are understandably
ke en to realise returns on capital already invested .
There are also typical
self-interest reasons fo r commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in politica l
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others , and so on .
The r e are
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by t e chnocratic-entrepre nial elite, a belief
in socl al control from above , control which nuclear powe r o f f ers f a r mo r e tlwn
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter th e power bas e , a f a ith
in th e unlimitedness of t e chnological enterprise, and nuclear in particular ,
so that any real probl ems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such b e li e f s are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
gove rning and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
thes e sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
thos e whos e types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear developme nt
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs .
It is then, contemporary corporate capitalsim, along with its state
e n t erprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure , corporate
capitalism , which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in we stern
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
t ype such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice .
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the notional
US
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible .
By comparison with the West, nuc lear power production i n
th e
small
Eastern bloc is
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
which had in 19 77 only about
nuclear plants .
one -sixth the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported elsewhere to any great extent .
American technology has .
�45,
The 60s were, because of the growth in electrici ty demand, a period of
great expansion of the elec trical utilities in the US . These companies we re
e ncouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlle d or influence d reasons:- Firs tly, owing to
governme ntal regulatio n procedure s the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly ,
the US governmen t arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation ,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies , actively
encourage d a nuclear choice and nuclea r deve lopment. In particula r, state
limitatio n of liability and shoulderi n g of part o f insurance for nu clear
accidents and state arrangeme nts to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profit able private utility operation appear feasibl e and r esulting in nuclea r
investmen t.
In the 70s, though the state subsidiza tion continued , the private
pict ur e changed : 'high costs of construct ion combine d with low capacity
factors and poor r eli ability have wiped out the last advantage that nuclear power '
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in th e US is con trolled by a few
co rpor ations , so the world mark et is dominated by a few countries , predomina ntly
and first of all the US, which through its two leadi ng nuclear companies ,
We stinghous e and Gen e ral Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
technolog y. 55 These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequen tly world markets by US foreign policies, ba sically th e " Ato ms for
Peace" program supplemen ted by bilateral agreement s providing for US technolog y ,
r e search, enri ched uranium and financial capital. ' The US offered a [ s tat e
s ub si dize d ] nuclear package that Europe could not refus e and with whi ch the
British could not compete'.
In the 70s the picture of US dominatio n of Common
Market nuclear technolog y had given way to subtler influence : American companies
held (actually dealing with relevant governmen ts) substanti al interests in Europ ean
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technolog y which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
ag re ements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries , for
example, Argentina , Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia , Iran, Ire l and, Israel ,
Pakistan, Philippin es, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, Spa in,
Taiwan, Turk ey , Venezuela , South Vi etnam.
The US proceeded ,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technolog y and nuclear materials in gre at quantitie s round th e world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear t echnology t hrough th e Internati onal Atomic
Ene rgy Agency , originall y de si gne d to control and saf eg uard nuclear ope rati ons,
but most of whos e ~udget and activitie s • .. have gone to promote nu c l ear
activitie s' .
�46.
A main reason for th e promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors. Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safe t y regulations
are loose and enforcement rar e , where public opposition
is not pennitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[Forj
..• the US has considerabl e leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
expe rience that many of the worst dictatorshi ps in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support .
Many of those same regimes
are now
pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. 56
It is e v ident from this sketch of the ways and means of r eactor
proliferatio n that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and the social Modificatio n, but that the practices (of
corp orate capitalism and associated third world imperialism ) involve much
that is eth ically unacceptabl e, whether
by olde r, modif ied, or alternative
57
percepts;
for principles such as those
and self-d e termination are grossly vio late d.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES . The futur e energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable . For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associ ated
phe nomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to ment ion the
despoliatio n caused by extensive strip mining , all of which result from its us e
in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
58
and replacement .
To these conventiona l main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroele ctricity . The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technologic al but social , and involves both
conservatio n measures and the restruct urin g of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumerist ic
and nonconsume ristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternative s , conventiona l t echnologica lly-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of de ciding in which way to meet
�4 7.
give n and unexamine d goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but als o a matter
of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technolog ies or substitut e ways of meeting some fi xed or give n
demand or level of consumpti on, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with s oft rather than hard technolog ies; we are also fac e d, and pr i ma rily, with th e
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society t hat creates
them . It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to mee t these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitabl e and unchangea ble . (Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessa ry trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.) Na turally this is not to deny that th e se softer options are
sup e rior because of the ethically unaccepta ble features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technolog y, howe ver benign in principle , will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expect e d to meet
unbounded and uncontrol led energy consumpti on and demands. Even the more benign
technolog ies such as solar technolog y could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriora ted world being hand e d
on to them . Consider, for example, the effect on the world's forest s , which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for productio n of methanol or o f
e lectricit y by woodchipp ing (as already planned by forest authoriti es and
contempla ted by many other energy organisat ions) . While few would object to t he
use of genui ne waste material for energy productio n, the unrestric ted exploi t ation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of " solar energy" or not. - to meet
e ver increasin g energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard-pres sed natural forests.
The effects of such additiona l demands on the maintenan ce of the
forests are often dismissed , even by soft technolo gicalists, by the simpl e
expedient of waving around the label 'renewabl e resources '. Many forests are
in principle renewable , it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitat ion , but in fact there are now very few forestry operation s anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completel y renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values. 59 In many regions too the rate of
e xploitatio n which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced . It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainfores t types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciat ion
of the conduct of contempor ary forestry operation s, who i s also concerned with
long-t erm conservat ion of the forests and remaining natural communiti e s, must
regard with alarm. The result of massive deforesta tion for energy purposes,
�48,
r esemb li n g the deforesta tion of England at the beginning of th e Industrial
Revolution, again for ene rgy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in s t eeper lands and trop i cal are as , dese rtification in more a rid
r egions, possib le climatic change, and massive impoverishm en t of na tural
ecosystems .
Some of us do not wa nt to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a de fores ted world to the future, any more than we want t o pass on on e
poisone d by nuclear products or polluted by coal p roduct s . In sh or t, a mere
swi t ch t o a more benign t e chnology - important though this i s - wi th out any
more bas ic structural and social change is inadequate .
Nor is such a simple technolo gi cal swi. tch likely to be achieved. It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuc lear
program (and that of the countrie s it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplishe d, it is ve ry un likely
give n th e inte gration of political powe rholders with those sponsoring nuclear
de velopment . 60
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism , consumption far beyo nd genuine needs, a nd
a n e conomic s tructure which en coura ge s increasing use of highly energy-inte nsive
mode s of prod uc tion. This means, for instance, trying to change a social
stru c ture in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work f o rce
are cogs i n a production machine over which they have ve ry little r eal cont r ol
an d in which most people do unpleasant or boring work fro m which they derive
very 1i t tle real satisfactio n in orde r to obta i n the r eward of consume r goo ds
and services . A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
prod ucts rather than proc es s e s, fro m consumption , rath e r than from satisfac tion
in work an d in social r e lations and oth er activities , is virtually bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unn e cessary consumption . (A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but fo r created and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce . ) Consumption frequently
be comes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the large r set of
adjustments involved in s ocially implementin g the New Paradigm , the move away
f rom consumerism is for examp le part of th e more ge ner al shift from ma t eri al ism
and ma terialist values .
The social change option tends to be obscured in mos t dis cussions o f
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it do e s
que stion unde rlying values of current social arrangemen ts . The conventiona l
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
61
n ee ds
) as unchall e ngeable, and th e iss ue to be on e of which t ech nology can
�49.
be most profi tably employed to meet th em.
This e ffectiv e ly pre s en ts a f a l se
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand a s lacking a s ocial
contex t so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
take n as unchallengeable and unchangeable .
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argue d by representat i ves
of such industries as trans!X)rtation and petroleum, as for exampl e by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
powe r boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent th em from satisfying
th e se wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such nee ds and wants arise or are produced.
To point to th e de t e rmination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach a ccording to which they are entirely de t ermined at the framewo rk level
( e .g. by indu s trial organisation) and th e r e is no such thing as indivi dual
ch oic e or de termination at all.
It is to s ee the soci a l framework as a major
f a c t o r i n de t e rmining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel ,
a n d t o see ap pare ntly individual choices made in such matte rs as being channelle d
a nd dire cte d by a social framework de t e rmined l argely i n th e inte r es t s o f
corporat e an d private pro f it and advantage .
The so cial change option is a hard option - at l e ast it wil l b e difficult
to obtain pol itically - but it is the only way , so it has been argued , of a voidin g
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of r easons t han
suc h ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective 62 , a perspective integ ral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingl y requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and pol i tical adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative require s will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option repre sents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surp r ising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misre pres enting and often
ob scuring i t .
But difficult though a change will be , es pec ially one with s uch
f a r - r eaching e ffects on th e prevailing power struc tur e , is to obt ai n, it is
imp e rative t o try: we are al l on the n uclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts , Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e . g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-settin g matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater ) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least a s important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
to the first, see references cited in Goodin , p . 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cot grove and Duff, and some of the references
As
given therein.
3.
Cot grove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34 .
5.
compare also
See, e.g ., Gyorgy , pp . 357- 8.
6.
For one illustration , see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty 's
Stationery Office , London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff , p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another .
One can argue both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nucle ar establishme nt, since they (those of th e
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualificatio ns) can release what, and only
what , suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmenta l inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear deve lopment; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclus ion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see , e . g.,
�2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11 .
Se e the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
lla.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclea r radi ation , unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
exampl e , can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the convent ional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recent l y nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to manage technology repr esent s the past]
14 .
On such l imitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and vot ing "p aradoxes" on the
other.
Other different limitation resu1 ts are presented in Routley 81 .
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
n e cessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
th e Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p . 34) .
15.
See Lovins and Price .
15a .
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
'What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed' (Barry, p. 24 3).
Therefor e ~ a nuclear f utur e contrav enes r equirements of justice .
�3
16.
For examples , and for some details of the history of philosoph e rs'
positions on obligatio ns to the future, see Routley (a).
17 .
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore' s position is ambivalen t and , to
all appearanc es, inconsist ent. It is considere d in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls ' position.
18.
For related criticism s of the e conomists ' arguments for discounti ng,
a nd for citation of the often eminent economist s who sponsor them, see
Goodin , pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborate d here) are that the propertie s are different
e . g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings , being only partial orderings , do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfact ory fashion . What he claims is tha t we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expe ct ed util ity maximiza tion
presuppos es, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedure s. But
outstandi ng alternativ es can always be comprehen ded logically , at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g. "'P covers everythin g except p). For example ,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehen ded along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error". Furthermo re the different
more app ropriate rules Goodin subsequen tly considers also requir e listing of
"possible " outcomes .
Goodin's point can be alternati vely stated however.
There
are really two points.
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternati v es
cannot in general be assigned required quantitat ive probabil ities, and it is
at that point that applicati ons of the models breaks dovm. The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertain ty from decision making
under risk. Secondly, many influenti al applicatio ns of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitim ately, delete possible
alternati ves from their modelling s.
21 .
Discount, or bank, rates in the economis ts' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson , Economics , 7th Edition, McGraw-H ill,
New York , 1967, p.351.
22 .
Thus the rates have little moral relevance .
A real possibili ty is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate . A real possibili ty requires producibl e evidence for its
considera tion . The contrast is with mere logical possibili ty.
23.
�4
24.
Such a princip le is explici t both in classica l utilitar iani s m (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414) , and in a range of contrac t and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawl s (p.293).
How the princip le is argu ed for will depe nd
heavily , however, on the underlyi ng theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend he avily on particu lar ethical theories .
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especia lly, the
Poverty argumen t.
26 .
SF, p. 27.
Shrader -Freche tte is herself somewha t critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods , suggesti ng that ' whoever aff irms or
den ies the desirab ility of ... [such] standard s is, to some degree,
symboll ically assentin g to a number of American value patterns and cu l tural
norms' (p. 28 ).
27.
The examp le paralle ls the sorts of countere xamp les often advance d to
utilitar ianism, e.g. the admissi ble lynching of an innocen t person because
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
against utilitar ianism, see ...
For the more general case
28 .
US Atomic Energy Commissi on , Compara tive Risk-Co st-B en ef it Study of
Alterna tive sources of Electric al Energy (WASH-1224), US Governm ent Printing
Office , Washing ton, D.C., Decembe r 1974 , p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29 .
As SF points out, p.37-44 ., in some detail. As she remarks,
... since standard s need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclea r Regulato ry commiss ion] judges that the
licence shows 'a reasonab le effort' at meetin g them,
current policy allows governm ent regulato rs to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparen t ] good
intentio ns of the promo tors of technolo gy. [Such]
good intentio ns have never been known to be sufficie nt
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulati on, even where the standard s are as mostl y not very
demandin g, and the alliance of regulato rs with those th ey a re s upposed t o be
r eg ulating, are conspicu ous features of modern environm ental control, not just
of (nuclear ) pollutio n control.
30 .
�31 .
The figures are thos e from the origin al Bro okhaven Report: ' Theo r e
t ical
possib ilities and consequ ences of major accide nts in large nuclea
r plants ',
USAEC Report WASH-740, Governm ent Printin g Office , Washin gton , D. C.,
1957.
This r e port was r eques ted in the first place because the Commis sion
on Atomic Energy
wanted pos i tive safe t y conc l usions "to r eass ure th e
private insuran ce compan ies" so that they would pr ovid e
coverag e for th e nuclea r indust ry. Since even th e
cons e rvative statist ics of the r eport we r e alannin g it
was supp r essed and its data we r e not made public until.
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brough t as a r esult of
the Freedom of Inform ation Act (Shrad er-Frec hette, pp. 78-9).
32 .
Atomic Energy Commis sion, Re actor Safe ty Study: An Ass e ssment of
Acc ident Risks in US Comme rcial Nuclea r Power Plants , Governm ent
Printin g Offi ce ,
Washin gton, D.C., 1975 . This report, the only alleged ly comple te
study ,
conclud ed that fission reactor s presen ted only a minima l health risk
t o the
public .
Early in 1979, th e Nuclea r Regula tory Commis sion (th e r elevan t
organ isation that superse ded the trouble d Atomic Energy Commis sion)
withdre
w
i ts suppor t for the report, with the result that there is now no
compreh ensive
analys is of nuclea r power approve d by the US Governm ent.
32a .
Most presen t and planned r eactors are of this type: see Gyo r gy .
33 .
34 .
Even then relevan t environ ment factors may have been neglec t ed .
35.
There are variati ons on (i) and (ii) which multip ly costs agains t
number s such as probab ilities. In this way risks, constru ed as probab
le
cos ts, can be taken into accoun t in the assessm ent.
(Alt e rnative ly, risks may
be assesse d through such familia r method s as insuran ce.)
A princip le varying (ii), and fonnula ted as follows :
(ii ) a is ethica lly accepta ble if (for some b) a include s no more
risks than b
and b is sociall y acce pted. was the basic ethica l princip le in terms
of which
the Cluff Lak e Board of Inquiry recentl y decided that nuclea r power
de velo pme nt
1
�in Saskat chewan is ethically acceptable :
s e e Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Departme nt of Environment , Government of Saskatchewa n, 1978, p. 305 and
p . 288 . In this report, a is nuclear power and bis either a ctiviti e s clearl y
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other application s b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietna m War(!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii'). The principles are certainly ethically substantive , since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissibl e conventiona l character. For l ook at the origin of b: b may be
socia lly accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibili ty is no longer so cle arcut and it would not have been socially
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. 'What
is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing
is then 'ethically acceptable' rather than 'socially accepted'. But even with
th e amendments the principles are invalid , for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcertin g that thes e arguments do not work . It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the exper ts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the tr oubl e with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian , and like utilitariani sm they neglect distributio nal features ,
involve na tu ralistic fallacies, et c.
Really they try to treat as an uncon-
straine d optimisatio n what is a deontically constraine d optimisatio n :
V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarian ism'.
s ee R. and
37.
Ap parent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistr i bution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be i f taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population .
Example s such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexam ples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p. 15, where references are also cited.
39 .
Goodin, p. 433.
40 .
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
Energy , Environment a lists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiat ing th e interesting case of Commoner
[7 ] . On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well [18], p. 23 . On th e employment issues, see too H. E. Daly in [ 9], p. 149.
�7
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Ene rgy and Equality , Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly th e opp osite of
what the poor need.
41 .
For much more deta il on the inappropria teness see E.F . Schumacher,
Sma ll is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973. As to the capital and
o ther requirement s, see [2] , p. 48 , and also [7] and [9] .
For an illuminatin g l ook at the sort of d evelopmen t high - energy
t e chnolo gy will t end to promote in the so-called unde rdeveloped countri es see
the pap e r of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Envfr•onment (edited
J . H. Wins l ow), Au s tr a l ian National University Press, Canb e rr a, 1977.
42 .
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins , Energy Strategy : The Road Not
Taken , Fr iends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Fo 1°eign Affair•s ,
Oc tob e r 1976); s ee also [ 17], [6 ] , [ 7], [14] , p . 233 ff, and Schumacher, op . cit .
43 .
An argument like this is suggested in Passmo re, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument
for the ove rriding importance of passing on contemporar y culture is underpinn e d
by what appears to be a future-dire cted ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed he
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good interventio n is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of t he present and immediate future. The argument has all
t he defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p . 191, and also Commoner .
45 .
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been a dvanced by civ il
liberties groups and others in a number of countri e s: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White , Nuclear Pr ospects. A comment on the individual , the State
and Nuclear Power , Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties , London, 1976.
46.
' US energy policy, for example , since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act , has been that nuclear powe r is necessary to provide "an e conomical
and reliable basis"
n eed ed "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p . 111, and
r efe rences there cit e d) .
�47.
There are now a great many criticism s of the second premiss in th e
literat ure . For our criticism , and a r e formulati on of the premiss in terms
of selec tive economic growth (which would exclude nu clear developm ent), see
Routley (b) , and also Berkley and Seckler.
To simple-mi ndedly contrast e conomic growth with no-growth , in the fa shion
of some discussio ns of nuclear power, c . f . Elster, is to leave out
crucial
alte rnatives ; the contracti on of course much simplifie s the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear developme nt is explicitl y in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the governmen t has very s ubstantia l
interests in main nuclear involved companies . Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehen sive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtical ly according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptio ns made
concernin g the measureme nt of plant performan ce
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49 .
See Kalmanoff , p .
50.
See Corney.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF on argument
from ignorance etc.
53 .
These e . g. Elster, p. 377.
On deci sion theory see also,
54 .
A recent theme in much economic literatur e is that Bayesian dec ision
theory and risk analysis can be universal ly applied . The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. In any case , even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, a nd few (and
widely diverging ) figures for the probabili ty of a reactor core meltdown,
an d no reliable estimates as to the likelihoo d of a nuclear confronta t i on.
Thus Goodin argue s (in 78) that 'such uncertain ties plague energy theories'
as to 'rend er expected utility calculati ons impossibl e '.
55 .
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff ., from which presentat ion of the
internati onal story is adapted.
�1
56.
Gyo rgy, p . 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
For elaborati on of some of th e important
and Hermann.
57.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principle s underlyin g the Old
Paradigm or its Modificat ion - and they do form a coherent set th at many
people can
respect - these are not the principle s unde rlying contempor ary
corporate capitalism and associate d third-wor ld i.mperialis m.
58.
Certainly practical transitio nal programs may involve tempo rary and
limited us e of unaccepta ble long t erm commoditi es such as coal, but in
presentin g su ch practical details one should not lose sigh t of the more basic
social and structura l changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitio nal strategie s should make use of such
measures as en vironment al (or replaceme nt) pricing of energy i . e . so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of r e placing it by an
equivalen t unit taking account of environm ental cost of productio n. Other
(sometime s coopU.ve) s trategies towards more satisfact ory alternativ es should
a lso, of course , be adopted, in particula r the removal of institutio nal barriers
to energy conservat ion and alternati ve technolog y (e . g. local governmen t
regulatio ns blocking these), and the removal of state assistanc e to fuel and
power industrie s.
59.
Symptoma tic of the fact that it is not treated as r enewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewabi lity - if th ey did
the losses and deficits on forestry operation s would be much more s triking tha n
t hey already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermo re, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully r e newable operation if net energy productio n is to be worthwhil e; see, e.g .
the argument in L. R.B . Mann 'Some difficult ies with energy farming for portable
fuels', and add in the costs of e cosystem maintenan ce.
60.
For an outline and explanati on of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee .
61 .
The requisite distinctio n is made in several places , e . g . Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literatur e), Baran and
Sw eezy .
62 .
The distinctio n between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasise d
by Naess. For its environm en tal i mpo rtance see Routl ey (c) (wher e
further reference s are cited) .
�•
REFERENCES .
In o rde r to contai n refe r e n ces to a modes t length, r efrre ncc to
primary sources has often been replaced by referen ce through secondary sources .
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sour ces . For those parts of
the text that ove rlap Routley (a), fuller references wil l be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, 'Environmen talism, middle-clas s radicalism an d
politics', Sociologica l Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E . Goodin, 'No moral nukes ', Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends , No Nukes: everyone's guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Ato mic Energy, Outb ack Press , Melbourn e ,
1977.
R. a nd V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 ( 1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Repo rt: Ranger Uranium Environmen tal I nquiry First Report , Australian
Go vernmen t Publishing Service, Canberra , 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Fr echet te, Nu clea r Power and Publi c Policy, Reidel, Do rdrecht,
1980 (refe rred to as SF).
W. R. Cat ton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, 'A new ecol ogical paradigm for post - ex uber an t
sociology', Ame rican Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47 .
Unite d States Interagency Review group on Nuclea r Waste Managemen t, Repo rt
to the President, Wash i ngton. (Dept. of Energy) 1979. (Ref. No . El. 28 . TID29442) (cited as US(a)) .
A.B . Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuc lear Futures : The Case for an Eth ical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth Internation al, San Fran cisco , 1975.
R. Routley , 'On the impossibili ty of an ortho dox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmen tal problems', Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routl ey , 'Necessa r y limits for knowledge: unknowable tru ths', in Es says in
honour of Paul Wei nga rtner,
(ed. E. Norscher ), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore , Man's Responsibi lity for Nature, Du ckworth , London, 1974 .
�,,,.
.-2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Editi on, RSSS, Austra lian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J . Rawls , A Theory of Justice, Harvard Unive rsit y Press, Cambridge , Mass.,
19 71.
P . hl . Berkl ey a nd D.W . Seckler, Economic Gr owth and Environment a l Dec ay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch , New York, 1972 .
J . Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power' , Soci al Science Information
18 (3) (1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson , Economic Heresi e s, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry, 'Circumstan ces of Justice and future generat i ons ' in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.I. Sikora and B. Barry), Templ e Universit y Press,
Philadelphi a, 1978.
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics , Macmillan, London , 1962 (r e issue ).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power , Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Right s , 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979 .
J. Woodmans ee , The World of a Giant Corporation , North Coun tr y Pr es s , Seattle ,
Washing ton, 1975.
P . A. B~r a n and P . Sweezy, Monopoly Capita l, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, ' The shallow and the deep, long range eco l ogy movement.
A summary ', Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
�
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NUCLE AR POWER -
I.
ETHIC AL,
SOC I AL AND POLltt AAL DI MiN S I ONS
COMPETING PARADIGMS AN D THE NU CLEAR DEBAT E.
1870
One ha rdly needs initia t i on i nt o the dark my s te ri e s of
nucl ear ph ys i cs to contribu te use f ully t o t he debat e no w
wid e l y r anging ov e r nuc lear powe r . While ma ny i mpo r tan t
empi rica l que stions ar e s t i ll unr e s olved, t hese do not r e a lly
l i e a t th e ce nt r e of t he con t r ove rsy. In st e ad, it is a
de ba t e about val ue s . ..
ma ny of the que s tions ~hi ch a ri s e are s oc i al an d et hica l one s . 1
Socio logical inves tigation s have conf i rme d that th e n ucl ea r deba t e is primaril
y
one ove r what is wor th having or pursuing and over what we a re ent i t l ed to do
to o th e rs .
They ha ve also confirme d tha t t he debate i s polaris ed a lon g t he
li nes o f compe ting paradigm s. 2 Accordin g to the entre nc he d parad i gm dis ce rn e
d,
that conste llation of value s , attitude s and be liefs o fte n ca ll e d t he Domi nan t
So ci a l Pa radigm (hereaft er the Old Paradigm ),
economic criteria be come the be nchmark by whi ch a wi de ran ge of
individu al and social action is judged and e va luat e d . And be li e f
in the market and marke t mechan isms is quit e ce ntral . Clust e rin g
around this core belief is the convicti on th a t e nt e r p r i s e flou r is hes
bes t i n a system of r isks and rewards, that di ffe r e nti als a r e
neces sary ..• , and in the nece ssity for some fo r m o f di vis i on of
labour, and a hi e rarchy of skills and exper t is e . In pa rt i cul a r,
t here i s a be li e f in th e comp e t e nce o f e xperts i n gener a l and of
sci entis t s in pa r ticular .
the re is an empha s i s on q uantif i ca t ion . 3
The ri v a l world view , sometime s c all e d t he Alte rnative Environm e ntal Par ad igm
(the New Paradi gm) dif f ers on almos t e ve ry pcint , and, acco rdin g t o so ciologi
sts ,
in ways summari sed i n th e fo llowing t a bl e 4 Domi nant Socia l Para digm
CORE VALUES
Ma te r i a l (e conomic growth , progress an d dev elopmen t )
Na tu ra l env ironment va lu e d as resourc e
Dom i nat i on over na t ur e
Al t e rn a tive Env ir onme nt al
Pa rad igm
Non-ma terial (se l f -r eali sa t io n)
Na t ural e nvir onm e nt i ntrin s i cally
valu ed
Ha r mo ny with na tu r e
ECONOMY*
Ma rket forces
Ri s k a nd rewa r d
Rewa r ds for ach i evemen t
Diff e rent i a l s
Individ ua l se lf-help
Public i nte r es t
Sa fety
Incomes r elat ed t o nee d
Egali t a r ian
Co ll ective/soc i al provi s i on
PO LITY
Authori t at iv e s t ru c t ures (e xp e r t s in flue ntia l)
Hi e r a r ch1.c a l
Law and order
Ac t io n through o ffi c ia l i nst it ut io ns
Pa rtic ip a tive s t ruc t ur e s ( ci ti zen/
wo r ke r invo lveme n t )
No n- hi era r chical
Liberation
Di r ec t a c ti o n
SOCIETY
Ce ntr a lised
La r ge-s ca le
As socia tional
Or der ed
Dece ntr a l ised
Small - s ca l e
Communa l
Flexib l e
NATURE
Ampl e rese r ves
Nature host il e/ ne u t r a l
Envi r onmen t cont roll a ble
Earth ' s r esou r c e s lim i ted
Nature be nign
Na t ure de l i ca t el y ba l a nc ed
KNOWLEDGE
Co nf idence in sc i ence and t ec hnology
Ra t i onal i t y of mea ns (only)
Li mit s t o sc i e nce
Rati ona lit y of en ds
*Stat e
socia l ism , as pr a ctised i n mo s t of t he " Eastern b l oc" , di ffers
as to eco nomi c o r ganisation , t he ma r ket i n pa r ticula r be i ng rep l ac ed
sys tem hy ~ comma nd sy st e m) . Bu t sin c e t he r e i s v irt ual l y no debate
r·o ni i nes 'l l s r a t <! ., ociali sm , 5 that mJnnr va riant on th e Old Para digm
from t he Ol d Pa rad i gm r eall y on ly
by cen t ral planning (a ma r ke t
over o nu c lea r futu r e within t he
ne ed no t be de lineat ed he r e .
2
No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple (and
subs equently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old econ omic assumptions with social welfa r e requirements :
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather count erpa radigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm) .
Nonetheless it is empi rically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focuss ed .
Large -
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world ,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Pa radigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nucl ear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the recei ved paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, th e nuclear debate is confined to
the tenns of the narrow utilitarianism up on which contemporary economic
practice is p r emisse d, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details :
whatever falls outside these terms is ( dismissed as)
.
.
1.6
irrationa
Furthermore, nuclear development rece ive s its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption frame.work of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails .
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimat ely fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by th e ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism .
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
.
7
main parts : -
There are two
It is argue d, firstl y , from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e . g . co sts of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and crite ria for project
selection) .
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of th e
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
3
th e place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within th e
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory argume nts, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian me ans to predetermined ends . )
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear deb a te is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whe th e r over minutiae and contingenci es of present techno l ogy o r ove r medical
or legal or mathematical details. 8
The double approach can be applied as regards each of t he main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many i nte rr ela t ed problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nucle ar power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
befo re assembled :
establishment, on a massive scale , of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
p roduction possible catastrophe , which delivers as a by-product rad ioactive
wastes which require up to a million years' storage but for which no sound and
e conomic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which r equires for
i t s operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of informa tion and
r es trictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in orde r
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, supper½ and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological develo pmen t, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
e thical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power que st i on s , is
th e unreso l ved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II . THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE .
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both pass e ngers and fr e i gh t.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someon e con signs as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a high ly toxic and exp losive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain th e gas for the
4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if th e train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
o r deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
All of
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while othe r s could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will , that the world needs his pr~uct and it is his duty to supply it , and
that in a ny case he is not responsible for th e train or the people on it. These
sorts of excuses however wo uld norrrally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
context . What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a "responsible" b usin essman , puts his workers ' health
or other peoples ' welf are at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is hi s own and otherd press ing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls,which produces the material as a
by-product , is in bad financia l straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails , he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and th e whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effe ct, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
espe cially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification .
Even where there are serious risks and costs to ones e lf or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not t o be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they a ri se from one's own, or one's group 's, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case . How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as th e argument
progresses . There is no known proven safe way to package th e highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around th e world as
large- scale nuclear development goes ahead. 9 The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average , annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb .
Much of this waste is extremely t oxic .
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer .
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
the ir expected life times of perhaps 40 years , and which, some have estimated,
may require l½ million years to reach saf e levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environ ment fo r
th e ir entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period
a ve rages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million yea r storage problem . Serious problems
have aris en with both short-term and proposed long-t erm methods of storage,
e ven with th e comparatively small quantities of waste produced ove r th e last
10
twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human in t e rven tion, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human i nterference and risk of leakage through non-human factors .
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose flu ctua tion s
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages , could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human
affa irs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years . Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already pro ved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the r e sult in multilayered metal containe rs before rock
deposit , simulation mo dels reveal that radioactive material may not rema in
suitably is ola ted from human environment . 11 In short, the best pres ent storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
.
h .
.
lla
d amaging t eir environment.
Given the heavy costs which could be involve d fo r the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodological ly unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance , none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly test e d, and they may
6.
well prove to involve unforeseen difficultie s and risks when an attemp t is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could
provide a rigorous guaran t ee of safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future µuman factors . But even if an economicall y viable, rigorously safe
long t e rm storage method could be devised , there is the problem of gua rantee ing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economicall y and politically ) seems to p r esuppose a level of efficiency,
pe rfection and concern for the f u ture which has not previously been e ncountere d
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nucl ea r industry. 12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long t e rm storage
sites through pe rhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weaponsgrade radioactive material will be accessible , over much of the million year
storage peri od, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
Th e assumption that a way will nonetheless be found , before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorag e problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumpti ons of way s ,
an article of faith . It is an assunption supplied by the Old Par adigm, a no
limitations ass ump tion , that there are really no (developmen t) problems that
cannot be solved technologic ally (if not in a fash i on that is always
immediately economi cally feasible).
The assumption has played
an important
part in development plans and pra ctic e.
It has not only encouraged an unwarrant e d
technolog ical optimism (not to say hubris 13 ), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish , es pe cially through science ; it has led t o the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactor ily solved or a solution
is even in sight , and it has led to th e idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled .
It has also led, not surprisingl y, to disasters .
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which a r e becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems 14 ); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technologic al development s often fail to take due account of (risk
a nalysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discuss e d
below) . The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fissi on would
provide unlimi t ed energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power '). That dr e am soon
shattered. The nu clear industry apparently remains a net consume r of power,
and nuclear fission will be but a quite shor t-t erm supplier of power. 15
)
7.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclea r development
are , then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder r eactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be se riously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of futur e people could
be fo rced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people o f 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials th e only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the fu ture .
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem , that of making a transition t o renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably , again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it .
For they may well have to face the change to renewable res ources in an
over- populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global
industrialisation are realised , more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associat ed technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it .
It will , moreover, probably be a world which is larg ely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which su ch r enewable r eso urces as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life ,
15a
are in a run-down condition. Such points
tell against th e idea th a t future
people mGst be , if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy , at least
indirect beneficiaries .
It is for such reasons th at the train pa rabl e cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for exampl e , the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (onl y)
by nuclear power.
The 'solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems .
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to ge t itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of e conomies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits .
The " solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
cl e ar alternatives to · this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them .
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived , the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
of t en not in fact ) in the contemporary wo rld, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
15a
th e future .
There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear pa rcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least whe re the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case .
Just as in the cas e of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in th e present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the ques tion of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear development.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
III
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e . non-immediat e) fut ure, the futur e with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obliga tions to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass , and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democra ti c and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that th ere are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next gene ration .
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on a ct ing or failing to act deriving from the
ef fect of our actions on future people . Of those philosophers who say , or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity .
Th us moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time ( o r sometimes in space) . Fo r example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive . Among su ch suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
r eq uirements on moral obligation , which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these :- Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his r ights or
en titlement . People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
e nforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly , there
a re those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement .
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there couid be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them .
10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the cont ex t of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rul e out th e
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive r ela tions
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent ) people in the far distant futu r e about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has l ittle or no sympa th y .
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
peop l e ; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
some thing acquired, either individually or institutionally , something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. pa rticipatin g
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e . g . love, sympathy, empathy). 16 Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice wh e ther or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable. Consider, for example , a scientific group which, for no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch . No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
...
11.
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictab le
result of the action. The unconstra ined position clearly implies that this is
an acceptabl e moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might legitimat ely
criticize in the scientis ts' experimen t, perhaps its being ove r-e xpensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to futu re people . The unconstra ined position also endorses as morally acceptabl e
the following sort
of policy: -
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining , processin g and manufactu ring a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendan ts, will
over a pe ri od of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous ep idemi c of cancer among the inhabitan ts of the earth at that time .
According to the unconstra ined view the firm is free to act in its own interests ,
without any considera tion for the harm it does r emote future people.
Such counterex amples to the unconstra ined view, which are easily vari e d
and multiplie d , might seem childii>hl y obvious. Yet the unconstra ined position
concernin g the future f rom which they follow is far from being a straw man ; not
only have several philosoph ers endorsed this position, but it is a cl e ar
implicati on of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligatio n, as
well as of prevailin g e conomic theory. It seems that those who opt for the
unconstra ined position have not considere d such examples , despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstra ined position admits such
counterex amples , that being free to act implies among other thin gs being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstra ined
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many
of those who have put forward the unconstra ined position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligatio n is rather that · future people can look after
themselve s, that we are not responsib le for their lives. The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causal l y
independe nt of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself .
Present people are influenci ng it , and in doing so
thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsi bilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obli gation to
tak e accoun t i n what they do of people affected and their interests , to be
care ful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probabili ty of their
actions causing harm, and to see that th ey do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
12.
Furth e rmore, to say that we are not respon s ible f o r th e lives o f future
people does not amount to th e same thing as sayin g t hat we are fr ee to do as we
like with r es pe ct to them , that there are no moral constraints on our act io n
involving th e m. In just th e same way , th e fact that on e does no t hav e o r ha s not
acquired an obliga tion to some stran ge r with whom one has ne ver been i nvolved , that
on e has no responsibil ity for his life, does not imply that on e is fr ee t o do
what on e like s with respect to him, for e xample to r ob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to on e self which could s e riously ha rm him.
These difficultie s for the uncons trained position arise in part from the
(sometime s deliberate) failure to make an important distinction betwe e n acquired
or assume d obligation toward somebody , for which some act of acquisition or
a s sumption is required as a qualifying condition , and moral constraints , which
require, for example, that one should not act so as t o damage or harm someone ,
a n d for which no act of acquisition is required.
There i s a conside rable
di ffer ence in the level and kind of responsibil ity involved. In the first cas e
on e must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e . g.
have loves, sy!ll)athy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibil it y arises
as a r e sult of being a causal agent who is aware of the cons eque nces o r probable
consequence s of his action, and thus does not have to be es pecially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latt e r class , moral c onstra ints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult o r i mpossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfi e d . They appl y a s a result
o f th e abil i t y to produce causal effects on the distant future of a r eas onably
pr e dict a ble nature .
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what do e s not
(ye t) e xist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist . Wh ile
it may pe rhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or a ssume d
ob liga tion in order for it to be claimed that contemporar y people mus t make
special sacrifices f or future people of an heroic kind, or even to he lp them
e s pe cially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrain e d
from harming them . Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigne r cannot
argue in justificatio n of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
re s ponsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
l ove or sympathy for th em and that t hey are not part of his moral community , in
short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one ne eds to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case , is that there are mo ral
constrain ts against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibil ity for the live s of people involved .
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinction s between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogat ion this is just
13 .
to misrep resent the positio n of these obliga tions. For exampl e, one
is no more
engagin g in heroic self-sa crifice by not forcing future people into
an unviab le
life positio n or by refrain ing from causing then direct harm than
the consign er
is resorti ng to heroic self-sa crifice in re frainin g from placing his
dangero us
package on the train.
The conflat ion of moral restrai nts with acquire d obliga tion, and the
attemp t there~ ith to view all constra ints as acquire d and to write
off nonacq uired
constr aints, is facilit ated through the use of the term ' moral obligat
ion ' both
to signify any type of deontic constra ints and also to indicat e r athe
r someth ing
which has to be assumed or require d . The conflat ion is encoura ged
by reduct ionist
positio ns which, in attemp ting to accoun t for obligat ion in genera
l, mistake nly
endeavo ur to collaps e all obligat ions . Hence the equa ti on , and some
main roots
of the uncons trained positio n, of the erron eous belief that there
are no moral
constr aint s concern ing the distant future.
The uncons trained view tends to give way , under the weight of counte
rexampl es , to more qualifi ed, and sometim es ambiva lent, positio ns ,
for example
the positio n that
our obliga tions are to immedi ate poster ity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immedi ate succes sors in a better conditi on, and that is all; 17
there are in practic e no obliga tions to the distan t futur e . A main
argume nt
in favour of the latter theme is that such obliga tions would in practic
e be
otiose . Everyth ing that needs to be accoun ted for can be en compass
ed through
the chain picture of obliga tion as linking succes sive genera tions,
under which
each genera tion has obliga tions, based on loves or sympath y , only
to the
succeed ing genera tion . The re are at least three objecti ons to this
chain
accoun t. First, it is inadeq uate to treat constr aints concern ing
the future
as if they applied only between genera tions, as if there were no questio
n of
constr aints on individ uals as opposed to whole genera tions, since
individ uals
can create causal effects , e . e. harm, on the future in a way which
may create
individ ual respon sibility , and which often cannot be sheeted home
to an e ntire
genera tion .
Nuclea r power and its wastes , for exampl e, are strictl y the
respon sibility of small groups of power- hol ders, not a genera tional
respon
sibility .
Second ly, such chains, since non-tr ansitiv e, cannot yield direct obligat
ions to
the distan t future . But for this very r eason the chain pict ure cannot
be
adeq uate, as exampl es again show. For the pic ture is unable to explain
severa l
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the exampl es already
discuss ed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distan t future
withou t
affecti ng the next genera tion, who may not even be able to influen
ce matters .
14.
Thirdly, improvement s fo r immediate successors may be achieved at th e expense of
disadvantag es to people of the more distant future . Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstanc es
be most easily achieved by , ruining it for less immediate successors . Such
cases can hardly be written off as "ne ver- never land" examples since many cases
of environment al exploitatio n might be seen as of just this type. e . g . not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewab le resources and the
long- term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overus e .
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from th e
fa vouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed ove r time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests .
IV . ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE: ECONOMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficultie s for the
unconstrain ed position, qualificatio n leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we a r e not entirely unconstrain ed
with respe ct to the distant future , there are obligations , but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the pres ent and immediate
future . The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, coun t for
very much l ess than the interests of present people. Hence such thin gs as nuclear
development and various exploitativ e activities which benefi t present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewha t) disadvantag ed by them .
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories , where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate , so dis counting costs and risks to future people.
a t tempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingl y common , can lead then to the qualified position. What is
objectionab le in such an approach is that
The
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints , just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints , not detennine what those constraints are. There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
th e waste problem. 18 Since there is mounting evidence that future ge ne rations
may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argume nt for discounting the interest s of future gcncrntionfl on thi s
can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
biH:1i. B
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporar ies would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
development s as nuclear power .
That is, it depends on the already scotched
sacrifice argument .
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimatel y bequeathed to the future gene rations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be , not just better off , but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs. It is argued , from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immedia te future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources . Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalizatio n of monetary
value, that compensatio n - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economica lly - costs much less now th an later . Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g . in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least , insurmounta ble practical difficultie s about
applying such discounting , e . g . how to de t ermine appropriate future discount rates .
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes ,
what is false, that compensatio n, like value, can always be converted into
monetary e quivalents , that peo ple (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, i n cluding cancer and loss
of life . There is no compensatin g a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact
the argument presupposes a do uble reduction neither part of which can succeed :
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
monetarily , 19 but (as against utilitariani sm, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to mat t ers of value . It is also
presupposed that all decision me thods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
16.
are bound to apply discounti ng . This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropria te decision rules do not allow discounti ng, and
discounti ng only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-bene fit and benefit-r isk analyses) , which are, he contends strictly
inapplica ble for nuclear choices (since no t all outcomes can be duly determine d
and assigned probabil ities, in the way that applicatio n of the rules requires. ). 20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounti ng move often has the same
result as the unconstra ined position . If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensa tion, it is evident that over a
sufficien tly long period of time discounti ng at curren t prices would lead to the
conclusio n that there are no recoverab le damages and so , in economic terms, no
constrain ts . In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the applicatio n of
discoun t rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about 15 years, 21 and applicati on of such rates would simply beg
the question against the i.nterests and rights of future pe ople . Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example , the whole method
of discounti ng is simply inapplica ble, and its use would violate moral
constrain ts .
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids th e objection s
from cases of certain damage, comes from probabili ty considera tions. The distant
future, it is argued , is much more uncertain than t he present and itillue diate
fut ure, so that probabili ties are consequen tly lower, perhaps even approachi ng
or coincidin g with zero for any hypothesi s concernin g the distant future. But
then if we take ac count of probabil iti es in the obvious way , by simply multiplyi ng
th e m against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people , except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty ,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbour ing people
where (much ) high~r probabil ities are attached. So in the case of confl ict
between the present and the future where it i s a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediat e future against a much
lower probabili ty of indetenni nate costs to an indetermi nate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved . But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nucle ar case, especial ly if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years , with consequen t
risk of serious harm to thousands of ge nerations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportuni ty
to maintain corporati on profitabi lity or to continue unnecess arily high energy
use.
And even if the costs an d benefits were comparabl e or
evenly weighted,
"
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner's action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
s ufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefi t or risk-benefi t approach to moral and decision
problems , with o r without the probability frills , is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintu itive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large ga in from
it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferabl e in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly rais e moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefi t approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of tran sfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptabili ty of the nuclea r
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking . In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelmin g extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved . In contrast the users and supposed beneficiari es
of nuclear energy will be r isking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-benefic iaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any dire ct way
related to a person ' s extent of use .
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian ' s
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introductio n of p r obability consideratio ns - as in utilita r ian de cision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis . One might further object to the probability
argument that probabiliti es involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes ,
and that the outcomes of some morai prob l ems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway .
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
reveals , that a significant risk is created ; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments .
18 .
Uncerta inty argumen ts in various forms are the most common and importan t
ones used by philo s ophers, economi sts and others to argue f or the position that
we
cannot be expe cted to
distant future .
take serious ac count of the effects of our actions on th e
There are two strands to the uncertai nty argumen t, capable of
s eparatio n , but frequen tly tangled up. Both argumen ts are mistaken , the first
on a priori grounds, the second on a posterio ri grounds. The first argumen t
is a gene ralised uncerta inty argumen t which runs as fol lows :- In contras t to
the exa ct informa tion we can obtain about the present, the informa tion we can
obtain about the effects of our a-ctions on the di s tant future is unreliab le,
fuzzy and highly specula tive. But we cannot base assessm ents of how we shoul
d
act on informa tion of this kind, especia lly when accurate informa tion is obtainable about the present which would indicate differen t act ion. Therefo re we must
r eg retfully ignore the uncertai n effects of our actions on the distant fut ure.
More formally and crudely: One only has obligati ons to the futur e if t hese
obliga tions are based on reliable in forma tion at present as regards th e
distant future. Therefo re one has no obligati ons to the distant future. This
first argumen t is essentia lly a variant on a sceptica l argwnen t in epistemo logy
concerni ng our knowledg e of the future (formall y, replace 'obligat ions ' by
'knowled ge' in the crude stateme nt of the argumen t above). The main ploy is
to
conside rably overesti mate and oversta te the degree of certaint y availabl e with
r es pect to the present and immedia t e future, and the degree of certaint y which
is required as the basis fo r moral conside ration with r espect to the present
and with respect to the f uture.
Associa ted with thi s is the attempt to sugges t
a sharp division as regards certaint y between the present and immedia te future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other . We shall not find, we
suggest , that there is any such sharp or simple divi sion between the distant
future and the adjacen t future and the present, at l east with re spect to those
things in th e pres e nt which are normally subject to moral constra ints. We can
and constan tly do act on the basis of such "unrelia ble " informa tion, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveni ently labels "unce rta i nty"; for scepticproof certaint y is rarely, or never, availab le with respect to much of the
present and immedia te future . In moral situatio ns in the pres e nt, action
often takes acco unt of risk and probabi lity , even quite low probab iliti es .
Conside r again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the
containe r will break and the lethal gas escape . In fact it does not even have
to be probable , in the relevan t sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consign er's action. It is enough that there is a signific ant
risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decrease d wellb eing of the consigne r is certain and that the prospec ts of the passeng ers
quite uncertai n, the resoluti on of the problem is neverth eless clearly in fa
vour
of the so-calle d "specul ative" and "unrelia ble". But if we do not require
certaint y of action to apply moral constra ints in cont emporary affairs, why
19.
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, ep istemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral act ion concerning the present and adjacent futur e does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consi deration
ca n be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining th e difference
between the present and the future a nd to justify ignoring future peoples'
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
e ach class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical unc e rtainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account becaus e uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross th a t we canmot determine what the lik ely
cons equences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rati onal ground for
ch oosing between them.
this way : -
The seco!ld uncertainty argume nt can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for eve r y
(action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
info rmation about future actions which would enable us to detach the
an tecedent of the implication .
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain cl ear
conclusions or dire ctions concerning contemporary action action of th e "It is
wrong to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
th e distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what th e effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to th e
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain an y clea r conclusions about
how to act.
on action .
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate .
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future , but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
"
20 .
argument has to assume .
There are some areas where un certainty is not so grea t as
to ex clude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point ,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certain ty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncerta inty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally r e levant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
t o moral is sues .
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavour s of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, espe cially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what peop le there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unli ke our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or ge netic defec ts, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the ear th of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place .
For this sort of r eason ,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of orde r as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
prope r consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncer taint y
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves .
For example, we may be told that we cannot r eally
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that th ey will exis t or
that their tast es and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon compl e t e ce r taint y of a
sort be yond what is required for the pre sent and imme diate future, whe r e there
i s also commonly no guarantee that some disast e r will not overtake t hose we are
mo rally cowmi tted to. Again we may be told that th e r e i s no guarant ee that
future peopl e will be worthy of any e fforts on our part, because th ey may be
mo rons or for ever plugged into enjoyme nt or other machin es . Even if on e is
prepare d t o accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or int e ll e ctual standards a r e
e ligible for moral consideration - what we are being han de d in such ar guments
as a serious defeating consideration is a gain a mere outside possibility li ke the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is pe rhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular r e ason for doing so, but bec ause he
hasn't looked around the back , drilled holes in it, etc. etc .
Ne ith e r the
cont emporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleas ure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
th e se me re logical possibilities the very real historically supportab l e risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty argume n t s of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succee d in showing th a t it is
a c ce ptab l e to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
,
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste cas e .
This is the argument that
future p eople may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage me thod for
nuclear was tes before they are damaged by escaped waste material . Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not) .
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible . In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer : that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logi cal possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible . The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
s orts were admissible only j_f what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it . In such cases before such actions could
22.
be conside r e d admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect th emselves .
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example wh ere the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of th e effec t of his actions on
the passengers b ec ause they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g . the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positi ve r eason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner's taking account of the passengers' welf are and th e
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the re al possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly r eq uired high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strate gy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat th e
application of moral constraints .
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future .
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example , with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present .
Since th e ir numbers are
ind eterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is rais ed
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latte r are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
23,
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributio nal problems as large and
representat ive of a class of moral prob lems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indetermina cy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be othe r conflict
cases where the level of indetermina cy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e . g . the train example which is a conflict case of a t ype . In particular,
th e re will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numb ers , n umbers of
interests, or whatever , cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteris tics of future people .
The crucial question which emerges is then :
are there any features of
futu re people which would disqualify them from full moral consideratio n o r
r e duce thei r claims to such below those of present people? The answe r is:
in
principle None .
Prima facie, moral principles are universalis able , and lawlike,
in that they ap ply independent ly of position in space or in time, for examp le.
But universalis ability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
whi ch are capable of dealing satisfactor ily with the pres ent : in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards th e present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e .g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (whit e skinned) humans , etc .
The only candidates for characteris tics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indetermina cy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see thes e features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determinatio n of best probable of practical course of action given only
present information ) . In particular, they do not affect cases of th e so~t
be ing considered, nuclear development , where highly determinate or certain
infonnation about the numbers and characteris tics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universaliz ability
principle is not required: it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideratio n; 24
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminat e morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position . As a result of this
.
23a.
universalizabi lity, there are the same general obligations to future peo ple as
to the present; and thus there i s the same obligation to take account of them
and thei r interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage , and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life . Uncertainty
and inde t e rminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
24.
harm in the future case under conside ration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceed ing with the action, thus discri mina ting
against future people.
Accordin gly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity , the conclusi on already tentativ ely reached, that proposa ls for nuclear
developm ent in the present and likely future state of technolo gy and practice
s
for future waste disposa l are immoral.
Before we conside r (in section VII) the remainin g escape route from this
conclusi on, through appeal to overridi ng circumst ances , it is importan t to
pick up th e further case (which heavily r einforce s the tentativ e conclusi on)
against nuclear developm ent, since much of it relies on ethical princip les
similar to those that underlie obligati ons to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenua ting ci rc umstanc es.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN . The
eth ical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to futur e creature
s.
Just as remoten ess in time does not erode obligati ons or enti tl emen ts t o just
treatmen t, neither does location in spac e , or a particu lar geograp hical position
.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposa l rais es serious question s
of
distribu tive justice not only across time, across generat i ons, but also across
space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioac tive polluti on in
another state's or region's yard or water s? When that region receives no due
compens ation (whateve r that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and
the
argumen ts underpin ning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentativ e conclusi on concerni ng the injustic e of imposing radioac tive
wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and
Japan
cannot endeavo ur to discoun t peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioac tive pollutio n in quite the same way the y can
discoun t people of two centurie s hence . (But what this conside ration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitl ement to just treatmen t can
be discoun ted over time.)
Ethical issues of distribu tive justice, as to equity , concen1 not only
the spatio-t emporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewher e in the
assessm ent of nuclear developm ent; in particu lar, a s regards the treatmen t of
those in the neighbou rhood of reactors , and, dif fe rently, as regards the
•
distribu tion of (alleged ) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. 25
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks : firstly, radioac tive pollutio n, due to the fact that
reactors discharg e radioac tive materia ls into the air and water near the plant,
25 .
and secondly catast rop hic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor .
immediate question is whether such costs an d risks can be imposed, with any
An
eth ical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs" of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with otl1er largescale polluting industry, where local participation and que stions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional det ermination and popular sovereignty , are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The "normal" emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
car ri es carcinogenic and mutagenic costs .
While the re are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely numbe r of cancers
and precise ex tent of genetic damage induced by exp os ure to such rad iation , over
the local health costs involved. Under t he Old Paradigm, whi ch (ill egi timately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the e thical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nucl ear power, and under
what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is th en translat e d into
decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation' and ' how to determine what is an
acceptab le level of risk/safe ty for the public. 26
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage . An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal th ey have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air con ditioner
working in summer . Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
comp ensate for the agony of cancer . 27 The point is that the costs to one party
a r e not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alte rnatively obtained without such awful costs , and morally indef ensible , being
imposed .
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant . (Children , for example, are in a
26.
particularl y vulnerable position, since they are severa l times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligi ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, all egedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear powe r production (allegedly,
for th e real reasons for nucl e ar development do not concern this silent
majority) . Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, e ve n
unde r the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that t he re are alternative ,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of deliveri ng the r eal benefi ts
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of
r adia tion on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serio us
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One ch eape r trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission, 28 is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a pop ulation
has
received with apparently negligible consequence s, th e argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural" level) is also likely
to have negligible consequence s.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted no rmal, and, of course,
so it is th en claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. None of the steps
in this argument is sound.
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no illeffects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affe ct a person's well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, unde r such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal,
e . g. two murde rs or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptabl e .
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits ra diation emissions very
sub s tantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than me re consideratio n of the standards would disclose. Furthermore , the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to th e nuclear op erators
themselves, scarcely disintereste d parties . Public policy is determin ed no t so
as to guarantee public he alth, but rather to serve as a ' public pacifier' wh ile
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered . 29
2 7.
While radioacti ve emissions are nn ordinary feature of react o r op e ration,
breakdown is, hopefully , not: an accident of magnitude is accounted , by official
definitio n, an 'extraord inary nuclear occurrenc e'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island). 30
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
30a
r e actors ,
then the core melts and 'containm ent failure' is likely, with the
r e sult that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioacti vely contamina ted .
I n the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident , prope rt y da mages
would exceed $1 7 billion and an area the size of Pennsylva nia would be destroyed .
Mod e rn nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
.
.
31
t h ese conservat ive
Us governmen t f'igures are given
t he con s equences of a
s imilar accident with a modern reactor would according l y be much great e r still.
Th e consigner in risking the lives, we ll-being and property of the
passenger s on the train has acted inadmissi bly. Does a governme nt-sponsor ed
private utility act in a way that is anything other th an much less responsib le
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community , in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigner s ' action is , as we would ordinaril y ·suppo se , inadmissi ble and i rrespon-
sible.
The proponent s of nuclear power have in effect argued to the cont rary,
while at the same time endeavour ing to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technolog ical dispute as to means (in accordanc e with the Old Paradigm) .
It has been contended , firstly, what con trasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibili ty of a catas trophic nuclear accident . Indeed in the
influenti al Rassmusse n report 32 - which was extensive ly used to support public
confidenc e in US nuc lear fission technolog y - an even stronger, an incredibl y
strong , improbab ility claim was stated: n amely , the likelihoo d of a catastrop hic
nucle ar accident is so remote as to be '3.lmost) impossi.bl e. The main argument for
this claim de rives from the assumptio ns and estimates of the report i.tself . These
assumptio ns like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents , incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathemat ical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technolog ical limitatiom s and human error, of waste leakage and r eactor inciden t s
and quite possibly accidents , not in an ideal world far removed from the actual ,
a technolog ical dream world whe re there is no real possibili ty of a nuclear
28,
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclea r world, wh e re wa s t e disposal we r e fool-proof
and reactors we re accident-proof, thin gs would no doubt be morally different.
But we do no t live in s u ch a world .
According to the Rasmuss en r e port its calc ulat ion of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological a ssumptions
and is methodo logically sound.
This is ve ry far from being the cas e .
The under-
ly ing mathematical methods, variousl y called "fault tree analysis " and
"reliability estimating techniques", a r e unsound, because they exclude as "not
credible" po s sibilities or as "not significant" branches that are re a l
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are othe rworldly .
In fact the me thodology and dat a of the report
· · 1 y cr1.t1.c1.ze
h as b een soun dl y an d d ec1.s1.ve
. · ·
d . JJ And 1.t
. h as b een s h own t1at
I
t he r e
is a real possibili t y, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident .
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negli gib l e
prob abi li ty of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, be ing of no greater
orde r than risks of accidents t hat ar e already socially accepted.
Here we
enco unt e r agai n that insidious e ngin e ering approach to morality built into
mod e ls of an e conomic cast, e.g. benefit - cost balance s heets , risk assessment
mode ls, et c.
Risk assessment, a sophistica ti on of trans ac tion or tr ade -off
mode ls, pur.-ports to p ro vide a compari s on between th e relative ri sks at tach ed to
different options, e . g . e nergy options, which settl es th e ir ethical status .
The fo llowing lines of argume nt are encountered in a risk assessme nt as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii )
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries , etc .) which is less than th at of option b, which is already accepted;
there for e op tion a is acceptable . 34
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accident s , which a r e
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable .
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argt.mlent involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
I t is far too simple -minded, and it ignores distrib ut ional
and other r e l e vant aspect s of the context.
In o rde r to ob tain an ethical
assessment we s hould need a much fuller pi cture and we sho uld nee d to know at
least t he s e thin gs :- do the costs and benef it s go to th e same parti es ; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also t he person who receives the benefits or
29.
primar ily, as in driving or cigare tte smokin g, or are the costs impos
e d on other
parties who do not benefi t? It is only if the parties are the same
in the case of
th e options compar ed, and there are no such distrib utiona l problem
s, that a
compar ison on such a basis would be val.id. 35 This is rarely the cas
e , and it is
not so in the case of risk assessm ents of energy options . Second
ly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activit y which he knowin gly
underta kes
in a situati on where he has a r easona ble choice, knowing it entails
the risk,
etc ., and is the level of risk in propor tion to the le~el of the
rel evant
ac tivity, e.g. as in smoking ? Thirdly , for what reason is the risk
imposed :
is it for a s e rious or a relativ ely trivial reason? A risk that is
e thica lly
accepta ble for a serious reason may not be ethica lly accepta ble for
a trivial
reason. Both the argume nts (i) and (ii) are often employe d in trying
to justify
nuclea r power. The second argume nt (ii) involve s the fallaci es of
th e firs t (i)
and an additio nal set , namely that of forgett ing that the health risks
in the
36
nuclea r s e nse are cumula tive , and already high if not , some say ,
too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefi ts you have to accept th e costs "
is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefi ts then you have to accept
the
costs (or some of them at least)" is anothe r and very differe nt thin
g . It is
a widely accepte d moral princip le, already argued for by way of exampl
es and
already invoked , that one is not, in genera l, entitle d to simply
transfe r cos ts
of a signifi cant kind arising fron an activit y which benefi ts onesel
f onto other
parties who are not involve d in the activit y and are not benefi ciaries 37
.
This
transfe r princip le is especi ally clear in cases where the signifi cant
costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof , and where
the benefi t to
the benefi tting par ty :is of a noncru cial or dispen sible nature , becaus
e, e . g.
it can be substit uted for or done withou t. Thus, for instanc e , one
is not
usually entitle d to harm , or risk harmin g, anot her in the process
of be nefitti ng
onesel f . Suppose , for anothe r example , we consid er a village which
produc es, as a
result of an indust rial process by which it lives, a noxious waste
materi al which
is expens ive and difficu lt to dispose of and yet creates a risk to
life and health
if undispo sed of. Instead of giving up thei r i.ndus trial process and
turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surroun ding
country side,
they persis t with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way
deliver y
service , on the train, to the next village . The inhabi tants of this
village are
then forced to face the problem either of under taking the expens ive
and difficu lt
dispos al process oor of sustain ing risks to thei r own lives and health
or else
leaving the village and their livelih oods. Most of us would see
this kind of
transfe r of co s ts as morally unacce ptable .
JO.
From this arises a necessary condition for ene rgy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the trans fer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its us e .
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
vil lages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors , especially, as in third world
co untries, neighbours who are not nuclear powe r users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain wide spread and serious forms of pollution, a nd is one
of its most obje ctionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we sho ul d not hand the world on t o
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - t he tramsmission
principle.
For if we did then that would be a signi ficant transfe r of costs .
(The corollary can be independerltly argued for on the basis of certain e t hic al
theories) .
VI . OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discuss ed by no means exhaus t the
envi ronme ntal, health and safety risks and costs in or arising from th e nuclea r
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle include s man y sta ges both before and after
r eacto r operation , apart from waste disposal, namely mining , milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and trans po rtati on of
materials.
Seve ral of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionab le material,
and of the further prolife ration of nuclear armaments - thes e hazard s have
parallels, if not exact equival ents, in other very polluting method s of generating
power, e . g. "workers in the uranium mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of
38
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".
Furth ermo re, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resultin g from location,
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in workin g with radio a ctive
material are now known in advance of choice of such a n occupation: with where
one al re ady lives things are very different.
The uranium mine r's choice of
occup ation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice, whe r eas t he Pacific
Islander ' s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue o f arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportuni ti es and often a t l east ease peo ple
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, i s not an i ssue newly produced by nuclear associated occupa tions .
31.
Other social and environm ental problems - though endemic where large-sca le
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalita rian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more imtimatel y linked with the nucle ar power
cycle.
Though pollu tion is a common and generally undesirab le component of
large-sca le industria l operation , radioacti ve pollution , such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especiall y a legacy of nuclear developme nt, and a
specially undesirab le one , as enormous rectifica tion estimates for de ad radioactive lands and waterways reveal .
Though sabotage is a threat t o many large
industrie s , so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentra tion
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequen ces, of a different order of magnitude from most industria l sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown) . Though theft of material from more
dubious enterpris es such as munitions works can pose threa ts to populatio ns at
large and can assist terrorism , no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterp rises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionab le material . No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabricatio n into such
massive explosive s.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerabl e on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it, vulnerab ility, in part because of its long and
continuin g associati on with military activitie s, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourage s, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies , crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of associati on and of expressio n, and free access to
informati on . These practices include secrecy , restricti on of infonnati on,
formation of speci al police and guard forces, espionage , curtailme nt of civil
lib e rties.
Already operators of nuclear installat ions are given extraordi nary
powers, in vetting employees , to investiga t e the backgroun d and
activitie s not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installati ons themselve s
become armed camps, which especiall y offends British sensibili ties.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constable s) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installat ions and made it
answerabl e ..• to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority . 39
These developme nts in the United Kingdom, and worse in West Germany, presage
along with nuclear developme nt increasin gly authorita rian and anti-demo cratic
societies . That nuclear developme nt a ppears to force such political consequen ces
tells heavily against it.
32.
Nuclear developme nt is further indicted political ly by the dire ct
connectio n of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunate ly true that
e thical questions concernin g nuclear war - for example, whether a nucle ar war
is justified , or just, under any circumsta nces , and if so what circums tances are distingui shable from those concernin g nuclear power. Undoubted ly , however,
t he spread of nuclear powe r is substanti ally increasin g the technical me ans
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportuni ty for , and
chances of, nuclear engagemen t.
Since nuclear wars are neve r account able
positive goods , but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirab le .
The spread
of nuclear power according ly
expands the opportuni ty for, and chances of, highly undesirab le consequen ces.
Finally the la tt e r, so increasin g thes e chances and opportun ities, is itself
undesirab le, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear developme n t, is also
undesirab le .
The details and considera tions that fill out this argume nt,
from nuclea r war against nuclear developme n t, are many. They are fir stly
technical , that it is a relativel y straightfo rward and inexpensi ve matte r to
make nuclear explosive s given access to a nuclear powe r plant, secondly political ,
that nuclear engagemen ts once institute d
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or different ly are likely to force access to) nuclear power plant s
do not shrink from nuclear confronta tion and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagemen t (up to "strategi c nuclear strikes" at least) , and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariabl y have immoral consequen ces, such as mas sive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justifica tion is.
Nucl ea r wars are certain to be considera bly worse as regards damage inflicted
than any pr e vious wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars p ut together) , because of th e enormous destructi ve power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioacti ve effec ts, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversi bility of any such confronta tions .
The supportin g considera tions are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
a r e designed to show that the chances of such undesirab l e out comes is itself
und e sirable .
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborate d in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternativ e options is
a case of de ci sion making under uncertain ty , because in particula r of th e gross
uncertain ties involved in nuclear developme nt. In cases of this type the
ap propriate rational procedure is to compare worst cons equences of each
alternati ve, to reject those alternati ves with th e wor s t of these worst
consequen ces (this is a pretty uncontrov ersial part of th e maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternati ve with the best worst consequen ces) . The
nuclear alternati ve has, in particula r because of the r e al possibili ty of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequen ce~ and is according ly a particula rly undesirab le
alternati ve.
33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS,AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT. As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development , only one justificatory route r emains open, that of app e al to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed ,
the consigne r's action cannot be justifi ed by purely economistic argume nts,
such as that his profits would ris e , the firm or the village would be more
prosperous , or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitl ed to cre ate a serious
risk to othe rs for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
parti cular, applied to the nuclear case. For this r eason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under th e Old Paradi gm to promote
nuclear development - e .g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electri city
utilities, and the need otherwise fo r uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these econornistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristica lly derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vic e versa .
What do have to be considered are however moral confli ct arguments, that is
arguments to the effe ct that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alt e rnative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and will ensue . For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may a rgue that his action is justified becaus e unless it is take n his
village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others;
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcu t, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral confl i ct are based on competin f
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligatio ns to future people .
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impos e on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and e xhaustive set of
alternatives (or a t ].east practical alternatives ) and upon showing that the only
alterna tives to admittedly mo rally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in th e argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
to starvi ng or to the sendin g off of the parce l, name l y ea
rning a liv ing in some
other way - then the argum ent is defect ive and cannot r eadily
be patche d . Just
s uch a suppre ssion of practi cable altern atives has occurr ed
in the argum ent
design ed to show that the altern atives to the nuclea r option
are even worse than
the option itself , and that there are other factua l defect
s in thes e argum ents
as well. .In short, the argum ents depend essen tially on the
presen tation of
false dichot omies .
A first argum ent, the povert y argum ent , is that there is
an ove rridin g
ob li gation to the poor , both the poor of the third world
and the poor of
indus trialis ed countr ies . Failur e to develo p nuclea r energy
, it is often claime d,
would amoun t to denyin g them the oppor tunity to reach the
standa rd of afflue nce
we curren tly enjoy and would create unemp loymen t and povert
y in th e indus triali s e d
n a tions.
The unemp loymen t and povert y argume nt does not stand up to
exami nati on
eithe r for t he poor of th e indus trial countr ies or for thos
e of th e thir d world.
The re is good eviden ce that large- scale nuclea r energy will
help to increa se
unemp loymen t and povert y in the indus trial world, throug h
the divers i on of very
much availa ble capita l into an indust ry which is not only
an excep tional ly
poo r provi der of di rect employ ment , but also helps to reduce
availa bl e jobs throug h
encour aging substi tution o f energy use for labour use. 40
The argume n t that nuclea r
ene rgy is needed for the third world is even less convin cing.
Nuclea r energy is
both politi cally and econom ically inapp ropria te for th e third
world, since it
requir es massiv e amoun ts of capita l , requir es numbe rs of
import ed sci en tists
and engine ers, but create s neglig ible local employ ment, and
depend s for its
feasib ility upon, what is largel y lackin g , establ ished electr
icity transm ission
system s and back-u p facili ties and suffic ient electr ical
applia nce s to plug into
the system . Politi cally it increa ses foreig n depend ence,
adds to ce ntrali sed
entren ched power and reduc es the chance for change in the
oppres sive politi cal
struct ures which are a large part of the proble m . 41 The
fa c t that nuclea r energy
is not in the intere sts of the people of t he third world
does not of course
mean that it is not in the intere sts of, and wanted by, their
rulers , the
wester nised and often milita ry elites in whose intere sts
the econom ies of thes e
countr ies are usuall y organi sed, and wanted often for milita
ry purpos es . It
is not patern alistic to examin e critic ally the demand s these
ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
35 .
The po verty argume nt is then a fraud. Nuclear ene r gy will not be used t o
help th e poor. Both for the third world and for the industr ialised co untrie
s
there are well-kno wn energy-c onservin g alternat ives and the practi cal option
of
developi ng oth e r energy sources, alternat ives some of which offer f a r bette r
prospec ts for helping the poor .
It can no longer be pretende d that there is no alt e rnative to nuclear
de velopme nt: indeed nuclear de velopme nt is itself but a bridging , or stop-gap
,
procedu re on route to solar or perhap s fusion deve lopment . And there a r e various
alternat ives : coal and other fossil fuels, geotherm al, and a range of solar
op tions (includi ng as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
each po ss ibly in combina tion with cons e rvation measures ~ 2 Despit e the availab
ility
of alterna tives, it may still be pre t e nde d that nuclea r deve lopment is ne cess
ary
fo r affluenc e (what will emerge is that it is advantag eous for the power and
aff luence of ce rtain select groups ) . Such an assumpt ion really und erlies part
o f t he pover ty argumen t, which thus amounts to an elabora tion of th e trickledown argumen t (much f avoured within the Old Paradigm se tting) . For the a rgument
runs : - Nuc l ea r developm ent is necessar y for (continu ing an d in c r eas in g)
affluenc e.
Affluenc e inevitab ly tr i ckl es down to th e poor. Th e r e for e nuclear
developm ent benefits the poor . First, the argumen t does not on i ts own sh ow
a nything specific about nuclear power : for it works equally well if ' ene r gy '
is substitu ted f or ' nuclear ' .
It has also to be shown , what the next major
argumen t will try to claim, that nuclear developm ent is unique among e ne rgy
alternat ives in increasi ng affluenc e . The second assumpt ion , that affluenc e
inevitab ly trickles down, has now been roundly refuted , both by r ecent historic
al
da ta, which show increasi ng affluenc e ( e .g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
co upled with increasi ng poverty in several countrie s, both developi ng and
de veloped , and th r ough economic models which reveal how "affluen ce" can increase
withou t r e dist ribution occur ring .
Another maj o r argumen t a dvanced to show moral conflic t app eals to a set
of suppos e dly ove rr iding and competin g obligati ons to future people . We have,
it is said , a du ty to pass on the immense ly valuable things and institut ions
which our culture has develope d .
Unless our high-tec hnology , high ene r gy
industr ial society is continue d and fo s tered, our valuab l e institut ion s and
tra ditions will fall into de cay or be swept away. The ar gument is essentia lly
th a t without nuclear powe r, withou t th e conti n ued level of materia l wealth
43
it alone is assumed to make possible , the li gh ts of our civiliza ti on wil l go
out.
Fut ure people will be th e los e rs.
36,
The lights-goin g-out argument doe s rais e quest ions as to what is valuable
in o ur society, and of what characteris tics are necess ary for a good society .
But for the most part th ese large questions, which deserve much full e r
ex amination , can be avoided .
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
un critical position with re spe ct to present high-techno logy societi es , apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable . It assumes that technologi c
society is unmodifiabl e , that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conse rvation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of ene rgy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is a ll eged t o furnish ar e essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technologic al
so c ie ty's energy patterns are unmodifiabl e is especially so - after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have r equired major social and technologic a
r es tructuring and consumption modificatio n. If western society ' s demands for energy
a re totally unmodifiabl e without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction , but one might ask what use its culture co uld
be to future people who would very likely , as a consequence of this destruction ,
lack the resource base which th e argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporar y society.
There is also difficulty with th e assumption of uniform valuablene ss;
but if this is rejected the question be comes not: what is necessary to maintain
exis ting high-techno logical society and its political institution s, but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and th e political
institution s which are needed to maintain those valuable things . While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to a rgu e that it
is e ssential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a du ty to pass .on to the fut ure.
The evidence, for instan ce from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
The re is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But e ve n
if a radical change in these di rec tions is independent ly desirable, as we should
arg ue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out a rgument a re wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-b e ing is required to consume less energy than at
37.
present , and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
consumption which is assumed in the usu al economic case for nucl ear energy . 44
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to preven t the
lights going out in west e rn civilisation , but to enable th e lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
th e Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high e nergy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, es pecially if e nergy
is obtained by nuclear fission means , be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an ext remely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susce ptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably t e nd to become
autho ritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat pos ed by dissident groups in the nuclea r
.
.
situation.
45
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of th e worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valua ble
asp e cts, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
p ersonal and collective autonomy which exist , would be lost or diminish e d:
political freedom , for example, is a high price to pay for consume ri sm and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technologynuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rath e r, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argumen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
38 .
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
appeal to fut urity, closed.
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scal e nuclear developmen t i s a crime agains t
the future is inevitable .
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other ar_guments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future .
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The arg ument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has r elied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for examp l e,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounte d (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of marketcentred economic theory ), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the cas e, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice .
Large-scale nucl ear developme nt is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy .
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alt ernatives to given economic
ends.
Admi t tedly so much capital has already been invested in nucle ar fission
research and development, in marka:l. contrast to other newer rival sources of
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(ou t) , and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, pub l icly
eco nomic (in that they are app roved for public consumption), and th e r ea l
r ea s ons , which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social
control.
39.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going -out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
valuable!): - Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e . g. to increas e the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistributi on problems, and connected social
unr e st, e tc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is
part of US energy policy, 46 and the second premiss is supplied by standard
economics textbooks . But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmen tal costs carried by unqualified
47
economi c growth .
More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rath e r an appropriate and less
vulne rabl e restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alt e rnatives .
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of th e premiss
Nuc lear power is the economicall y best way to sustain economic growth, 'economicall y
best' being filled out as ' most efficient', 'cheapest ' , 'having most favourable
benefit-cos t ratio', etc.
Unfortunate ly for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively, unless
a goo d deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. Much data, beginning with
th e cancellatio n of nuclear plant orders, can't be assembled to show as much. Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to b e permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public ( governmenta l)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments . Virtually all available data
concen1s the USA; in EuroZS, West and East, true cos ts of uniformly "publicly=
controlled" nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants .
Komanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26 % in 1985. 49 And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell rather decisively
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants . Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators . Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the elect ricit y th ey were
designed to produ ce , and that when Atomic Energy Commis sion estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both opera t ed at 80% of design
capacity , were adjusted accordingly , nuclear generated power proved to be far more
40.
.
h
.
d 50
expensive
tan
estimate.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an ac tual capacity factor of 55 %
produced electricity at a cost about 25% high e r than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers' projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (p e r kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
r e liability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of ef ficienc y and product production costs , against nuclear powe r .
Thes e unfavourable assessments are from a privat e (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account .
The main subsidies are through research and development , by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
51
Act ), in en richme n 4 and in waste management . It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nucl ea r power by at least 25% ( and probably much more) .
Wh en official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is f ound that they inadmissibly omit seve ral of the public
costs i nvolve d in producing nuclear power .
For example, the analyses igno re
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known curren tly
wha t t he costs involved are .
But even using actual waste handling cos t s (while
wastes await s torage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuc l ear . 52
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage , are dul y taken into account, the balance is swung stil l further i n
favo ur of al te rnatives to nuclear and
aga i nst nuclear power .
In short , eve n on
proper Old Par a digm accounting, the nu c l ear alte rn at iv e s hould be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly se ems ; it has b een
kept going n~ through its clear economic v iability, but by massive pub li c
s ubsidization , of s e vera l types .
In USA, to take a main examp le where
information is available , nuclear developme nt is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or somet i mes free research and development , thro ugh the
Price-Anderson Act, which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i . e . wh ich in ef fe ct p rovided t he insurance subsidy making corporat e nuclear
development e conomicall y f e asibl e, and through government ag r eement to handle all
r adioactive wastes .
While the Old Paradigm str ictly construed c annot sup port un economical
developments, cont empo rary liberalisation of the Paradigm do e s allow fo r
un economi c projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
soc ial welfare.
Duly admitting s ocial welfare and some
equity
pr i nciples
41,
i n th e dist ribut ion of wealt h (not necessa rily of pol l ution) l e ads the modern
version of the Old Paradigm , called the Mo dified Old Paradigm .
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic facto rs, e . g . individual self-he lp is down- played , wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g . through t:axation , market forces are re gulated
or disp la ced (not in principle eliminat e d, as with stat e s ocialism).
Now it
has been cont ended - outrageous though it should now se e m - that nuclear powe r
is i n the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example ,
apart from those already mentioned suc h as energy fo r growth and che ap
e l ect ricity, and such as plantiful powe r f or heating and cooking a nd app lian ce
use , avoidan ce of shortages , rat ioning ,
brown-outs and the like .
Since
alternative power sources, such as coal, could s e rve some ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argumen t has aga in to show that t he
cho ice of nucle ar power over other a lterna tives is best in the requ isite
respects, in s erving the public interes t.
Such a n ar gumen t is a matter for
decision theory, unde r which head cost -bene f i t analyse s which rank alternatives
a l so fall as special cases .
Decision theory purports to cover th eo r e tically the field of choice
b e tween alte rnatives; it is present ed as the theory which ' dea l s with t he
.
pro bl em o f c h oosing
one cours e o f acti. on among s e vera 1 poss1'bl. e cou r ses 1 . 53
Th us the choice of alt e rnati~ modes of energy pro duc ti on, t he ene r gy choice
problem, be comes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nucl ea r choice is
often ''.justi f ied" in Old Paradigm terms t h rough app e al to decision t heo ry.
But though decision theory is in principle comp rehens ive , as soon as it is put
to work in such practi cal cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronte d with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to confo r m with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream e conomic
theory .
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comp a ring , to take one
imp ortant example , a general optimisation model for decision (wh ere
uncertainty is not gross) with comparab le decision the ory methods, such as th e
expe cted uti lity model.
The general model for best choice among alte rnatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constrain ts, which may
include
et hical constraints ex clud ing cert a in alt e rnati ves under gi ven
cond itions .
Expected utility
models dEmote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference prop e rt ies t hat may not obtain, and elimina te
constraints altoget her (absorbing what is fo rbidden, fo r examp le , as having a
hi gh dis u tili ty, but one that can be compensate d for none th eless ).
Thus , in
42.
particula r,
e thical constrain ts against nuclear developme nt are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensat ion for damage
sustained . Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled , so no longer at issue are the defective (nee-clas sical)
economic assumptio ns made in the theory, for example as to the assessmen t of
everythin g t o be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms : everythin g worth accountin g has a price), and as to the legitimac y
of transferr ing with limited compensat ion risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework , a case of decision under uncertain ty . It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicabl e),
be cause some possible outcomes are so unce rtain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective ) quantifia ble probabil ities can be assigned to them.
It ems that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core me ltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear de velopment : 54
widesprea d radioactive pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain .
The correct rule for decision under uncertain ty is, in the case of energy
ch oice , maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended .
In fact, on ce again, it is unnecessa ry for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected .
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same rejection s for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergen ce in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected . All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option .
A further convergen ce can be effected
also , because the best possible (economic ) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelec tric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elabo rated). Unde r these
condition s complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Hor wicz rule) which take
account of both best possible and most possible outcomes under each option
reduce to the maximin
rule .
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substanti ally better
than that of the nuclear
option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare , not th e nuclear
dream, is realised) . Further applicati on of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predomin antly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effe cts
on the earth 's climate from burning massive quantitie s of such fuels .
43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with maximin
position several rivals to maximin
proposed,
each
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
Some of these
rules , such as the risk- added reasonin g criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
which 'assesses
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existin g in the status quo, rather than in te rms of
th e absolute value of the risk associated with the policy' are decidedly
dubious,
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears t o
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
~~at will be argued, or rather
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option .
For example , the keep -options-op en or allow-for-r eversibility
(not an entirely unquestiona ble rule
rule
'of strictly limited applicabili ty')
e xcludes the nuclear option because 'nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibi lity ... " One cannot simply abandon
a nuclear reactor
the way one can abandon
a coal-fired plant"' (p.506). The compare-the alt e rnatives rule, in ordinary application , leads back to th e cost -b e nefit
assessments , which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-s ustainable-b enefits rule,
which ' directs us to opt for th e policy producing the highest level of net
b enefits which can be sustained indefinitel y', 'decisively favours r e newable
sources ', ruling out the nuclear option.
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoida nce and protecting- thevulnerable als o yields th e same nuclear-exc luding results. Harm-avoida nce,
in particular, points
1
decisively in favour of "alt ernative" and "renewable "
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy cons ervation'
(p.442) .
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
the result is the same, a nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
standards . Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefi t analyses,wi th
probabiliti es duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-b enefit co nsideration s, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut : nor does its Modificatio n. The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case,
sufficientl y evident that contemporar y e conomic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with nee-classic al economic
....
44.
th eory nor, to consider the main modification , with social democratic
th eory .
There are , firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one :
corporations so committed are understandably
ke en to realise returns on capital already invested .
There are also typical
self-interest reasons fo r commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in politica l
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others , and so on .
The r e are
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by t e chnocratic-entrepre nial elite, a belief
in socl al control from above , control which nuclear powe r o f f ers f a r mo r e tlwn
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter th e power bas e , a f a ith
in th e unlimitedness of t e chnological enterprise, and nuclear in particular ,
so that any real probl ems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such b e li e f s are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
gove rning and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
thes e sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
thos e whos e types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear developme nt
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs .
It is then, contemporary corporate capitalsim, along with its state
e n t erprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure , corporate
capitalism , which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in we stern
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
t ype such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice .
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the notional
US
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible .
By comparison with the West, nuc lear power production i n
th e
small
Eastern bloc is
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
which had in 19 77 only about
nuclear plants .
one -sixth the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported elsewhere to any great extent .
American technology has .
45,
The 60s were, because of the growth in electrici ty demand, a period of
great expansion of the elec trical utilities in the US . These companies we re
e ncouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlle d or influence d reasons:- Firs tly, owing to
governme ntal regulatio n procedure s the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly ,
the US governmen t arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation ,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies , actively
encourage d a nuclear choice and nuclea r deve lopment. In particula r, state
limitatio n of liability and shoulderi n g of part o f insurance for nu clear
accidents and state arrangeme nts to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profit able private utility operation appear feasibl e and r esulting in nuclea r
investmen t.
In the 70s, though the state subsidiza tion continued , the private
pict ur e changed : 'high costs of construct ion combine d with low capacity
factors and poor r eli ability have wiped out the last advantage that nuclear power '
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in th e US is con trolled by a few
co rpor ations , so the world mark et is dominated by a few countries , predomina ntly
and first of all the US, which through its two leadi ng nuclear companies ,
We stinghous e and Gen e ral Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
technolog y. 55 These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequen tly world markets by US foreign policies, ba sically th e " Ato ms for
Peace" program supplemen ted by bilateral agreement s providing for US technolog y ,
r e search, enri ched uranium and financial capital. ' The US offered a [ s tat e
s ub si dize d ] nuclear package that Europe could not refus e and with whi ch the
British could not compete'.
In the 70s the picture of US dominatio n of Common
Market nuclear technolog y had given way to subtler influence : American companies
held (actually dealing with relevant governmen ts) substanti al interests in Europ ean
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technolog y which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
ag re ements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries , for
example, Argentina , Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia , Iran, Ire l and, Israel ,
Pakistan, Philippin es, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, Spa in,
Taiwan, Turk ey , Venezuela , South Vi etnam.
The US proceeded ,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technolog y and nuclear materials in gre at quantitie s round th e world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear t echnology t hrough th e Internati onal Atomic
Ene rgy Agency , originall y de si gne d to control and saf eg uard nuclear ope rati ons,
but most of whos e ~udget and activitie s • .. have gone to promote nu c l ear
activitie s' .
46.
A main reason for th e promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors. Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safe t y regulations
are loose and enforcement rar e , where public opposition
is not pennitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[Forj
..• the US has considerabl e leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
expe rience that many of the worst dictatorshi ps in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support .
Many of those same regimes
are now
pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. 56
It is e v ident from this sketch of the ways and means of r eactor
proliferatio n that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and the social Modificatio n, but that the practices (of
corp orate capitalism and associated third world imperialism ) involve much
that is eth ically unacceptabl e, whether
by olde r, modif ied, or alternative
57
percepts;
for principles such as those
and self-d e termination are grossly vio late d.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES . The futur e energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable . For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associ ated
phe nomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to ment ion the
despoliatio n caused by extensive strip mining , all of which result from its us e
in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
58
and replacement .
To these conventiona l main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroele ctricity . The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technologic al but social , and involves both
conservatio n measures and the restruct urin g of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumerist ic
and nonconsume ristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternative s , conventiona l t echnologica lly-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of de ciding in which way to meet
4 7.
give n and unexamine d goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but als o a matter
of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technolog ies or substitut e ways of meeting some fi xed or give n
demand or level of consumpti on, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with s oft rather than hard technolog ies; we are also fac e d, and pr i ma rily, with th e
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society t hat creates
them . It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to mee t these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitabl e and unchangea ble . (Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessa ry trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.) Na turally this is not to deny that th e se softer options are
sup e rior because of the ethically unaccepta ble features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technolog y, howe ver benign in principle , will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expect e d to meet
unbounded and uncontrol led energy consumpti on and demands. Even the more benign
technolog ies such as solar technolog y could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriora ted world being hand e d
on to them . Consider, for example, the effect on the world's forest s , which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for productio n of methanol or o f
e lectricit y by woodchipp ing (as already planned by forest authoriti es and
contempla ted by many other energy organisat ions) . While few would object to t he
use of genui ne waste material for energy productio n, the unrestric ted exploi t ation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of " solar energy" or not. - to meet
e ver increasin g energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard-pres sed natural forests.
The effects of such additiona l demands on the maintenan ce of the
forests are often dismissed , even by soft technolo gicalists, by the simpl e
expedient of waving around the label 'renewabl e resources '. Many forests are
in principle renewable , it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitat ion , but in fact there are now very few forestry operation s anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completel y renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values. 59 In many regions too the rate of
e xploitatio n which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced . It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainfores t types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciat ion
of the conduct of contempor ary forestry operation s, who i s also concerned with
long-t erm conservat ion of the forests and remaining natural communiti e s, must
regard with alarm. The result of massive deforesta tion for energy purposes,
48,
r esemb li n g the deforesta tion of England at the beginning of th e Industrial
Revolution, again for ene rgy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in s t eeper lands and trop i cal are as , dese rtification in more a rid
r egions, possib le climatic change, and massive impoverishm en t of na tural
ecosystems .
Some of us do not wa nt to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a de fores ted world to the future, any more than we want t o pass on on e
poisone d by nuclear products or polluted by coal p roduct s . In sh or t, a mere
swi t ch t o a more benign t e chnology - important though this i s - wi th out any
more bas ic structural and social change is inadequate .
Nor is such a simple technolo gi cal swi. tch likely to be achieved. It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuc lear
program (and that of the countrie s it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplishe d, it is ve ry un likely
give n th e inte gration of political powe rholders with those sponsoring nuclear
de velopment . 60
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism , consumption far beyo nd genuine needs, a nd
a n e conomic s tructure which en coura ge s increasing use of highly energy-inte nsive
mode s of prod uc tion. This means, for instance, trying to change a social
stru c ture in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work f o rce
are cogs i n a production machine over which they have ve ry little r eal cont r ol
an d in which most people do unpleasant or boring work fro m which they derive
very 1i t tle real satisfactio n in orde r to obta i n the r eward of consume r goo ds
and services . A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
prod ucts rather than proc es s e s, fro m consumption , rath e r than from satisfac tion
in work an d in social r e lations and oth er activities , is virtually bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unn e cessary consumption . (A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but fo r created and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce . ) Consumption frequently
be comes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the large r set of
adjustments involved in s ocially implementin g the New Paradigm , the move away
f rom consumerism is for examp le part of th e more ge ner al shift from ma t eri al ism
and ma terialist values .
The social change option tends to be obscured in mos t dis cussions o f
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it do e s
que stion unde rlying values of current social arrangemen ts . The conventiona l
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
61
n ee ds
) as unchall e ngeable, and th e iss ue to be on e of which t ech nology can
49.
be most profi tably employed to meet th em.
This e ffectiv e ly pre s en ts a f a l se
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand a s lacking a s ocial
contex t so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
take n as unchallengeable and unchangeable .
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argue d by representat i ves
of such industries as trans!X)rtation and petroleum, as for exampl e by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
powe r boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent th em from satisfying
th e se wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such nee ds and wants arise or are produced.
To point to th e de t e rmination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach a ccording to which they are entirely de t ermined at the framewo rk level
( e .g. by indu s trial organisation) and th e r e is no such thing as indivi dual
ch oic e or de termination at all.
It is to s ee the soci a l framework as a major
f a c t o r i n de t e rmining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel ,
a n d t o see ap pare ntly individual choices made in such matte rs as being channelle d
a nd dire cte d by a social framework de t e rmined l argely i n th e inte r es t s o f
corporat e an d private pro f it and advantage .
The so cial change option is a hard option - at l e ast it wil l b e difficult
to obtain pol itically - but it is the only way , so it has been argued , of a voidin g
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of r easons t han
suc h ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective 62 , a perspective integ ral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingl y requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and pol i tical adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative require s will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option repre sents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surp r ising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misre pres enting and often
ob scuring i t .
But difficult though a change will be , es pec ially one with s uch
f a r - r eaching e ffects on th e prevailing power struc tur e , is to obt ai n, it is
imp e rative t o try: we are al l on the n uclear train.
FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts , Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e . g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-settin g matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater ) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least a s important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
to the first, see references cited in Goodin , p . 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cot grove and Duff, and some of the references
As
given therein.
3.
Cot grove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34 .
5.
compare also
See, e.g ., Gyorgy , pp . 357- 8.
6.
For one illustration , see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty 's
Stationery Office , London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff , p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another .
One can argue both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nucle ar establishme nt, since they (those of th e
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualificatio ns) can release what, and only
what , suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmenta l inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear deve lopment; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclus ion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see , e . g.,
2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11 .
Se e the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
lla.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclea r radi ation , unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
exampl e , can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the convent ional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recent l y nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to manage technology repr esent s the past]
14 .
On such l imitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and vot ing "p aradoxes" on the
other.
Other different limitation resu1 ts are presented in Routley 81 .
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
n e cessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
th e Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p . 34) .
15.
See Lovins and Price .
15a .
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
'What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed' (Barry, p. 24 3).
Therefor e ~ a nuclear f utur e contrav enes r equirements of justice .
3
16.
For examples , and for some details of the history of philosoph e rs'
positions on obligatio ns to the future, see Routley (a).
17 .
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore' s position is ambivalen t and , to
all appearanc es, inconsist ent. It is considere d in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls ' position.
18.
For related criticism s of the e conomists ' arguments for discounti ng,
a nd for citation of the often eminent economist s who sponsor them, see
Goodin , pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborate d here) are that the propertie s are different
e . g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings , being only partial orderings , do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfact ory fashion . What he claims is tha t we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expe ct ed util ity maximiza tion
presuppos es, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedure s. But
outstandi ng alternativ es can always be comprehen ded logically , at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g. "'P covers everythin g except p). For example ,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehen ded along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error". Furthermo re the different
more app ropriate rules Goodin subsequen tly considers also requir e listing of
"possible " outcomes .
Goodin's point can be alternati vely stated however.
There
are really two points.
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternati v es
cannot in general be assigned required quantitat ive probabil ities, and it is
at that point that applicati ons of the models breaks dovm. The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertain ty from decision making
under risk. Secondly, many influenti al applicatio ns of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitim ately, delete possible
alternati ves from their modelling s.
21 .
Discount, or bank, rates in the economis ts' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson , Economics , 7th Edition, McGraw-H ill,
New York , 1967, p.351.
22 .
Thus the rates have little moral relevance .
A real possibili ty is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate . A real possibili ty requires producibl e evidence for its
considera tion . The contrast is with mere logical possibili ty.
23.
4
24.
Such a princip le is explici t both in classica l utilitar iani s m (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414) , and in a range of contrac t and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawl s (p.293).
How the princip le is argu ed for will depe nd
heavily , however, on the underlyi ng theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend he avily on particu lar ethical theories .
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especia lly, the
Poverty argumen t.
26 .
SF, p. 27.
Shrader -Freche tte is herself somewha t critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods , suggesti ng that ' whoever aff irms or
den ies the desirab ility of ... [such] standard s is, to some degree,
symboll ically assentin g to a number of American value patterns and cu l tural
norms' (p. 28 ).
27.
The examp le paralle ls the sorts of countere xamp les often advance d to
utilitar ianism, e.g. the admissi ble lynching of an innocen t person because
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
against utilitar ianism, see ...
For the more general case
28 .
US Atomic Energy Commissi on , Compara tive Risk-Co st-B en ef it Study of
Alterna tive sources of Electric al Energy (WASH-1224), US Governm ent Printing
Office , Washing ton, D.C., Decembe r 1974 , p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29 .
As SF points out, p.37-44 ., in some detail. As she remarks,
... since standard s need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclea r Regulato ry commiss ion] judges that the
licence shows 'a reasonab le effort' at meetin g them,
current policy allows governm ent regulato rs to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparen t ] good
intentio ns of the promo tors of technolo gy. [Such]
good intentio ns have never been known to be sufficie nt
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulati on, even where the standard s are as mostl y not very
demandin g, and the alliance of regulato rs with those th ey a re s upposed t o be
r eg ulating, are conspicu ous features of modern environm ental control, not just
of (nuclear ) pollutio n control.
30 .
31 .
The figures are thos e from the origin al Bro okhaven Report: ' Theo r e
t ical
possib ilities and consequ ences of major accide nts in large nuclea
r plants ',
USAEC Report WASH-740, Governm ent Printin g Office , Washin gton , D. C.,
1957.
This r e port was r eques ted in the first place because the Commis sion
on Atomic Energy
wanted pos i tive safe t y conc l usions "to r eass ure th e
private insuran ce compan ies" so that they would pr ovid e
coverag e for th e nuclea r indust ry. Since even th e
cons e rvative statist ics of the r eport we r e alannin g it
was supp r essed and its data we r e not made public until.
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brough t as a r esult of
the Freedom of Inform ation Act (Shrad er-Frec hette, pp. 78-9).
32 .
Atomic Energy Commis sion, Re actor Safe ty Study: An Ass e ssment of
Acc ident Risks in US Comme rcial Nuclea r Power Plants , Governm ent
Printin g Offi ce ,
Washin gton, D.C., 1975 . This report, the only alleged ly comple te
study ,
conclud ed that fission reactor s presen ted only a minima l health risk
t o the
public .
Early in 1979, th e Nuclea r Regula tory Commis sion (th e r elevan t
organ isation that superse ded the trouble d Atomic Energy Commis sion)
withdre
w
i ts suppor t for the report, with the result that there is now no
compreh ensive
analys is of nuclea r power approve d by the US Governm ent.
32a .
Most presen t and planned r eactors are of this type: see Gyo r gy .
33 .
34 .
Even then relevan t environ ment factors may have been neglec t ed .
35.
There are variati ons on (i) and (ii) which multip ly costs agains t
number s such as probab ilities. In this way risks, constru ed as probab
le
cos ts, can be taken into accoun t in the assessm ent.
(Alt e rnative ly, risks may
be assesse d through such familia r method s as insuran ce.)
A princip le varying (ii), and fonnula ted as follows :
(ii ) a is ethica lly accepta ble if (for some b) a include s no more
risks than b
and b is sociall y acce pted. was the basic ethica l princip le in terms
of which
the Cluff Lak e Board of Inquiry recentl y decided that nuclea r power
de velo pme nt
1
in Saskat chewan is ethically acceptable :
s e e Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Departme nt of Environment , Government of Saskatchewa n, 1978, p. 305 and
p . 288 . In this report, a is nuclear power and bis either a ctiviti e s clearl y
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other application s b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietna m War(!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii'). The principles are certainly ethically substantive , since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissibl e conventiona l character. For l ook at the origin of b: b may be
socia lly accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibili ty is no longer so cle arcut and it would not have been socially
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. 'What
is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing
is then 'ethically acceptable' rather than 'socially accepted'. But even with
th e amendments the principles are invalid , for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcertin g that thes e arguments do not work . It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the exper ts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the tr oubl e with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian , and like utilitariani sm they neglect distributio nal features ,
involve na tu ralistic fallacies, et c.
Really they try to treat as an uncon-
straine d optimisatio n what is a deontically constraine d optimisatio n :
V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarian ism'.
s ee R. and
37.
Ap parent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistr i bution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be i f taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population .
Example s such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexam ples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p. 15, where references are also cited.
39 .
Goodin, p. 433.
40 .
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
Energy , Environment a lists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiat ing th e interesting case of Commoner
[7 ] . On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well [18], p. 23 . On th e employment issues, see too H. E. Daly in [ 9], p. 149.
7
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Ene rgy and Equality , Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly th e opp osite of
what the poor need.
41 .
For much more deta il on the inappropria teness see E.F . Schumacher,
Sma ll is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973. As to the capital and
o ther requirement s, see [2] , p. 48 , and also [7] and [9] .
For an illuminatin g l ook at the sort of d evelopmen t high - energy
t e chnolo gy will t end to promote in the so-called unde rdeveloped countri es see
the pap e r of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Envfr•onment (edited
J . H. Wins l ow), Au s tr a l ian National University Press, Canb e rr a, 1977.
42 .
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins , Energy Strategy : The Road Not
Taken , Fr iends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Fo 1°eign Affair•s ,
Oc tob e r 1976); s ee also [ 17], [6 ] , [ 7], [14] , p . 233 ff, and Schumacher, op . cit .
43 .
An argument like this is suggested in Passmo re, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument
for the ove rriding importance of passing on contemporar y culture is underpinn e d
by what appears to be a future-dire cted ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed he
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good interventio n is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of t he present and immediate future. The argument has all
t he defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p . 191, and also Commoner .
45 .
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been a dvanced by civ il
liberties groups and others in a number of countri e s: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White , Nuclear Pr ospects. A comment on the individual , the State
and Nuclear Power , Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties , London, 1976.
46.
' US energy policy, for example , since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act , has been that nuclear powe r is necessary to provide "an e conomical
and reliable basis"
n eed ed "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p . 111, and
r efe rences there cit e d) .
47.
There are now a great many criticism s of the second premiss in th e
literat ure . For our criticism , and a r e formulati on of the premiss in terms
of selec tive economic growth (which would exclude nu clear developm ent), see
Routley (b) , and also Berkley and Seckler.
To simple-mi ndedly contrast e conomic growth with no-growth , in the fa shion
of some discussio ns of nuclear power, c . f . Elster, is to leave out
crucial
alte rnatives ; the contracti on of course much simplifie s the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear developme nt is explicitl y in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the governmen t has very s ubstantia l
interests in main nuclear involved companies . Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehen sive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtical ly according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptio ns made
concernin g the measureme nt of plant performan ce
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49 .
See Kalmanoff , p .
50.
See Corney.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF on argument
from ignorance etc.
53 .
These e . g. Elster, p. 377.
On deci sion theory see also,
54 .
A recent theme in much economic literatur e is that Bayesian dec ision
theory and risk analysis can be universal ly applied . The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. In any case , even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, a nd few (and
widely diverging ) figures for the probabili ty of a reactor core meltdown,
an d no reliable estimates as to the likelihoo d of a nuclear confronta t i on.
Thus Goodin argue s (in 78) that 'such uncertain ties plague energy theories'
as to 'rend er expected utility calculati ons impossibl e '.
55 .
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff ., from which presentat ion of the
internati onal story is adapted.
1
56.
Gyo rgy, p . 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
For elaborati on of some of th e important
and Hermann.
57.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principle s underlyin g the Old
Paradigm or its Modificat ion - and they do form a coherent set th at many
people can
respect - these are not the principle s unde rlying contempor ary
corporate capitalism and associate d third-wor ld i.mperialis m.
58.
Certainly practical transitio nal programs may involve tempo rary and
limited us e of unaccepta ble long t erm commoditi es such as coal, but in
presentin g su ch practical details one should not lose sigh t of the more basic
social and structura l changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitio nal strategie s should make use of such
measures as en vironment al (or replaceme nt) pricing of energy i . e . so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of r e placing it by an
equivalen t unit taking account of environm ental cost of productio n. Other
(sometime s coopU.ve) s trategies towards more satisfact ory alternativ es should
a lso, of course , be adopted, in particula r the removal of institutio nal barriers
to energy conservat ion and alternati ve technolog y (e . g. local governmen t
regulatio ns blocking these), and the removal of state assistanc e to fuel and
power industrie s.
59.
Symptoma tic of the fact that it is not treated as r enewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewabi lity - if th ey did
the losses and deficits on forestry operation s would be much more s triking tha n
t hey already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermo re, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully r e newable operation if net energy productio n is to be worthwhil e; see, e.g .
the argument in L. R.B . Mann 'Some difficult ies with energy farming for portable
fuels', and add in the costs of e cosystem maintenan ce.
60.
For an outline and explanati on of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee .
61 .
The requisite distinctio n is made in several places , e . g . Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literatur e), Baran and
Sw eezy .
62 .
The distinctio n between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasise d
by Naess. For its environm en tal i mpo rtance see Routl ey (c) (wher e
further reference s are cited) .
•
REFERENCES .
In o rde r to contai n refe r e n ces to a modes t length, r efrre ncc to
primary sources has often been replaced by referen ce through secondary sources .
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sour ces . For those parts of
the text that ove rlap Routley (a), fuller references wil l be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, 'Environmen talism, middle-clas s radicalism an d
politics', Sociologica l Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E . Goodin, 'No moral nukes ', Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends , No Nukes: everyone's guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Ato mic Energy, Outb ack Press , Melbourn e ,
1977.
R. a nd V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 ( 1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Repo rt: Ranger Uranium Environmen tal I nquiry First Report , Australian
Go vernmen t Publishing Service, Canberra , 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Fr echet te, Nu clea r Power and Publi c Policy, Reidel, Do rdrecht,
1980 (refe rred to as SF).
W. R. Cat ton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, 'A new ecol ogical paradigm for post - ex uber an t
sociology', Ame rican Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47 .
Unite d States Interagency Review group on Nuclea r Waste Managemen t, Repo rt
to the President, Wash i ngton. (Dept. of Energy) 1979. (Ref. No . El. 28 . TID29442) (cited as US(a)) .
A.B . Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuc lear Futures : The Case for an Eth ical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth Internation al, San Fran cisco , 1975.
R. Routley , 'On the impossibili ty of an ortho dox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmen tal problems', Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routl ey , 'Necessa r y limits for knowledge: unknowable tru ths', in Es says in
honour of Paul Wei nga rtner,
(ed. E. Norscher ), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore , Man's Responsibi lity for Nature, Du ckworth , London, 1974 .
,,,.
.-2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Editi on, RSSS, Austra lian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J . Rawls , A Theory of Justice, Harvard Unive rsit y Press, Cambridge , Mass.,
19 71.
P . hl . Berkl ey a nd D.W . Seckler, Economic Gr owth and Environment a l Dec ay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch , New York, 1972 .
J . Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power' , Soci al Science Information
18 (3) (1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson , Economic Heresi e s, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry, 'Circumstan ces of Justice and future generat i ons ' in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.I. Sikora and B. Barry), Templ e Universit y Press,
Philadelphi a, 1978.
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics , Macmillan, London , 1962 (r e issue ).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power , Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Right s , 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979 .
J. Woodmans ee , The World of a Giant Corporation , North Coun tr y Pr es s , Seattle ,
Washing ton, 1975.
P . A. B~r a n and P . Sweezy, Monopoly Capita l, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, ' The shallow and the deep, long range eco l ogy movement.
A summary ', Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
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Typescript (photocopy) of draft, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield.
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Australian National University - Far Bookshelf - Second Bay - Top Shelf - Pile 2
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Australian National University Office > Far Bookshelf > Second Bay > Top Shelf > Pile 2
Box 59: Nuclear
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Text
1875
�/IN/J , AJuncl)L
NUCLEAR POWER
•
-
ETHICA L,a& SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
---.. Compet ing paradig fus and · the nuclea r debate .
~
J C/l/'I
One hardly 1ieeds ini t.. i ation into the dark myster ies of nuclea r physic
s
to contrib ute useful ly to the debate now widely raging over nuclea r
power. While many import ant empiri cal questio ns are still
unreso lved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controv ersy.
Instead , it is a debate about values ...
\
many of the questio ~which arise are social and ethica l ones. 1
•.:tSociol ogica) investi gation s have confirm ed fJ £ a t~
I pa,i I 11g , I a1:a1Hiliit e:f! the
,!
01\.C!..
debate l=!S:&!!!!t'!~ primar ily over what is w.9rth having
or pursuin g and over what we are
'tli.a,., /i.,we 4ho cc,-.+·,r,.,../),l fl..,,/ it,, J;,'/.wh :1 ;•,l~:,~-11
.entitle d to do to others .~,] ii pelaFi oatienA
along the lines of compet ing
paradig ms. 2 Accord ing to the entrenc hed paradig vtldisc erned, that constel
lation. a'
of values , attitud es and beliefs often called the nomina nt Social
Paradig m
(herea fter
I ena ipsoiac to u hl:ttan f!nD
--)
I
r/
I
riteria become the benchm ark by which a v.;id..e/ range of
individ ual and social action is J IA"{'J4.l
and evalua ted.
AW'\d
belief in the market and market mechan isms is
quite centra l.
Clv'.:ite...<il"\<J
around this col'"e belief is the
convic tion that enterp rise flouris hes best in a system of
risks and r ew~ rds, that differe ntials are necess ary ..• , and in
the necess ity for some form of divisio n of labour , and a itfl1rar chy
of skills and expert ise. In particu lar, there is a belief in
the compet ence of ~xpert s in genera l and of scient ists in
particu lar , m More thau this, scient: ifie knowle dge aftd t:he scient ific
speei:r~:'i~/,;2··::.,,./
method enjoy a
-ef knowiftg , • , , A:Re
3
S = ~ : . . _ 4"--
quanti f ica.tion .
.status as
super, '(P'
::::j there 1s an emphas is on
~~,3
The rival world view, sometim es called the Altern ative Environ mental
Paradig m
( the ~ Paradig m) differs on almost every point, and, accord ing to
sociol ogists ,
in ways su~mar i~ din the followi ng table 4":Nature hostile/ne utral
Environm ent controllable
---·. ,csourccs limited
Nature benign
Nature clclicatdy balanced
\.
\
�EDGE
.,.
Confidence in science
and technology
~ation:ility of means~}
Limits to science
~ationality of ends
•
S.t-~te socialism, as practiced in most of the "EasteI11 bloc", differs from the
01/ PaLl.digm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular
l\ ffl~'
being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system).
/
o-Y
,r,~t)tlt
But
since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of
·
h
· 1·ism, 5 tat
variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated here.
minor
s t a t e socia
,,.... 1
Nctl.cu,t
.WailiaA the competing paradigm picture is a trifle s i m p l e ~ instead
~
a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadi gms, a cluster of not very well
out rositions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the
wo,•k~
Jfl01+,;.,./'cr-hJ,
)/o,ie,/{~(J
Old Paradigm~ i t is empirically investigable, and.I\ it enables the nuclear debate
be focussed.
Large-scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of
the world ,
counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of
the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the
assessment of nuclear power, instead of
~,..
olt-0u'-,
merely economic
1in addition to
jJa9.,-.d
..
u(_, \-"-..
factors such as cost and efficiency, isAto move somewhat
received paradigm.
g.gl; .. i le
the
For under the Old Paradig~, strictly construed, the nuclear
debate is confined to the terms of the narrow ut1litarianism upon which contemporary
economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to
assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irratfonal. I
/;,(4.(11,-,'1"4-J J~clear development receives its support from adherents of the Old
Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the
assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the
t:o
fails. But in
· and ultimately fails
fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backedj)
case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
unless the free enterprise economic assumptions are replaced
by the ethically
unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. r->~~~tt--en--e--a:nm~m-t~
7
�The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm ) to be structur ed. There are two
main part~JJ :It is argued, firstly, from
the Old Paradigm , that nuclear
J&tfSe
developm ent is
ethicall y
unjusti fiable;
A
but that, secondly , even from within
e·th,t" I~ ,;,{,.l,fo "1
the framewo rk of the,\Old Paradigm , such developm ent is unaccep table, since signific
ant
features of nuclear developm ent conflic t with indispe nsible features of the Paradigm
(e.g. costs of project developm ent and state :s ... lPs ,l ,J"--f:,,;, •., with market
independ ence and criteria for project selectio n). It has _?~E_~ d accepta ble
from
within the claminan t paradigm only because )rfo,,Js
do not square with practice , only
because the assumpt ions of the Old Paradigm are but very ~A~~ty
applied in
contemp orary politica l practice the place of i ru.<<I!.(~., "'1( td)
,v
capitali sm having been usurped by corpora te capitali sm. It is because the nuclear
debate <:<1.vi bL.
carried on within the framewo rk
of the Old Paradigm that the
debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflict ingvalu
es
of the
<c.,..,.,fL-f;;"1
paradigm s - is not just a debate about values; it is also a
debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (ec:.on0" 1istid
ends, and
-:=:-
of rationa l choice as to energy option.5 within
(~
~ 0 1""Q;i1f
2'n this corner ~
0<,f/e,,..Jj4 ft!1ho',. "JllD I
most !i F I Im. decision
1
a predeter mined framewo rk of values.
tlrp~
theory argumen ts,often conside red
"
as encompa ssing
all the nuclear debate is ethicall y about, I\best util.i t~rian
means to predeter mined ends..,) be l : ~ For another leading charact eristic of the
nuclear debate is the attempt , under the dominan t par_adigyn, to r~c'1~ it from
t/•IIW 1f
the ethical and
social sphere) and to turR ; t into spec,iali st issues ef'
#"
whether over minutia? .and conting encies A present technolo gy or overme&lw,,/
~legal or
~)
mathem atical ,,' upeciaJ J y de, rs r 011 tbentetf c: and Stat Is Lica:1:, or amdie&t details.,8
/
£'
;or
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear
.
developm ent poses.
There are 7any
A inter~e lated problems and -fl. t.- OAJ'""'"cd
· , is further
,)
I\
/_,flW4r
structur ed in terms of these.
For in the advancem ent and promotio n of nuclear ~
we encount er a remarka ble combina tion of factors, never before assemble d
establis hment,
on a massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its process
ing
serious risks and at some stages of product ion possible catastro phe, which delivers
as a by-prod uct radioac tive wastes which require up to a million years' storage
but for which no sound and economi c storage methods are known, which gr~w up as
part of the war industry and which is easily $""h v,e..,rld to deliver nuclear weapons
,
which require s for its
operatio nconsid erable secrecy , limitati ons on the flow of
informa tion and restrict ions on civil libertie s, which depends for its economi
cs,
and in
order
to generate expected private profits, on Sl.\bs-i.4.,,/..,~/
state
subsidi zation, support , and interven tion. It is, in short, a very high technol
ogical
developm ent,
ba~«-f.
with problem s.
first importa nt problem .which serves also
to exempli fy ethical issues and princip les involved in other nuclear power questio
ns,
is the unresolv ed matter of disposa l of nuclear wastes.
A
�.------------- ------------ ------------ -------~--- ---.
f
5.
t
annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb.
of this waste is extremely toxic.
)
Much
For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium
part of the waste material
of even a
is enough to induce a lung
Wastes will include the reactors themselves,
...contamination
which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
and which, some have estimated, may require l½ million years to reach safe levels
of radioactivity.
P,,.tcAF
A~astes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire
For fission products the required storage period averages a
active lifetime.
thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there
is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen
with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the
comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. ~ Shortterm methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer
term methods are subject to both human interference and risk of leakage through
non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
ti
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formation s or in salt mines, are largely speculative and
relatively untested1 and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts
made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for
the result in
first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and enca/ulating
,i
multilayered metal containers before rock
radioactive material may not remain
deposit 1 si~ulation models reveal that
11.
.
, 'II isolated from human environments.
S'k,t.<\t1
f~4.
In short, the best present ~iapeoel proposals carry very real possibilities of
.J... /Id
•
//
I
lZ..t-u ~~~ •
irradiating future people- (V',i,,l.
Given the
c<c,,,~'7
I
Atu.lflf
.QA:Q;pQfiQWB
costs which could be involved for the future, and given
0
the known ~~mits of technology, it is £i?la:h:tw methodol@gi cal.ly unsound amt to bet,• as
nuclear
Mlin,-J
~
A
t~a.
have,• on the discovery of safe procedures for 1tis.pr19i,j of wastes.
Any
new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present
proposals, and subjecJto the same inadequacies.
methods for safe
l
storage
For instance, none of the proposed
X "'t.H
has been properly tested, and they mayAprove to involve
ell :sorts o:fi unforseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into
practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee
�,
I
I
09
when set in this context.
t,/wo/!
are not so ruf'I
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses
when the consigner, again~ "responsible" businessman, puts
).
his workers' health or other peoples' welfare at risk.
~
THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE1~IN PARABLE .
II.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded
carries both passengers and freight.
journey
The train which is
At an early stop in the
someone consigns as freight , to a far distant destination, a package
which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
container which> as the consigner
ii ava..r4- 1
Jii' l 'J I ems
This is packaged in a very thin
may~ not contain the gas for the
~ full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior
of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere
try; to steal some
1e t 11 r 5ffi'1jhQ~
ot
eliherately
~
the freight~
inadvertent!
Ml
tX,lA4'rcd,.
have happened on some previous journeys.
All
iii,.
~
with
fU:
ft,1-h ~
fCJ Laps
Conf• ;;bi.c, ;_,,,
of these tie:! cg ,..
,\
If the container should
"'
break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the
train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases .
..,.,
Most of us would Aoundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain that
the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the train or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however
1$
would normally be s een as ludicrous~
a11rlo'1er1
(~~up~~he says that it is hisgownA pressing needs which justify his action.
The ~ h e
0!111!!6,
,\
which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
A
straits, and could•
n.,r
,. afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to
r~..../'441' ~ ,1/r
make one.
If t h e ~
§?PB
ersl~~, he and his family will suffer, his employees
r~L'~~
will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the who}eA
1~,~,
through
loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
()It,/ rl.A~"/t ~ "
.fo-...
The ppor of t'he ¥.j)Jag_P,whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
,1
suffer especially. ::,
,1r.,i/Q
G ew people would accept~ story1 even if correct, as justification. Even
where there are serious risks and costs to oneseLf or some group for whom one is
(o
concerned one is usually
m,""kM,l
ii,b. w;gil1'UA not
hacc.u_y
to be entitled to simply transfer the,4 burden
of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
1
()r
1
CI U J
1
/JIZMJ' J )
from one's own.< chosefi Iife-style.ca:nd the t~nsfer af cos.ts creates a risk of
,ae-r ious harm t:e G - t ~ r
-----
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resem\1le
the train (i4.tqatiaeu
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plant~ that will be spread around the world as large/9
scale nuclear development goes ahead. ' The waste problem will be much more serious
than thut generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, withx'each one of the
2000 or so r actors envisaged by
,IJ
,f/4.
J.IYl/4w
l#i7 l,Q. ~~'4~ ,i·
dfi) flp,J4v{-
...,_,
jj{'. ,
,~IL
cue end of the century producing, on average,
A
. /"'-A
'VI
'/I
Ji?
t
•
s/4
/7
__
/ L_:~-..':~. . :~=====================
==---___,tl~===~l_____i_~
~----
------,_,.........----------~---_......._
----:,..........,__..
�6. {
of safety over th e s torage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt , would be
acceptable.
It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given
concerning either the geological or future human factors.
But even if an
economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method
could
be devised,
there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably
.
. as
The assumption that it would be{ especially if,
~
used.
-
likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the f uture which has not previously been e~counter~in
human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
1
.
Again,
unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites
through perhaps a million years of possible future human ac t ivity, weapons-grade
radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period,
to any pa rt y who is in a position to retrieve it.
nonetheless be found 1 before 2000,
(no longer a mere disposal pfioblem)
s accordingly not t"~t,cnA '(
which gets around the waste storage problem
. like ma~v assumptions ?~ifH~s, It is an assumption supplied by the
based, but is ratne ~ ~an artitle or
The assumption that a way will
/!
Old Paradigm,
1
Cit M limitations assumption , that there are really no (development)
-
·
-.
problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion
always immediately ·· economically feasible).
part in development plans and practice..
technological optimism (not to say
what humans can accomplish,
The assumption
that is
has played an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
t3 -h(A.J,,.,·::, -____
);
that there are no limits to
;~;:14.
i<. through science ; it has led
to the em~rcation on
projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved
t,r
a solution is
tNll.~ i n sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led , not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe limits
on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the form of
'"'
limitation theorems,~ and in addition there are human limitations which modern
technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the
·
, llliu:,,olll( lido-wliklihood of reac t or accidents is a relevant exampll). The original nuclear
technology dream
..fj 1>S1.l»-'I
was that nuclear
'clean unlimited supply of power').
apparently remains a net
will be but a quite
X
That dream soon shattered .
cons &-1>t1~
"!)hc..-l::-tM1<1
would provide unlimited energy (a
The nuclear industry
of power, and nuclear
..flt~, ;o,,..
s upplier of power/>
The risks :l.mposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
then , significant.
are,
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a
million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy
source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy problems of the
people of the distant future whose lj_ves could be seriously affected by the wastes.
�I
pt,..."'tl.Mt..
It is for such reasons that the train aua]og; cannot be turned around
.p, .. ~,.,,,/(._
. s.
to work in favour of nuclear power, w1.·th .:e::g:.-"1 t, h e nuc 1 ear train b r1.n1.ng
I
4
relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power.
7.
~
~~----Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use
I.I f»l~)'r•jloiT,,j.,.
d
r{4.
of onlyAlO generations.
l''°/'k o.f
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the ene~gy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that
in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of
energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably,
again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it ~
For
they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which,
if the nuclear proponents' dream~of global industrial:lsation are realised, more
and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy
consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or
reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world
which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable
resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form
4
a very important part of the basis of life, are in a run·-down condition.
Such
pointf~~ll against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries
of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary
indu st rial society proposes, in order to get itself out of _a
mess arising from its
chfik
Q,W:fl
life style - the creation of economies dependent on an
abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs
and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits.
.
The ''solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes~n the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner's action
avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the
expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity
to
/eJ J.Q.c~nt /,vu
Afli1J
may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under e~ch paradigm, so it will be argued clear alternatives
(YJ>o~-t~
1
cf i patterns
~
w
to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
c~mpet,Nil,iJo.l'J ~
of consumption and protect the interest of those,\who benefit
from them.
I r~ pcrca.,t1cd,
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
1
principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the
contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development
firTr-/S~
inv61ves injustice
~
/:T4- •
with respect to the future 1,0
.I\
li
g s111l s n 1J e> . The.re appear to be
only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance
of
such a conclusion.
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8.
I
i
I
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply
f{,_
because the recipients of...- nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
!eject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to
1
~
that there are
circumstances in which such an action might ~,.;s i];Jj'
no
be justifiable 1 or at least where the
the nuclear case.
f,t,,J/,e,,
~
is less clearcut.
It is the same with
Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there
is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether
(on(l,/e,r-
We ~urfl now to the first oA these possible escape
they apply in the present case.
h,1',.,. ,¼ ,,;I,11.
,~ 1V,r,q
routes for the proponent of nuclear developmen~, A~
the
~ ~ a i e::u,
question of
our obligations to the future.@
III
The especially problematic area
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
is that of the distant (i.e.
~
,-inun({..!',l j ate) future,
11(
the future with
which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
&,I"
In fact the question of
future gives fe~ problems for most ethical theories.
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
( tl~eu,lf;"i,
a;iff.
ill}~-?~
•
•
1-t,u,· fe,!, 0 "! 1-ope:ram,o_rLJ
fail to pass, and also
o'Ji(~)
tlo
.-u-r ~ t/JM_
the adequacy of accepted;/ institutions which leave
future pe pl.c.
in political philosophy cen:e!r .. in:g
01:1~
<YP
of account~ the interests of
ll'd"-lvx~,
;>?Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future
people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other philosophers
have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the
future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those
who deny or who are committed by their
general moral position to denying that there
are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight
of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political
pcr/1t,,/IJ
institutions,that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond ~those
f@raap,s to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there
are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect
of our actions on future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or whose views
imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have
opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accouna
of moral obligation which are builh. on relations which presuppose some ckiguhl uf
\
�9.
temporal or spatial contiguit y.
Thus moral obligatio n is seen as grounded on
or as presuppos ing various relations which could not hold between people widely
separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligatio n is seen
as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also nontransitiv e. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligatio n, or
requireme nts on moral obligatio n, which would rule out obligatio ns to the non.immediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligatio n is held be able to claim his rights or
entitleme nt.
People in the distant future will not be able t'b-claim rights and
en«fw11.
entitleme nts as aga:inst us, and of course they can do nothingAt o enforce any
claims they might have for their rights against us. Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligatio ns on social or legal conventio n, for example
a conventio n which would require punishmen t of offenders or at least some kind
of social enforceme nt. But plainly these and other conventio ns will not hold
invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventio ns and so will
not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders , and there could be no guarantee that any
contempo rary institutio n would do it for them.
~ Both the view that moral obligatio n requ{es the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractu ally based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligatio n as they not only require a
commonal ity or some sort of common basis which cannot be guarantee d in the case of
the distant future, but also a possibili ty of interchan ge or reciproci ty of action
which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligatio n is seen
as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they
cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The
exclusion of moral obligatio ns to the distant future also follows from those
views which attempt to ground moral obligatio ns in non-tran sitive relations of
short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficult ies about
love and sympathy for (non-exis tent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characte ristics one must know very little and who may well
Ji/fa,,,,be committed to a life-styl e for which one has no sympathy. On the current
1
showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that
contempo rary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would
appear to follow fr om this that contempor ary people had no obligatio ns concernin g
future people and could damage them as it suited them.
(
�10.
j
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
\b 5
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empffathy).
{ t:#11/
Because obligation therefore
fOt1'0i7'1 )
c,4/t..,&,./.h.
become\conditional, features usually"' thought to characterise ia;~such as
universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) ate
lost,~special.ly where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required
to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria
for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them,
Mt
is Ahowever
Jurn.mi).(/e.
,fl
·•=~
aH:llLalt one te ~t113ta1A J
Irr
Consider, elm example , a
a scientific
group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device
designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No
presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affecte.d,
but the population ofY the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
The unconstrained position clearly
direct and predictabl~ result of the action.
implie s that this is an acceptable moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might
legitimately criticize in the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being overexpensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally
J,,)rc'y:
acceptable the following sorts of linEOfflf':les:- A firm discovers it can make a
will do to future people.
handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material
which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate
descendents, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which
will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at
that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its
own interests, without any consideration for the harm i .t does
,ren,,~
future
people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
0...
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it i s ~ clear
impli cation of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well
as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained
position have not considered such examples,
-, /J/(l.
by their position.
despite their being clearly implied
w ..ld cuh..117 ~o/1'1 Md;{ -
We suspect thatAwhen it is brought out that the unconstrained
position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other
things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for
�11.
the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they
intende.d.
I
What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position
seem to have had in mind in denying moral obligation is rather that future
people can look after themselves, that we are not reponsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a
future causally independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if,
r:--
in the counter/
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being
.....:.,...,
left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and
in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as
they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the
obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of
the chance of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acqu.ired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one .is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course
of act.ion of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or
assumed obligations toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption
is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for
example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which
no act of acquisition is required.
and kind of responsibility involved.
There is a considerable difference in the level
In the first case one must do something or be
something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent
who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus
does not have to be especially acquired or assumed.
Thus there is no problem about
how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases
where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditions to
be satisfied.
They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the
distant future of a reasonably predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can
apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not
p{jf-lrr
(yet) exist. While it may~be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must
make speci.al sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
�12.
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
from harming them.
argue in justification of hi.s action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsfbility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to
take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self- sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self- sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package 6n the train.
- 1~ ,-;.,,.
The conf~ of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral obligation' both to
signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which
t?t-. con.Pl~"'
has to be assumed or acquired. a .~is encouraged by reductionist positions which,
in attempting to account for obligation in genera~mistakenly endeavour to collapse
all obligations into acquired obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
{),nu,,WUI
of the unconstrained position, of theAbelief that there are no moral constraints
concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve
the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate
successors in a better condtion, and that is all; il,/7
there are irferactice
no obligations to the distant future.
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the
�chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each
generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding
-
generation.
/hftfe..
'U'L P..t (t A.,t
~ . A three objections to this chain account.
First, it is
inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only
between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals
opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g.
harm, on the future in a way which may create individual
responsibility, and
which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation.
Secondly, such chains,
since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again
show.
For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be
dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a
direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who
may not even be able to influence matters.
VThirdly, improvements for immediate
successors may be achieved at the expense oflcfi\advantages to people of the more
distant future.
Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with ,
and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less
immediate successors.
examples
Such cases can hardly be written off as "never-never land"
since many cases of environmental exploitation might be seen as of
just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils
t.($l.
and forests through over crttl
If then such obvious injustices to future
W•
people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors
are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way
fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV.
ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATI_ONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONOMISTIC
r.\
Ul\tERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While
there are grave
difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible
. , ~ ,;.
position.
According to thej qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future .
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
�( 'tJ
c./,~
14.
c,,...,.,,..7
e-.Al'I r~e/ ,,_0 /1//4,r.4'---/o/_/,._
costs and benefits (and so of future inter~s) is obtained by application over
time of a ! ~ discount rateJ l The attempt to apply eco~omics as
a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to
the qualified position.
J
What is objectionable in such an approach is that
rl..ooA.cl
economics~ operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just
A
as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those
There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply
constraints are.
to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg
~.rn.<)~
t=t.m questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future 1 the most threadbare is based ~n the assumption that future generations
J'{
than present ones > and so better placed to handle the waste
off
willj€:tter
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well UQ_l=
problem.
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argujJnent
can carry Much
discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
For it depends qf
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argujtnent.
weight.
~
1 ~.<f_.: ~
assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
(ullRJ_td/., h-n.a-hc '"/ J
richer successors in foregoing such,i de.f5elopments as nuclear power. Tl,q•f ;1 1
il-.la/Jt,,,.1U
H:O::f t f ~ a ~ I
cl:e..vi?1tiprirn~
M
th. f:>.I~,. .Ly rcdr.lul
-Be:t,\ the sacrifice
{(J/0..)
lias , 1r cad, li @an
~
~
hi¥/~
-tl,e.,
on
sacrifices to
f or
8'1. Qto @h es.
t"/!"4;/
"r: toJ/IJ-f,444
the future
'i1:m:1 for the waste disposal problem to be
~
argument . Iii\ ""1
legitimately
generations, it would have to be shown, what recent
economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better
U 11.,t
J1' 011!.. C u.;,,;/,/e_.
off, but so much better offAthat they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is d.i rectly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued_, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so f~r efficient allocation of
resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of
'r/'~/,·s-.-l,~.....
of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to cawii:a. to
71....r
a few pennies set
now than later. ~
costs much less_
economically
,1ov.)Q/"
--
,......
aside (e.g. in a trust fund)Ain the future, if need bev, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any
v,c. t,w>.f
of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, in surmountable pract1cal _
_
difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that
�15 .
applied generally, the argument presupposes , what is false, that compensatio n,
like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents , that people ~ncluding
I
those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of
damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensatin g a dead man,
or for a lost species.
In fact the argument presupposes
neither part of which can succeed
be represented
,
at all adequately
it is not just
/</
a double reduction
that value cannot in general
, -fa'
/J,'K~~
monetarily, but (as against utilitariani sm)
,t
-LJ..,.t
constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It
i s also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear
choic e s,'!_--- - -~
are bound ~o apply discounting . This is far from so :
indeed
A
Goodi~ argues that, on the
do not allow discounting , and discounting only works in practice with expected
utility rules (such as underlie cost-benef it and benefit-ris k analyses), which
,r,//
are, he contends strictly inapplicabl e for nuclear choices (since aJncrt
1 pnl'>Si],1 f3
{,/,11.{f al f<j''1. a,t /'.,~,,/,/;#b J
outcomes can
be duly determirte1, in the way that application of the rules
1-0
requir es).
1/
contrary, more appropriate decision £~1¢s
,,
As the f~e.ceid;nJ . arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrain ed position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer
i
example and reduce costs to payable compensatio n, it is evident that over a
sufficientl y long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclus ion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints . I n short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bi a s against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current e conomic horizons of no more than about
15 years~2/ and appli.cation of such rates would
simply beg the question against
the interests a nd rights of fu t ure people.
Where there is certain future damage
of a mo rally f o rbidden t ype, f or example, the whole method of discounting is simply
inappl.icabl e, and its use would violate moral constraint s.~
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from ca ses of c ert a in d a mage, comes from probability considerati ons. The distant
future, it is a rgued, is much more uncertain than
the present and immediate future,
so that probabiliti es are consequentl y lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding
with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.•
But then if we take
account of probabiliti es in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against
costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people; except in
cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
much) less than those of present and
must count for (very
neighbourin g people where (much) higher
probabj_lities are attached.
So in the case of conflict between the present and the
future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the
present and the immediate f(Jture against a much lower probability of indetermina te
�16.
costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally
be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits
were involved.
But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a
question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain am:±E doubtful fU" t, i :b4. benefits for some present people, in
f11(,i11i.1,~ c,HJcn.A,;;,. l';-of,Y~;l,7 or le
the shape of the opportunity to). continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even
if the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted ,)<such an argument would
be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action
is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing
significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large.
or l"isl.~JwiolilSuch a cost-benefitAapproach to moral and decision problems, with or without
the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned
or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
it would follow on such principles that it is permissible
For example,
for a firm to injure,
or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a
sufficiently large gain from it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not
transferable in any s1mple or general way from one party to another.
Transfers of
this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral
issues - e.g. is
x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on
y -
whi.ch are not susceptible to, a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted
J~
J,!01-Ult;,...
•F enenza, of nuclear energy, ltho attefl@J':=::f::fl=di-smiss the costs to future
,~~
#
"41'-
.
~'?f1¥=;ll,,
d?,,-,ipQ/i,,.
people~with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as
benefHs.
The limitations
of transfei:_ point is enough to invalidate the
comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
--
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity
-3.
are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and
risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear
energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but
also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporaJ.ly removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a
person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
{happiness) sums as a way ~f solvini moral. conflict between diff_e_r ent parties, and the
.
.
-
1J.1
,,.
u/i'th:urty,-
~IJ-UJI--.
NJ/t.J1
~
O-?
'Hf/t• """~ aP/2~.i.-1-;-
1ntroduct1on of probabi.lity cons1derations.-l does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis.
One might further object to the probability
argument that piobabilities involving distant future situations are not always less
than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes, and
~
�17.
that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
f
probability anyway.
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
I
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on
high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
distant future.
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of sep-
aration, but frequently tangled up.
priori
Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a
grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument is a
generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to the
exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain
-ft1Z'L:J
about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreli.able,wootl; and highly
A
speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the present
which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the
X
uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
crudely:
More formally and
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reli.able information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace 'obligations' by 'knowledge'
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the
present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the
basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect
to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between
the present and immediate future on the one hand and the
distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any
such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future
and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are
normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis
of such "unreliable" information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently
labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic-proof certainty is rarely, or never, available
with respect to much of the present and immediate future. In moral situations in
the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low
probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for
certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order
for us to condemn the consigner's action.
It is enough that there is a significant
�18 .
in this sort of case.
risk of harnt
J
It does not matter if the decreased
well-being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
But if we do not require
of the so-called "speculative " and "unreliable".
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should
we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should we
require for the future, episte.m ic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can
be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard.
But such a~ epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests, in
fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already
presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which
difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our
obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
theoretical
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is
gross
where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
this way:-
If moral principles are, like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if
every (action) x" ,
x
has character
h
then
x
is wrong, for
then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever
obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach
the antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obt.ain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action of the "It is wrong
to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument
be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible
to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action
will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then
moral
principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not
be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant
future will impose no practical moral constraints on action.
However the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain
or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning
the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the
�~~
--t9-.
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
I
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
-f/,u.'fN-r I
in a hundred years i n ~ names o r ~ footwear, or what praod1
of ice
•
•
.._A'.~
cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe,
especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a
hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from t h e ~ earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present
makes it such a rich and interesting place.
Ill
uncertainty argument should be rejected.
For this sort of reason, the second
The case of nuclear waste storage,
and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where
uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral
constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties at least
probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the
application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where
spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as~• eac. ~
eu,~
~ ··from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
{
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the def ects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
0~1,.(t_
write off probable~ harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves emv
,< .loy both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people
because we cannot be sure that they will
exist or that their tastes and wants
will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the~hings that would c,.ffect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for
the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that
some disaster will not overtake those we are mora.lly committed to. Again we may
�be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts
on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other
machines.
Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual
standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such
arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as oppo s ed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its
resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may consider
a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable
to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is
often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that future
people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not ~ffect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this app ears to be a
~
live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make
the action of the firm
tu
..c
tbeaa-:&-xam~ aiscussed
earlier
of producing a
substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact
that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for
inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such
cases before such actions could be considered admissible what would ?e required is
22
far more than a possibility, real or not
- it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for
achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be
to protect themselves.
~tpected to apply
�~/l,.. a..,,.L- a«'if
The strategy of /tnost af rbes9 uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
I
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some
lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all
change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash
killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These
are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe that
liC/t2-
they are any more than that, that is they are n o t ~ possibilities.
~k-
The
;\,
strategy is to stress such bH~sid& possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the contai.ner will break should be treated in the same way as these
mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great as to
preclude the consigners' takin~ account of the passengers' welfare and the real
possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related
strategy is to stress a real vossibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and
thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This
move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of
harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws attention
to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application
of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
,:J$
'<>A,
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is SloM!-d, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised
particularly by pr,Pblems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
-fu,-- Q ~11.,,y,.La.. ..,, I,
and future people," wherf the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such
problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
f
)
of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved byVignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and representative a cl'ass of moral
problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest.
can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of
It
�the future will make co~flicts
very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble -
J
a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will
equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder
resolution of the issue, e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular, there will bi~ many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers,
numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most
general probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then: are there any features of
future people which would disqualify them fro~ral consideration or reduce their
claims to such below those of present people?
Prima facie,
The answer is :
in principle None.
,.
moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability
of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of deali.ng
satisfactorily with the present;
in other words, a theory that did not allow
properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to
deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located.
those outside some select subgroup, such as (white-skinned) humans, etc.
candidates
The only
for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the
logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; ht1 1l, ,
. ~ we have argued 1 p: ai-Oia) it would be far too sweeping to see these features as
affecting
the moral claims of future people in a general way.
These special features
only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or
practical
course of action given only present information).
In particular/ they
do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly
determinate. or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class
likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required:
it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot af feet his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration ;i Zfj
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
universalizahility, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the
present;
and thus there is the same ooligation to take account of them and their
interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the
probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage,
and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of
what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy
tf,1'1 Q.v. a.
do not/\:krt: u s ~ of these obligations. If in a closely comparable case concerning
the present
the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as
immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of
�I
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V.
Problems of safe nuclear operation:
reactor emissions, and core meltdown.
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in spa ce, or a particular gqsgraphical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
e,,- ,.q/Jjel'J
another state's or region's yard?
,(
When that region receives no due compensation
(whatever that would amount to, in such a case~ and the people do not agree
(though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the arguments under-
pinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative
conc.lusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future
people.
But the cases are not exactly the same:
USA and Japan cannot endeavour
fl'I- cf
to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop~ their
,a,ltdi;~ pollution in quite the way they can discount people of two centuries hence.
(But
what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that e ntitlement to just treatment can be discounted over time.)
!
�'
~
'· i
Eth~· c 1 i ssues of distr i bu tive j ustice, • as to equityI
/
,:,J
~ J.._ /,
,tJ
tc..id~,,..__
v J{
~iv9ly=~=in ~ , also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development ;
in particular, a s regards t h e treatment of those in the neighbour of reactors, and,
tud rorb
differently, as r~gards the distribution of (alleged) b~nefits Afrom nuclear power
across ~ ~5' (The la t ter ques tion is t aken up
,\
a~ s ~~~ ,
especja] Jy , tb s Pev etty argument . ) ~
Weople livin g or working in the vicinity
special costs and risks:
f
~w{ffitrrf oslde, al ll rn
;i" a
nuclear reactor are subject to
firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact tha t
reactors discharge radioactive ma terials into the air and water near the plant ,
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such a:; {steam) explosion of a reactor. ~ ,I/;.._
~ question is whether such cos t s and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legi-
timacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition,
and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit
--
tradeoffs" of nuclea r _technology. -:::)__
( That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without
local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the
antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development
shares however with other large-scale polluting industry, where local
participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy/ of regional
determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided.
.-:-,,,
The "normal" ei 1ssion , during plant operation1 of low level rad~ ation
carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there r mains
/,id,,
substantial disagreement over theAnumber of cancers and precise extent of genetic
damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegltimotely ) permits free transfer of costs
and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to
be: what extent of c~5cer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for
the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions?
m
Under the Old Parad
the issue is then translated into decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'ho · to
e mploy risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation' and 'how t o
....1.
�25.
determine what is an acceptable level of risk/safety for the pub lic'
.:ii
}
3/
The Old Paradigm a t titude, ref~ted in the public policy o f s ome count r ie s
that have such policies, i s t ha t the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations , which rely~ what appeal
they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a pity about
Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air conditioner working in
summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be
obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way compensate for
the (a;~nf Y, of cance~
'----
The point is that the costs to one party
27
are not justifie~
'-.:,.
especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained
a,-,{,...~
without such ~
awful costs.:.
People, minorities, whose
,;.~;(a_,
.Jro/
~
within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.
p().~M...11£;
,1711~,
position isA compromised are thos\/ who live
(Ehildren, for example, are in aAparticularly
vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer
through exposure than normal adults.)
In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer
and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at l arge.
~i
A notinegl 11ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) o f ~
qJ'~c~
R@r~ t a? s&&-eh:e people 1 in the area will di~j for the sake of the majority who are
111,(.ctaii-J"
'I
aailat.'@ffl benefitted byApower producti~n . ~e~~a
ft~elear.
Whatever charm t he
argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once
it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive ~
ways/ of delivering the real benefits involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation
t:Jt/~ or
on minorities, most of whom havei\ no genuine voice in the location of reactors in
their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally)
acceptable.
l~
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US Atomic Energy Corrnnission,
is to
suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of
(natural) rqdiation that a population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being
"natural" level) is also likely to have negligible consequences.
equivalent to the
The increased
amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted
normal,
and,
f<-,f- i, l(e,,... c-ltt<..,cd.
of course,,\ what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects,
whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person's well-being;
and while
the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will,
under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g . two
murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiat i on emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards wou'ld disclose.
Furthermore , the
�~------- -------- ----~-- -------- -------- -------- ---monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely di.sinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as
to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a 'public pacifier' while
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered~
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island) Y-Q
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
1flore acto rs, then the core melts and 'containment failure' is likely, with ~he result
that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the
event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in
the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least
100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17
billion and an area H,e size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear
reactors are abo ut five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative
US government figures are giveti' : the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly b~Y~~eater still.
The consigner in ri sking the lifes, well-being and property of the passengers
on the train has acted i_nadmissibly. Does a government or govern~t-spon sored
private utility act in tay that is anything other than much less responsible in
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the community train. The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily suppose, inadmissible and irresponsible. The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical ar€/1
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended , firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the
'11-
influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These
assumptions li ke the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very cil:ose
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors,
it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological
limitations and human error, of waste leak.age and reactor incidents and quite
possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed .from the actual, a technological
�27.
(
dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.
In such an ideal n ucle a r wo r ld , where waste disposal were fool-proof and reac tors
were accident-proof , things wo uld no doubt be morally different. But we do no t
live in such a world.
""
According to the Ra\ussen
report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodological ly sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under-
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability
as
estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude .-1 "not credible"
,>Difl~;l,,9'?~ ~
possibilities or as branches t;o:1:t!il fl Ellffl "not significant" that are real
.m:d" may well
b'1. rt:i./f,04,(
~1cq1pen1 in the real world.
\
It i.s the eliminations that are otherworldly. Infact
the methodology and data of the report has been soundly and decisively criticized .Ji
And it has been shown that there is a real possibili.ty, a notjpegligibJ.e probability,
of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability
of a reactor accident, still ibis acceptable, being of no greater order than
risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here we encounter again
that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk
assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to
provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options,
e.g. energy options,which settles their ethical status. The following lines of
argument are encountered in risk assessment a.s applied to energy options:
(i) if option a imposes costs on fewe.r people thq.n option b then option a is
preferable to optic+;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
therefore option a is acceptable. 3
f
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
1,r 1'-i l'Jp.,( ,-c.c.,',l.ci...fs
~
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which jjB accepted: so nuclear pqwer
A
stations are acceptable. A little refle c tion reveals that this sort of risk
assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as ll!l!it transaction modek.
It is far too simple--minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need
a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and
i1·he
person who undertakes the
risks also the person who receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or
cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on ot e parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties a r e the same in the case of the options compared, and
there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on such a basis would
be valid.i '})This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments
�Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an
of energy options.
28.
activ.Lty which be knowingly unclcttakes in a situationw-iere he has a reasonable
choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion
to the level6f the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what
/
reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically
acceptable for a tr:Lvial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
A
employed in trying to justify nuclear power.
The second argument (ii) involves
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting
that the health risks in the nuclear sense are cumulative, and ) 'n bhw ey ;i s g f:"
P'J;ct'.) pce i,1 e~ already
'°fc'
not A oo high.16
high if ~
1
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing
and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some
of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted
d/' l).,c-~ ~ flJ,;<d ,;k~4 .~ vr4..a)
I fl/rotl,7 ~~ kr 1/1
/ moc.tal plfinci'ple,\ that one' is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
I
r7n
of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other
This
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries~
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
iq;lude an effect on life or ~ealth or a ,risk thereof, a~d where the benefit to
j<2,c-(kUt , «J,•1
,r ·~ ,k
,-,1,-.r.:.. ,riz.._~,
t.4,/,:K/~7',-,t ~ ~ q:.:rLc-1- .
the benefit ting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature,.,\ { Thus ,tone is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
CIA.en(~
Suppose, forA example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an i.ndustrial process by which it lives, a nox~us waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
oneself. f
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
,Oil ·/J..0- ~ )
service Ato the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced
to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal
or ol,e_ i'1M,).; 1(4. e1/Tl~L. ~ ~ Cdt'-/.:/4r,h .
process or of sustaining risks to their own lives and healthA Most of us would
see this kind of transfer of costs as.
morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this
/trl" gA'-,
condition are future people /§.~~~~ B ~eeiji~ a ~~~~m~aE~:iic=;m ;;~~i;E~~
1
The distribution of
-hut rd~ future generations (those of the next villages~;
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. o~to non-benef
is one of its most
of certain widespread and serious fonns of
objectionable moraL£eatures- ;-- - -
/4' ..;~<fi'nt ~ ,u/4.v
tfi/1_
,.,c,,r
r«-,,.4/ .......,,_,,
f"u<H;f I
l4'(!,,r)
\
iaries is a characteristic
=&,
7''7, ~ ,;_ ~
__../4;,,
-
7:.(,/,_.., ~
v /
__
- •_
__
�·~-~---- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ---~
,.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantial ly worse shape than we received it - the transmissio n
principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independen tly argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories.)
eJpoc,"ct lly ru,clc>u- //)CL-;
•
Other social and environmen tal risks and costs of nuclear development ;~ The
problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmen tal, health and safety
VI.
risks and costs in or arising from the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle
includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste
disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation , reprocessing spent fuel, and transportat ion of materials. Several of these stages
involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of
plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferati on of
nuclear armaments - these hazards have p~rallels, if not exact equivalents , in
other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. 'workers in the uranium
mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers
in the coal industry 1 1'f Furthennore , the various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sector of uranium fabrication should be differently
viewed from those resulting from location, for instance from already living where
a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupationa l relocation) , and many types of hazards incurred
fr/working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an
with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium
miner's choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice,
whereas the Pacific Islander's 11 fact" of location cannot be. The social issue
occupation:
of arrangement s that contract occupationa l choices and opportuniti es and often
at least· ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal
mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly
compensated ), while very important, :i.s not an issue newly produced by nuclear
associated occupations .
Other social and environmen tal problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitari an and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of largescale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for
instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear developmen t, and a specially
C-,t.o ,,._.......,
eef, :i.i.lef
undesirable one, as~ rectificatio n eosb~ for dead radioactive lands and waterways
reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern
factory complexes are often guarded like concentrati on camps (but from us on the
�dire conse quen ces, of a diffe rent
outs ide), sabot age o a nuc ear react or can have
(cons ider again the effec ts of
orde r of magn itude from most indu stria l sabot age
more dubio us enter prise s such as
core meltd own) . Though theft of mate rial from
at large and can assis t terro rism ,
muni tions works can pose threa ts to popu latio ns
probl ems of the same orde r as
no theft s for alleg edly peac eful enter prise s pose
produ ces mate rials which so
theft of fissi onab le mate rial. No othe r indu stry
explo sives . No othe r indu stry is,
read ily perm it of fabri catio n into such mass ive
to sum it up, so vulne rable on so many front s.
, in part becau se of its long and
In part to ~ ; ; , . ; ; : ; ~ ~ ~ ~ r a b i l i t y
, the nucle ar indu stry is subje ct
conti nu ing asso ciati on with milit ary activ ities
ainly given their scale ) run
to, and enco urage s, seve ral prac tices which (cert
tiesy Th ese ~e secre cy,
coun ter to basic featu res of free and open socie
ial polic e and guard force s,
restr ictio n of infor mati on, form ation of spec
espio nage , curta ilme nt of civil liber ties.
/
'l
given extra ordin ary
Alrea dy ope rator s of nucle ar insta llati ons are
backg round and
the
te
stiga
powe rs, in vetti ng empl oyees , to inve
fami lies and
their
of
activ ities not only of emplo yees but also
them selve s
ons
llati
some times even of their frien ds. The insta
sens ibili ties.
sh
become armed camp~ which espe ciall y offen ds Briti
creat e d a
1976
of
The U.K. Atom ic Energ y (Spe cial Cons table s) Act
it
made
ons and
spec ial armed force to guard nucle ar insta llati
ority 1'
answ erabl e ... to the U.K. Atom ic Energ y Auth
If\ th,_ µ.• ;-fud K~~~fh
ar
worse in West Germ any, presa ge along with nucle
These devel opme nts, and
,-\
anti- demo crati c soci eties . That
devel opme nt .i ncrea singl y auth orita rian and litiui/
:conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it.
nucl ear devel opme nt appe ars to force such'
,/i.~tdi't-...
A conne ct1.on of
the
by
ly
tical
poli
:lslted
inia:i:
er
furth
is
Nucl ear devel opme nL
t ethic al ques ti?ns conc ernin g
nucle ar powe r with nucle ar war. It is ~&te -',tha
4 Of'}'4ff';
. unde r any
fiea,
justi
is
war
ar
nucle
a
nucle ar war - for exam ple, whet her
are disti ngui shab le from those
circu msta nces , and if so what circu msta nces er, the sprea d of nucle ar powe r is
conc ernin g nucle ar powe r. Undo ubted ly, howev
[tl~Jfc -,C,ltt
nucle ar war and so, to that exten t,
~inc re~i ng the techn ical means for engag ing in
,~ c.Aq,,,_ ceJ ef 1
Since nucle ar wars are ,fleJ de"') f'41' neve r
the oppo rtuni ty for 1 nuc1 ear engag emen t. e-;(4vry
J , / ~ a.r~«'../~ ~"'1 '~/e ..
,,t,uclo f¥ c.riu-1" CU'-11.
"
the"' lesse r of'm ajor evils ~Jhe eprea d
bes~
at
are
but
s,
good
tive
posi
le
acco untab
ty for / ~dc/a .-.,e,, -,
1
of nucle ar powe r acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni
o/~
~ /Z/
7
r
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04-r/
u.--, ,..<. .M/~ ;
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1~ a~(/
-- -- -- -- ! - - -- -- -,77,._, ~ ~
t,-m k~/e
~~~ LIIL :I'.,
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1
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,,"/2._v ,,,_,,o,µ;..~&_
I'
~ll
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'- / --/_ ~
I
-~
~~ / ~ 4--t'/o
~c../
C..IY'C-
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C1-j,
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di../-<_
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c-.b
To
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�30.1
many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforw ard
and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear
I
power plant, secondly political, that nuclear engagements on<~ inJf,ntf~u
likely to esculate and that those who control (or differently are likely to
force access to) nuclear power plants do not s.hrin k from nuclear confrontati on
and are certainly prepared to toy with nuclear engagement (up to " S'fr-c1.feeiic
v
"tla,ut
nuclear strikes; ), and thirdly ethical, that wats invariably have immoral
consequence s, such as massive damage to involved parties, however high sounding
their justificatio n is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerabl y worse as
regards damage inflicted t har1 any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse
than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power
of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects,
and because of the expected rapidity and irreversib ility of any such confrontati ons.
The supporting considerati ons are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
-----------are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itsclf
unde si i- able. The c or e arguement is in brief this (the W"J"~.wt will be
in section :m:I) :- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty , because in particular of the JN.If
Utt.UrffJt~fi'es involved in nuclear developmen t. In cases of this type the
1"rlt•c':-iov/
appropriate procedure is to compare worst consequence s of each alternative ,
e. /c.J,orP>lt>A
A
'
to r e_Je-cL . those alternative s with tht
~-,
--the bs~t (the roaxiro m rule) ,
f.llCl'tf:"
~
of these worst consequence e-nd select
J
II
The nuclear alternative has, in particular
because of the) p,.o ssibility of a nuclear war, the WotJC
and is according 1a particularl y unde$itable alternative .
wo1"Jt
"'
.
( ~ ,i it
,'l, /4
/A-
4.//t'dJ'
(l,- (fAt_~; d/6;-,rf ~ ~
d,.'£1/ ~d~
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6e-fC w_"o/- r,?t/7/UI~~).
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aee-=o-=-l~o.s;gi.::i:..:c::a:.:l::_.:b::..:a::.:s=-e=-"'=-c,_:::._o..::f_..::.n:::u:.::c:.:l::.!e:.::a~r~d~e=-v.!..e:::..:::.l::::.01::p!!:m~e
:, t=.,;h~e=--=I=
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.~~
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~
already observed, the consigner's action cannot be justified by purely economisti c
arguments , such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village woul
be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer Iffiinciple on which this assessment
was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a
serious risk to others
for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to
�f
31.
For this r eason t he economistic argumen t s whi ch are t hos e mo s t
commonly advance d under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear develo pment - e . g .
ch apness, efficiency, profitabili ty for electricity unilities, and the need
the nuclear case .
otherwise for un comfortable chan ges such as restructurin g of employment, i nves t ment
and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an
Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present
people were correct - j_t will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments
) h as to
.
.- ;-,'d~er1.ves
· h it,\
~h ic
f rom w
.
.
·
(like t h e ut1· 1 1tar1an1sm
.
wou ld f a1· 1 b ecause economics
acceptable one .
operate within the framework of moral constraints , and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
/'~}
arguments to the effect that, unless the prim.a facie unacceptabr e~ alternative is
taken, some even more unacceptabl e alternatice is the only possible outcome; and
will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his
h,J
action is justified because unless it is taken~ village will starve. It is by
no means clear that even such a justificati on as this wou~ be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become
one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would
no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action
taken in such circumstanc es.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
~ present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
/\.
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arglllll.ents
crucially on the presentatio n of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternative s (or at least practical alternative s) and upon showing that the only
:is based
alternative s to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones. If some pratical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
"j 11~~
case it turns out that the -1ril1:agers have another option
e xample, if in the
t~:~~r:
)
~ to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living is some
othe r way - then the argwnent is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just .
such a suppression of practicable alternative s has occurred in the argument designed
to show that the alternative s to the nuclear option are even worse than the option
itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments as well. In
short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentatio n of false dichotomies .
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indusFailure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemploymen t and poverty in the industriali sed
trialised countries.
nations .
�1
32. J
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either
for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There
is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment
and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct
employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution
of energy use for labour use.~ "'°The argument that nuclear energy i1needed for the
third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy~ both politically and econom-
ically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of
capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates
negligible local employment, and depends .for its feasibility upon, what is largely
lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and
sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases
forei¾ dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
lt/,zc
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third
world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, ·
their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the
economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military
purposes.
It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling
elites may make in the name of the poor.
The ooverty argument is then a fraud.
the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to help
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there
are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and t he practical option of developing
other energy sources~
alternatives
some of which offer far better prospects for
helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development:
indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure
on route
1~1
to solar or1 £usion developme nt.
And there are various alternatives:
coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including
aAi<J.1fiM.r
) eti~L._01,i:/j,:,,-;._
as well as narrowly solar, wind, water ami tidal power)1
'
A
"
<t.,,(C:...uf~...
Despite the availabiity ~~
.
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence ~( what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups )-: ~
.)uch an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an
Q.la.bcn'~-l,;;,,.,,
trickle-down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
argument runs:affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
For the
_si,,,}:,~-l-,{v1.t.d.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power2:
is
of the
Nuclear development is necessary for / continuing and increasing)
development benefits the poor.
for 'nuclear'.
. ~2
,,,,7t ~~4
for j_t works equally well if 'energy'
It has also to be shown, what the JI • rsnd M,<J(t
major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
�33.
alternati ves in increasin g affluence .
The second assumptio n, that affluence
(
inevitabl y trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historica l
data, which show increasin g affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasin g poverty in several countries , both developin g and
developed , and through economic models_, which reveal how "affluenc e" can increase
Jt
without redistrib ution occurring -_J Another major argument advanced to show moral
conflict appeals to a set of supposedl y overridin g and competing obligatio ns to future
people . We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things
and institutio ns which our culture has developed . Unless our high-tech nology, high
energy industria l society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutio ns
and tradition s will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essential ly
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it
alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilizat ion will go out.4J
Future people will be the losers.
The lights-go ing-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characte ristics are necessary for a good
society. But for the most part these large questions , which deserve much fuller
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritica l position with respect to present high-tech nology societies , apparentl y
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technolog ical
examinati on, can be avoided.
society is unmodifia ble, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservat ion or alternati ve (perhaps high technolog y) energy sources without
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy -· such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to { ..._v-.,, •sf.t -
collapse.
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptio ns are hard to accept.
The assumptio n that technolog ical
society's energy patterns are unmodifia ble is especiall y so - after all it has .
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technolog ical
restructu ring and consumpti on modifica tion. If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifia ble without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
pro gram of i.ncreasin g destructi on, but one might ask what use its culture could be to
future people who would very likely, as a consequen ce of this destructi on, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contempo rary society.
There is also difficult y with the assumptio n of uniform valuablen ess;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-tech nological society and its political institutio ns , but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutio ns which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumpti on centrally controlle d is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to arguethat it
�....
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --~- ----34-.
(
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable .
There is good x·eason i~ fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even
if a radical chan1e in these directions is independen tly desirable , as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at leas;,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. No
enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less evergy than a \ present,
and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of asstili1ption
which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.~ What the nuc~ear
strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in
western civilisatio n, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to
maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganz a.
In fact there is good reason to think that, fa r from the high energy
society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which
has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised , controlled and
cons 1.At'1f10"'
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive ener gy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert
enenormous powe r over the political system and over people's lives, even more
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritari an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among other things,
of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. ~
than they do at present.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as the
degre e of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and collective
autonomy whic h exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example,
is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagenc e.
the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumabl
1,
But it is not
that we have some
obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s,
: l?a,#1-0.'t\..t...G--
alternative socia;Aand political choices, which do not involve such unacceptabl e
consequence s are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option
1
Ii- c,/~e/4,,._ ~
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ettl..i,,- fl.a,. u/4jr/iP- "f- "- ~
is not a retturn to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but~ the development
of a'tlJ,ernative technologie s and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the
li).,j·
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maintenance and further development of whAt . is valuable in our society than the
The lights-goin g-out argument, as a moral
highly centralised nuclear option. ~
�/;,.
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a fa l se dichoto-y.
r fJ.J,..,
I(
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Th us the Aescape route/, the appeal to moral conflict aua
to t he appeal t o
1
fu
ty, ~ closed. If then we a pply - as we have argued we s hould - t he s ame
l.
J
standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the presen t,
the conclusion that large~-~sca le nuclear development is a crime agains t the f uture
is inevitable.
1 from reactor
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other argumentst:IAtt Ji> <>'l ;'${1~
ma(/_ ~wn J
radiation emissions, Aetc:::::t
for · ~ / nuc ~
development
as morally unacceptabl e, for saying that it is not only a Acrime
against the distant future but also a ~
~rime against the present and immediate
future.
In sumJ nuclear development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds.
A corn--o llary is that only political arrangement s that are morally unacceptabl e will ·
suppor_t th.e i(1!pending nuclear _future .
of future people
not tf'.I J ;,; I discounted (in contrast to the temporally - limited utilitariani sm
~"'of_
n,,ia,-k-4!.t - ~~economic theory)J and that serious costs and risk~ to health and
life.cannot admiss ~ ly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties ( h ~ I
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will now be outlined whichAshow that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm,
choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice .
..Jl:
Large-scale nuclear
on
&,<.
cc,,//,,,_.,,,;,, h-4111,
development is not just something that Mppens, it requires,.\ an immense input of
capital and energy. , J,.j ,:_ .~J.-..r~ ,,.,;_,R.J
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been i nvested in nuclear
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Admittedly so much capital has already
research and development,
:i..n marked contra t
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to othe~rival sources of powes
that t hert is strong political incentive top
f1'7
- as distinct fromAreason s for further capital and energy inputs. ~
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�The main argume£~~~an economic growth
argument, upon which variat~S
, re played., is the following version of the lights-going-o ut argument (with economic
.
e~
/
growth duly standing in for ll'late•oal wealth, and Afor what is valuable!):Nuclear power is necessary to su.stai.n economic growth.
Economi c growth is
desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the
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to-1 postpone reJistribution problems,/\ etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desira.ble ~
The first premiss is part of US energy policj~ and the second premiss is suppli ed
by standard economics textbooks.
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But both premisses are
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since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first
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( or rather · an appropriate,{ restatement of it )
fails even on Old Paradigm
For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps
e:=-1:.I,~
alternatives.
N-.e,./41"
elaboration of the
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ptemiss
out as 'most efficient',
etc .
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The premiss usually
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growth, 'economically best' being filled
'cheapest', 'having most favourable
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Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear
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(easi..4 to do) ~
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37
//1.d'
The ~aradigm does not, it j/i«,f
7~r,) _sustain
the nuclear
jl.(ggernau~:l?The real _reasons for the continuing development program ~
commitment .,- -·-
A.~
the
r
--.. to the program have to be sought elsewhere,, outside the
Old Paradigm,
at leas-t as preached.® There are, firstly reaso?s of previous
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commitJ!lent, when nuclear power \ looked a cheaper and safer• deal. corpouations
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are ;\_ keer{ -t:o
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returns on capital,{ invested. There are lypical _,. ,
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s e l ~ reasons for commitment to the program, that
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a ff_airs,
an d as a
profits <;1-ccrue to others, tV't/ Jc on ·..,
-·1c J ear eng1 nee.,r,:i ng, -etG-:- There
.
J,.cLa.-t
are A
ideological reasons ~ a belief in the control of both political and phys ical
~ b1Z,/,e..f1 IYJ ScC/4 I c.on-l •✓-ol -f'.-e,,,-n itho ,/2
power by technocratic-entreprenial elite,
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a faith in the unlimitedne ss at ' .
technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems
that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially
conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes.
/It ' ;,:. <=c<--,,../4-;:?-»'r~ ~~
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·these :;orts of reasons for nuclear development are,.\ linked, h
/, C-
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i4t /-(!_.
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ret13f'lfl
tJ,tH those whose types of enterprise/
benefit
@8rf?lislit
O
n
,pi tq l i e
substantially
nuclear development are commonly those who hold the. requisite beliefs.
f;.C-A I <-0•1.:f°'7~1"U:I
.Lt is
ti _ corporate capitalism, , ~ its state enterprise image,
; / "''#.
Hu
· cm
t.min i;s;;;
pc e I if\~, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
corporate capitalism, which is the political · e
?t~r~,d
col'l.o,.,.._"/
v
To be sure,
largely thrust upon
us in ilr/es•-ern .11~ .sln e, is nnt ni>ce~sary fn:r a nuclear furur@; a totalitarian
state of the typ (~ such capitalism often supports in the third worl"d w.i ll suffice.
But, unlike a hypothetical state tl'tA--C. does conform to precepts of the Old
Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well
embarke d 4111 such a future -/
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�~--v>~-e/f
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�_,,,""--'.___;:._;;_..::..::::.=-=-"-=:..::..:~;:_.:_~=-=...:.:...:::.;::_-=~-=-=L.:;;-=-~a~l~t~e~r~n~a~t~i~v~e~s=-=-.- The future energy
['cJ4¢-r
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ootion that is ttS11 a H-,A contrasted with nuclea~, namely coa¾, wMe
, _,., ,__,. I
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c/4u,,/f-r_a/'~k- t'a-- ~w.r
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the likelihood of .;r;.edty serious (air) pollution and associated phenUIII-•
s uch as acid rain and atmospheric heating 1 not to mention the despoliation caused
by extensive strip mining 1 all of which will result from its use in meeting very ttigh
projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the
'j?u.-,/e,.
necessary~ condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for
r
some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the
full costs of production and replacement..iS$J
.
f>t.l.t-,;,..
lo
'these a
r 112'
conventiona~ options .-- a third is often added which emphasizes
r,,,u{ .:, Alt<K/l..11A. Gc-l7L-., "-yd/otJ/,: J.riufy
A.
_,t.,,...a,
softel.-4 benign technologies, such as those of solar' energyA The deeper choice,
which '!Ven soflllfpaths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
r~11la/lJ4~ ~Ht-,-4,,?
6<'tl
bot~ the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more
basic level there is a choice between consumeristjc and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between soci ,tl alternatives, conventicnal technologically
ol CA-V":fr ~fu~
oriented discussion At.ends to obscure. It is not just c. rr:.atter of deciding in ,;.,-hich
~
ytil•- Mr/
way to meerxt..:.nexam~nEd goals (as the Old Paradign ~ d
1·
of examining the goals.
14'
,
)t
J\..
Ml )' but alEC: a rr.atter
That is, we are not merely faced with the que.stion of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
a-
.
matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost o~ society that creates . them. It
is not just a question of devising less damaging wais to meet these alleged needs
conceived of us inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unn~cessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear wayst al'
ber1.11ft o.f ~<1..
~ /J '1-tf--t'
~
A. ot(Ql.Se)'blie~s Hot uaat to deny that these softer optfons are superior • ethically
unacceptable features of the
'lltl
et :u ~ i b f
rt,~,
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principl~will
h
likely to leave a tolerable world for~ future ,., . p:l:i2: if it is expected to meet
�f
38 .
u,.',awo.d.
i ~mit lcss and uncontrolled e nergy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
them.
Consider, fo r exa mple, t he effect on t he world's forests, whic h are
commonly counted as a solar res ource, of use for production of methl•nol or of
electricity by woodchipping ( as already planned by f ~ist authorities
and contemplated by many other ener gy organisations) J\ f'ew would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, -b:ttt the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard- pressed natural fores t s.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
r?ftJfiW
forests are often dicem:1Ht@d, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
A-expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'. May forests are in
A
principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values . ~$, In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be immanent if not already well advanced. It certainly
has begun in( ~
n.--11>
regions, and for
U'-Plr,•0-:1:i!PJ~,;
~
which are,\ beifig 16st for the future.
that f o r ~
on top of ~
present
forest types (such ~s rainforest types)
amt "•i M11,f."5 /.~.t,.//4__
)!HtJ~
The addition of a major further ,\demand ee2rn:e,,,
J'f't!4J~
is one which anyone with a realistic
(o,t/<>,,./l_rl"~
.
appreciation of the conduct 6fAforestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard
with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes ~ resembling
the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again
for energy purposes, w ould be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands
and tropical ar eas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change,
and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on -
we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than
we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In
short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - i.mportant though this is - without any more basic structural and -locial change is inadequate.
f,,t,.,,IOJ1,",;/
Nor is such a simple.4 switch likely to be achieved.
~1&4-
It is no t as if
fc
political pressure could i -11st bene:,\ the US government,\ stop its nuclear
~ =
Ntn-G ( and
that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the way pressure appeared
to succeed in 11,-1.lting the Vietnam war.
could be accomplished, it is very
While without doubt it would be good if this
unlikely given the integration of political
powerholders with those spons r ring nuclear development .'°
�I
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
, ,om......,,.;.,. ,A.. h~JG".t j"-.:; ~ no.odr,
s tructure which promotes consumerismAand ah economic structure which encourages
increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.
This means, for
instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough
to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work
from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward
of consumer goods and services.
A
society in which social rewards are obtained
primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from
rer~
satisfaction in work and in social re.lations and other activities, is.\ bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system
that produces goods not to meet ge~uine needs but for created and non-genuine needs
is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently becomes a substitute
for satisfaction in other areas .
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set
of adjustments involved in socially j_mplementing the New Paradigm, the move away
from
,:::6',t.SIArne<•S"Yl
is for example part of the more general shift from material ism
and materialist values. /
~
Th4
c
'
A=::O:f social change option tends to be obscured in most
ol
discussions of energy options andAhow to meet
.---.
@S
energy needs, in part because
question• underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional
6.,; ,.
nee~)
or
wants
with
conflo..W
(often
demand
alleged
taking
by
proceeds
discussion
as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most
profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and
is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the
social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable arid
unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated., It is commonly argued by representatives
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people ~deep ~ezers, air conditioners, power
boats, ... 1t would be authoritarian to ps:t:llp them satisfying these wants. ~ tl+c
A
argument conveniently ignores the soc:f.al framework in which such needs and wants
�To point to the determinati on of many such wants at t he
framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to whic h
they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial
or are produced.
organisatio n) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determinati on at
all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain
kinds of choices , such as those for travel , Mle iafrastrtt~t u"v and to see apparently
individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and diLected by a
social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private prt,fit
and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only wa» so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than
it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspectivef .2..-a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
such ethical ones for taking it:
paradigm.
tJa,,u#t;LJ J',;...,
The ethical , requirement defende.o<.,
I
social and political
d. -,
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?t,(""f""e.u •
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The socialAchan ges that the deeper alternative requires will be strongiy
r esisted because they mean changes in current social organisatio n and power structure •
..tt'ld<°f:o the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of presen t
political and economic arrangemen ts it is not surprising that official energy
option discussion proceeds by misrepresen ting and often obscuring it. But
i.,,·11 Jtz_
difficult though a change t,f t:icn~inant p: a @eigm, especially one with such ~rreaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative
to try;
we are all on the nuclear train.
�V
(
• I
-
FOOTNOTES
~
1.
-
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Good in ., p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear .fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fal la cies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
~
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Gooij_in, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also
catton and Dtinlap, especially p. 34.
--
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy ~
e.nd$, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr. Justice
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry
Parker a~
Vol. 1. Her Majesty's
Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue
both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvltfls
....
favour the (proLnuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
�information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
.
them.
what, s
f)f1ts
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
The same conclusion has been reached in
details up to 1977 see Routley (a) .
L
/;..:i
/t,lrf
~t/ J
i I! rl. I e
·7.
[{CL
/i
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
eol
.
See the papers, and simulations, discuss :bal in GoodiA p. f-28.
/~
On the pollution and waste disposal ·r"ecoff'd of the n uclear industry,
, 12.
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price1 and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of e..f fective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
Back of this Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of
13.
replacing God.
power.
Man
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over- nature, then when
during the Englightenment
Man
replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
Science and technology were the tools which were to put '1an into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to
14.
manage technology represents the past]
On such limitation fhe.o~UJ?l, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow
.,-----------.....-
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d.n · o ther ·
.I\
~
see, e.g. Routley 80. ,j Other different
are presented in Routley 81.
'
l,,;,.;l-etht>,..,,
te1t1/tf
It follows that there are many problems that have
no solution and much that is necessarily
lJ/lkA•N4'/4. .
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
t he history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there
is a solution, and thUf progress need never cease (C cttto,i and
p.34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
,1
OS (a,:.J
Amore recent official reports, ft n r, <t:etieHlar
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I
For examples. and for some details of the history of philosophe~
16.
positions 4 n obligations to the future. see Routley (a).
Passmore, p. 91.
17.
Passmore's position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
as also is
Rciw/s ,
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
position.
For related criticisms of the economists' arguments for
18.
discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
. ,,
Good11, , pp 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a
linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin/ however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
prefi, poses, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g.
"'P
covers everything except
Cll#l-
p) .
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listedJ aMI be comprehended along such lines
>.
as "plant breakdown through human error".
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l-9!"
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Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, Economics , 7th Edition, McGrawHill, New York, 1967, p.351.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
The contrast is with me re logical possibility.
�Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitaria nism (e.g.
'lf.
J.H'.1,A'"
Sidgwick
p.414), and in a range of contract and other theories
How the principle is
from Kant and Rousseau to Rawls (J8(A" p.293).
argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlyin g theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particula r ethical
theories.
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�Even then relev ant envi ronm ental facto rs may have
been
negl ected .
,
1
Ther e are vari ation s on (i) and (ii) whic h mult
iply cost s
agai nst numb ers such as prob abil ities . In this
wav risk s,
cons trued as prob able cost s, can be taken into
' acco unt in
the asses smen t. (Alt erna tivel y, risks may be asse
ssed throu gh
such fami liar meth ods as insu ranc e).
'
A prin ciple vary
ing (ii), and form ulate d as follo ws:
(ii') a is ethi cally acce ptab le if (for some b)
a inclu des
no more risk s than band bis soci ally acce pted
.
was the basi c ethi cal prin ciple in term s of whic
Lake Boar d of Inqu iry rece ntly decid ed that nuclh the Cluf f
ear powe r
deve lopm ent in Sask atche wan
is ethi cally acce ptab le:
see Cluf f Lake Boar d of Inqu iry Fina l Repo rt, Depa
rtmen t of
Envi ronm ent, Gove rnme nt of Sask atche wan,
1978 , p.305 and
p.28 8.
In this repo rt, a is nucl ear powe r and bis eithe
r
acti vitie s clea rly acce pted by soci ety as alter
nativ e powe r
sour ces.
In othe r appl icati ons b has been taken as ciga rette
smok ing, moto ring, minin g and even the Vietn am
war( !)
The poin ts made in the text do not exha ust the
obje ction s to
prin ciple s (i)- (ii') . The prin ciple s are certa
inly
ethi cally
subs tanti ve, sinc e an ethi cal cons eque nce cann
ot be dedu ced fro m
none thica l prem isses , but they have an inad miss
char acte r. For look at the orig in of b: b may ible conv entio nal
be
acce pted thoug h it is no long er soci ally acce ptab soci ally
le,
or
thoug
h
its soci al acce ptib ility is no long er so clea rcut
and it woul d
not have been soci ally acce pted if as much as is
now
know n had
been know n when it was intro duce d. What is requ
ired
in (ii') ,
for insta nce, for the argum ent to begi n to look
conv incin g is
then 'ethi call y acce ptab le' rath er than 'soc ially
acce pted '.
But even with the amen dmen ts the prin ciple s are
inva
lid,f or the
reaso ns give n in the text .
It is not disc once rting that these argum ents do
not work .
It
woul d be sad to see yet anot her area lost to the
expe
rt~
name
Jy
ethic s to actu aries .
-
A main part of the trou ble with the mode ls_is
that
narro wly utili taria n, and like utili tari~ ni~m they they are
distr ibut iona l featu res, invo lve natu ralis tic fa~l~ n~gl ect
Real ly they try to trea t as an unco nstra ined optim cie~ , etc.
isati on what
is a deon tical ly cons train ed optim isati on: see
R. and V. Rout ley
'An expe nsive repa ir kit for utili taria nsim '.
I.-"\
Appa rent exce ption s to the prin ciple su~h as taxa
redi strib utio n of incom e gene rally ) vani sh when tion (~nd
weal th is
cons trued (as it has to be if taxa tion is to be
P:ope
r,J_y
justi fied ) as at leas t part ly a so~i al asse t unfa
irly mono polised by a mino rity of the popu latio n. -:)
·
~ Exam ples such as that of moto ring dang er~u sly
coun terex ampl es to the prin ciple ; for one is not do not cons t~tu t~
mora lly entit lcu
to so moto r.
�f,
;o».
,> /;o cfobs and
On all these points see R. Grossm an and G. Daneke r , t7w· L
E'nergy, Environ men 1:a]jsts for Fu.11 Employ ment, W;:ishington
DC, 1977,
ting
pp.1-7 , and also the details supplie d in substa ntiatin g the interes
case of Commoner · [7].
nuclea r indust ry,
On the absorp tion of availab le capita l by the
see as well [18], p.23.
On the employm ent issues ,
the
see too H.E. Daly in [9], p.149.X A more fundam ental challen ge to
poverty argume nt appear s in 1. I 11 i.rli
Energy a:nd Equal·i ty, Cal den and
Boyars , London 1974, where it is atgued that the sort of develop ment
need.
nuclea r energy represe nts is exactly the opposi te of what the poor
Small
For much more detail on the inappr opriate ness see E.F. Schuma cher,
is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs , London , 1973.
As to the capita l and
other require ments, see [2], p.48, and also [7] and [9].
For an illumin ating look at the sort of develop ment high-en ergy
techno logy will tend to promot e in the so-cal led underd evelope d
countr ies see the paper .of Waiko and other papers in The Melane sian
Environ ment (edited J.H. Winslo w), Austra lian Nation al Univer sity Press,
Canber ra, 1977.
.-B9-..- -'.JT;lhHi~sHf§'..ia'!1ee,jtE---:1ii·ss-:1t.i·m;a:pE>cll-1.ic·e.eici~t±l:-;:v-r-4r:ee~c,QO'l:!g,i;ineii~s~e~0Hittrrr- [P.2f]~,:7p~.~5516J.
A use
Ta
1 survey is given in A. Lovins . Energy Strateg y:
The Road Not
n, Friend s of the Earth Austra lia, 1977 (reprin ted from Foreign
/
Af. airs, Octobe r 1976);
see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p.233 ff, and
Schum~ cher, op. cit.
//3·
An
argume nt like this is sugges ted in Passmo re
-f-fi, chapte rs 4 and 7,
with respec t to the questio n of saving resour ces.
In Passmo re this
argume nt for the overrid ing importa nce of passing on contem porary
l
culture is underp inned by what appear s to be a future -direct ed ethica
version of the Hidden Hand argume nt of econom ics -
that, by a coincid ence
care of
which if correc t would indeed be fortun ate, the best way t o take
the future (and perhap s even the only way to do so, since do-good
of
iRterv ention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care
the presen t and immedi ate future.
The argume nt has all the defects
of the related Chain Argume nt discuss ed above and others .
�/1, IA;, u,./n er
Very persuasive argurn en t sAh ave b een
advanced by civil liberties groups and othe.rs in
· a number of countries:
C.$ee especia· 11y M.
· , Nuclear Prospects.
y·
Flood and R. Grove-White,
A Comment on the Individual., the State and Nuclear
Power, 'F riends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural.
England _a~d National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
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Certainly practical transitional programs may involve tempor ary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such a s
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use o f
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of encn1y,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cosl
,.
------~--
�tl
~
-1
footno te le continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking ac count
of environmental cost of production . Other (sometimes
strategies towards more s a tisfactory altercooptive)
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particul a r
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local g ove rnment
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
ff
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated a s rene wa ble
is that forest economics do not generally a llow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and de ficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough .
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
f o rests can be a ! fully renewable operation if net energy
see, e.g. the argument in
production is to be worthwhile;
L.R.B. Mann 'Some difficulties with energy farmin g fo r
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosy stem mainte nance.
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1875
/IN/J , AJuncl)L
NUCLEAR POWER
•
-
ETHICA L,a& SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
---.. Compet ing paradig fus and · the nuclea r debate .
~
J C/l/'I
One hardly 1ieeds ini t.. i ation into the dark myster ies of nuclea r physic
s
to contrib ute useful ly to the debate now widely raging over nuclea r
power. While many import ant empiri cal questio ns are still
unreso lved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controv ersy.
Instead , it is a debate about values ...
\
many of the questio ~which arise are social and ethica l ones. 1
•.:tSociol ogica) investi gation s have confirm ed fJ £ a t~
I pa,i I 11g , I a1:a1Hiliit e:f! the
,!
01\.C!..
debate l=!S:&!!!!t'!~ primar ily over what is w.9rth having
or pursuin g and over what we are
'tli.a,., /i.,we 4ho cc,-.+·,r,.,../),l fl..,,/ it,, J;,'/.wh :1 ;•,l~:,~-11
.entitle d to do to others .~,] ii pelaFi oatienA
along the lines of compet ing
paradig ms. 2 Accord ing to the entrenc hed paradig vtldisc erned, that constel
lation. a'
of values , attitud es and beliefs often called the nomina nt Social
Paradig m
(herea fter
I ena ipsoiac to u hl:ttan f!nD
--)
I
r/
I
riteria become the benchm ark by which a v.;id..e/ range of
individ ual and social action is J IA"{'J4.l
and evalua ted.
AW'\d
belief in the market and market mechan isms is
quite centra l.
Clv'.:ite...<il"\<J
around this col'"e belief is the
convic tion that enterp rise flouris hes best in a system of
risks and r ew~ rds, that differe ntials are necess ary ..• , and in
the necess ity for some form of divisio n of labour , and a itfl1rar chy
of skills and expert ise. In particu lar, there is a belief in
the compet ence of ~xpert s in genera l and of scient ists in
particu lar , m More thau this, scient: ifie knowle dge aftd t:he scient ific
speei:r~:'i~/,;2··::.,,./
method enjoy a
-ef knowiftg , • , , A:Re
3
S = ~ : . . _ 4"--
quanti f ica.tion .
.status as
super, '(P'
::::j there 1s an emphas is on
~~,3
The rival world view, sometim es called the Altern ative Environ mental
Paradig m
( the ~ Paradig m) differs on almost every point, and, accord ing to
sociol ogists ,
in ways su~mar i~ din the followi ng table 4":Nature hostile/ne utral
Environm ent controllable
---·. ,csourccs limited
Nature benign
Nature clclicatdy balanced
\.
\
EDGE
.,.
Confidence in science
and technology
~ation:ility of means~}
Limits to science
~ationality of ends
•
S.t-~te socialism, as practiced in most of the "EasteI11 bloc", differs from the
01/ PaLl.digm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular
l\ ffl~'
being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system).
/
o-Y
,r,~t)tlt
But
since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of
·
h
· 1·ism, 5 tat
variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated here.
minor
s t a t e socia
,,.... 1
Nctl.cu,t
.WailiaA the competing paradigm picture is a trifle s i m p l e ~ instead
~
a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadi gms, a cluster of not very well
out rositions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the
wo,•k~
Jfl01+,;.,./'cr-hJ,
)/o,ie,/{~(J
Old Paradigm~ i t is empirically investigable, and.I\ it enables the nuclear debate
be focussed.
Large-scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of
the world ,
counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of
the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the
assessment of nuclear power, instead of
~,..
olt-0u'-,
merely economic
1in addition to
jJa9.,-.d
..
u(_, \-"-..
factors such as cost and efficiency, isAto move somewhat
received paradigm.
g.gl; .. i le
the
For under the Old Paradig~, strictly construed, the nuclear
debate is confined to the terms of the narrow ut1litarianism upon which contemporary
economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to
assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irratfonal. I
/;,(4.(11,-,'1"4-J J~clear development receives its support from adherents of the Old
Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the
assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the
t:o
fails. But in
· and ultimately fails
fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backedj)
case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
unless the free enterprise economic assumptions are replaced
by the ethically
unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. r->~~~tt--en--e--a:nm~m-t~
7
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm ) to be structur ed. There are two
main part~JJ :It is argued, firstly, from
the Old Paradigm , that nuclear
J&tfSe
developm ent is
ethicall y
unjusti fiable;
A
but that, secondly , even from within
e·th,t" I~ ,;,{,.l,fo "1
the framewo rk of the,\Old Paradigm , such developm ent is unaccep table, since signific
ant
features of nuclear developm ent conflic t with indispe nsible features of the Paradigm
(e.g. costs of project developm ent and state :s ... lPs ,l ,J"--f:,,;, •., with market
independ ence and criteria for project selectio n). It has _?~E_~ d accepta ble
from
within the claminan t paradigm only because )rfo,,Js
do not square with practice , only
because the assumpt ions of the Old Paradigm are but very ~A~~ty
applied in
contemp orary politica l practice the place of i ru.<<I!.(~., "'1( td)
,v
capitali sm having been usurped by corpora te capitali sm. It is because the nuclear
debate <:<1.vi bL.
carried on within the framewo rk
of the Old Paradigm that the
debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflict ingvalu
es
of the
<c.,..,.,fL-f;;"1
paradigm s - is not just a debate about values; it is also a
debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (ec:.on0" 1istid
ends, and
-:=:-
of rationa l choice as to energy option.5 within
(~
~ 0 1""Q;i1f
2'n this corner ~
0<,f/e,,..Jj4 ft!1ho',. "JllD I
most !i F I Im. decision
1
a predeter mined framewo rk of values.
tlrp~
theory argumen ts,often conside red
"
as encompa ssing
all the nuclear debate is ethicall y about, I\best util.i t~rian
means to predeter mined ends..,) be l : ~ For another leading charact eristic of the
nuclear debate is the attempt , under the dominan t par_adigyn, to r~c'1~ it from
t/•IIW 1f
the ethical and
social sphere) and to turR ; t into spec,iali st issues ef'
#"
whether over minutia? .and conting encies A present technolo gy or overme&lw,,/
~legal or
~)
mathem atical ,,' upeciaJ J y de, rs r 011 tbentetf c: and Stat Is Lica:1:, or amdie&t details.,8
/
£'
;or
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear
.
developm ent poses.
There are 7any
A inter~e lated problems and -fl. t.- OAJ'""'"cd
· , is further
,)
I\
/_,flW4r
structur ed in terms of these.
For in the advancem ent and promotio n of nuclear ~
we encount er a remarka ble combina tion of factors, never before assemble d
establis hment,
on a massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its process
ing
serious risks and at some stages of product ion possible catastro phe, which delivers
as a by-prod uct radioac tive wastes which require up to a million years' storage
but for which no sound and economi c storage methods are known, which gr~w up as
part of the war industry and which is easily $""h v,e..,rld to deliver nuclear weapons
,
which require s for its
operatio nconsid erable secrecy , limitati ons on the flow of
informa tion and restrict ions on civil libertie s, which depends for its economi
cs,
and in
order
to generate expected private profits, on Sl.\bs-i.4.,,/..,~/
state
subsidi zation, support , and interven tion. It is, in short, a very high technol
ogical
developm ent,
ba~«-f.
with problem s.
first importa nt problem .which serves also
to exempli fy ethical issues and princip les involved in other nuclear power questio
ns,
is the unresolv ed matter of disposa l of nuclear wastes.
A
.------------- ------------ ------------ -------~--- ---.
f
5.
t
annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb.
of this waste is extremely toxic.
)
Much
For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium
part of the waste material
of even a
is enough to induce a lung
Wastes will include the reactors themselves,
...contamination
which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
and which, some have estimated, may require l½ million years to reach safe levels
of radioactivity.
P,,.tcAF
A~astes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire
For fission products the required storage period averages a
active lifetime.
thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there
is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen
with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the
comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. ~ Shortterm methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer
term methods are subject to both human interference and risk of leakage through
non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
ti
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formation s or in salt mines, are largely speculative and
relatively untested1 and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts
made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for
the result in
first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and enca/ulating
,i
multilayered metal containers before rock
radioactive material may not remain
deposit 1 si~ulation models reveal that
11.
.
, 'II isolated from human environments.
S'k,t.<\t1
f~4.
In short, the best present ~iapeoel proposals carry very real possibilities of
.J... /Id
•
//
I
lZ..t-u ~~~ •
irradiating future people- (V',i,,l.
Given the
c<c,,,~'7
I
Atu.lflf
.QA:Q;pQfiQWB
costs which could be involved for the future, and given
0
the known ~~mits of technology, it is £i?la:h:tw methodol@gi cal.ly unsound amt to bet,• as
nuclear
Mlin,-J
~
A
t~a.
have,• on the discovery of safe procedures for 1tis.pr19i,j of wastes.
Any
new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present
proposals, and subjecJto the same inadequacies.
methods for safe
l
storage
For instance, none of the proposed
X "'t.H
has been properly tested, and they mayAprove to involve
ell :sorts o:fi unforseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into
practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee
,
I
I
09
when set in this context.
t,/wo/!
are not so ruf'I
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses
when the consigner, again~ "responsible" businessman, puts
).
his workers' health or other peoples' welfare at risk.
~
THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE1~IN PARABLE .
II.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded
carries both passengers and freight.
journey
The train which is
At an early stop in the
someone consigns as freight , to a far distant destination, a package
which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
container which> as the consigner
ii ava..r4- 1
Jii' l 'J I ems
This is packaged in a very thin
may~ not contain the gas for the
~ full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior
of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere
try; to steal some
1e t 11 r 5ffi'1jhQ~
ot
eliherately
~
the freight~
inadvertent!
Ml
tX,lA4'rcd,.
have happened on some previous journeys.
All
iii,.
~
with
fU:
ft,1-h ~
fCJ Laps
Conf• ;;bi.c, ;_,,,
of these tie:! cg ,..
,\
If the container should
"'
break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the
train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases .
..,.,
Most of us would Aoundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain that
the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the train or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however
1$
would normally be s een as ludicrous~
a11rlo'1er1
(~~up~~he says that it is hisgownA pressing needs which justify his action.
The ~ h e
0!111!!6,
,\
which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
A
straits, and could•
n.,r
,. afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to
r~..../'441' ~ ,1/r
make one.
If t h e ~
§?PB
ersl~~, he and his family will suffer, his employees
r~L'~~
will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the who}eA
1~,~,
through
loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
()It,/ rl.A~"/t ~ "
.fo-...
The ppor of t'he ¥.j)Jag_P,whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
,1
suffer especially. ::,
,1r.,i/Q
G ew people would accept~ story1 even if correct, as justification. Even
where there are serious risks and costs to oneseLf or some group for whom one is
(o
concerned one is usually
m,""kM,l
ii,b. w;gil1'UA not
hacc.u_y
to be entitled to simply transfer the,4 burden
of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
1
()r
1
CI U J
1
/JIZMJ' J )
from one's own.< chosefi Iife-style.ca:nd the t~nsfer af cos.ts creates a risk of
,ae-r ious harm t:e G - t ~ r
-----
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resem\1le
the train (i4.tqatiaeu
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plant~ that will be spread around the world as large/9
scale nuclear development goes ahead. ' The waste problem will be much more serious
than thut generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, withx'each one of the
2000 or so r actors envisaged by
,IJ
,f/4.
J.IYl/4w
l#i7 l,Q. ~~'4~ ,i·
dfi) flp,J4v{-
...,_,
jj{'. ,
,~IL
cue end of the century producing, on average,
A
. /"'-A
'VI
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Ji?
t
•
s/4
/7
__
/ L_:~-..':~. . :~=====================
==---___,tl~===~l_____i_~
~----
------,_,.........----------~---_......._
----:,..........,__..
6. {
of safety over th e s torage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt , would be
acceptable.
It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given
concerning either the geological or future human factors.
But even if an
economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method
could
be devised,
there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably
.
. as
The assumption that it would be{ especially if,
~
used.
-
likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the f uture which has not previously been e~counter~in
human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
1
.
Again,
unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites
through perhaps a million years of possible future human ac t ivity, weapons-grade
radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period,
to any pa rt y who is in a position to retrieve it.
nonetheless be found 1 before 2000,
(no longer a mere disposal pfioblem)
s accordingly not t"~t,cnA '(
which gets around the waste storage problem
. like ma~v assumptions ?~ifH~s, It is an assumption supplied by the
based, but is ratne ~ ~an artitle or
The assumption that a way will
/!
Old Paradigm,
1
Cit M limitations assumption , that there are really no (development)
-
·
-.
problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion
always immediately ·· economically feasible).
part in development plans and practice..
technological optimism (not to say
what humans can accomplish,
The assumption
that is
has played an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
t3 -h(A.J,,.,·::, -____
);
that there are no limits to
;~;:14.
i<. through science ; it has led
to the em~rcation on
projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved
t,r
a solution is
tNll.~ i n sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led , not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe limits
on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the form of
'"'
limitation theorems,~ and in addition there are human limitations which modern
technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the
·
, llliu:,,olll( lido-wliklihood of reac t or accidents is a relevant exampll). The original nuclear
technology dream
..fj 1>S1.l»-'I
was that nuclear
'clean unlimited supply of power').
apparently remains a net
will be but a quite
X
That dream soon shattered .
cons &-1>t1~
"!)hc..-l::-tM1<1
would provide unlimited energy (a
The nuclear industry
of power, and nuclear
..flt~, ;o,,..
s upplier of power/>
The risks :l.mposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
then , significant.
are,
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a
million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy
source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy problems of the
people of the distant future whose lj_ves could be seriously affected by the wastes.
I
pt,..."'tl.Mt..
It is for such reasons that the train aua]og; cannot be turned around
.p, .. ~,.,,,/(._
. s.
to work in favour of nuclear power, w1.·th .:e::g:.-"1 t, h e nuc 1 ear train b r1.n1.ng
I
4
relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power.
7.
~
~~----Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use
I.I f»l~)'r•jloiT,,j.,.
d
r{4.
of onlyAlO generations.
l''°/'k o.f
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the ene~gy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that
in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of
energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably,
again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it ~
For
they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which,
if the nuclear proponents' dream~of global industrial:lsation are realised, more
and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy
consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or
reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world
which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable
resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form
4
a very important part of the basis of life, are in a run·-down condition.
Such
pointf~~ll against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries
of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary
indu st rial society proposes, in order to get itself out of _a
mess arising from its
chfik
Q,W:fl
life style - the creation of economies dependent on an
abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs
and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits.
.
The ''solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes~n the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner's action
avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the
expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity
to
/eJ J.Q.c~nt /,vu
Afli1J
may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under e~ch paradigm, so it will be argued clear alternatives
(YJ>o~-t~
1
cf i patterns
~
w
to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
c~mpet,Nil,iJo.l'J ~
of consumption and protect the interest of those,\who benefit
from them.
I r~ pcrca.,t1cd,
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
1
principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the
contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development
firTr-/S~
inv61ves injustice
~
/:T4- •
with respect to the future 1,0
.I\
li
g s111l s n 1J e> . The.re appear to be
only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance
of
such a conclusion.
(p)
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8.
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i
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First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply
f{,_
because the recipients of...- nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
!eject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to
1
~
that there are
circumstances in which such an action might ~,.;s i];Jj'
no
be justifiable 1 or at least where the
the nuclear case.
f,t,,J/,e,,
~
is less clearcut.
It is the same with
Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there
is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether
(on(l,/e,r-
We ~urfl now to the first oA these possible escape
they apply in the present case.
h,1',.,. ,¼ ,,;I,11.
,~ 1V,r,q
routes for the proponent of nuclear developmen~, A~
the
~ ~ a i e::u,
question of
our obligations to the future.@
III
The especially problematic area
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
is that of the distant (i.e.
~
,-inun({..!',l j ate) future,
11(
the future with
which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
&,I"
In fact the question of
future gives fe~ problems for most ethical theories.
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
( tl~eu,lf;"i,
a;iff.
ill}~-?~
•
•
1-t,u,· fe,!, 0 "! 1-ope:ram,o_rLJ
fail to pass, and also
o'Ji(~)
tlo
.-u-r ~ t/JM_
the adequacy of accepted;/ institutions which leave
future pe pl.c.
in political philosophy cen:e!r .. in:g
01:1~
<YP
of account~ the interests of
ll'd"-lvx~,
;>?Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future
people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other philosophers
have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the
future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those
who deny or who are committed by their
general moral position to denying that there
are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight
of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political
pcr/1t,,/IJ
institutions,that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond ~those
f@raap,s to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there
are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect
of our actions on future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or whose views
imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have
opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accouna
of moral obligation which are builh. on relations which presuppose some ckiguhl uf
\
9.
temporal or spatial contiguit y.
Thus moral obligatio n is seen as grounded on
or as presuppos ing various relations which could not hold between people widely
separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligatio n is seen
as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also nontransitiv e. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligatio n, or
requireme nts on moral obligatio n, which would rule out obligatio ns to the non.immediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligatio n is held be able to claim his rights or
entitleme nt.
People in the distant future will not be able t'b-claim rights and
en«fw11.
entitleme nts as aga:inst us, and of course they can do nothingAt o enforce any
claims they might have for their rights against us. Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligatio ns on social or legal conventio n, for example
a conventio n which would require punishmen t of offenders or at least some kind
of social enforceme nt. But plainly these and other conventio ns will not hold
invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventio ns and so will
not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders , and there could be no guarantee that any
contempo rary institutio n would do it for them.
~ Both the view that moral obligatio n requ{es the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractu ally based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligatio n as they not only require a
commonal ity or some sort of common basis which cannot be guarantee d in the case of
the distant future, but also a possibili ty of interchan ge or reciproci ty of action
which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligatio n is seen
as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they
cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The
exclusion of moral obligatio ns to the distant future also follows from those
views which attempt to ground moral obligatio ns in non-tran sitive relations of
short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficult ies about
love and sympathy for (non-exis tent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characte ristics one must know very little and who may well
Ji/fa,,,,be committed to a life-styl e for which one has no sympathy. On the current
1
showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that
contempo rary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would
appear to follow fr om this that contempor ary people had no obligatio ns concernin g
future people and could damage them as it suited them.
(
10.
j
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
\b 5
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empffathy).
{ t:#11/
Because obligation therefore
fOt1'0i7'1 )
c,4/t..,&,./.h.
become\conditional, features usually"' thought to characterise ia;~such as
universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) ate
lost,~special.ly where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required
to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria
for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them,
Mt
is Ahowever
Jurn.mi).(/e.
,fl
·•=~
aH:llLalt one te ~t113ta1A J
Irr
Consider, elm example , a
a scientific
group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device
designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No
presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affecte.d,
but the population ofY the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
The unconstrained position clearly
direct and predictabl~ result of the action.
implie s that this is an acceptable moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might
legitimately criticize in the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being overexpensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally
J,,)rc'y:
acceptable the following sorts of linEOfflf':les:- A firm discovers it can make a
will do to future people.
handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material
which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate
descendents, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which
will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at
that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its
own interests, without any consideration for the harm i .t does
,ren,,~
future
people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
0...
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it i s ~ clear
impli cation of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well
as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained
position have not considered such examples,
-, /J/(l.
by their position.
despite their being clearly implied
w ..ld cuh..117 ~o/1'1 Md;{ -
We suspect thatAwhen it is brought out that the unconstrained
position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other
things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for
11.
the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they
intende.d.
I
What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position
seem to have had in mind in denying moral obligation is rather that future
people can look after themselves, that we are not reponsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a
future causally independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if,
r:--
in the counter/
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being
.....:.,...,
left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and
in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as
they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the
obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of
the chance of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acqu.ired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one .is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course
of act.ion of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or
assumed obligations toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption
is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for
example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which
no act of acquisition is required.
and kind of responsibility involved.
There is a considerable difference in the level
In the first case one must do something or be
something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent
who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus
does not have to be especially acquired or assumed.
Thus there is no problem about
how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases
where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditions to
be satisfied.
They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the
distant future of a reasonably predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can
apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not
p{jf-lrr
(yet) exist. While it may~be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must
make speci.al sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
12.
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
from harming them.
argue in justification of hi.s action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsfbility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to
take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self- sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self- sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package 6n the train.
- 1~ ,-;.,,.
The conf~ of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral obligation' both to
signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which
t?t-. con.Pl~"'
has to be assumed or acquired. a .~is encouraged by reductionist positions which,
in attempting to account for obligation in genera~mistakenly endeavour to collapse
all obligations into acquired obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
{),nu,,WUI
of the unconstrained position, of theAbelief that there are no moral constraints
concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve
the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate
successors in a better condtion, and that is all; il,/7
there are irferactice
no obligations to the distant future.
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the
chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each
generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding
-
generation.
/hftfe..
'U'L P..t (t A.,t
~ . A three objections to this chain account.
First, it is
inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only
between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals
opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g.
harm, on the future in a way which may create individual
responsibility, and
which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation.
Secondly, such chains,
since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again
show.
For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be
dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a
direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who
may not even be able to influence matters.
VThirdly, improvements for immediate
successors may be achieved at the expense oflcfi\advantages to people of the more
distant future.
Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with ,
and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less
immediate successors.
examples
Such cases can hardly be written off as "never-never land"
since many cases of environmental exploitation might be seen as of
just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils
t.($l.
and forests through over crttl
If then such obvious injustices to future
W•
people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors
are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way
fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV.
ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATI_ONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONOMISTIC
r.\
Ul\tERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While
there are grave
difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible
. , ~ ,;.
position.
According to thej qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future .
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
( 'tJ
c./,~
14.
c,,...,.,,..7
e-.Al'I r~e/ ,,_0 /1//4,r.4'---/o/_/,._
costs and benefits (and so of future inter~s) is obtained by application over
time of a ! ~ discount rateJ l The attempt to apply eco~omics as
a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to
the qualified position.
J
What is objectionable in such an approach is that
rl..ooA.cl
economics~ operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just
A
as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those
There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply
constraints are.
to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg
~.rn.<)~
t=t.m questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future 1 the most threadbare is based ~n the assumption that future generations
J'{
than present ones > and so better placed to handle the waste
off
willj€:tter
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well UQ_l=
problem.
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argujJnent
can carry Much
discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
For it depends qf
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argujtnent.
weight.
~
1 ~.<f_.: ~
assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
(ullRJ_td/., h-n.a-hc '"/ J
richer successors in foregoing such,i de.f5elopments as nuclear power. Tl,q•f ;1 1
il-.la/Jt,,,.1U
H:O::f t f ~ a ~ I
cl:e..vi?1tiprirn~
M
th. f:>.I~,. .Ly rcdr.lul
-Be:t,\ the sacrifice
{(J/0..)
lias , 1r cad, li @an
~
~
hi¥/~
-tl,e.,
on
sacrifices to
f or
8'1. Qto @h es.
t"/!"4;/
"r: toJ/IJ-f,444
the future
'i1:m:1 for the waste disposal problem to be
~
argument . Iii\ ""1
legitimately
generations, it would have to be shown, what recent
economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better
U 11.,t
J1' 011!.. C u.;,,;/,/e_.
off, but so much better offAthat they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is d.i rectly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued_, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so f~r efficient allocation of
resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of
'r/'~/,·s-.-l,~.....
of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to cawii:a. to
71....r
a few pennies set
now than later. ~
costs much less_
economically
,1ov.)Q/"
--
,......
aside (e.g. in a trust fund)Ain the future, if need bev, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any
v,c. t,w>.f
of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, in surmountable pract1cal _
_
difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that
15 .
applied generally, the argument presupposes , what is false, that compensatio n,
like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents , that people ~ncluding
I
those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of
damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensatin g a dead man,
or for a lost species.
In fact the argument presupposes
neither part of which can succeed
be represented
,
at all adequately
it is not just
/</
a double reduction
that value cannot in general
, -fa'
/J,'K~~
monetarily, but (as against utilitariani sm)
,t
-LJ..,.t
constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It
i s also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear
choic e s,'!_--- - -~
are bound ~o apply discounting . This is far from so :
indeed
A
Goodi~ argues that, on the
do not allow discounting , and discounting only works in practice with expected
utility rules (such as underlie cost-benef it and benefit-ris k analyses), which
,r,//
are, he contends strictly inapplicabl e for nuclear choices (since aJncrt
1 pnl'>Si],1 f3
{,/,11.{f al f<j''1. a,t /'.,~,,/,/;#b J
outcomes can
be duly determirte1, in the way that application of the rules
1-0
requir es).
1/
contrary, more appropriate decision £~1¢s
,,
As the f~e.ceid;nJ . arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrain ed position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer
i
example and reduce costs to payable compensatio n, it is evident that over a
sufficientl y long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclus ion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints . I n short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bi a s against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current e conomic horizons of no more than about
15 years~2/ and appli.cation of such rates would
simply beg the question against
the interests a nd rights of fu t ure people.
Where there is certain future damage
of a mo rally f o rbidden t ype, f or example, the whole method of discounting is simply
inappl.icabl e, and its use would violate moral constraint s.~
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from ca ses of c ert a in d a mage, comes from probability considerati ons. The distant
future, it is a rgued, is much more uncertain than
the present and immediate future,
so that probabiliti es are consequentl y lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding
with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.•
But then if we take
account of probabiliti es in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against
costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people; except in
cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
much) less than those of present and
must count for (very
neighbourin g people where (much) higher
probabj_lities are attached.
So in the case of conflict between the present and the
future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the
present and the immediate f(Jture against a much lower probability of indetermina te
16.
costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally
be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits
were involved.
But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a
question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain am:±E doubtful fU" t, i :b4. benefits for some present people, in
f11(,i11i.1,~ c,HJcn.A,;;,. l';-of,Y~;l,7 or le
the shape of the opportunity to). continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even
if the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted ,)<such an argument would
be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action
is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing
significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large.
or l"isl.~JwiolilSuch a cost-benefitAapproach to moral and decision problems, with or without
the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned
or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
it would follow on such principles that it is permissible
For example,
for a firm to injure,
or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a
sufficiently large gain from it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not
transferable in any s1mple or general way from one party to another.
Transfers of
this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral
issues - e.g. is
x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on
y -
whi.ch are not susceptible to, a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted
J~
J,!01-Ult;,...
•F enenza, of nuclear energy, ltho attefl@J':=::f::fl=di-smiss the costs to future
,~~
#
"41'-
.
~'?f1¥=;ll,,
d?,,-,ipQ/i,,.
people~with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as
benefHs.
The limitations
of transfei:_ point is enough to invalidate the
comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
--
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity
-3.
are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and
risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear
energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but
also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporaJ.ly removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a
person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
{happiness) sums as a way ~f solvini moral. conflict between diff_e_r ent parties, and the
.
.
-
1J.1
,,.
u/i'th:urty,-
~IJ-UJI--.
NJ/t.J1
~
O-?
'Hf/t• """~ aP/2~.i.-1-;-
1ntroduct1on of probabi.lity cons1derations.-l does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis.
One might further object to the probability
argument that piobabilities involving distant future situations are not always less
than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes, and
~
17.
that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
f
probability anyway.
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
I
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on
high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
distant future.
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of sep-
aration, but frequently tangled up.
priori
Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a
grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument is a
generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to the
exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain
-ft1Z'L:J
about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreli.able,wootl; and highly
A
speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the present
which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the
X
uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
crudely:
More formally and
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reli.able information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace 'obligations' by 'knowledge'
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the
present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the
basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect
to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between
the present and immediate future on the one hand and the
distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any
such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future
and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are
normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis
of such "unreliable" information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently
labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic-proof certainty is rarely, or never, available
with respect to much of the present and immediate future. In moral situations in
the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low
probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for
certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order
for us to condemn the consigner's action.
It is enough that there is a significant
18 .
in this sort of case.
risk of harnt
J
It does not matter if the decreased
well-being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
But if we do not require
of the so-called "speculative " and "unreliable".
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should
we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should we
require for the future, episte.m ic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can
be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard.
But such a~ epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests, in
fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already
presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which
difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our
obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
theoretical
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is
gross
where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
this way:-
If moral principles are, like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if
every (action) x" ,
x
has character
h
then
x
is wrong, for
then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever
obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach
the antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obt.ain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action of the "It is wrong
to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument
be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible
to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action
will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then
moral
principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not
be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant
future will impose no practical moral constraints on action.
However the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain
or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning
the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the
~~
--t9-.
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
I
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
-f/,u.'fN-r I
in a hundred years i n ~ names o r ~ footwear, or what praod1
of ice
•
•
.._A'.~
cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe,
especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a
hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from t h e ~ earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present
makes it such a rich and interesting place.
Ill
uncertainty argument should be rejected.
For this sort of reason, the second
The case of nuclear waste storage,
and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where
uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral
constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties at least
probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the
application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where
spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as~• eac. ~
eu,~
~ ··from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
{
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the def ects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
0~1,.(t_
write off probable~ harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves emv
,< .loy both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people
because we cannot be sure that they will
exist or that their tastes and wants
will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the~hings that would c,.ffect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for
the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that
some disaster will not overtake those we are mora.lly committed to. Again we may
be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts
on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other
machines.
Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual
standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such
arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as oppo s ed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its
resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may consider
a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable
to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is
often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that future
people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not ~ffect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this app ears to be a
~
live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make
the action of the firm
tu
..c
tbeaa-:&-xam~ aiscussed
earlier
of producing a
substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact
that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for
inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such
cases before such actions could be considered admissible what would ?e required is
22
far more than a possibility, real or not
- it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for
achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be
to protect themselves.
~tpected to apply
~/l,.. a..,,.L- a«'if
The strategy of /tnost af rbes9 uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
I
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some
lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all
change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash
killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These
are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe that
liC/t2-
they are any more than that, that is they are n o t ~ possibilities.
~k-
The
;\,
strategy is to stress such bH~sid& possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the contai.ner will break should be treated in the same way as these
mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great as to
preclude the consigners' takin~ account of the passengers' welfare and the real
possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related
strategy is to stress a real vossibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and
thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This
move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of
harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws attention
to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application
of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
,:J$
'<>A,
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is SloM!-d, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised
particularly by pr,Pblems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
-fu,-- Q ~11.,,y,.La.. ..,, I,
and future people," wherf the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such
problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
f
)
of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved byVignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and representative a cl'ass of moral
problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest.
can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of
It
the future will make co~flicts
very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble -
J
a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will
equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder
resolution of the issue, e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular, there will bi~ many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers,
numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most
general probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then: are there any features of
future people which would disqualify them fro~ral consideration or reduce their
claims to such below those of present people?
Prima facie,
The answer is :
in principle None.
,.
moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability
of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of deali.ng
satisfactorily with the present;
in other words, a theory that did not allow
properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to
deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located.
those outside some select subgroup, such as (white-skinned) humans, etc.
candidates
The only
for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the
logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; ht1 1l, ,
. ~ we have argued 1 p: ai-Oia) it would be far too sweeping to see these features as
affecting
the moral claims of future people in a general way.
These special features
only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or
practical
course of action given only present information).
In particular/ they
do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly
determinate. or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class
likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required:
it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot af feet his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration ;i Zfj
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
universalizahility, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the
present;
and thus there is the same ooligation to take account of them and their
interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the
probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage,
and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of
what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy
tf,1'1 Q.v. a.
do not/\:krt: u s ~ of these obligations. If in a closely comparable case concerning
the present
the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as
immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of
I
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V.
Problems of safe nuclear operation:
reactor emissions, and core meltdown.
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in spa ce, or a particular gqsgraphical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
e,,- ,.q/Jjel'J
another state's or region's yard?
,(
When that region receives no due compensation
(whatever that would amount to, in such a case~ and the people do not agree
(though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the arguments under-
pinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative
conc.lusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future
people.
But the cases are not exactly the same:
USA and Japan cannot endeavour
fl'I- cf
to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop~ their
,a,ltdi;~ pollution in quite the way they can discount people of two centuries hence.
(But
what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that e ntitlement to just treatment can be discounted over time.)
!
'
~
'· i
Eth~· c 1 i ssues of distr i bu tive j ustice, • as to equityI
/
,:,J
~ J.._ /,
,tJ
tc..id~,,..__
v J{
~iv9ly=~=in ~ , also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development ;
in particular, a s regards t h e treatment of those in the neighbour of reactors, and,
tud rorb
differently, as r~gards the distribution of (alleged) b~nefits Afrom nuclear power
across ~ ~5' (The la t ter ques tion is t aken up
,\
a~ s ~~~ ,
especja] Jy , tb s Pev etty argument . ) ~
Weople livin g or working in the vicinity
special costs and risks:
f
~w{ffitrrf oslde, al ll rn
;i" a
nuclear reactor are subject to
firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact tha t
reactors discharge radioactive ma terials into the air and water near the plant ,
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such a:; {steam) explosion of a reactor. ~ ,I/;.._
~ question is whether such cos t s and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legi-
timacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition,
and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit
--
tradeoffs" of nuclea r _technology. -:::)__
( That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without
local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the
antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development
shares however with other large-scale polluting industry, where local
participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy/ of regional
determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided.
.-:-,,,
The "normal" ei 1ssion , during plant operation1 of low level rad~ ation
carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there r mains
/,id,,
substantial disagreement over theAnumber of cancers and precise extent of genetic
damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegltimotely ) permits free transfer of costs
and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to
be: what extent of c~5cer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for
the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions?
m
Under the Old Parad
the issue is then translated into decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'ho · to
e mploy risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation' and 'how t o
....1.
25.
determine what is an acceptable level of risk/safety for the pub lic'
.:ii
}
3/
The Old Paradigm a t titude, ref~ted in the public policy o f s ome count r ie s
that have such policies, i s t ha t the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations , which rely~ what appeal
they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a pity about
Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air conditioner working in
summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be
obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way compensate for
the (a;~nf Y, of cance~
'----
The point is that the costs to one party
27
are not justifie~
'-.:,.
especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained
a,-,{,...~
without such ~
awful costs.:.
People, minorities, whose
,;.~;(a_,
.Jro/
~
within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.
p().~M...11£;
,1711~,
position isA compromised are thos\/ who live
(Ehildren, for example, are in aAparticularly
vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer
through exposure than normal adults.)
In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer
and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at l arge.
~i
A notinegl 11ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) o f ~
qJ'~c~
R@r~ t a? s&&-eh:e people 1 in the area will di~j for the sake of the majority who are
111,(.ctaii-J"
'I
aailat.'@ffl benefitted byApower producti~n . ~e~~a
ft~elear.
Whatever charm t he
argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once
it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive ~
ways/ of delivering the real benefits involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation
t:Jt/~ or
on minorities, most of whom havei\ no genuine voice in the location of reactors in
their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally)
acceptable.
l~
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US Atomic Energy Corrnnission,
is to
suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of
(natural) rqdiation that a population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being
"natural" level) is also likely to have negligible consequences.
equivalent to the
The increased
amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted
normal,
and,
f<-,f- i, l(e,,... c-ltt<..,cd.
of course,,\ what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects,
whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person's well-being;
and while
the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will,
under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g . two
murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiat i on emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards wou'ld disclose.
Furthermore , the
~------- -------- ----~-- -------- -------- -------- ---monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely di.sinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as
to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a 'public pacifier' while
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered~
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island) Y-Q
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
1flore acto rs, then the core melts and 'containment failure' is likely, with ~he result
that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the
event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in
the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least
100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17
billion and an area H,e size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear
reactors are abo ut five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative
US government figures are giveti' : the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly b~Y~~eater still.
The consigner in ri sking the lifes, well-being and property of the passengers
on the train has acted i_nadmissibly. Does a government or govern~t-spon sored
private utility act in tay that is anything other than much less responsible in
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the community train. The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily suppose, inadmissible and irresponsible. The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical ar€/1
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended , firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the
'11-
influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These
assumptions li ke the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very cil:ose
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors,
it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological
limitations and human error, of waste leak.age and reactor incidents and quite
possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed .from the actual, a technological
27.
(
dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.
In such an ideal n ucle a r wo r ld , where waste disposal were fool-proof and reac tors
were accident-proof , things wo uld no doubt be morally different. But we do no t
live in such a world.
""
According to the Ra\ussen
report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodological ly sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under-
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability
as
estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude .-1 "not credible"
,>Difl~;l,,9'?~ ~
possibilities or as branches t;o:1:t!il fl Ellffl "not significant" that are real
.m:d" may well
b'1. rt:i./f,04,(
~1cq1pen1 in the real world.
\
It i.s the eliminations that are otherworldly. Infact
the methodology and data of the report has been soundly and decisively criticized .Ji
And it has been shown that there is a real possibili.ty, a notjpegligibJ.e probability,
of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability
of a reactor accident, still ibis acceptable, being of no greater order than
risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here we encounter again
that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk
assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to
provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options,
e.g. energy options,which settles their ethical status. The following lines of
argument are encountered in risk assessment a.s applied to energy options:
(i) if option a imposes costs on fewe.r people thq.n option b then option a is
preferable to optic+;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
therefore option a is acceptable. 3
f
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
1,r 1'-i l'Jp.,( ,-c.c.,',l.ci...fs
~
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which jjB accepted: so nuclear pqwer
A
stations are acceptable. A little refle c tion reveals that this sort of risk
assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as ll!l!it transaction modek.
It is far too simple--minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need
a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and
i1·he
person who undertakes the
risks also the person who receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or
cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on ot e parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties a r e the same in the case of the options compared, and
there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on such a basis would
be valid.i '})This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments
Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an
of energy options.
28.
activ.Lty which be knowingly unclcttakes in a situationw-iere he has a reasonable
choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion
to the level6f the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what
/
reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically
acceptable for a tr:Lvial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
A
employed in trying to justify nuclear power.
The second argument (ii) involves
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting
that the health risks in the nuclear sense are cumulative, and ) 'n bhw ey ;i s g f:"
P'J;ct'.) pce i,1 e~ already
'°fc'
not A oo high.16
high if ~
1
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing
and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some
of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted
d/' l).,c-~ ~ flJ,;<d ,;k~4 .~ vr4..a)
I fl/rotl,7 ~~ kr 1/1
/ moc.tal plfinci'ple,\ that one' is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
I
r7n
of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other
This
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries~
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
iq;lude an effect on life or ~ealth or a ,risk thereof, a~d where the benefit to
j<2,c-(kUt , «J,•1
,r ·~ ,k
,-,1,-.r.:.. ,riz.._~,
t.4,/,:K/~7',-,t ~ ~ q:.:rLc-1- .
the benefit ting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature,.,\ { Thus ,tone is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
CIA.en(~
Suppose, forA example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an i.ndustrial process by which it lives, a nox~us waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
oneself. f
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
,Oil ·/J..0- ~ )
service Ato the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced
to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal
or ol,e_ i'1M,).; 1(4. e1/Tl~L. ~ ~ Cdt'-/.:/4r,h .
process or of sustaining risks to their own lives and healthA Most of us would
see this kind of transfer of costs as.
morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this
/trl" gA'-,
condition are future people /§.~~~~ B ~eeiji~ a ~~~~m~aE~:iic=;m ;;~~i;E~~
1
The distribution of
-hut rd~ future generations (those of the next villages~;
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. o~to non-benef
is one of its most
of certain widespread and serious fonns of
objectionable moraL£eatures- ;-- - -
/4' ..;~<fi'nt ~ ,u/4.v
tfi/1_
,.,c,,r
r«-,,.4/ .......,,_,,
f"u<H;f I
l4'(!,,r)
\
iaries is a characteristic
=&,
7''7, ~ ,;_ ~
__../4;,,
-
7:.(,/,_.., ~
v /
__
- •_
__
·~-~---- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ---~
,.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantial ly worse shape than we received it - the transmissio n
principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independen tly argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories.)
eJpoc,"ct lly ru,clc>u- //)CL-;
•
Other social and environmen tal risks and costs of nuclear development ;~ The
problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmen tal, health and safety
VI.
risks and costs in or arising from the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle
includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste
disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation , reprocessing spent fuel, and transportat ion of materials. Several of these stages
involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of
plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferati on of
nuclear armaments - these hazards have p~rallels, if not exact equivalents , in
other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. 'workers in the uranium
mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers
in the coal industry 1 1'f Furthennore , the various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sector of uranium fabrication should be differently
viewed from those resulting from location, for instance from already living where
a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupationa l relocation) , and many types of hazards incurred
fr/working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an
with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium
miner's choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice,
whereas the Pacific Islander's 11 fact" of location cannot be. The social issue
occupation:
of arrangement s that contract occupationa l choices and opportuniti es and often
at least· ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal
mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly
compensated ), while very important, :i.s not an issue newly produced by nuclear
associated occupations .
Other social and environmen tal problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitari an and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of largescale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for
instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear developmen t, and a specially
C-,t.o ,,._.......,
eef, :i.i.lef
undesirable one, as~ rectificatio n eosb~ for dead radioactive lands and waterways
reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern
factory complexes are often guarded like concentrati on camps (but from us on the
dire conse quen ces, of a diffe rent
outs ide), sabot age o a nuc ear react or can have
(cons ider again the effec ts of
orde r of magn itude from most indu stria l sabot age
more dubio us enter prise s such as
core meltd own) . Though theft of mate rial from
at large and can assis t terro rism ,
muni tions works can pose threa ts to popu latio ns
probl ems of the same orde r as
no theft s for alleg edly peac eful enter prise s pose
produ ces mate rials which so
theft of fissi onab le mate rial. No othe r indu stry
explo sives . No othe r indu stry is,
read ily perm it of fabri catio n into such mass ive
to sum it up, so vulne rable on so many front s.
, in part becau se of its long and
In part to ~ ; ; , . ; ; : ; ~ ~ ~ ~ r a b i l i t y
, the nucle ar indu stry is subje ct
conti nu ing asso ciati on with milit ary activ ities
ainly given their scale ) run
to, and enco urage s, seve ral prac tices which (cert
tiesy Th ese ~e secre cy,
coun ter to basic featu res of free and open socie
ial polic e and guard force s,
restr ictio n of infor mati on, form ation of spec
espio nage , curta ilme nt of civil liber ties.
/
'l
given extra ordin ary
Alrea dy ope rator s of nucle ar insta llati ons are
backg round and
the
te
stiga
powe rs, in vetti ng empl oyees , to inve
fami lies and
their
of
activ ities not only of emplo yees but also
them selve s
ons
llati
some times even of their frien ds. The insta
sens ibili ties.
sh
become armed camp~ which espe ciall y offen ds Briti
creat e d a
1976
of
The U.K. Atom ic Energ y (Spe cial Cons table s) Act
it
made
ons and
spec ial armed force to guard nucle ar insta llati
ority 1'
answ erabl e ... to the U.K. Atom ic Energ y Auth
If\ th,_ µ.• ;-fud K~~~fh
ar
worse in West Germ any, presa ge along with nucle
These devel opme nts, and
,-\
anti- demo crati c soci eties . That
devel opme nt .i ncrea singl y auth orita rian and litiui/
:conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it.
nucl ear devel opme nt appe ars to force such'
,/i.~tdi't-...
A conne ct1.on of
the
by
ly
tical
poli
:lslted
inia:i:
er
furth
is
Nucl ear devel opme nL
t ethic al ques ti?ns conc ernin g
nucle ar powe r with nucle ar war. It is ~&te -',tha
4 Of'}'4ff';
. unde r any
fiea,
justi
is
war
ar
nucle
a
nucle ar war - for exam ple, whet her
are disti ngui shab le from those
circu msta nces , and if so what circu msta nces er, the sprea d of nucle ar powe r is
conc ernin g nucle ar powe r. Undo ubted ly, howev
[tl~Jfc -,C,ltt
nucle ar war and so, to that exten t,
~inc re~i ng the techn ical means for engag ing in
,~ c.Aq,,,_ ceJ ef 1
Since nucle ar wars are ,fleJ de"') f'41' neve r
the oppo rtuni ty for 1 nuc1 ear engag emen t. e-;(4vry
J , / ~ a.r~«'../~ ~"'1 '~/e ..
,,t,uclo f¥ c.riu-1" CU'-11.
"
the"' lesse r of'm ajor evils ~Jhe eprea d
bes~
at
are
but
s,
good
tive
posi
le
acco untab
ty for / ~dc/a .-.,e,, -,
1
of nucle ar powe r acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni
o/~
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r
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30.1
many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforw ard
and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear
I
power plant, secondly political, that nuclear engagements on<~ inJf,ntf~u
likely to esculate and that those who control (or differently are likely to
force access to) nuclear power plants do not s.hrin k from nuclear confrontati on
and are certainly prepared to toy with nuclear engagement (up to " S'fr-c1.feeiic
v
"tla,ut
nuclear strikes; ), and thirdly ethical, that wats invariably have immoral
consequence s, such as massive damage to involved parties, however high sounding
their justificatio n is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerabl y worse as
regards damage inflicted t har1 any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse
than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power
of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects,
and because of the expected rapidity and irreversib ility of any such confrontati ons.
The supporting considerati ons are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
-----------are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itsclf
unde si i- able. The c or e arguement is in brief this (the W"J"~.wt will be
in section :m:I) :- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty , because in particular of the JN.If
Utt.UrffJt~fi'es involved in nuclear developmen t. In cases of this type the
1"rlt•c':-iov/
appropriate procedure is to compare worst consequence s of each alternative ,
e. /c.J,orP>lt>A
A
'
to r e_Je-cL . those alternative s with tht
~-,
--the bs~t (the roaxiro m rule) ,
f.llCl'tf:"
~
of these worst consequence e-nd select
J
II
The nuclear alternative has, in particular
because of the) p,.o ssibility of a nuclear war, the WotJC
and is according 1a particularl y unde$itable alternative .
wo1"Jt
"'
.
( ~ ,i it
,'l, /4
/A-
4.//t'dJ'
(l,- (fAt_~; d/6;-,rf ~ ~
d,.'£1/ ~d~
.JIM,;,,_
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6e-fC w_"o/- r,?t/7/UI~~).
«-/~~
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W✓ ~
I
tPI.Ccn/4.J~
:.::n:::.t.
:.
aee-=o-=-l~o.s;gi.::i:..:c::a:.:l::_.:b::..:a::.:s=-e=-"'=-c,_:::._o..::f_..::.n:::u:.::c:.:l::.!e:.::a~r~d~e=-v.!..e:::..:::.l::::.01::p!!:m~e
:, t=.,;h~e=--=I=
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~,-JV_I_I_.__C_o_n_f_l_i_c_t_
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already observed, the consigner's action cannot be justified by purely economisti c
arguments , such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village woul
be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer Iffiinciple on which this assessment
was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a
serious risk to others
for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to
f
31.
For this r eason t he economistic argumen t s whi ch are t hos e mo s t
commonly advance d under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear develo pment - e . g .
ch apness, efficiency, profitabili ty for electricity unilities, and the need
the nuclear case .
otherwise for un comfortable chan ges such as restructurin g of employment, i nves t ment
and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an
Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present
people were correct - j_t will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments
) h as to
.
.- ;-,'d~er1.ves
· h it,\
~h ic
f rom w
.
.
·
(like t h e ut1· 1 1tar1an1sm
.
wou ld f a1· 1 b ecause economics
acceptable one .
operate within the framework of moral constraints , and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
/'~}
arguments to the effect that, unless the prim.a facie unacceptabr e~ alternative is
taken, some even more unacceptabl e alternatice is the only possible outcome; and
will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his
h,J
action is justified because unless it is taken~ village will starve. It is by
no means clear that even such a justificati on as this wou~ be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become
one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would
no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action
taken in such circumstanc es.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
~ present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
/\.
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arglllll.ents
crucially on the presentatio n of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternative s (or at least practical alternative s) and upon showing that the only
:is based
alternative s to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones. If some pratical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
"j 11~~
case it turns out that the -1ril1:agers have another option
e xample, if in the
t~:~~r:
)
~ to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living is some
othe r way - then the argwnent is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just .
such a suppression of practicable alternative s has occurred in the argument designed
to show that the alternative s to the nuclear option are even worse than the option
itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments as well. In
short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentatio n of false dichotomies .
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indusFailure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemploymen t and poverty in the industriali sed
trialised countries.
nations .
1
32. J
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either
for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There
is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment
and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct
employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution
of energy use for labour use.~ "'°The argument that nuclear energy i1needed for the
third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy~ both politically and econom-
ically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of
capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates
negligible local employment, and depends .for its feasibility upon, what is largely
lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and
sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases
forei¾ dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
lt/,zc
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third
world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, ·
their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the
economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military
purposes.
It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling
elites may make in the name of the poor.
The ooverty argument is then a fraud.
the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to help
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there
are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and t he practical option of developing
other energy sources~
alternatives
some of which offer far better prospects for
helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development:
indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure
on route
1~1
to solar or1 £usion developme nt.
And there are various alternatives:
coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including
aAi<J.1fiM.r
) eti~L._01,i:/j,:,,-;._
as well as narrowly solar, wind, water ami tidal power)1
'
A
"
<t.,,(C:...uf~...
Despite the availabiity ~~
.
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence ~( what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups )-: ~
.)uch an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an
Q.la.bcn'~-l,;;,,.,,
trickle-down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
argument runs:affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
For the
_si,,,}:,~-l-,{v1.t.d.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power2:
is
of the
Nuclear development is necessary for / continuing and increasing)
development benefits the poor.
for 'nuclear'.
. ~2
,,,,7t ~~4
for j_t works equally well if 'energy'
It has also to be shown, what the JI • rsnd M,<J(t
major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
33.
alternati ves in increasin g affluence .
The second assumptio n, that affluence
(
inevitabl y trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historica l
data, which show increasin g affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasin g poverty in several countries , both developin g and
developed , and through economic models_, which reveal how "affluenc e" can increase
Jt
without redistrib ution occurring -_J Another major argument advanced to show moral
conflict appeals to a set of supposedl y overridin g and competing obligatio ns to future
people . We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things
and institutio ns which our culture has developed . Unless our high-tech nology, high
energy industria l society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutio ns
and tradition s will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essential ly
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it
alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilizat ion will go out.4J
Future people will be the losers.
The lights-go ing-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characte ristics are necessary for a good
society. But for the most part these large questions , which deserve much fuller
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritica l position with respect to present high-tech nology societies , apparentl y
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technolog ical
examinati on, can be avoided.
society is unmodifia ble, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservat ion or alternati ve (perhaps high technolog y) energy sources without
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy -· such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to { ..._v-.,, •sf.t -
collapse.
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptio ns are hard to accept.
The assumptio n that technolog ical
society's energy patterns are unmodifia ble is especiall y so - after all it has .
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technolog ical
restructu ring and consumpti on modifica tion. If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifia ble without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
pro gram of i.ncreasin g destructi on, but one might ask what use its culture could be to
future people who would very likely, as a consequen ce of this destructi on, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contempo rary society.
There is also difficult y with the assumptio n of uniform valuablen ess;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-tech nological society and its political institutio ns , but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutio ns which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumpti on centrally controlle d is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to arguethat it
....
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --~- ----34-.
(
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable .
There is good x·eason i~ fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even
if a radical chan1e in these directions is independen tly desirable , as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at leas;,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. No
enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less evergy than a \ present,
and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of asstili1ption
which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.~ What the nuc~ear
strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in
western civilisatio n, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to
maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganz a.
In fact there is good reason to think that, fa r from the high energy
society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which
has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised , controlled and
cons 1.At'1f10"'
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive ener gy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert
enenormous powe r over the political system and over people's lives, even more
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritari an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among other things,
of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. ~
than they do at present.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as the
degre e of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and collective
autonomy whic h exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example,
is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagenc e.
the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumabl
1,
But it is not
that we have some
obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s,
: l?a,#1-0.'t\..t...G--
alternative socia;Aand political choices, which do not involve such unacceptabl e
consequence s are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option
1
Ii- c,/~e/4,,._ ~
/4 f
ettl..i,,- fl.a,. u/4jr/iP- "f- "- ~
is not a retturn to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but~ the development
of a'tlJ,ernative technologie s and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the
li).,j·
c-o,y(
/'IWQ.r rr '
~#a-r,
maintenance and further development of whAt . is valuable in our society than the
The lights-goin g-out argument, as a moral
highly centralised nuclear option. ~
/;,.
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a fa l se dichoto-y.
r fJ.J,..,
I(
J:r._,._
Th us the Aescape route/, the appeal to moral conflict aua
to t he appeal t o
1
fu
ty, ~ closed. If then we a pply - as we have argued we s hould - t he s ame
l.
J
standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the presen t,
the conclusion that large~-~sca le nuclear development is a crime agains t the f uture
is inevitable.
1 from reactor
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other argumentst:IAtt Ji> <>'l ;'${1~
ma(/_ ~wn J
radiation emissions, Aetc:::::t
for · ~ / nuc ~
development
as morally unacceptabl e, for saying that it is not only a Acrime
against the distant future but also a ~
~rime against the present and immediate
future.
In sumJ nuclear development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds.
A corn--o llary is that only political arrangement s that are morally unacceptabl e will ·
suppor_t th.e i(1!pending nuclear _future .
of future people
not tf'.I J ;,; I discounted (in contrast to the temporally - limited utilitariani sm
~"'of_
n,,ia,-k-4!.t - ~~economic theory)J and that serious costs and risk~ to health and
life.cannot admiss ~ ly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties ( h ~ I
/4- /4 ~1~
a-<<h'-,::4,~c..:.,__
o.;rr,llc,;.._.)f'c,d
/o
/ / , , / ).
7
CI//C-1~
e
a{_
&, N-
t-f"/<7/2#;,__,
~~
~~ LL ,, ~ ~
/~
~ "°''f"(JI{
will now be outlined whichAshow that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm,
choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice .
..Jl:
Large-scale nuclear
on
&,<.
cc,,//,,,_.,,,;,, h-4111,
development is not just something that Mppens, it requires,.\ an immense input of
capital and energy. , J,.j ,:_ .~J.-..r~ ,,.,;_,R.J
.J""11 ~-.,,&./ 7'iN/ t>h- ?
~
/-7,._ rt..-JJu..7~-.',-
/4- '.,..... ~
o//-,.;?.,/ ~ /;: ,J''"'e"' eccJnom,'c__
/~t:'tJJ-rl,-~«
~ - ;t,4
r
r/4'-Ntr/
been i nvested in nuclear
.fiH1on
'4~
.-Utti,.r,
,r
~ -d'M.r
J
~?
Admittedly so much capital has already
research and development,
:i..n marked contra t
)I
to othe~rival sources of powes
that t hert is strong political incentive top
f1'7
- as distinct fromAreason s for further capital and energy inputs. ~
~
/(,v;,~..,.
6-4'C
t¾t
aff_
,,,1
~ IU-
'1
/'t~ /&J
7~
/ t:1/1). ...
"'--.f
11<11f4..,
/4-:J~vf_/J
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f.,..,._r),
q /l~
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/<ff"" /J~ (~~6t;..._ )
/'~a.. o.u~•~,._•~/.c~
-~ ~k /
I
~-.:..,,Lc.1
,-•.A-e/
1/ tL/t,.,.f
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d,
,Af'.._:,:! .,>V°L /
~~ (
_J
~~
/4.l()~J/ > ~ ~k
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r/~
/ ~C--,
/nrv-7
~ ,..~~,,._~ .-
('c;.. rr.;-/
trv/4.,;_/
wt~
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a/~
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,,
<~CU'~
/CJ-u_J,./
~ ~.
The main argume£~~~an economic growth
argument, upon which variat~S
, re played., is the following version of the lights-going-o ut argument (with economic
.
e~
/
growth duly standing in for ll'late•oal wealth, and Afor what is valuable!):Nuclear power is necessary to su.stai.n economic growth.
Economi c growth is
desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the
t:,'IU{ c·o,,,ae,cf,,l( /ocip,/ k/!Mff,
, , , ~ f()'f"
f'~
J
to-1 postpone reJistribution problems,/\ etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desira.ble ~
The first premiss is part of US energy policj~ and the second premiss is suppli ed
by standard economics textbooks.
Ja U>'t~
fr
C(,a<~ A/~{
1~!
M ~k.
t~
-1<>c~JL
But both premisses are
~~<IL
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O</?'V 0d
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c.....
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c,;,l~il/~C!- ,
I
7
·
/ More to the
since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first
{tltK.
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( or rather · an appropriate,{ restatement of it )
fails even on Old Paradigm
For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps
e:=-1:.I,~
alternatives.
N-.e,./41"
elaboration of the
/)tPwt--Y
ptemiss
out as 'most efficient',
etc .
1',s
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The premiss usually
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is s,ome
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growth, 'economically best' being filled
'cheapest', 'having most favourable
'cost' benefiti-ratio
~--_..,,
1
>
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear
po er is none of these things decisively , unless a good deal of economic cheating
(easi..4 to do) ~
I
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37
//1.d'
The ~aradigm does not, it j/i«,f
7~r,) _sustain
the nuclear
jl.(ggernau~:l?The real _reasons for the continuing development program ~
commitment .,- -·-
A.~
the
r
--.. to the program have to be sought elsewhere,, outside the
Old Paradigm,
at leas-t as preached.® There are, firstly reaso?s of previous
1'ru,.J_
l e,iQAFa.-;~ , ~ PJ,/{/M.rfr,
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l;vf,f,,U_DN!;
commitJ!lent, when nuclear power \ looked a cheaper and safer• deal. corpouations
(;~.&? ~
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,{
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are ;\_ keer{ -t:o
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returns on capital,{ invested. There are lypical _,. ,
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s e l ~ reasons for commitment to the program, that
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~ i t s accrue to some, lil<e
' !}cr'o.-t,.J;'
~
in o__
liti
~ corporations, that are influent1·a1
c:--_ _r_
· _ca 1
·
.tr
Sf1n-~,
1
·
a ff_airs,
an d as a
profits <;1-ccrue to others, tV't/ Jc on ·..,
-·1c J ear eng1 nee.,r,:i ng, -etG-:- There
.
J,.cLa.-t
are A
ideological reasons ~ a belief in the control of both political and phys ical
~ b1Z,/,e..f1 IYJ ScC/4 I c.on-l •✓-ol -f'.-e,,,-n itho ,/2
power by technocratic-entreprenial elite,
C&t/nd-- ~ /l~ ~i'tu.r
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a faith in the unlimitedne ss at ' .
technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems
that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially
conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes.
/It ' ;,:. <=c<--,,../4-;:?-»'r~ ~~
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·these :;orts of reasons for nuclear development are,.\ linked, h
/, C-
C
i4t /-(!_.
• ~- t-h.,,
ret13f'lfl
tJ,tH those whose types of enterprise/
benefit
@8rf?lislit
O
n
,pi tq l i e
substantially
nuclear development are commonly those who hold the. requisite beliefs.
f;.C-A I <-0•1.:f°'7~1"U:I
.Lt is
ti _ corporate capitalism, , ~ its state enterprise image,
; / "''#.
Hu
· cm
t.min i;s;;;
pc e I if\~, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
corporate capitalism, which is the political · e
?t~r~,d
col'l.o,.,.._"/
v
To be sure,
largely thrust upon
us in ilr/es•-ern .11~ .sln e, is nnt ni>ce~sary fn:r a nuclear furur@; a totalitarian
state of the typ (~ such capitalism often supports in the third worl"d w.i ll suffice.
But, unlike a hypothetical state tl'tA--C. does conform to precepts of the Old
Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well
embarke d 4111 such a future -/
7
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'-~------------------------------~--"'
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_,,,""--'.___;:._;;_..::..::::.=-=-"-=:..::..:~;:_.:_~=-=...:.:...:::.;::_-=~-=-=L.:;;-=-~a~l~t~e~r~n~a~t~i~v~e~s=-=-.- The future energy
['cJ4¢-r
Y>tAlf't°' 0
ootion that is ttS11 a H-,A contrasted with nuclea~, namely coa¾, wMe
, _,., ,__,. I
/~u-
c/4u,,/f-r_a/'~k- t'a-- ~w.r
:>
/J / ~
the likelihood of .;r;.edty serious (air) pollution and associated phenUIII-•
s uch as acid rain and atmospheric heating 1 not to mention the despoliation caused
by extensive strip mining 1 all of which will result from its use in meeting very ttigh
projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the
'j?u.-,/e,.
necessary~ condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for
r
some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the
full costs of production and replacement..iS$J
.
f>t.l.t-,;,..
lo
'these a
r 112'
conventiona~ options .-- a third is often added which emphasizes
r,,,u{ .:, Alt<K/l..11A. Gc-l7L-., "-yd/otJ/,: J.riufy
A.
_,t.,,...a,
softel.-4 benign technologies, such as those of solar' energyA The deeper choice,
which '!Ven soflllfpaths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
r~11la/lJ4~ ~Ht-,-4,,?
6<'tl
bot~ the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more
basic level there is a choice between consumeristjc and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between soci ,tl alternatives, conventicnal technologically
ol CA-V":fr ~fu~
oriented discussion At.ends to obscure. It is not just c. rr:.atter of deciding in ,;.,-hich
~
ytil•- Mr/
way to meerxt..:.nexam~nEd goals (as the Old Paradign ~ d
1·
of examining the goals.
14'
,
)t
J\..
Ml )' but alEC: a rr.atter
That is, we are not merely faced with the que.stion of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
a-
.
matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost o~ society that creates . them. It
is not just a question of devising less damaging wais to meet these alleged needs
conceived of us inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unn~cessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear wayst al'
ber1.11ft o.f ~<1..
~ /J '1-tf--t'
~
A. ot(Ql.Se)'blie~s Hot uaat to deny that these softer optfons are superior • ethically
unacceptable features of the
'lltl
et :u ~ i b f
rt,~,
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principl~will
h
likely to leave a tolerable world for~ future ,., . p:l:i2: if it is expected to meet
f
38 .
u,.',awo.d.
i ~mit lcss and uncontrolled e nergy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
them.
Consider, fo r exa mple, t he effect on t he world's forests, whic h are
commonly counted as a solar res ource, of use for production of methl•nol or of
electricity by woodchipping ( as already planned by f ~ist authorities
and contemplated by many other ener gy organisations) J\ f'ew would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, -b:ttt the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard- pressed natural fores t s.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
r?ftJfiW
forests are often dicem:1Ht@d, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
A-expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'. May forests are in
A
principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values . ~$, In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be immanent if not already well advanced. It certainly
has begun in( ~
n.--11>
regions, and for
U'-Plr,•0-:1:i!PJ~,;
~
which are,\ beifig 16st for the future.
that f o r ~
on top of ~
present
forest types (such ~s rainforest types)
amt "•i M11,f."5 /.~.t,.//4__
)!HtJ~
The addition of a major further ,\demand ee2rn:e,,,
J'f't!4J~
is one which anyone with a realistic
(o,t/<>,,./l_rl"~
.
appreciation of the conduct 6fAforestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard
with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes ~ resembling
the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again
for energy purposes, w ould be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands
and tropical ar eas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change,
and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on -
we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than
we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In
short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - i.mportant though this is - without any more basic structural and -locial change is inadequate.
f,,t,.,,IOJ1,",;/
Nor is such a simple.4 switch likely to be achieved.
~1&4-
It is no t as if
fc
political pressure could i -11st bene:,\ the US government,\ stop its nuclear
~ =
Ntn-G ( and
that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the way pressure appeared
to succeed in 11,-1.lting the Vietnam war.
could be accomplished, it is very
While without doubt it would be good if this
unlikely given the integration of political
powerholders with those spons r ring nuclear development .'°
I
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
, ,om......,,.;.,. ,A.. h~JG".t j"-.:; ~ no.odr,
s tructure which promotes consumerismAand ah economic structure which encourages
increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.
This means, for
instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough
to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work
from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward
of consumer goods and services.
A
society in which social rewards are obtained
primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from
rer~
satisfaction in work and in social re.lations and other activities, is.\ bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system
that produces goods not to meet ge~uine needs but for created and non-genuine needs
is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently becomes a substitute
for satisfaction in other areas .
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set
of adjustments involved in socially j_mplementing the New Paradigm, the move away
from
,:::6',t.SIArne<•S"Yl
is for example part of the more general shift from material ism
and materialist values. /
~
Th4
c
'
A=::O:f social change option tends to be obscured in most
ol
discussions of energy options andAhow to meet
.---.
@S
energy needs, in part because
question• underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional
6.,; ,.
nee~)
or
wants
with
conflo..W
(often
demand
alleged
taking
by
proceeds
discussion
as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most
profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and
is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the
social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable arid
unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated., It is commonly argued by representatives
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people ~deep ~ezers, air conditioners, power
boats, ... 1t would be authoritarian to ps:t:llp them satisfying these wants. ~ tl+c
A
argument conveniently ignores the soc:f.al framework in which such needs and wants
To point to the determinati on of many such wants at t he
framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to whic h
they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial
or are produced.
organisatio n) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determinati on at
all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain
kinds of choices , such as those for travel , Mle iafrastrtt~t u"v and to see apparently
individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and diLected by a
social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private prt,fit
and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only wa» so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than
it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspectivef .2..-a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
such ethical ones for taking it:
paradigm.
tJa,,u#t;LJ J',;...,
The ethical , requirement defende.o<.,
I
social and political
d. -,
£
CUr{f?'?~{j
~~~
J
t<~
~~
-f7 ~
?t,(""f""e.u •
,uu1...l',1;1.ial
The socialAchan ges that the deeper alternative requires will be strongiy
r esisted because they mean changes in current social organisatio n and power structure •
..tt'ld<°f:o the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of presen t
political and economic arrangemen ts it is not surprising that official energy
option discussion proceeds by misrepresen ting and often obscuring it. But
i.,,·11 Jtz_
difficult though a change t,f t:icn~inant p: a @eigm, especially one with such ~rreaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative
to try;
we are all on the nuclear train.
V
(
• I
-
FOOTNOTES
~
1.
-
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Good in ., p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear .fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fal la cies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
~
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Gooij_in, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also
catton and Dtinlap, especially p. 34.
--
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy ~
e.nd$, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr. Justice
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry
Parker a~
Vol. 1. Her Majesty's
Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue
both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvltfls
....
favour the (proLnuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
.
them.
what, s
f)f1ts
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
The same conclusion has been reached in
details up to 1977 see Routley (a) .
L
/;..:i
/t,lrf
~t/ J
i I! rl. I e
·7.
[{CL
/i
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
eol
.
See the papers, and simulations, discuss :bal in GoodiA p. f-28.
/~
On the pollution and waste disposal ·r"ecoff'd of the n uclear industry,
, 12.
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price1 and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of e..f fective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
Back of this Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of
13.
replacing God.
power.
Man
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over- nature, then when
during the Englightenment
Man
replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
Science and technology were the tools which were to put '1an into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to
14.
manage technology represents the past]
On such limitation fhe.o~UJ?l, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow
.,-----------.....-
fk
d.n · o ther ·
.I\
~
see, e.g. Routley 80. ,j Other different
are presented in Routley 81.
'
l,,;,.;l-etht>,..,,
te1t1/tf
It follows that there are many problems that have
no solution and much that is necessarily
lJ/lkA•N4'/4. .
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
t he history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there
is a solution, and thUf progress need never cease (C cttto,i and
p.34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
,1
OS (a,:.J
Amore recent official reports, ft n r, <t:etieHlar
\
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I
For examples. and for some details of the history of philosophe~
16.
positions 4 n obligations to the future. see Routley (a).
Passmore, p. 91.
17.
Passmore's position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
as also is
Rciw/s ,
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
position.
For related criticisms of the economists' arguments for
18.
discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
. ,,
Good11, , pp 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a
linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin/ however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
prefi, poses, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g.
"'P
covers everything except
Cll#l-
p) .
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listedJ aMI be comprehended along such lines
>.
as "plant breakdown through human error".
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l-9!"
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Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, Economics , 7th Edition, McGrawHill, New York, 1967, p.351.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
The contrast is with me re logical possibility.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitaria nism (e.g.
'lf.
J.H'.1,A'"
Sidgwick
p.414), and in a range of contract and other theories
How the principle is
from Kant and Rousseau to Rawls (J8(A" p.293).
argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlyin g theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particula r ethical
theories.
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Even then relev ant envi ronm ental facto rs may have
been
negl ected .
,
1
Ther e are vari ation s on (i) and (ii) whic h mult
iply cost s
agai nst numb ers such as prob abil ities . In this
wav risk s,
cons trued as prob able cost s, can be taken into
' acco unt in
the asses smen t. (Alt erna tivel y, risks may be asse
ssed throu gh
such fami liar meth ods as insu ranc e).
'
A prin ciple vary
ing (ii), and form ulate d as follo ws:
(ii') a is ethi cally acce ptab le if (for some b)
a inclu des
no more risk s than band bis soci ally acce pted
.
was the basi c ethi cal prin ciple in term s of whic
Lake Boar d of Inqu iry rece ntly decid ed that nuclh the Cluf f
ear powe r
deve lopm ent in Sask atche wan
is ethi cally acce ptab le:
see Cluf f Lake Boar d of Inqu iry Fina l Repo rt, Depa
rtmen t of
Envi ronm ent, Gove rnme nt of Sask atche wan,
1978 , p.305 and
p.28 8.
In this repo rt, a is nucl ear powe r and bis eithe
r
acti vitie s clea rly acce pted by soci ety as alter
nativ e powe r
sour ces.
In othe r appl icati ons b has been taken as ciga rette
smok ing, moto ring, minin g and even the Vietn am
war( !)
The poin ts made in the text do not exha ust the
obje ction s to
prin ciple s (i)- (ii') . The prin ciple s are certa
inly
ethi cally
subs tanti ve, sinc e an ethi cal cons eque nce cann
ot be dedu ced fro m
none thica l prem isses , but they have an inad miss
char acte r. For look at the orig in of b: b may ible conv entio nal
be
acce pted thoug h it is no long er soci ally acce ptab soci ally
le,
or
thoug
h
its soci al acce ptib ility is no long er so clea rcut
and it woul d
not have been soci ally acce pted if as much as is
now
know n had
been know n when it was intro duce d. What is requ
ired
in (ii') ,
for insta nce, for the argum ent to begi n to look
conv incin g is
then 'ethi call y acce ptab le' rath er than 'soc ially
acce pted '.
But even with the amen dmen ts the prin ciple s are
inva
lid,f or the
reaso ns give n in the text .
It is not disc once rting that these argum ents do
not work .
It
woul d be sad to see yet anot her area lost to the
expe
rt~
name
Jy
ethic s to actu aries .
-
A main part of the trou ble with the mode ls_is
that
narro wly utili taria n, and like utili tari~ ni~m they they are
distr ibut iona l featu res, invo lve natu ralis tic fa~l~ n~gl ect
Real ly they try to trea t as an unco nstra ined optim cie~ , etc.
isati on what
is a deon tical ly cons train ed optim isati on: see
R. and V. Rout ley
'An expe nsive repa ir kit for utili taria nsim '.
I.-"\
Appa rent exce ption s to the prin ciple su~h as taxa
redi strib utio n of incom e gene rally ) vani sh when tion (~nd
weal th is
cons trued (as it has to be if taxa tion is to be
P:ope
r,J_y
justi fied ) as at leas t part ly a so~i al asse t unfa
irly mono polised by a mino rity of the popu latio n. -:)
·
~ Exam ples such as that of moto ring dang er~u sly
coun terex ampl es to the prin ciple ; for one is not do not cons t~tu t~
mora lly entit lcu
to so moto r.
f,
;o».
,> /;o cfobs and
On all these points see R. Grossm an and G. Daneke r , t7w· L
E'nergy, Environ men 1:a]jsts for Fu.11 Employ ment, W;:ishington
DC, 1977,
ting
pp.1-7 , and also the details supplie d in substa ntiatin g the interes
case of Commoner · [7].
nuclea r indust ry,
On the absorp tion of availab le capita l by the
see as well [18], p.23.
On the employm ent issues ,
the
see too H.E. Daly in [9], p.149.X A more fundam ental challen ge to
poverty argume nt appear s in 1. I 11 i.rli
Energy a:nd Equal·i ty, Cal den and
Boyars , London 1974, where it is atgued that the sort of develop ment
need.
nuclea r energy represe nts is exactly the opposi te of what the poor
Small
For much more detail on the inappr opriate ness see E.F. Schuma cher,
is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs , London , 1973.
As to the capita l and
other require ments, see [2], p.48, and also [7] and [9].
For an illumin ating look at the sort of develop ment high-en ergy
techno logy will tend to promot e in the so-cal led underd evelope d
countr ies see the paper .of Waiko and other papers in The Melane sian
Environ ment (edited J.H. Winslo w), Austra lian Nation al Univer sity Press,
Canber ra, 1977.
.-B9-..- -'.JT;lhHi~sHf§'..ia'!1ee,jtE---:1ii·ss-:1t.i·m;a:pE>cll-1.ic·e.eici~t±l:-;:v-r-4r:ee~c,QO'l:!g,i;ineii~s~e~0Hittrrr- [P.2f]~,:7p~.~5516J.
A use
Ta
1 survey is given in A. Lovins . Energy Strateg y:
The Road Not
n, Friend s of the Earth Austra lia, 1977 (reprin ted from Foreign
/
Af. airs, Octobe r 1976);
see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p.233 ff, and
Schum~ cher, op. cit.
//3·
An
argume nt like this is sugges ted in Passmo re
-f-fi, chapte rs 4 and 7,
with respec t to the questio n of saving resour ces.
In Passmo re this
argume nt for the overrid ing importa nce of passing on contem porary
l
culture is underp inned by what appear s to be a future -direct ed ethica
version of the Hidden Hand argume nt of econom ics -
that, by a coincid ence
care of
which if correc t would indeed be fortun ate, the best way t o take
the future (and perhap s even the only way to do so, since do-good
of
iRterv ention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care
the presen t and immedi ate future.
The argume nt has all the defects
of the related Chain Argume nt discuss ed above and others .
/1, IA;, u,./n er
Very persuasive argurn en t sAh ave b een
advanced by civil liberties groups and othe.rs in
· a number of countries:
C.$ee especia· 11y M.
· , Nuclear Prospects.
y·
Flood and R. Grove-White,
A Comment on the Individual., the State and Nuclear
Power, 'F riends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural.
England _a~d National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
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Certainly practical transitional programs may involve tempor ary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such a s
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use o f
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of encn1y,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cosl
,.
------~--
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~
-1
footno te le continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking ac count
of environmental cost of production . Other (sometimes
strategies towards more s a tisfactory altercooptive)
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particul a r
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local g ove rnment
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
ff
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated a s rene wa ble
is that forest economics do not generally a llow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and de ficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough .
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
f o rests can be a ! fully renewable operation if net energy
see, e.g. the argument in
production is to be worthwhile;
L.R.B. Mann 'Some difficulties with energy farmin g fo r
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosy stem mainte nance.
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Box 59, Item 1875: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions
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Typescript draft, with handwritten emendations and annotations, and handwritten notes, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield.
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/f51dc99ef93d040908b142ebb835179a.pdf
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Text
Elaboration of *Nuclear energy and obligations to the future*:
A note on expertise and methodology.
Some people may ask why philosophers, who know nothing about
nuclear physics, should be dealing with this area, which surely
should be left to the province of the real experts in the area,
nuclear physicists and those with direct experience and authority
in the area of nuclear power.
One of the most irritating things in this area for a
philosopher is the sight of such people constantly presented, by
themselves and others, as experts and authorities whose pronounce
ments on the issue should be accepted without question by laymen
(see e.g. articles [15] and [16]), when in fact the issues involve
quite crucially issues of and assumptions about values and morality^
matters concerning which the so-called ’’authorities" and "experts"
commonly know less than the average first year student in philosophy.
Value issues and moral issues and issues of social and political
theory are probably more crucially concerned in the nuclear issues
than are issues of fact concerning nuclear power, and certainly
they are just as important.
Few philosophers nowadays would want to claim to be "experts"
or "authorities" on matters of value or morality in the way nuclear
experts claim to be authorities on matters of nuclear power, who
can tell people what to do in way which is authoritative or
which must be uncritically accepted by the non-experts/non
philosophers.
Rejection of the argument from authority is basic
in proper philosophical method, going back to Plato and beyond,
and forming a basic position without which the subject, as critical
inquiry into basic assumptions, could not operate as it does and
traditionally has.
Indeed rejection of the argument from
authority is one feature which distinguishes philosophy proper
from closely related areas such as theology, casuistry, some
�2.
areas of legal thought and various types of apology.
But a form
/of the argument from authority*—the claim to entitlement to have
one’s word or views accepted, not on the basis of what one says
and how sound it is,!^ but of who one is - appears however to be
an important element in the modern cult of the ''scientific expert"
which has played such a large part in the contempory Australian
discussion of the neclear issue.
While most philosophers would
reject the view that they were "experts" in this sense on values
or moral issues, philosophers can fairly lay claim to a number of
special skills which enable them to bring out explicit assumptions
about values or morality, and expose defects in arguments.
Most
philosophers also have moral view’s, that is, they believe some
things to be morally acceptable and others morally unacceptable,
although some might prefer to express similar attitudes without
use of explicit moral terminology.
In writing this paper then we don’t hope to be accepted as
’authorities’ or ’experts’ on moral questions, but only to have
skills which may throw light on some areas.
We have tried to
bring out value and moral assumptions, expose logical defects and
inconsistencies in the structure of some of the arguments and in
certain sorts of argumentsconcerning the future, and to argue that
if one accepts a certain moral judgment (which we accept and which
we believe would be widely agreed on*), one should, if one is
going to be consistent, non-arbitrary, and follow through one’s
principles, accept a certain other one.
This seems to us a propei
area for philosophical work.
The non-philosophical or background factual assumptions which
are essential for discussing the issue are not large, and are in
substance only those of the Fox Report (p.110, in particular)•
* We are sure that philosophers can be found who will disagree wit!
virtually every statement we make.
�
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Draft Papers
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Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed.
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Elaboration of *Nuclear energy and obligations to the future*:
A note on expertise and methodology.
Some people may ask why philosophers, who know nothing about
nuclear physics, should be dealing with this area, which surely
should be left to the province of the real experts in the area,
nuclear physicists and those with direct experience and authority
in the area of nuclear power.
One of the most irritating things in this area for a
philosopher is the sight of such people constantly presented, by
themselves and others, as experts and authorities whose pronounce
ments on the issue should be accepted without question by laymen
(see e.g. articles [15] and [16]), when in fact the issues involve
quite crucially issues of and assumptions about values and morality^
matters concerning which the so-called ’’authorities" and "experts"
commonly know less than the average first year student in philosophy.
Value issues and moral issues and issues of social and political
theory are probably more crucially concerned in the nuclear issues
than are issues of fact concerning nuclear power, and certainly
they are just as important.
Few philosophers nowadays would want to claim to be "experts"
or "authorities" on matters of value or morality in the way nuclear
experts claim to be authorities on matters of nuclear power, who
can tell people what to do in way which is authoritative or
which must be uncritically accepted by the non-experts/non
philosophers.
Rejection of the argument from authority is basic
in proper philosophical method, going back to Plato and beyond,
and forming a basic position without which the subject, as critical
inquiry into basic assumptions, could not operate as it does and
traditionally has.
Indeed rejection of the argument from
authority is one feature which distinguishes philosophy proper
from closely related areas such as theology, casuistry, some
2.
areas of legal thought and various types of apology.
But a form
/of the argument from authority*—the claim to entitlement to have
one’s word or views accepted, not on the basis of what one says
and how sound it is,!^ but of who one is - appears however to be
an important element in the modern cult of the ''scientific expert"
which has played such a large part in the contempory Australian
discussion of the neclear issue.
While most philosophers would
reject the view that they were "experts" in this sense on values
or moral issues, philosophers can fairly lay claim to a number of
special skills which enable them to bring out explicit assumptions
about values or morality, and expose defects in arguments.
Most
philosophers also have moral view’s, that is, they believe some
things to be morally acceptable and others morally unacceptable,
although some might prefer to express similar attitudes without
use of explicit moral terminology.
In writing this paper then we don’t hope to be accepted as
’authorities’ or ’experts’ on moral questions, but only to have
skills which may throw light on some areas.
We have tried to
bring out value and moral assumptions, expose logical defects and
inconsistencies in the structure of some of the arguments and in
certain sorts of argumentsconcerning the future, and to argue that
if one accepts a certain moral judgment (which we accept and which
we believe would be widely agreed on*), one should, if one is
going to be consistent, non-arbitrary, and follow through one’s
principles, accept a certain other one.
This seems to us a propei
area for philosophical work.
The non-philosophical or background factual assumptions which
are essential for discussing the issue are not large, and are in
substance only those of the Fox Report (p.110, in particular)•
* We are sure that philosophers can be found who will disagree wit!
virtually every statement we make.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Box 59, Item 1: Draft of Elaboration of 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future': a note on expertise and methodology
Subject
The topic of the resource
Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations, undated.
Description
An account of the resource
Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
Creator
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a>
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<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 59, Item 1
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Box 59: Nuclear
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b660995c442b4ed34e33174523ca0eaf.pdf
e2754cf92cd4759c1c7554709975a749
PDF Text
Text
94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial- consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmenta lly
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with ·
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmenta l hazards by appealing
to the inadequate standards of the Internationa l Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the internationa l
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
ur a 11 /um
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequate public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in ur.ani- um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begg ing grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an arms
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a..rft'\S or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibili ty of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
�94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial__: consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmentally
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmental hazards by apF ealing
to the inadequate standards of the International Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the international
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
u r ,i A ,'ufrL
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequ~te public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in l.lia.ni~ .um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begging grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an atMJ
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a.rAt!
or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibility of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
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In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
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94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial- consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmenta lly
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with ·
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmenta l hazards by appealing
to the inadequate standards of the Internationa l Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the internationa l
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
ur a 11 /um
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequate public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in ur.ani- um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begg ing grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an arms
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a..rft'\S or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibili ty of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial__: consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmentally
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmental hazards by apF ealing
to the inadequate standards of the International Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the international
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
u r ,i A ,'ufrL
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequ~te public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in l.lia.ni~ .um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begging grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an atMJ
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a.rAt!
or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibility of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Box 23, Item 1: Val Routley and Richard Routley to "Sir", 6 Feb 1975
Subject
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Two copies of typescript letter addressed to "Sir", from Val Routley (later Val Plumwood) and Richard Routley (later Richard Sylvan). The letter to government addresses nuclear energy.
Description
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Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
Creator
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Val+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 23, Item 1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1975-02-06
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
Rights
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
Format
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Letter, [2] leaves. 3.65 MB.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Correspondences
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:329e04d">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:329e04d</a>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
n/a - not numbered or identified in locator field
Box 23: More Green
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/ede0486e608e80171df909e34126861a.pdf
9db543cfb87caa03ad0862f020147ec3
PDF Text
Text
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Cutting (photocopy), two pages (title page and page 125) from Weisskopf WA (1971) Alienation
and economics, Dutton. (2 leaves)
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�THE AGE OF [THE REALISATION OF] LIMITS?
1.
Growth versus Limits.
A phenomenon of the contemporary ags. is increasing
awareness of limits, espeO^ally material limits, due to resource and energy
limitations.
Hence, in part, the limits to growth (in part because there are
other major elements in models which reveal limits to growth:
pollution, etc.).
population,
The awareness is not a new one - the ancient Greeks put con
siderable emphasis on limits - but was largely lost sight of in modern times
until recently.
Although some material limitations are now widely reetrgjinised, in Europe and
/
North America^ at any rate, social limits are far from widely acknowledged, and
there is the idea that in the spiriual sphere there are no limitations.
Thus, for
example, Perelman:
The traditional social sphere is ... transcendental and spiritual.
i _• x..-
-- i -----~
‘-v- -ewards
the physical and social limits of the economic world (p.394)."
---- A similar open-fredte«ee-«Mte^e<-'in-the-spiritual sphere thenyls presented by
T. Haydon (Social Alternatives ~1980).
2.
The failure to realist, limits is a basic fault common to Marxism (Barman
p.150) and capitalism.
further down, p.399, >6 relies on false dichotomy between ’religious influence
and secular economic power’ which are said to be * complementary, when one grows,
the other declines. Also the suggestion that the£e are
social limits^the
’soft paradigm’ is not explained p.415?
to
W2- -M
�/
Disappearing species and vanishing rainforests:
philosophical roots of the problem. *
wrong directions, and the
Both rainforests and species are
disappearing at an unprecedented and accelerating rate.
becoming
a vastly poorer place ecologically.
of great value is being lost or destroyed.
The world is fast
Which is really bad:
for much
Thus far there is substantial
agreement among a wide range of groups and organisations seriously concerned
about vanishing rainforests, disappearing species, and the ecological impover
ishment of the earth.
But penetrate a little further - ask for the causes of
this situation, for what should be done about it, why value is being diminished
in this way, and why there is any cause for concern - and the agreement begins
to evaporate.
Probe a little more widely, bringing in assessment of economists,
foresters, and politicians, and spokesmen for the elites of ’’developing nations ,
and agreement ceases, and substantial disagreement sets in.
The phenomena of disappearing life, animal and plant, creature and
species and ecosystem, are well-enough documented (if not well-enough knowin,
in several senses) for a sketch of the background to serve.
§2.
Background:
the rates of loss of species and disappearance of rainforest.
First, plants:the extinction of each species of plant is, on the average,
accompanied by a ten-|to thirty-fold loss amongst other organisms.
Therefore, the diversity of plants i£ the underlying factor
controlling the diversity of other organisms and thus the
stability of the world ecosystem ... nearly two-thirds of the
world’s plant species (at least 150,000species of flowering
plants) appear to be tropical in distribution.
... Considering
that there will be no undisturbed tropical lowland forest any
where in the world within twenty-five years, except for relatively
small reserves,
... it is certain that many of them will become
extinct during our lifetime.
To illustrate this point we need
only mention that the FAO estimates that about ten million
The paper was first sketched for Earthday 1980.
The topic is of considerable
relevance to Earthday X, for it concerns the ecological impoverishment of the
earth (which - despite Earthday - continues to accelerate) and reasons for it
especially the underlying philosophical and ideological grounds. (In the
latter connection the US has, despite its prominence in ecological concern
and in implementing things environmental, much to answer for.)
�2.
hectares [1979 estimates are 16 million hectares] of tropical
forest are being felled annually.
... One supposes ... that
at least a third of [tropical plant species] will be threatened
or extinct by the end of the century, with the first major wave
of extinction in South-east Asia and New Guine^ ...
(Raven 1976).
Second, animals:It has been estimated that if current Saends in massive forest
clearing continue, about one-third of the species now found in
humid tropical forests - perhaps 15 to 20Z of all species on
earth - will be extinct only 20 years from now, and many more
in the ensuing decades.
This would be one of the greatest
impoverishments ever suffered.
|x----- —Third, rainforests:Every minute 30 hectares (about 75 acres) of the world s rain—
^forests are being destroyed.
The issue can be sharply p^roc^ssed by considering the world’s tropical
rainforests, where major Looweo are occurring.
The tropical moist forests are believed to contain between 2
and 5 million species from 2/5ths to ^planet’s total .
Thus i£ 1 million species are lost by the end of the twentieth century, the
I result would be the extinction of more than - perhaps much more than - l/5th
of the world’s
.
(Myers, p.4 & p.113).
Other estimates differ somewhat, but all serve to make the main point;
staggering ecological and biological losses and impoverishment.
§2.
Reasons and causes^ actdon and fataldsm (ineu^'i/Lity).
be disentangled.
There is much to
There are reasons for and against destroying rain-forests
and their dependent species, reasons which divide into shallower reasons and
deeper reasons.
The familiar shallow reasons against are those that answer back in one
way or another to human interests, and concern the pros and cons of rain
forests as
sources of genetic diversity and gene pools, as natural biological
sources for medicines, as
uftkt
catchment protection areas, and to prevent
and stop flooding, as buffer and quarantine zones, as refuges for
plants and animals.
The inadequacy of these sorts of reasons is not difficult to discern;
and the strategies they lead to would only sewe- bits and pieces here and
there.
,
-i -i
_
a_i_
_
Furthermore the onus is^wrong way round too, as well as the jacamng j
not reaching to any social depth.
What needs to say here is:
Why is all
�3.
this happening?
What justifies it?
The onus is on those who try to proceed,
who are doing the doing, interfering destruction and demise.
The shallower reasons for tend to rely on the character of humans,
their attitudes and aspirations and now rather inevitable dominance.
causes fail.
Ini^t^l shallow explanatory theses to be critically
assessed and rejected include these:
1.
The overpopulation argument:
’unless the population explosion can be
damped down, wildlife will not survive’
2.
Economistic arguments:
(Webb, 1979).
forest destruction will alleviate poverty and
provides jobs and foreign revenue.
Rather, as forester Westoby recently explained,
’the unpalatable fact, for
foresters, is that forest industries have done very little to raise the
welfare of the urban and rural masses in developing countries;
instead
resources and wealth have been transferred to the rich industrialised
countries’
(or at least certain parts of their populations).
Westoby, who perhaps optimistically sees elements of change in the
world, went on to explain, colourfully, somewhat deeper issues:
of policies of self-reliance,
’The growth
the struggles on every continent by the
dispossessed and hungry millions to win a fair and decent life, to break out
of the power of landlords, of moneylenders, of the agents of foreign capital
will be decisive in the future ... foresters ... have historically supported
power, landed property, and the status quo, and acted as the gendarme of the
landed proprietor’
(emphasis added).
[Even where the people originally held
the land, it has been removed from them by military power in such places as
Indonesia.]
Although this begins to bring out how it is that major forest destruct
ion, for example, is not being undertaken by local people themselves,but by
large foreign companies (with the co-operation of a ruling ’’western" elite
in countries involved, elites characteristically propped up in turn by
"western" capital and armsj), it does not explain why "western"—style com
panies (Japanese as well as American and British) are, with considerable
government support, engaged in these activities.
Again, there are shallow
economic reasons, e.g. growth of GNP, consumer demand, etc.
But in fact the
bulk of tropical forest goes into pulp and paper most of which is used for
packaging, which most people do
not, in any good sense, choose to purchase,
but find it "thrust upon them" and difficult to avoid.
§4.
Getting to the roots, historical and ideological.
And so on.
The deeper reasons are
the underlying attitudes to the natural world that are held by western exploit
ing powers, attitudes such as human chauvinism, which have a very long history,
�and which were shaped and enforced first by the Renaissance, then the Enlight
enment, and more recently by both positivism and Marxism.
The main object of
the paper is to show how these attitudes figure in such practical matters as
forest destruction and its justification, to outline [again]
criticism of
them, and to indicate a long minority criticism of them, running from the
Germanic Sturm und Drang movement through classical anarchism to the counter
culture
§5.
the modern deeper environmental movement.
Wrong strategic directions:
the potiticaZ thrust.
WORLD (ECOLOGICAL) IMPOVERISHMENT:
IDEOLOGICAL BASES AND EXCUSES.
World ecological impoverishment is world impoverishment, because much
of great value is being lost without due value recompense.
at rapidly accelerating rate:
It is occurring
there is little cause for celebration of
^arthday X.
1.
The mounting ecological losses.
The phenomenon is well enough documented
within the limits of our rather abysmal knowledge awd of the systems^ species
and individuals being lost.
78).
(For a carefully referenced survey see Eckholm
�REFERENCES
E. Eckholm,
Disappearing Species:
The Social Challenge_>Worldwatch Paper 22
July 1978.
•
A. and A. Erhlich, Extinction;
$fJLc pc<Tf
/iouLi-ty
A/Cm/
Ho(-
P.H. Raven, ’Ethics and attitudes" in Conservation of Threatened Plants3
J.B. Simmons et aL) , Plenum, New York, 1976.
(ed
�/UoT^l
f
(
/
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7.
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9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
—-5 16 ■>
17.
r 18.
' 19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Z 25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
394. «
Machine metaphor " ---Reductionist
linear
--------------- Nature as instrumental ------ “* *"
Observer spirt from nature Causal ®odels-®achanisticZ------- /
Consciousness as epiphenomena1 Dead matter
Growth
Z
Quantitative
Non-Dialectical z
Discrete things
Knowledge as power
™—
No Spiritual dimensions Z-———
Technology as power
——
Having
——
Machine paradigms y-—------ ~
Mastery of nature fro© outside -Z
External relations ---- *-----Subject-object separation -Z-—
Centralization
Design &» technique ---------- ~~
Specialism Z
.—
Training - skills alone ‘Z
—-—~
Anthropocentric —-----Corporation </
— Competition y
——------ Uniformity Z
--------- —**“
Machine planet x
----------Science vs. Religion Z-——~—•
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organic metaphor
holistic
z
mult1-dimensiona1 (Hi erarchial)
intrinsic value in things
Participator-Agent
scausal-etochastic '
consciousness irreduciable
Living matter - energy
Development
Qualitative (changas) Z
Dialectical Z
.
Fields and processes Z
Coderst&nding and wisdom
Spiritual dimensions Z
Appropriate technology Z
Being
r.y
Ecological paradigm Z '
Mastery of self
v'
Internal and external relations
Subject-object reciprocity z""
Decentralisation 1
Design as art ^Z
Cultivation of whole person
. education - balanced Z
Transpersonal Z
Community Z
cooperation Z
diversity and symbiosis Z
Gaia Hypothesis (Living Planet)
Science & Religion Interact Z'
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
An account of the resource
In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
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The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy), two pages (title page and page 125) from Weisskopf WA (1971) Alienation
and economics, Dutton. (2 leaves)
7
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THE AGE OF [THE REALISATION OF] LIMITS?
1.
Growth versus Limits.
A phenomenon of the contemporary ags. is increasing
awareness of limits, espeO^ally material limits, due to resource and energy
limitations.
Hence, in part, the limits to growth (in part because there are
other major elements in models which reveal limits to growth:
pollution, etc.).
population,
The awareness is not a new one - the ancient Greeks put con
siderable emphasis on limits - but was largely lost sight of in modern times
until recently.
Although some material limitations are now widely reetrgjinised, in Europe and
/
North America^ at any rate, social limits are far from widely acknowledged, and
there is the idea that in the spiriual sphere there are no limitations.
Thus, for
example, Perelman:
The traditional social sphere is ... transcendental and spiritual.
i _• x..-
-- i -----~
‘-v- -ewards
the physical and social limits of the economic world (p.394)."
---- A similar open-fredte«ee-«Mte^e<-'in-the-spiritual sphere thenyls presented by
T. Haydon (Social Alternatives ~1980).
2.
The failure to realist, limits is a basic fault common to Marxism (Barman
p.150) and capitalism.
further down, p.399, >6 relies on false dichotomy between ’religious influence
and secular economic power’ which are said to be * complementary, when one grows,
the other declines. Also the suggestion that the£e are
social limits^the
’soft paradigm’ is not explained p.415?
to
W2- -M
/
Disappearing species and vanishing rainforests:
philosophical roots of the problem. *
wrong directions, and the
Both rainforests and species are
disappearing at an unprecedented and accelerating rate.
becoming
a vastly poorer place ecologically.
of great value is being lost or destroyed.
The world is fast
Which is really bad:
for much
Thus far there is substantial
agreement among a wide range of groups and organisations seriously concerned
about vanishing rainforests, disappearing species, and the ecological impover
ishment of the earth.
But penetrate a little further - ask for the causes of
this situation, for what should be done about it, why value is being diminished
in this way, and why there is any cause for concern - and the agreement begins
to evaporate.
Probe a little more widely, bringing in assessment of economists,
foresters, and politicians, and spokesmen for the elites of ’’developing nations ,
and agreement ceases, and substantial disagreement sets in.
The phenomena of disappearing life, animal and plant, creature and
species and ecosystem, are well-enough documented (if not well-enough knowin,
in several senses) for a sketch of the background to serve.
§2.
Background:
the rates of loss of species and disappearance of rainforest.
First, plants:the extinction of each species of plant is, on the average,
accompanied by a ten-|to thirty-fold loss amongst other organisms.
Therefore, the diversity of plants i£ the underlying factor
controlling the diversity of other organisms and thus the
stability of the world ecosystem ... nearly two-thirds of the
world’s plant species (at least 150,000species of flowering
plants) appear to be tropical in distribution.
... Considering
that there will be no undisturbed tropical lowland forest any
where in the world within twenty-five years, except for relatively
small reserves,
... it is certain that many of them will become
extinct during our lifetime.
To illustrate this point we need
only mention that the FAO estimates that about ten million
The paper was first sketched for Earthday 1980.
The topic is of considerable
relevance to Earthday X, for it concerns the ecological impoverishment of the
earth (which - despite Earthday - continues to accelerate) and reasons for it
especially the underlying philosophical and ideological grounds. (In the
latter connection the US has, despite its prominence in ecological concern
and in implementing things environmental, much to answer for.)
2.
hectares [1979 estimates are 16 million hectares] of tropical
forest are being felled annually.
... One supposes ... that
at least a third of [tropical plant species] will be threatened
or extinct by the end of the century, with the first major wave
of extinction in South-east Asia and New Guine^ ...
(Raven 1976).
Second, animals:It has been estimated that if current Saends in massive forest
clearing continue, about one-third of the species now found in
humid tropical forests - perhaps 15 to 20Z of all species on
earth - will be extinct only 20 years from now, and many more
in the ensuing decades.
This would be one of the greatest
impoverishments ever suffered.
|x----- —Third, rainforests:Every minute 30 hectares (about 75 acres) of the world s rain—
^forests are being destroyed.
The issue can be sharply p^roc^ssed by considering the world’s tropical
rainforests, where major Looweo are occurring.
The tropical moist forests are believed to contain between 2
and 5 million species from 2/5ths to ^planet’s total .
Thus i£ 1 million species are lost by the end of the twentieth century, the
I result would be the extinction of more than - perhaps much more than - l/5th
of the world’s
.
(Myers, p.4 & p.113).
Other estimates differ somewhat, but all serve to make the main point;
staggering ecological and biological losses and impoverishment.
§2.
Reasons and causes^ actdon and fataldsm (ineu^'i/Lity).
be disentangled.
There is much to
There are reasons for and against destroying rain-forests
and their dependent species, reasons which divide into shallower reasons and
deeper reasons.
The familiar shallow reasons against are those that answer back in one
way or another to human interests, and concern the pros and cons of rain
forests as
sources of genetic diversity and gene pools, as natural biological
sources for medicines, as
uftkt
catchment protection areas, and to prevent
and stop flooding, as buffer and quarantine zones, as refuges for
plants and animals.
The inadequacy of these sorts of reasons is not difficult to discern;
and the strategies they lead to would only sewe- bits and pieces here and
there.
,
-i -i
_
a_i_
_
Furthermore the onus is^wrong way round too, as well as the jacamng j
not reaching to any social depth.
What needs to say here is:
Why is all
3.
this happening?
What justifies it?
The onus is on those who try to proceed,
who are doing the doing, interfering destruction and demise.
The shallower reasons for tend to rely on the character of humans,
their attitudes and aspirations and now rather inevitable dominance.
causes fail.
Ini^t^l shallow explanatory theses to be critically
assessed and rejected include these:
1.
The overpopulation argument:
’unless the population explosion can be
damped down, wildlife will not survive’
2.
Economistic arguments:
(Webb, 1979).
forest destruction will alleviate poverty and
provides jobs and foreign revenue.
Rather, as forester Westoby recently explained,
’the unpalatable fact, for
foresters, is that forest industries have done very little to raise the
welfare of the urban and rural masses in developing countries;
instead
resources and wealth have been transferred to the rich industrialised
countries’
(or at least certain parts of their populations).
Westoby, who perhaps optimistically sees elements of change in the
world, went on to explain, colourfully, somewhat deeper issues:
of policies of self-reliance,
’The growth
the struggles on every continent by the
dispossessed and hungry millions to win a fair and decent life, to break out
of the power of landlords, of moneylenders, of the agents of foreign capital
will be decisive in the future ... foresters ... have historically supported
power, landed property, and the status quo, and acted as the gendarme of the
landed proprietor’
(emphasis added).
[Even where the people originally held
the land, it has been removed from them by military power in such places as
Indonesia.]
Although this begins to bring out how it is that major forest destruct
ion, for example, is not being undertaken by local people themselves,but by
large foreign companies (with the co-operation of a ruling ’’western" elite
in countries involved, elites characteristically propped up in turn by
"western" capital and armsj), it does not explain why "western"—style com
panies (Japanese as well as American and British) are, with considerable
government support, engaged in these activities.
Again, there are shallow
economic reasons, e.g. growth of GNP, consumer demand, etc.
But in fact the
bulk of tropical forest goes into pulp and paper most of which is used for
packaging, which most people do
not, in any good sense, choose to purchase,
but find it "thrust upon them" and difficult to avoid.
§4.
Getting to the roots, historical and ideological.
And so on.
The deeper reasons are
the underlying attitudes to the natural world that are held by western exploit
ing powers, attitudes such as human chauvinism, which have a very long history,
and which were shaped and enforced first by the Renaissance, then the Enlight
enment, and more recently by both positivism and Marxism.
The main object of
the paper is to show how these attitudes figure in such practical matters as
forest destruction and its justification, to outline [again]
criticism of
them, and to indicate a long minority criticism of them, running from the
Germanic Sturm und Drang movement through classical anarchism to the counter
culture
§5.
the modern deeper environmental movement.
Wrong strategic directions:
the potiticaZ thrust.
WORLD (ECOLOGICAL) IMPOVERISHMENT:
IDEOLOGICAL BASES AND EXCUSES.
World ecological impoverishment is world impoverishment, because much
of great value is being lost without due value recompense.
at rapidly accelerating rate:
It is occurring
there is little cause for celebration of
^arthday X.
1.
The mounting ecological losses.
The phenomenon is well enough documented
within the limits of our rather abysmal knowledge awd of the systems^ species
and individuals being lost.
78).
(For a carefully referenced survey see Eckholm
REFERENCES
E. Eckholm,
Disappearing Species:
The Social Challenge_>Worldwatch Paper 22
July 1978.
•
A. and A. Erhlich, Extinction;
$fJLc pc<Tf
/iouLi-ty
A/Cm/
Ho(-
P.H. Raven, ’Ethics and attitudes" in Conservation of Threatened Plants3
J.B. Simmons et aL) , Plenum, New York, 1976.
(ed
/UoT^l
f
(
/
Schematic c
;)t>^e
of
TWO paradigms*
perspn-PJ. unetary
1.
2»
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
—-5 16 ■>
17.
r 18.
' 19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Z 25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
394. «
Machine metaphor " ---Reductionist
linear
--------------- Nature as instrumental ------ “* *"
Observer spirt from nature Causal ®odels-®achanisticZ------- /
Consciousness as epiphenomena1 Dead matter
Growth
Z
Quantitative
Non-Dialectical z
Discrete things
Knowledge as power
™—
No Spiritual dimensions Z-———
Technology as power
——
Having
——
Machine paradigms y-—------ ~
Mastery of nature fro© outside -Z
External relations ---- *-----Subject-object separation -Z-—
Centralization
Design &» technique ---------- ~~
Specialism Z
.—
Training - skills alone ‘Z
—-—~
Anthropocentric —-----Corporation </
— Competition y
——------ Uniformity Z
--------- —**“
Machine planet x
----------Science vs. Religion Z-——~—•
Limited perspective Z^—------Captive of its own mythology X—
organic metaphor
holistic
z
mult1-dimensiona1 (Hi erarchial)
intrinsic value in things
Participator-Agent
scausal-etochastic '
consciousness irreduciable
Living matter - energy
Development
Qualitative (changas) Z
Dialectical Z
.
Fields and processes Z
Coderst&nding and wisdom
Spiritual dimensions Z
Appropriate technology Z
Being
r.y
Ecological paradigm Z '
Mastery of self
v'
Internal and external relations
Subject-object reciprocity z""
Decentralisation 1
Design as art ^Z
Cultivation of whole person
. education - balanced Z
Transpersonal Z
Community Z
cooperation Z
diversity and symbiosis Z
Gaia Hypothesis (Living Planet)
Science & Religion Interact Z'
Open poesibilities^jZ
Intentional myth
z>»~£
y
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U~&-Y tot
zz>
(A SVYK
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Box 61, Item 1781: Notes and cutting on environment ; Draft of The age of (the realisation of) limits?
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Various handwritten notes on scrap paper, and cutting from Weisskopf WA (1971) Alienation and economics, Dutton. Includes typescript draft of The age of (the realisation of) limits? by Richard Sylvan, with handwritten emendations, undated.
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An account of the resource
Verso of scrap paper not digitised. Cutting redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Title in collection finding aid: Writings of RS & VP on environment.
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Val+Plumwood&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Plumwood</a>
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Australian National University Office
Australian National University Office > Second Bookcase > Bottom Shelf
Box 61: Ethics and Theoretical Ethics
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/75fc64a2f672780af3de8a71e4e815bb.pdf
cc1ffac27c9576ab7491fb57f389143a
PDF Text
Text
SOME ETHICAL ASPECTS OF ENERGY OPTIONS.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Box 37 Braidwood, NSW. 2622.
Major ethical issues intrude conspicuously into the question
For example, the Kantian question:
of energy choice.
what ought
we to do (or try to do) in the awkward circumstances that will shortly
face us on the energy-front?
And Aristotle’s question:
What is a
a question transposed these days into questions as
good life like?
to quality of life and the extent to which quality genuinely depends
on quantity of energy (Aristotle thought, by the way, that a good
life required only a modicum of material goods.)
questions such as:
And traditional
What are we morally entitled to do to others,
and with respect to nature?
a question extended to include future
others and now asked seriously as regards wild nature.
modern questions such as:
And more
which sorts of consumer demand —
especially of energy-intensive goods - should be met?
It is evident enough then, without going into details , that
ethical questions have an important bearing on main issues on
energy choice and that a pure social engineering
approach to
the problem is bound to write in much that calls for examination
or rejection.
But it is often supposed - mistakenly - that the
ethical issues are adequately taken care of in the structures we
already have, e.g. through internal political and legal structures
and by international legal arrangements.
Suppose, it is said, the question of replacement of burners in
a Japanese electricity station arises, and the Japanese decide to
replace the burners by nuclear ones.
routine political way.
wider morality?
for the Japanese.
The matter is approved in a
Who are we to say that the matter is one of
It is a matter of internal pclitical arrangements
Suppose, to begin to see that this is not so,
that a nation decides to install(or replace in the course of modern
�2.
isation) the burners in a concentration camp, and that the matter
is approved in a routine political fashion and meets all internal
legal requirements.
We are almost all going to say that the matter
is one of wider morality.
And so also is taking choices on the life,
health and well being of future people in a nuclear adventure.
More
generally, pollution, and especially non-local types of pollution
such as nuclear pollution, raises ethical issues which transcend
conventional national and political boundaries.
For the effects of
pollution are often not locally contained, polluted air or water may
move far afield to affect even features of the world, such as climate
and ocean levels.
The idea that the ethics of such matters is satisfactorily
regulated by international legal arrangements - agreements, pacts,
contracts and the like or international regulatory agencies (where
they operate) - is likewise unsound.
For the arrangements commonly
bear little relation to what is considered right or just:
they
may have been arrived at by expediency or, at best, through moral
compromise, and they may reflect immediate self-interest rather
than morality.
Just as legal principles are in general neither
necessary nor sufficient as moral principles, so international
legal arrangements are no substitute for morality, and usually do
not even offer, a poor reflection of ethical arrangements.
More difficult to dispose of, and more insidious, are
engineering approaches to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc.
§1.
It is a commonplace nowadays that there is no method of pro
viding for future energy needs which will not involve substantial
costs to someone, and that these costs must just be accepted as
part of the price we pay for our advanced technological society and
our high living standard.
"If you want the benefits you must be
prepared to pay the costs" is part of the new conventional wisdom
�3.
on energy.
The model is that of a simple economic transaction, for
example someone going into a shop and buying paper towels — she
wants the paper so she must be prepared to pay over the money
representing the equivalent of the cost of the paper in unpleasant
labour, forest destruction, etc.
But here, on energy, as in so many other places, the conventional
wisdom is not to be trusted.
For the transaction model suggests
that the costs and benefits are evenly distributed, that those who
benefit pay the costs and vice versa.
is very often
But with energy options this
not so, and in fact this is one of the more important
ways in which the ethical aspects of the energy issue arise.
The
conventional transaction model is an attempt to gloss over crucial
ethical aspects of the problem.
Again, the energy issue raises
questions about the goals (ends) and values of society, and is not
just a disagreement about the best means of achieving unquestioned
or accepted goals, and it has an important bearing too on the
distribution of power both economic and political between various
groups.
Thus are involved then crucial political as well as ethical
aspects, and these too the simple transaction model attempts to sweep
under the carpet.
The simple transaction model, despite its appeal
to the technological mind, and to those who are anxious to maintain
the myth of the political and value freedomness of science and
technology, is quite inadequate, for it does not reflect significant
distributional features of the energy problem.
It is in fact an
attempt to ignore, deny or gloss over the crucial political and
ethical aspects of the energy issue, and to avoid facing the social
and ethical choices involved.
A more sophisticated relative of the transaction model is
now called risk assessment, which purports to provide a comparison
between the relative risks attached to different energy options which
settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are
�4.
encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to
people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than of option b,
3
which is already accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations
is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which is
accepted:
So nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little
reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves
the same kind of fallacy as the transaction model.
It is far too
simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment
we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:-
do the costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who
receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking,
or are costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit?
It is
only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared,
and there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on
such a basis would be valid.4
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly,
does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he
knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice,
knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in
proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
or a relatively trivial reason?
is it for a serious
A risk that is ethically acceptable
for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptably for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
trying to justify nuclear power.
employed in
The second argument (ii) involves
�5.
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that
of forgetting that the health risks in the nuclear sense are
cumulative, and in the eyes of many people already high if not too
high.
Despite a certain superficial plausibility, so-called risk
assessment as a method of comparing the ethical status of energy
options is little more than a bundle of fallacies deceptively
packaged in pseudo-scientific wrappings.
It purports to give a
simple apparently precise and scientific method of evaluating the
ethical status of energy options, but in fact it depends on a number
of hidden assumptions about which factors are relevant and which can
be ignored in an ethical assessment, which when brought out for
examination can be seen to be guite unacceptable.
§2. The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the
costs" is one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you
have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another
and very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle
that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a
significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself
onto other parties who are not involved in the activity and are not
beneficiaries.
This transfer principle
is especially clear in
cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or
health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
(Thus one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of
benefitting oneself.)
Suppose, for example, we consider a village
which produces, as a result of the industrial process by which it
lives, a noxious waste material which is expensive and difficult
to dispose/ye^t creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some
other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding
�6.
countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their
problem on a one-way delivery service to the next village.
The
inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process
or of sustaining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us
would see this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options:
that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer
of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not
involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit corres
pondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this condition
are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time
7
but also future generations (those of the next villages).
The
distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. onto non
beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious
forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable morel
features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the
world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we
received it - the transmission principle.
For if we did then that
would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be
independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories,
in particular contract theories such as Rawls’.)
Some philosophers8 have attempted to undercut the trans
mission principle, arguing that we are not morally obligated to
make sacrifices for the future.
Making sacrifices is however signifi
cantly different from refraining from passing on costs, and it is
the latter which is mainly at issue.
We might be making sacrifices,
for example, if we made ourselves worse off than future people might
be normally expected to be in order that they might be better off
than us.
We are passing on our costs when we make them worse off
�7.
than they would normally be because of some activity which benefits
us.
We may not be morally obliged to make sacrifices for future
people, but we do have a moral obligation not to pass on our costs,
and our obligations in this respect do not just apply to the next
generation, but to any set of people who could be affected.
In terms of the necessary condition we can undertake some
limited comparison of energy options from an ethical standpoint.
It is very doubtful that the main options that are being seriously
considered meet this condition for moral acceptibility ;
in particular
it is extremely doubtful that nuclear energy options do so.
Nuclear
energy appears to represent a classic case of passing on costs and
risks to nonbeneficiaries, especially future people, because of the
way in which nuclear waste created now produces risks and problems
for future people.
Unless a rigorously safe method of storage is
employed, as many as 40,000
generations of people have to face costs
in the shape of risks to health and life arising from the energy
consumption of at most perhaps 10 generations.
even worse when
The situation is
one reflects on the fact that many of the purposes
for which this energy will be required are of a dispensible and
unnecessary (and even undesirable) nature, and energy use of an
extravagant and needless kind would undoubtedly be involved in order
for the big increases in per capita energy consumption which justify
much of the nuclear expansion program in the industrialised world
to be reached.
Not only would costs be passed on to people in the
distant future to whom no benefits seem to accrue but his is done
9
for reasons that cannot be seen as pressing or needful.
The waste
disposal aspect of nuclear power production is not the only way in
which the nuclear option may pass on problems and costs to nonbene
ficiaries:
unless an unrealistic perfection in the handling, mining,
transport and processing and reprocessing of nuclear fuels and waste
�8.
is assumed, various forms of widespread radioactive pollution could
occur which would affect not only those who use and benefit from
the energy source but also very many who do not, especially m the
third world.10
We have heard a good deal recently from some local quarters
(the PR machinery of the Australian National University) about how
the nuclear waste disposal problem has been solved, and the objections
on the grounds of waste disposal eleminated.
Of course a number
of similar claims have been made in the past, and there never
was a problem according to hard-line nuclear advocates of nuclear
power.
There are good reasons for treating these claims with some
scepticism, and not merely because of disagreement among the parties,
but because what we have in effect with the final "solution
is
yet another proposal for a possible method of treating waste with
significant gaps in the arguments, a considerable lack of experimental
and practical support, and so on.11
We must be satisfied beyond
reasonable doubt that there is a completely safe procedure
before claims can be responsibily made that a problem of such
seriousness has been technically solved.
It is irresponsible,
especially on the part of university authorities, to give the
impression that such a problem is solved or eliminated when so much
remains to be done and when reasonable doubts may still be raised
as they may in this case.
An even more important reason why the
claims that the problem has been eliminated have to be rejected is
that even if a method of disposal can be experimentally (or even
commercially) demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt to be completely
safe, it is not the technical possibility of safe disposal that is
important from an ethical standpoint but the actual practical
likelihood of such a method being used.
Firstly, it is worth
�9.
bearing in mind that the new miracle method was immediately
rejected by some of the pronuclear establishment as both expensive
(despite optimistic cost estimates) and unnecessary, which does
not give a very hopeful prognosis for its use.
There are moreover
reasons for thinking that governments may not want or favour
permanent irretrievable disposal methods.
They may want to keep
open their options for employing waste either for military purposes
or for use in breeder reactors or elsewhere.
There is in fact
little reason to believe that nuclear pollution will be treated
in a different fashion from other forms of pollution, where the mere
fact that there are satisfactory methods of control is by no means
sufficient to guarantee their effective employment, especially if
they are expensive.
It would be methodologically unsound to ignore
these risk elements arising from social and political factors and
to regard the problem as a purely technological one which can be
classed as eliminated the moment someone puts forward a promising
looking technical proposal.
The practical likelihood, even with a
disposal method proven safe beyond reasonable doubt, remains - that
nuclear power will impose costs on future people who do not benefit,
that future people will either be forced to go to great expense and
trouble to dispose safely of the nuclear wastes generated by our
consumption, or that they will have to pay the price in their own
lives and health for inadequate disposal or storage of the wastes
generated by us.
For these reasons, we belive that the nuclear
energy option remains morally unacceptable!
and unacceptable not
merely from a particular ethical standpoint, but in terms of common
ground from a range of ethical positions.
§3.
One cannot pretend that the future energy option that is
frequently contrasted with nuclear, namely coal, is particularly
attractive - because of the likelihood of really serious (air)
�10.
pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmosphere
heating not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip
mining all of which will result from its use in meeting very high
Such an option would also fail,
projected consumption figures.
it seems, to meet the necessary condition, because it would impose
widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits
to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs
x. 13
of production and replacement.
These are the conventional options and a third is often added
which emphasizes soft or benign technologies, such as those of
solar energy.
The fundamental choice, such options tend to neglect,
is not technological but social, and involves both the restructuring
of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more basic level
there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, con
ventional technologically-oriented discussion tends to obscure.
It
is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet unexamined goals
but also a matter of examining the goals.
That is, we are not just
faced with the question of comparing different technologies or
substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of
consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with
soft rather than hard technologies;
we are also faced, and primarily,
with the matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost of
society that creates them.
It is not just a question of devising
less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived of us
inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways).
Of course one does not want to deny that these
softer options are superior to the clearly ethically unacceptable
features of the others.
�lie
But it is doubtful that any technology however benign in
principle will be likely to leave a tolerable world for future
people if it is expected to meet limitless and uncontrolled energy
consumption and demands.
Even the more benign technologies such
as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for
future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world
being handed on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the
world's forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of
use for production of methonal or of electricity by woodchipping,
as already planned by forest authorities in California and contem
plated by many other energy organisations.
Few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, but the un
restricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name
of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands
could well be the last nail in the coffin of the world's already
hard pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often discounted, even by soft technologicalists, by
the simple expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resource'.
Most forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a
certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are
now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the
forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the
renewal of all their values.in many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded,
so that a total decline is widely thought to be immanent if not
already well advanced.
It certainly has begun in some regions,
and for some forest types (such as rainforest types) which are being
lost for the future.
The addition of a major further demand source
that for energy— and especially one which shows every sign of being
not readily limitable,
on top of the present sources is one which
�12.
anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry
operations, who is also concerned with longterm conservation of
the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive
and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas,
desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and
massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not
want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world
to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by
nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - with
out any more basic structural and social change is not enough.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to
change a social structure which promotes consumerism and an economic
structure which encourages the use of highly energy-intensive modes
of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the
work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or
boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in
order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services.
A society
in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather
than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work
and in social relations and other activities, is bound to be one which
generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created
and non-genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption
frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
�13.
§4. Conclusions.
The social change option is a hard option, but
it seems the only way to avoid passing on serious costs to the
future - and there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical
ones for taking it.15
The ethical conditions thus lead
us into
political issues, but this is not very surprising, as there is no
sharp division between the areas (and political theories always
presuppose an ethics).
This kind of social change option tends
to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and how to
meet our energy needs, in part because it questions underlying
values of current social arrangements.
The conventional discussion
proceeds by taking alleged demand (often restated as wants or needs)
as unchallengeable,16 and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively
presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand
as lacking a social context so that the social structure which
produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengable and unchange
able.
The social changes that the option requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation
and power structure, and to the extent that the option represents
some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic
arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option
discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it.
�FOOTNOTES
(1)
A more detailed case would look at what is involved in
decision methods for choosing between options on energy
and would show that general decision modellings, e.g.
optimisation modellings for best choice, necessarily involve
evaluative factors, some of them of a>n ethical kind.
The ethical components are particularly conspicuous in
elementary decision theory where the assessment of each
outcome is obtained by multiplying the probability of
the outcome by its desirability, the desirability being
an overtly evaluative question often involving ethical
components.
Any idea that decision theory is somehow a
value-free way of reaching decisions is thoroughly wrong.
The pure theory may be a logico—mathematical one, but its
significant applications are not.
(2)
The pernicious underlying assumption - that major ethical issues
are not really a matter of individual concern and can, and
perhaps should, be left to elected government_or appointed
bureaucrats - can be despatched in a rather similar way.
(3)
Even then relevant environmental factors may have been
neglected.
(4)
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs
In this way risks,
against numbers such as probabilities.
construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through
such familiar methods as insurance).
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii') a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes
no more risks than b and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power
development in Saskatchewan
is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final Report, Department of
Environment, Government of Saskatchewan,
1978, p.305 and
p.288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power
sources. In other applications b has been taken as cigarette
smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war(’)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles (i)-(ii’). The principles are certainly ethically
substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced.from
nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional
character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially
accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though
its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would
not have been socially accepted if as much as is.now known.had
been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii’),
for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is
then 'ethically acceptable1 rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the
reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It
would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts/ namely
ethics to actuaries.
�2.
(5)
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are
narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect
distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an unconstrained optimisation what
is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley
'An expensive repair kit for utilitariansim'.
(6)
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is
construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly
justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopo
lised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute
counterexamples to the principle;
for one is not morally entitled
to so motor.
(7)
As we have argued in detail in R. and V. Routley 'Nuclear energy
and obligations to the future \ Inquiry 21 (1978), pp. 133-179 .
(8)
For example, Passmore in Man's Responsibility for Nature,
Duckworth, London, 1974, chapter 4.
(9)
A further problem of a less obvious kind is also created for
future people; the postponement of the switch away from energyintensive economies, which nuclear power is designed to effect,
creates a situation of increasing and critical dependence upon
energy-intensive uses at a time when there is eve.ry prospect that
Nevertheless
they cannot be sustained for more than a short time.
the growth of energy-intensive societies and lifestyles is encouraged
and fostered.
The switch is accordingly made far more difficult
than it is at present, and thus we may well be placing future
people in very difficult positions, with a real energy crisis.
Continuance on a high energy path in the present circumstances
seems then to violate the commonly recognised principle that we
have an obligation to hand on to the next generation a society
that is not conspicuously worse than that which we received.
(10)
A few nuclear plant accidents, for example, would significantly
increase background levels of radiation, so that millions of
people who are not involved might have to carry risks or costs
because of the energy consumption of a few wealthy nations or
wealthy elites. The increased risk of nuclear war is another
way in which global risks are imposed because of the determination
of industrial nations to maintain and increase lavish energy
consumption levels.
(11)
For an excellent discussion of the limitations of the proposed
disposal method see B. Martin, 'Radioactive waste disposal:
is Synroc the solution?'
(12)
For the reason that the consequences of failure are so serious:
see R. and V. Routley, op. cit. footnote 1.
(13)
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost
�3.
footnote 13 continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account
of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes
coootive)
strategies towards more satisfactory alter
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conser
vation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
(14)
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated as renewable
is that forest economics do not generally allow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy.
production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument m
L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
(15)
Certainly it is the only sort of option open to one who takes
a deeper ecological perspective.
(16)
Thus it is argued by representatives of such industries as
transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air
conditioners, power boats,- It would be authoritarian to stop them
satisfying these wants. The argument conveniently ignores
the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or
are produced. To point to the determination of many such
wants at the framework level is not hower to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at
the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) an .
there is no such thing as individual choice or determination
at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor
in determining certain kinds of choices such as those for
travel and infrastructure and to see apparently individual
choices made in such matters as being channelled.and directed
by a social framework determined largely in the interests o
private profit and advantage. See R.,and V. Routlev,
'Towards a social theory for ecotopia'.
�
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SOME ETHICAL ASPECTS OF ENERGY OPTIONS.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Box 37 Braidwood, NSW. 2622.
Major ethical issues intrude conspicuously into the question
For example, the Kantian question:
of energy choice.
what ought
we to do (or try to do) in the awkward circumstances that will shortly
face us on the energy-front?
And Aristotle’s question:
What is a
a question transposed these days into questions as
good life like?
to quality of life and the extent to which quality genuinely depends
on quantity of energy (Aristotle thought, by the way, that a good
life required only a modicum of material goods.)
questions such as:
And traditional
What are we morally entitled to do to others,
and with respect to nature?
a question extended to include future
others and now asked seriously as regards wild nature.
modern questions such as:
And more
which sorts of consumer demand —
especially of energy-intensive goods - should be met?
It is evident enough then, without going into details , that
ethical questions have an important bearing on main issues on
energy choice and that a pure social engineering
approach to
the problem is bound to write in much that calls for examination
or rejection.
But it is often supposed - mistakenly - that the
ethical issues are adequately taken care of in the structures we
already have, e.g. through internal political and legal structures
and by international legal arrangements.
Suppose, it is said, the question of replacement of burners in
a Japanese electricity station arises, and the Japanese decide to
replace the burners by nuclear ones.
routine political way.
wider morality?
for the Japanese.
The matter is approved in a
Who are we to say that the matter is one of
It is a matter of internal pclitical arrangements
Suppose, to begin to see that this is not so,
that a nation decides to install(or replace in the course of modern
2.
isation) the burners in a concentration camp, and that the matter
is approved in a routine political fashion and meets all internal
legal requirements.
We are almost all going to say that the matter
is one of wider morality.
And so also is taking choices on the life,
health and well being of future people in a nuclear adventure.
More
generally, pollution, and especially non-local types of pollution
such as nuclear pollution, raises ethical issues which transcend
conventional national and political boundaries.
For the effects of
pollution are often not locally contained, polluted air or water may
move far afield to affect even features of the world, such as climate
and ocean levels.
The idea that the ethics of such matters is satisfactorily
regulated by international legal arrangements - agreements, pacts,
contracts and the like or international regulatory agencies (where
they operate) - is likewise unsound.
For the arrangements commonly
bear little relation to what is considered right or just:
they
may have been arrived at by expediency or, at best, through moral
compromise, and they may reflect immediate self-interest rather
than morality.
Just as legal principles are in general neither
necessary nor sufficient as moral principles, so international
legal arrangements are no substitute for morality, and usually do
not even offer, a poor reflection of ethical arrangements.
More difficult to dispose of, and more insidious, are
engineering approaches to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc.
§1.
It is a commonplace nowadays that there is no method of pro
viding for future energy needs which will not involve substantial
costs to someone, and that these costs must just be accepted as
part of the price we pay for our advanced technological society and
our high living standard.
"If you want the benefits you must be
prepared to pay the costs" is part of the new conventional wisdom
3.
on energy.
The model is that of a simple economic transaction, for
example someone going into a shop and buying paper towels — she
wants the paper so she must be prepared to pay over the money
representing the equivalent of the cost of the paper in unpleasant
labour, forest destruction, etc.
But here, on energy, as in so many other places, the conventional
wisdom is not to be trusted.
For the transaction model suggests
that the costs and benefits are evenly distributed, that those who
benefit pay the costs and vice versa.
is very often
But with energy options this
not so, and in fact this is one of the more important
ways in which the ethical aspects of the energy issue arise.
The
conventional transaction model is an attempt to gloss over crucial
ethical aspects of the problem.
Again, the energy issue raises
questions about the goals (ends) and values of society, and is not
just a disagreement about the best means of achieving unquestioned
or accepted goals, and it has an important bearing too on the
distribution of power both economic and political between various
groups.
Thus are involved then crucial political as well as ethical
aspects, and these too the simple transaction model attempts to sweep
under the carpet.
The simple transaction model, despite its appeal
to the technological mind, and to those who are anxious to maintain
the myth of the political and value freedomness of science and
technology, is quite inadequate, for it does not reflect significant
distributional features of the energy problem.
It is in fact an
attempt to ignore, deny or gloss over the crucial political and
ethical aspects of the energy issue, and to avoid facing the social
and ethical choices involved.
A more sophisticated relative of the transaction model is
now called risk assessment, which purports to provide a comparison
between the relative risks attached to different energy options which
settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are
4.
encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to
people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than of option b,
3
which is already accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations
is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which is
accepted:
So nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little
reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves
the same kind of fallacy as the transaction model.
It is far too
simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment
we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:-
do the costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who
receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking,
or are costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit?
It is
only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared,
and there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on
such a basis would be valid.4
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly,
does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he
knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice,
knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in
proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
or a relatively trivial reason?
is it for a serious
A risk that is ethically acceptable
for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptably for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
trying to justify nuclear power.
employed in
The second argument (ii) involves
5.
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that
of forgetting that the health risks in the nuclear sense are
cumulative, and in the eyes of many people already high if not too
high.
Despite a certain superficial plausibility, so-called risk
assessment as a method of comparing the ethical status of energy
options is little more than a bundle of fallacies deceptively
packaged in pseudo-scientific wrappings.
It purports to give a
simple apparently precise and scientific method of evaluating the
ethical status of energy options, but in fact it depends on a number
of hidden assumptions about which factors are relevant and which can
be ignored in an ethical assessment, which when brought out for
examination can be seen to be guite unacceptable.
§2. The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the
costs" is one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you
have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another
and very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle
that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a
significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself
onto other parties who are not involved in the activity and are not
beneficiaries.
This transfer principle
is especially clear in
cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or
health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
(Thus one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of
benefitting oneself.)
Suppose, for example, we consider a village
which produces, as a result of the industrial process by which it
lives, a noxious waste material which is expensive and difficult
to dispose/ye^t creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some
other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding
6.
countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their
problem on a one-way delivery service to the next village.
The
inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process
or of sustaining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us
would see this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options:
that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer
of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not
involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit corres
pondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this condition
are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time
7
but also future generations (those of the next villages).
The
distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. onto non
beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious
forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable morel
features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the
world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we
received it - the transmission principle.
For if we did then that
would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be
independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories,
in particular contract theories such as Rawls’.)
Some philosophers8 have attempted to undercut the trans
mission principle, arguing that we are not morally obligated to
make sacrifices for the future.
Making sacrifices is however signifi
cantly different from refraining from passing on costs, and it is
the latter which is mainly at issue.
We might be making sacrifices,
for example, if we made ourselves worse off than future people might
be normally expected to be in order that they might be better off
than us.
We are passing on our costs when we make them worse off
7.
than they would normally be because of some activity which benefits
us.
We may not be morally obliged to make sacrifices for future
people, but we do have a moral obligation not to pass on our costs,
and our obligations in this respect do not just apply to the next
generation, but to any set of people who could be affected.
In terms of the necessary condition we can undertake some
limited comparison of energy options from an ethical standpoint.
It is very doubtful that the main options that are being seriously
considered meet this condition for moral acceptibility ;
in particular
it is extremely doubtful that nuclear energy options do so.
Nuclear
energy appears to represent a classic case of passing on costs and
risks to nonbeneficiaries, especially future people, because of the
way in which nuclear waste created now produces risks and problems
for future people.
Unless a rigorously safe method of storage is
employed, as many as 40,000
generations of people have to face costs
in the shape of risks to health and life arising from the energy
consumption of at most perhaps 10 generations.
even worse when
The situation is
one reflects on the fact that many of the purposes
for which this energy will be required are of a dispensible and
unnecessary (and even undesirable) nature, and energy use of an
extravagant and needless kind would undoubtedly be involved in order
for the big increases in per capita energy consumption which justify
much of the nuclear expansion program in the industrialised world
to be reached.
Not only would costs be passed on to people in the
distant future to whom no benefits seem to accrue but his is done
9
for reasons that cannot be seen as pressing or needful.
The waste
disposal aspect of nuclear power production is not the only way in
which the nuclear option may pass on problems and costs to nonbene
ficiaries:
unless an unrealistic perfection in the handling, mining,
transport and processing and reprocessing of nuclear fuels and waste
8.
is assumed, various forms of widespread radioactive pollution could
occur which would affect not only those who use and benefit from
the energy source but also very many who do not, especially m the
third world.10
We have heard a good deal recently from some local quarters
(the PR machinery of the Australian National University) about how
the nuclear waste disposal problem has been solved, and the objections
on the grounds of waste disposal eleminated.
Of course a number
of similar claims have been made in the past, and there never
was a problem according to hard-line nuclear advocates of nuclear
power.
There are good reasons for treating these claims with some
scepticism, and not merely because of disagreement among the parties,
but because what we have in effect with the final "solution
is
yet another proposal for a possible method of treating waste with
significant gaps in the arguments, a considerable lack of experimental
and practical support, and so on.11
We must be satisfied beyond
reasonable doubt that there is a completely safe procedure
before claims can be responsibily made that a problem of such
seriousness has been technically solved.
It is irresponsible,
especially on the part of university authorities, to give the
impression that such a problem is solved or eliminated when so much
remains to be done and when reasonable doubts may still be raised
as they may in this case.
An even more important reason why the
claims that the problem has been eliminated have to be rejected is
that even if a method of disposal can be experimentally (or even
commercially) demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt to be completely
safe, it is not the technical possibility of safe disposal that is
important from an ethical standpoint but the actual practical
likelihood of such a method being used.
Firstly, it is worth
9.
bearing in mind that the new miracle method was immediately
rejected by some of the pronuclear establishment as both expensive
(despite optimistic cost estimates) and unnecessary, which does
not give a very hopeful prognosis for its use.
There are moreover
reasons for thinking that governments may not want or favour
permanent irretrievable disposal methods.
They may want to keep
open their options for employing waste either for military purposes
or for use in breeder reactors or elsewhere.
There is in fact
little reason to believe that nuclear pollution will be treated
in a different fashion from other forms of pollution, where the mere
fact that there are satisfactory methods of control is by no means
sufficient to guarantee their effective employment, especially if
they are expensive.
It would be methodologically unsound to ignore
these risk elements arising from social and political factors and
to regard the problem as a purely technological one which can be
classed as eliminated the moment someone puts forward a promising
looking technical proposal.
The practical likelihood, even with a
disposal method proven safe beyond reasonable doubt, remains - that
nuclear power will impose costs on future people who do not benefit,
that future people will either be forced to go to great expense and
trouble to dispose safely of the nuclear wastes generated by our
consumption, or that they will have to pay the price in their own
lives and health for inadequate disposal or storage of the wastes
generated by us.
For these reasons, we belive that the nuclear
energy option remains morally unacceptable!
and unacceptable not
merely from a particular ethical standpoint, but in terms of common
ground from a range of ethical positions.
§3.
One cannot pretend that the future energy option that is
frequently contrasted with nuclear, namely coal, is particularly
attractive - because of the likelihood of really serious (air)
10.
pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmosphere
heating not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip
mining all of which will result from its use in meeting very high
Such an option would also fail,
projected consumption figures.
it seems, to meet the necessary condition, because it would impose
widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits
to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs
x. 13
of production and replacement.
These are the conventional options and a third is often added
which emphasizes soft or benign technologies, such as those of
solar energy.
The fundamental choice, such options tend to neglect,
is not technological but social, and involves both the restructuring
of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more basic level
there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, con
ventional technologically-oriented discussion tends to obscure.
It
is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet unexamined goals
but also a matter of examining the goals.
That is, we are not just
faced with the question of comparing different technologies or
substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of
consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with
soft rather than hard technologies;
we are also faced, and primarily,
with the matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost of
society that creates them.
It is not just a question of devising
less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived of us
inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways).
Of course one does not want to deny that these
softer options are superior to the clearly ethically unacceptable
features of the others.
lie
But it is doubtful that any technology however benign in
principle will be likely to leave a tolerable world for future
people if it is expected to meet limitless and uncontrolled energy
consumption and demands.
Even the more benign technologies such
as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for
future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world
being handed on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the
world's forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of
use for production of methonal or of electricity by woodchipping,
as already planned by forest authorities in California and contem
plated by many other energy organisations.
Few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, but the un
restricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name
of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands
could well be the last nail in the coffin of the world's already
hard pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often discounted, even by soft technologicalists, by
the simple expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resource'.
Most forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a
certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are
now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the
forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the
renewal of all their values.in many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded,
so that a total decline is widely thought to be immanent if not
already well advanced.
It certainly has begun in some regions,
and for some forest types (such as rainforest types) which are being
lost for the future.
The addition of a major further demand source
that for energy— and especially one which shows every sign of being
not readily limitable,
on top of the present sources is one which
12.
anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry
operations, who is also concerned with longterm conservation of
the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive
and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas,
desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and
massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not
want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world
to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by
nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - with
out any more basic structural and social change is not enough.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to
change a social structure which promotes consumerism and an economic
structure which encourages the use of highly energy-intensive modes
of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the
work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or
boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in
order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services.
A society
in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather
than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work
and in social relations and other activities, is bound to be one which
generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created
and non-genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption
frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
13.
§4. Conclusions.
The social change option is a hard option, but
it seems the only way to avoid passing on serious costs to the
future - and there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical
ones for taking it.15
The ethical conditions thus lead
us into
political issues, but this is not very surprising, as there is no
sharp division between the areas (and political theories always
presuppose an ethics).
This kind of social change option tends
to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and how to
meet our energy needs, in part because it questions underlying
values of current social arrangements.
The conventional discussion
proceeds by taking alleged demand (often restated as wants or needs)
as unchallengeable,16 and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively
presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand
as lacking a social context so that the social structure which
produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengable and unchange
able.
The social changes that the option requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation
and power structure, and to the extent that the option represents
some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic
arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option
discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it.
FOOTNOTES
(1)
A more detailed case would look at what is involved in
decision methods for choosing between options on energy
and would show that general decision modellings, e.g.
optimisation modellings for best choice, necessarily involve
evaluative factors, some of them of a>n ethical kind.
The ethical components are particularly conspicuous in
elementary decision theory where the assessment of each
outcome is obtained by multiplying the probability of
the outcome by its desirability, the desirability being
an overtly evaluative question often involving ethical
components.
Any idea that decision theory is somehow a
value-free way of reaching decisions is thoroughly wrong.
The pure theory may be a logico—mathematical one, but its
significant applications are not.
(2)
The pernicious underlying assumption - that major ethical issues
are not really a matter of individual concern and can, and
perhaps should, be left to elected government_or appointed
bureaucrats - can be despatched in a rather similar way.
(3)
Even then relevant environmental factors may have been
neglected.
(4)
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs
In this way risks,
against numbers such as probabilities.
construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through
such familiar methods as insurance).
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii') a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes
no more risks than b and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power
development in Saskatchewan
is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final Report, Department of
Environment, Government of Saskatchewan,
1978, p.305 and
p.288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power
sources. In other applications b has been taken as cigarette
smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war(’)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles (i)-(ii’). The principles are certainly ethically
substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced.from
nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional
character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially
accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though
its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would
not have been socially accepted if as much as is.now known.had
been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii’),
for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is
then 'ethically acceptable1 rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the
reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It
would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts/ namely
ethics to actuaries.
2.
(5)
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are
narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect
distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an unconstrained optimisation what
is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley
'An expensive repair kit for utilitariansim'.
(6)
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is
construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly
justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopo
lised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute
counterexamples to the principle;
for one is not morally entitled
to so motor.
(7)
As we have argued in detail in R. and V. Routley 'Nuclear energy
and obligations to the future \ Inquiry 21 (1978), pp. 133-179 .
(8)
For example, Passmore in Man's Responsibility for Nature,
Duckworth, London, 1974, chapter 4.
(9)
A further problem of a less obvious kind is also created for
future people; the postponement of the switch away from energyintensive economies, which nuclear power is designed to effect,
creates a situation of increasing and critical dependence upon
energy-intensive uses at a time when there is eve.ry prospect that
Nevertheless
they cannot be sustained for more than a short time.
the growth of energy-intensive societies and lifestyles is encouraged
and fostered.
The switch is accordingly made far more difficult
than it is at present, and thus we may well be placing future
people in very difficult positions, with a real energy crisis.
Continuance on a high energy path in the present circumstances
seems then to violate the commonly recognised principle that we
have an obligation to hand on to the next generation a society
that is not conspicuously worse than that which we received.
(10)
A few nuclear plant accidents, for example, would significantly
increase background levels of radiation, so that millions of
people who are not involved might have to carry risks or costs
because of the energy consumption of a few wealthy nations or
wealthy elites. The increased risk of nuclear war is another
way in which global risks are imposed because of the determination
of industrial nations to maintain and increase lavish energy
consumption levels.
(11)
For an excellent discussion of the limitations of the proposed
disposal method see B. Martin, 'Radioactive waste disposal:
is Synroc the solution?'
(12)
For the reason that the consequences of failure are so serious:
see R. and V. Routley, op. cit. footnote 1.
(13)
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost
3.
footnote 13 continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account
of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes
coootive)
strategies towards more satisfactory alter
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conser
vation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
(14)
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated as renewable
is that forest economics do not generally allow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy.
production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument m
L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
(15)
Certainly it is the only sort of option open to one who takes
a deeper ecological perspective.
(16)
Thus it is argued by representatives of such industries as
transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air
conditioners, power boats,- It would be authoritarian to stop them
satisfying these wants. The argument conveniently ignores
the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or
are produced. To point to the determination of many such
wants at the framework level is not hower to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at
the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) an .
there is no such thing as individual choice or determination
at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor
in determining certain kinds of choices such as those for
travel and infrastructure and to see apparently individual
choices made in such matters as being channelled.and directed
by a social framework determined largely in the interests o
private profit and advantage. See R.,and V. Routlev,
'Towards a social theory for ecotopia'.
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Typescript of draft, one page corrected with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1979) 'Some ethical aspects of energy options' in Diesendorf M, Bartell R, Casey C, Day A, Day LH, Gifford RM and Saddler H (eds), Energy and people: social implications of different energy futures, Society for Social Responsibility in Science A.C.T.
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�Nuclear energy and obligations to the future.
.. .discussion of values and goods may seem
fuzzy and unscientific, but it is the beginning
and end of any energy policy ... . (Lovins, 75, xxii).
Important ethical issues concerning obligations to the
future and evaluative issues as to what sort of world we want
to see are raised by proposed nuclear development, but have been
largely neglected in current technologically oriented discussion
of the development.
The first part of the paper considers the
arguments of a number of philosophers
philosophical positions
(e.g.
obligations to the future
we do have practical,
(e.g. Passmore)
and
c
social contract theories)
and rejects them.
concerning
It concludes that
and not merely theoretical, moral obligations
to the non-immediate future, and that these are not made void
by temporal remoteness or some degree of uncertainty about the
effects of our nations.
The second part of the paper considers
a number of examples of crimes against the future and sets the
more comp ex nuclear energy case against this background.
One
philosophical corollary which emerges is the falsity of the still
common view that philosophical analysis of moral concepts,
meta-ethics,
or
is neutral with respect to practical moral issues.
�r * '"'
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���A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears
in I.
Illich, Energy and Equity, Calder and Boyers, London,
1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy
represents is exactly the opposite of what the poor need.
The
main thesis seems to be that a society heavily dependent for basic
needs on capital demanding, commercially or centrally controllable
energy forms
(especially for transport), will inevitably create
energy hierachies and en/l ance poverty and inequalities in contrast
to a society employing low capital energy sources which people
control themselves,
fairly convincing,
such as bicycles or feet.
The main thesis is
given that there is unequal access to capital
and centralised power,
even if the argument for it leaves something
to be desired and the emphasis on speed as the critical factor
seems mistaken
(would the invention of a cheap 60 m.p.h.
bicycle
thereby convert the bicycle to an instrument of hierarchy?)
If
the thesis is correct the common economic assumption that the
solution to poverty lies in more and more massive inputs of costly
energy is mistaken in a quite fundamental way.
�Elaboration of
'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future, :
A note on expertise and methodology.
Some people may ask why philosophers, who know nothing about
nuclear physics,
should be dealing with this area, which surely
should be left to the province of the real experts in the area,
nuclear physicists and those with direct experience and authority
in the area of nuclear power.
One of the most irritating things in this area for a
philosopher is the sight of such people constantly presented, by
themselves and others,
as experts and authorities whose pronounce
ments on the issue should be accepted without question by laymen
(see e.g. articles
[15]
and
[16]), when in fact the issues involve
quite crucially issues of and assumptions about values and morality^
matters concerning which the so-called "authorities'
and
experts
commonly know less than the average first year student in philosophy.
Value issues and moral issues and issues of social and political
theory are probably more crucially concerned in the nuclear issues
than are issues of fact concerning nuclear power, and certainly
they are just as important.
Few philosophers nowadays would want to claim to be
experts
or "authorities" on matters of value or morality in the way nuclear
experts claim to be authorities on matters of nuclear power, who
can tell people what to do in way which is authoritative or
which must be uncritically accepted by the non-experts/non
philosophers .
Rejection of the argument from authority is basic
in proper philosophical method, going back to Plato and beyond,
and forming a basic position without which the subject,
as critical
inquiry into basic assumptions, could not operate as it does and
traditionally has.
Indeed rejection of the argument from
authority is one feature which distinguishes philosophy proper
from closely related areas such as theology,
casuistry,
some
�2.
areas of legal thought and various types of apology.
But a form
of the argument from authority-the claim to entitlement to have
one’s word or views accepted, not on the basis of what one says
and how sound it is,
but of who one is - appears however to be
an important element in the modern cult of the "scientific expert"
which has played such a large part in the contempory Australian
discussion of the nuclear issue.
While most philosophers would
reject the view that they were "experts"
or moral issues,
in this sense on values
philosophers can fairly lay claim to a number of
special skills which enable them to bring out explicit assumptions
about values or morality,
and expose defects in arguments.
philosophers also have moral views,
Most
that is, they believe some
things to be morally acceptable and others morally unacceptable,
although some might prefer to express similar attitudes without
use of explicit moral terminology.
In writing this paper then we don't hope to be accepted as
'authorities' or
'experts'
on moral questions, but only to have
skills which may throw light on some areas.
bring out value and moral assumptions,
We have tried to
expose logical defects and
inconsistencies in the structure of some of the arguments and in
certain sorts of argument concerning the future,
and to argue that
if one accepts a certain moral judgment
(which we accept and which
we believe would be widely agreed on*),
one should,
going to be consistent,
principles,
non-arbitrary ,
accept a certain other one.
if one is
and follow through one's
This seems to us a proper
area for philosophical work.
The non-philosophical or background factual assumptions which
are essential for discussing the issue are not large, and are in
substance only those of the Fox Report
(p.110,
in particular).
* We are sure that philosophers can be found who will disagree with
virtually every statement we make.
�Nuclear Power
Ethical and Social Dimensions
The issue of nuclear power raises many basic issues in ethics.
By means of an example, we argue for the illegitimacy of certain
sorts of transfers of costs,
transfers from one party who obtains
benefits from a given course of action,
onto other parties who do
The inadequate methods currently available for storing nuclear
not.
wastes mean that nuclear power could permit such an illegitimate
transfer of serious costs and risks onto future people.
Many of
the arguments for the acceptability of imposing such risks on the
future ignore these crucial ethical transfer issues.
We argue that
the mot'Q 1 constraints on action such transfer principles give rise
to are not removed by the fact that those affected are future and
not present people.
The nuclear issue and associated arguments also raise in a
highly topical wSy
really
many basic issues in social theory.
Do people
’need' all the consumer items nuclear power is supposed to
allow for,
and is it authoritarian or wrong to frustrate such needs,
or are such needs in part imposed by a particular, alterable social
framework?
Are existing democratic mechanisms for control over
the social framework adequate, or do they give inadequate control
and permit excessive concentrations of power?
If the answer to the
last question is affirmative, what kinds of social changes would
prevent such>concentrations of power and allow for more adequate
control by people over the social framework and over their own
lives?
The approach to all these questions depends crucially on
how the underlying elements of social interaction are conceived are these basic elements pure individuals, are they social wholes,
or do we need to assume both, distinct and irreducible, as we shall
argue ?
R. and V,. Rout ley
�t.
;
/
%
//
C
.
f
« ^7
£C—e
Z'
fe
c*
—
fl
AUStrOl/LCt'S
I£ nuclear energy is unacceptable on moral grounds, what of
Australia s role in cooperating in its development overseas?
Is its development
inevitable, as some say, so that others would sell if we didn’t and Australia
would simply profit from the folly and immorality of others?
assumption is false.
This inevitability
Most countries considering nuclear energy are not yet
irreversibly committed to it, and have other options.
Australia has a good
percentage of the world’s high-grade reserves of uranium and is regarded by western
powers as a stable and reliable energy source.
In so far as there is an economic
case for nuclear energy development, the relative cheapness of its fuel and
reliability of its source is a major part of it.
It seems likely that by with'
�holding its uranium Australia could shake this assumption and thus be influential
in directing attention to alternatives.
Nuclear energy development is not
inevitable, but even if it were, inevitability does not cancel moral responsibility.
Few would accept the argument of the hired assassin that if he did not do the job
someone else would be found who would perhaps make a messier job of it.
Australia
does not evade moral responsibility by arguing in a similar way, that other, possibly
even less responsible, suppliers would emerge.
Other arguments are presented to excuse Australia’s collaboration in nuclear
development, that by selling its uranium Australia will help prevent nuclear
proliferation and the development of the breeder reactor.
The argument that widely
exporting the basic means of making nuclear weapons is the best means of preventing
nuclear proliferation compares, in its twisted logic, with the all too familiar
6,,-vvA
claims that war is the best means of promoting peace, that the best way to assist
the poor is to increase the power of the wealthy^and so on.
help prevent development of the breeder reactor?
Will uranium export
That seems, at least, unlikely,
since the most important potential customers, in Europe, have already announced
their determination to proceed with it, while the other most important customer,
Japan, has made no secret of its interest in it.
faulty too.
But such an argument is logically
The fact that the breeder creates even worse problems, for present
people, than conventional fission reators hardly shows that conventional fission
A
is acceptable or ought not also to be opposed.
These are not exhaustive options,
and the case against even conventional fission energy is a sufficiently strong one.
The strategy of the argument here is to suggest that rather than opposing or
resisting something immoral, one should collaborate in it in order to use one’s
influence to secure improvements;
this would justify, for example, assisting in
fabricating evidence against an innocent man in order to use one’s influence to
ensure minimum suffering, a speedy trial and humane execution.
These arguments to excuse Australia’s participation are sad and threadbare,
exhibiting the morality of the market.
There seems little doubt that Australia’s
collaboration will assist and encourage the development of nuclear energy as
opposed to alternatives.
Thus Australia’s uranium export policy makes it an
important accomplice in this crime against the future.
�The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
•
Cutting (photocopy), 'Letters' (24 November 1978), Science, 202: 818, 820-821. (3 leaves)
Cutting (photocopy), 'The World: Europe' (13 November 1976), The Economist, 261: 6364. (2 leaves)
Cutting (photocopy), 'Nuclear man at bay' (19 March 1977), The Economist, 292(2): 12-13.
(2 leaves)
�9
/vuclem
9
7 7/A
»
■«■
r«v<-Z
>
^4
Jr
X
(7
6s *'t
Ai
cr *
7
C T~
<7^
��The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Typescript (photocopy), Embargoed Advance material for release at 0200 GMT January 15 1981
of Jimmy Cater, 39th President of the United States: 1977 ‐ 1981, Farewell Address to the
Nation. (5 leaves)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
An account of the resource
In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
<%///# /(V?fac/
’
Nuclear energy and obligations to the future.
.. .discussion of values and goods may seem
fuzzy and unscientific, but it is the beginning
and end of any energy policy ... . (Lovins, 75, xxii).
Important ethical issues concerning obligations to the
future and evaluative issues as to what sort of world we want
to see are raised by proposed nuclear development, but have been
largely neglected in current technologically oriented discussion
of the development.
The first part of the paper considers the
arguments of a number of philosophers
philosophical positions
(e.g.
obligations to the future
we do have practical,
(e.g. Passmore)
and
c
social contract theories)
and rejects them.
concerning
It concludes that
and not merely theoretical, moral obligations
to the non-immediate future, and that these are not made void
by temporal remoteness or some degree of uncertainty about the
effects of our nations.
The second part of the paper considers
a number of examples of crimes against the future and sets the
more comp ex nuclear energy case against this background.
One
philosophical corollary which emerges is the falsity of the still
common view that philosophical analysis of moral concepts,
meta-ethics,
or
is neutral with respect to practical moral issues.
r * '"'
xwz^f
/A
/.
Z-
fC'”-'l
- z^zzwf
LOW
q/7
//¥/Woc>
7"
f//7/^r
*
r'^' <
X
ft/TWM si
J ■
7/.//7J
Bfjte
L ■
*?■. 1
.
; ■-
______ .__________ '
77^^Z^7/
/
\
1 <21 w*-*-* ^*7,
/ indeed so
much energy is required in reactor establishment
Fthat it will be a considerable time before nuclear development makes a substantial
fpositive contribution to net energy output. ;
x@
«J ■
/V <1
<- *
x
;/
, z-X
/* C
&■
/
X <xXX XX
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears
in I.
Illich, Energy and Equity, Calder and Boyers, London,
1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy
represents is exactly the opposite of what the poor need.
The
main thesis seems to be that a society heavily dependent for basic
needs on capital demanding, commercially or centrally controllable
energy forms
(especially for transport), will inevitably create
energy hierachies and en/l ance poverty and inequalities in contrast
to a society employing low capital energy sources which people
control themselves,
fairly convincing,
such as bicycles or feet.
The main thesis is
given that there is unequal access to capital
and centralised power,
even if the argument for it leaves something
to be desired and the emphasis on speed as the critical factor
seems mistaken
(would the invention of a cheap 60 m.p.h.
bicycle
thereby convert the bicycle to an instrument of hierarchy?)
If
the thesis is correct the common economic assumption that the
solution to poverty lies in more and more massive inputs of costly
energy is mistaken in a quite fundamental way.
Elaboration of
'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future, :
A note on expertise and methodology.
Some people may ask why philosophers, who know nothing about
nuclear physics,
should be dealing with this area, which surely
should be left to the province of the real experts in the area,
nuclear physicists and those with direct experience and authority
in the area of nuclear power.
One of the most irritating things in this area for a
philosopher is the sight of such people constantly presented, by
themselves and others,
as experts and authorities whose pronounce
ments on the issue should be accepted without question by laymen
(see e.g. articles
[15]
and
[16]), when in fact the issues involve
quite crucially issues of and assumptions about values and morality^
matters concerning which the so-called "authorities'
and
experts
commonly know less than the average first year student in philosophy.
Value issues and moral issues and issues of social and political
theory are probably more crucially concerned in the nuclear issues
than are issues of fact concerning nuclear power, and certainly
they are just as important.
Few philosophers nowadays would want to claim to be
experts
or "authorities" on matters of value or morality in the way nuclear
experts claim to be authorities on matters of nuclear power, who
can tell people what to do in way which is authoritative or
which must be uncritically accepted by the non-experts/non
philosophers .
Rejection of the argument from authority is basic
in proper philosophical method, going back to Plato and beyond,
and forming a basic position without which the subject,
as critical
inquiry into basic assumptions, could not operate as it does and
traditionally has.
Indeed rejection of the argument from
authority is one feature which distinguishes philosophy proper
from closely related areas such as theology,
casuistry,
some
2.
areas of legal thought and various types of apology.
But a form
of the argument from authority-the claim to entitlement to have
one’s word or views accepted, not on the basis of what one says
and how sound it is,
but of who one is - appears however to be
an important element in the modern cult of the "scientific expert"
which has played such a large part in the contempory Australian
discussion of the nuclear issue.
While most philosophers would
reject the view that they were "experts"
or moral issues,
in this sense on values
philosophers can fairly lay claim to a number of
special skills which enable them to bring out explicit assumptions
about values or morality,
and expose defects in arguments.
philosophers also have moral views,
Most
that is, they believe some
things to be morally acceptable and others morally unacceptable,
although some might prefer to express similar attitudes without
use of explicit moral terminology.
In writing this paper then we don't hope to be accepted as
'authorities' or
'experts'
on moral questions, but only to have
skills which may throw light on some areas.
bring out value and moral assumptions,
We have tried to
expose logical defects and
inconsistencies in the structure of some of the arguments and in
certain sorts of argument concerning the future,
and to argue that
if one accepts a certain moral judgment
(which we accept and which
we believe would be widely agreed on*),
one should,
going to be consistent,
principles,
non-arbitrary ,
accept a certain other one.
if one is
and follow through one's
This seems to us a proper
area for philosophical work.
The non-philosophical or background factual assumptions which
are essential for discussing the issue are not large, and are in
substance only those of the Fox Report
(p.110,
in particular).
* We are sure that philosophers can be found who will disagree with
virtually every statement we make.
Nuclear Power
Ethical and Social Dimensions
The issue of nuclear power raises many basic issues in ethics.
By means of an example, we argue for the illegitimacy of certain
sorts of transfers of costs,
transfers from one party who obtains
benefits from a given course of action,
onto other parties who do
The inadequate methods currently available for storing nuclear
not.
wastes mean that nuclear power could permit such an illegitimate
transfer of serious costs and risks onto future people.
Many of
the arguments for the acceptability of imposing such risks on the
future ignore these crucial ethical transfer issues.
We argue that
the mot'Q 1 constraints on action such transfer principles give rise
to are not removed by the fact that those affected are future and
not present people.
The nuclear issue and associated arguments also raise in a
highly topical wSy
really
many basic issues in social theory.
Do people
’need' all the consumer items nuclear power is supposed to
allow for,
and is it authoritarian or wrong to frustrate such needs,
or are such needs in part imposed by a particular, alterable social
framework?
Are existing democratic mechanisms for control over
the social framework adequate, or do they give inadequate control
and permit excessive concentrations of power?
If the answer to the
last question is affirmative, what kinds of social changes would
prevent such>concentrations of power and allow for more adequate
control by people over the social framework and over their own
lives?
The approach to all these questions depends crucially on
how the underlying elements of social interaction are conceived are these basic elements pure individuals, are they social wholes,
or do we need to assume both, distinct and irreducible, as we shall
argue ?
R. and V,. Rout ley
t.
;
/
%
//
C
.
f
« ^7
£C—e
Z'
fe
c*
—
fl
AUStrOl/LCt'S
I£ nuclear energy is unacceptable on moral grounds, what of
Australia s role in cooperating in its development overseas?
Is its development
inevitable, as some say, so that others would sell if we didn’t and Australia
would simply profit from the folly and immorality of others?
assumption is false.
This inevitability
Most countries considering nuclear energy are not yet
irreversibly committed to it, and have other options.
Australia has a good
percentage of the world’s high-grade reserves of uranium and is regarded by western
powers as a stable and reliable energy source.
In so far as there is an economic
case for nuclear energy development, the relative cheapness of its fuel and
reliability of its source is a major part of it.
It seems likely that by with'
holding its uranium Australia could shake this assumption and thus be influential
in directing attention to alternatives.
Nuclear energy development is not
inevitable, but even if it were, inevitability does not cancel moral responsibility.
Few would accept the argument of the hired assassin that if he did not do the job
someone else would be found who would perhaps make a messier job of it.
Australia
does not evade moral responsibility by arguing in a similar way, that other, possibly
even less responsible, suppliers would emerge.
Other arguments are presented to excuse Australia’s collaboration in nuclear
development, that by selling its uranium Australia will help prevent nuclear
proliferation and the development of the breeder reactor.
The argument that widely
exporting the basic means of making nuclear weapons is the best means of preventing
nuclear proliferation compares, in its twisted logic, with the all too familiar
6,,-vvA
claims that war is the best means of promoting peace, that the best way to assist
the poor is to increase the power of the wealthy^and so on.
help prevent development of the breeder reactor?
Will uranium export
That seems, at least, unlikely,
since the most important potential customers, in Europe, have already announced
their determination to proceed with it, while the other most important customer,
Japan, has made no secret of its interest in it.
faulty too.
But such an argument is logically
The fact that the breeder creates even worse problems, for present
people, than conventional fission reators hardly shows that conventional fission
A
is acceptable or ought not also to be opposed.
These are not exhaustive options,
and the case against even conventional fission energy is a sufficiently strong one.
The strategy of the argument here is to suggest that rather than opposing or
resisting something immoral, one should collaborate in it in order to use one’s
influence to secure improvements;
this would justify, for example, assisting in
fabricating evidence against an innocent man in order to use one’s influence to
ensure minimum suffering, a speedy trial and humane execution.
These arguments to excuse Australia’s participation are sad and threadbare,
exhibiting the morality of the market.
There seems little doubt that Australia’s
collaboration will assist and encourage the development of nuclear energy as
opposed to alternatives.
Thus Australia’s uranium export policy makes it an
important accomplice in this crime against the future.
The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
•
•
•
Cutting (photocopy), 'Letters' (24 November 1978), Science, 202: 818, 820-821. (3 leaves)
Cutting (photocopy), 'The World: Europe' (13 November 1976), The Economist, 261: 6364. (2 leaves)
Cutting (photocopy), 'Nuclear man at bay' (19 March 1977), The Economist, 292(2): 12-13.
(2 leaves)
9
/vuclem
9
7 7/A
»
■«■
r«v<-Z
>
^4
Jr
X
(7
6s *'t
Ai
cr *
7
C T~
<7^
The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Typescript (photocopy), Embargoed Advance material for release at 0200 GMT January 15 1981
of Jimmy Cater, 39th President of the United States: 1977 ‐ 1981, Farewell Address to the
Nation. (5 leaves)
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Box 106, Item 3: Early drafts, notes and cuttings on big nuclear
Subject
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Various typescript and handwritten early drafts and notes on big nuclear, undated. Includes cuttings on nuclear power and photocopy of Embargoed Advance material for release at 0200 GMT January 15 1981 of Jimmy Cater, 39th President of the United States: 1977 ? 1981, Farewell Address to the Nation.
Description
An account of the resource
Verso of scrap papers not digitised. Cutting redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Papers housed in unnumbered folder marked Australia's Defence. Item number assigned by library staff. One of four papers digitised from item 2.
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
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<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 106, Item 3
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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Box 106: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics [War and Peace]
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/0b17d50e19500ff0b2b32520f6a252ed.pdf
89d18b08b7b801165a65380cf512aeec
PDF Text
Text
AGAINST THE INEVITABILITY OF HUMAN CHAUVINISM
In our enlightened times, when most forms of chauvinism have been abandoned
at least in theory by those who consider themselves progressive, western ethics
still appears to retain, at its very heart, a fundamental form of chauvinism,
namely, human chauvinism.
ethical theories
For both popular western thought and most western
assume that both value and morality can ultimately be reduced
to matters of interest or concern to the class of humans.
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is substantially differential,
discriminatory, and inferior treatment (characteristically, but not necessarily,
by members of the privileged class) of items outside the class, for which there
is not sufficient justification.
Human chauvinism, like other varieties of
chauvinism, can take stronger and weaker forms;
an example of the weaker form
is the Greater Value Thesis, the invariable allocation of greater value or
preference, on the basis of species, to humans, while not however entirely
excluding non-humans from moral consideration and claims.
We will be concerned
primarily with strong forms of human chauvinism, which see value and morality as
ultimately concerned entirely with humans, and non-human items as having value
or creating constraints on human action only insofar as these items serve human
interests or purposes.
In recent years, since the rise of the 'environmental consciousness', there
has been increasing, if still tentative, questioning of this exclusive concern
with, or at least heavy bias towards, human interests;
and indeed, at a time
when human beings are rapidly accelerating their impact on the natural world,
the question as to the validity of this basic assumption is not merely an
abstract one, but is of immediate and practical concern in its implications for
This thesis has, among other unacceptable outcomes, the consequence that,
if there is only room in one's boat for one and one must choose between
saving Adolf Hitler and a wombat which has lived a decent and kindly life
and never harmed a living creature, one is morally obligated to choose the
former. That would not be the choice of the authors.
�2.
human action.
In reply to this questioning (which appears to originate largely
from people with environmental interests), modern moral philosophers - fulfilling
their now established function of providing a theoretical superstructure to explain
and justify contemporary moral sensibilities,
questioning fundamental
assumptions - tend to argue that the bias towards human interests, which is an
integral part of going ethical theories, is not just another form of class
chauvinism which it is both possible and desirable to eliminate, but rather a
restriction dictated by the logic of evaluative and moral concepts, and that
there is no coherent, possible or viable alternative to the "human chauvinism"
of standard ethical theories.
series of
In this paper we want to consider and reject a
arguments in the theory of value designed to show that this
is so, and thereby to advance the cause of an alternative, non-chauvinistic,
environmental ethic.
The orthodox defence of human chauvinism argues that it is inevitable
that humans should be taken as the exclusive subjects of value and morality.
Humans are uniquely and exclusively qualified for moral consideration and
attributions of value, according to this defence either because the human
species alone does, as a matter of fact, possess properties which are a pre
condition for such ascriptions or because, as a matter of the definition or
the logic or the significance of moral concepts in natural language, such
considerations are restricted, as a matter of logic, to the human species.
In the first case the restriction of morality and value to the human species
will be taken as contingent, in the second necessary.
In either case, if the
argument is correct, the bias in favour of humans in current theories is
inescapable, so that, depending on one's definition of chauvinism, either
human chauvinism itself is inevitable, or human bias is, because justifiable,
not a real chauvinism at all.
We shall consider the logical or definitional
approach first.
According to the definitional approach, moral and evaluative terms are,
as a matter of their definitions, restricted in their application to members
of the human species;
only in a secondary way
at best do such terms find a
�3.
wider application, according as evaluated items are instrumental to human
interests.
The thesis is often backed up by the production of definitions
which are so restricted, for example,
'the value of a thing is its capacity
to confer a benefit on someone, to make a favourable difference to his life'
(Baier, in [13], p. 40), where in the intended context 'someone' is obviously
restricted to humans.
The attempt to preserve human chauvinism in an unchallengeable form
through definitions involves the fallacy of taking definitions to be self
validating and unchallengeable, and appears to be based on the confusion of
abbreviative definitions with those involving or presupposing substantive
claims, such as creative definitions, which may be accepted or rejected.
Such
definitions as those above, cannot be merely abbreviative because they attempt
to characterise or explicate already understood terms, such as 'moral' or
'value'.
Worse still, they do so in a way which is not dictated by prevailing
usage - which does not require that moral and value terms be restricted in
range to human:in order that they continue to apply to humans in the ordinary
way.
Alternative definitions which do not so restrict the range of application
may be supplied, they can in fact be found by looking up dictionaries, and
these alternatives quite properly do not close off genuine issues which natural
language itself leaves open.
The fallacy of the definitional move is that of believing that by converting
the substantive evaluative theses of human chauvinism to matters of definition
they become somehow exempt from challenge or need for justification.
This is
comparable to justifying discriminatory membership for a club by referring to
the rules, similarly conceived as self-validating and exempt from question or
justification.
Since a similar move could obviously be employed to limit
membership of the Moral Club to say, white male humans in place of humans, it
is plain that such a definitional argument does far too much, and is capable
of use to produce completely unacceptable conclusions.
But of course substantive theses involved in definitions, like club rules,
are not exempt from challenge and may be arbitrary, undesirable, restrictive,
c/
�4.
and in need of justification.
Once this is grasped the definitional move can
be seen as entirely question-begging, since the question of the acceptability
and inevitability of human chauvinism is simply transformed into the question
of the acceptability and inevitability of the definition.
The production of
such human chauvinist definitions has done nothing to advance the case of
human chauvinism, other than to throw a spurious air of unchallangeability and
over the highly challengeable and arbitrary substantive theses
they embody.
The attempt to settle substantive issues 'by definition' is both
philosophically facile and methodologically unsound, and is especially so when
there are clearly alternative definitions which would not settle the issue in
the same way.
What, however, of the substantive claim presupposed by the
definitional move, namely that as a matter of natural language usage, or the
logic of moral and evaluative concepts, the meaning of moral and value terms,
it is logically necessary that direct, non-instrumental, application of such
terms be restricted to the human (a claim made at least in the case of rights
by Ritchie [4], p. 107, and subsequently by Passmore [5] and [9]^,p. 116, 189,
Ay
and,others).
But usually, when it is asserted that non-humans cannot have
rights, obligations and such like, what sort of 'cannot' is involved is
not specified - whether
it is a 'cannot' of logical impossibility, or of
non-significance or absurdity, or something else again (the point is nicely
illustrated by Feinberg's discussion of McCloskey,
McCloskey [11] itself).
in
p. 195 , and by
In any case, however, the thesis appears to be mistaken,
for it rules out as logically impossible or absurd a number of positions and
theses which are very plainly neither and which it may even, in some circumstances,
be important to consider.
For example, it is surely neither impossible nor absurd
to consider moral questions concerning conduct of humans towards other species,
e.g. to a race of sensitive and intelligent extraterrestrial beings, and
similarly moral questions arising from their conduct towards or concerning humans,
indeed science fiction writ .ers do this commonly without producing nonsense or
contradicting themselves.
Not only does the proposed restriction appear quite
�5.
mistaken given current usage, but there seems indeed to be something logically
unsound about the attempt to place a logical restriction to a particular species
on such terms, just as there would be in restricting membership of the Moral
Club to people with blue eyes and blond hair who are over 6 feet tall.
The
accident of being a zoological human, defined in terms of various physical
characteristics, cannot be morally relevant.
It is impossible to restrict
moral terms to particular species, when species distinctions are defined in
terms of physical characteristics which are not morally relevant.
More generally, any attempt to derive a logically necessary connection
between humanity itself and the applicability of morality is bound to fail.
For creatures anatomically and zoologically distinct from humans which are
identical with humans in terms of all morally relevant features are logically
possible, upsetting any logical linkage.
tie between humanity
But attempts to establish a logical
and morality through features which all and only humans
possess and which are themselves linked logically to morality, would, of course,
involve a modal fallacy, namely that of substituting a contingent equivalence
within an opaque modal conte t of logical necessity.
In order for such an
argument to be val? d, it would have to be logically necessary that non
humans do not possess such features, not merely a contingent fact that they
do not;
but this assumption must be incorrect for morally relevant
characteristics.
The only proposal which has ac/n/tce of succeeding, then, is the factual one
which makes the selection of just humans for the Moral Club a contingent matter,
the claim being that as a matter of contingent fact all and only humans possess
a certain set of characteristics, which characteristics themselves are logically
tied with qualification for moral consideration and for direct attribution of
value to the possessor.
What this contingent form of human chauvinism has to produce then, in
order to establish its case, is a set of characteristics which satisfy the
following conditions of adequacy:
�6.
1.
The set of characteristics must be possessed by at least all properly
functioning humans, since to omit any significant category usually considered
subject to moral consideration, such as infants, young children, primitive
tribesmen etc., and to allow that it was permissible to treat these gro^J^L^
in the way it is considered permissible to treat non-humans, ^s mere instruments,
would certainly be repuguant to modern moral sensibilities, and would offend
common intuitions as to the brotherhood of man, the view that all humans are
possessors of inalienable
rights.
Thus human chauvinism, if it is to produce
a coherent theory which does not unacceptably rule out some groups of humans
must find some set of features common to the most diverse members of humankind,
from Rio Tinto executives to hunter-gatherer tribes of Amazonian Indians,
from those who engage in highly abstract activities such as logic and
mathematics to those who cannot, from the literate and cultured to the
illiterate and uncouth, from the poet and professor to the infant.
This
alone will be no easy task.
2.
In order for human chauvinism to be justified this set of characteristics
must not be possessed by any non-human.
3.
The set of characteristics must not merely be morally relevant,but
sufficient to justify, in a non-circular way, the cut-off of moral consideration
at exactly the right point.
If human chauvinism is to avoid the charge of
arbitrariness and unjustifiability, and demonstrate its inevitability and
the impossibility of alternatives, it must emerge from the characteristicj
why items not having
may be used as mere instruments to serve the interests
of those which do possess
There must be some explanatory logical
connection between the set of characteristics and membership of the Moral
Club.
Chauvinists aie.
fc
stress
distinguishing points between
the privileged class and those outside it - and there is no lack of
characteristics which distinguish humans from non-humans, at least
functioning healthy adult ones.
The point is that these distinctions usually
do not warrant the sort of radically inferior treatment for which they are
�7.
proposed as a rationale.
On the basis of the characteristics then the
proposed radical difference in treatment between the privileged and non
privileged class and the purely instrumental treatment of the non-privileged
class, must be warranted, that is, the distinguishing characteristics must
be able to carry the moral superstructure placed upon them.
A large and exceedingly disparate collection of features has been suggested
as distinguishing humans from non-humans and justifying human chauvinism.
But
it turns out that every one of these, on examination, either fails to pick out
the desired privileged class of humans in an unequivchcal fashion, that is, it
applies to some non-humans or excludes some humans who should not be excluded,
or, when it does select the desired class, fails on condition 3, and does not
warrant the exclusive claim to moral consideration of the privileged class.
Many suggested criteria in fact fail on more than one count.
The traditional distinction between humans and the rest in terms of
rationality illustrates the point.
Once the theological doctrines of the
exclusively human soul on which the distinction once rested are abandoned,
it is not so easy to see what is meant by this term.
Indeed it often appears
to function as little more than a self-congratulatory predicate applied
exclusively to humans, with no other clear function at all.
clarifications are sometimes offered.
However various
For example rationality may be said
to be the ability to reason, this being tested by such basically linguistic
performances as the ability to do lo^ic, to prove theorems, to draw conclusions
from arguments and to engage in inductive and deductive linguistic behaviour.
But such stringent and linguistically-loaded criteria will eliminate far
too many members of the human species who cannot perform these tasks.
If,
however, behavioural criteria for rationality are adopted, or the ability to
solve problems and to fit attion to individual goals becomes the test - that
is, practical reasoning is the test - it is obvious that many non-human
admission to
the Moral Club, rather than the ability to perform some other
�tasks
or meet some other set of standards, such as orienteering ability,the
ability to mix concrete (the use of concrete being, afte^all, a far more
conspicuous feature of modern human society than the use of reason).
One
senses also in the appeal to such criteria (andespecially to linguistic
criteria) the overvaluation of the things in which the privileged class
typically excells and the undervaluation of the skills - not obviously^ in any
non—circular way inferior - of the non-privileged class, which is such a
typical feature of chauvinism.
We list
some of the suggested characteristics supposedly justifying
human chauvinism, and indicate in brackets after each some of the conditions
they fail:
using tools (fails 1, 2, 3), altering the environment (1, 2, 3),
the ability to communicate (1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn language
(1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn English (1, 3), possession of
consciousness (2, 3), self-consciousness or self-awareness (1, 2?, 3), having
a conscience (1, 2?, 3), having a sense of shame (1, 2?, 3), being aware of
oneself as an agent or initiator (1, 2, 3), having awareness (2, 3), being
aware of one's existence (1, 2?, 3), being aware of the inevitability of
one's own death (1, 2?, 3), being capable of self-deception (1, 3), being
able to ask questions about moral issues such as human chauvinism (1, 3),
having a mental life (2, 3), being able to play games (1, 2, 3), being able
to laugh (1, 3), to laugh at oneself (1, 3), being able to make jokes (1, 3),
having interests (2, 3), having projects (1, 2, 3), being able to assess
some of one's performances as successful or not (1, 2, 3), enjoying freedom
of action (2, 3), being able to vary one's behaviour outside a narrow range
of insttnctu al behaviour (1, 2, 3), belonging to a social community (1, 2, 3),
being morally responsible for one's actions (1), being able to love (1, 2),
being capable of altruism (1, 2), being capable of being a Christian, or
capable of religious faith (1, 3), being able to produce the items of (human)
civilisation grid, culture
*
(1, 3).
* This feature typifies a number of rather circular distinguishing characteristics,
or at least ones which raise serious theob^. tical problems for human chauvinism,
because they attempt to explain the unique value of humans in terms of their
ability to produce items which are taken to be independently valuable, thus
contradicting human chauvinism (see the discussion in [10],/?.;77/,
�It appears that none of these criteria meet the conditions of adequacy;
furthermore it seems most unlikely that any other characteristic
or any cowbinlation of the^characteristics does
so.
Thus we conclude that these contingent direct arguments for human
&
chauvinism^not establish its inevitability, and that indeed the position rests
on a shaky base and so f^r lacks a coherent theoretical justification.
Human chauvinism cannot be restored by a detour through the concept of
a person, that is by linking perso/JnoocL with membership of the /*
foral
(lub, and
identifying the class of persons contingently with the class of humans.
For then the same problem as above arises with different terminology
even if the
of person
since,
can be specified in such a way as to justify
the restriction of moral privileges to persons, the class of persons will
then not
conicin the way human chauvinism requires^ with the class
of humans, but will either include a great many non-humans or exclude a good
many humans^morally considered.
Attempts to enlarge the privileged class, for example to persons (broadly
specified), or to sentient or preference having creatures, may avoid many
of the problems of arbitrariness and justification which face the strong
form of human chauvinism, but, as we
shall argue, face a set of problems of
coherence and consistency common to all instrumentalist theories of value and
morality.
*******
There are a number of indirect arguments for human chauvinism based on
features of value and morality.
argument
We turn now to consider these.
One abstract
which is supposed to establish that values are, or must, be
determined through the interests of humans or persons - a central argument
underlying chauvinism - takes the following form:-
�10.
A.
Values are determined through the preference rankings of valuers.
(The
no detachable values assumption).
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers' interests.
(The preference reduction thesis).
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
(The species assumption).
Therefore:
D.
Values are determined through human interests [through the interests of
persons].
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human interest,
there is no rational or possible alternative to doing so:
any alternative
is simply incoherent.
Although th{$
argument does not, so far as we are aware, appear anywhere
with its premisses explicitly stated, it does seem to reflect the sorts of
considerations those who claim that there is no rational or coherent alternative
to organising everything in human interests usually have in mind.
Of course
once the premisses are exposed, it is easier to see that this initially
persuasive argument, like others in the area, rests on fallacious assumptions.
y<2^ —
We shall claim that although the argument to conclusion D is formally^given
only some quite conventional assumptions such as that the relation of determin
ation or functionality is appropriately transitive and the principle of
replacement of necessary identicals - not all the premisses should be accepted.
The argument can be treated as the major representative of a family of
similar arguments.
For there are many variations that can be made on the
argument with a view to amending it, tightening it, varying or strengthening
its conclusion, and so on.
Our criticisms of the argument will, for the most
part, transfer to the variations.
qualifies the determining relation;
A first group of variations replaces or
for example, 'determined through' or
'determined by' may be replaced by 'answer back to',
of',
'can be reduced to', or 'are a function of'.
'reflect',
'are a matter
(The latter functional
form makes it plain that 'determined' has to mean 'exactly determined', which
�11.
ensures that no extraneous factors enter
into the chauvinistic determination:
mere partial determination would be quite compatible with the rejection of
human chauvinism.)
Alternatively, 'determined' may be modally upgraded to
'have to be determined', in order to reveal the sheer necessity of conclusion
D.
(In this case it is essential that premiss C be of modal strength, and not
merely contingent as it would be if the original form were retained;
other
wise the argument would contain a modal fallacy.).
Another familiar, and appealing, variation we have already bracketed into
the form of the argument given;
class by persons.
namely the replacement of humans as base
This straightaway increases the cogency of premiss C,
which otherwise - while better than, say,
'Valuers are white (North American)
humans' - would at best be contingently true (which is not good enough for the
argument and in fact appears false, since some valuers may not be human;
and
certainly not all humans are valuers), while at worst it is simply a circular
way of reintroducing the logical version of human chauvinism by rest^cting the
class of valuers a priori to humans.
That all valuers are persons may be made
analytic on the sense of 'person' - given a redefinition of 'person' away from
its normal English usage, which philosophical
English appears to almost
tolerate - thus shielding premiss C from criticism.
Other base classes than
persons can replace humans in premiss C, for example animals, thus leading
to the conclusion, of animal chauvinism, that values are determined through
the interests (considerations and concerns) of animals, sentient creatures,
or whatever.
In the end, of course premiss C could be absorbed (as: Valuers
are valuers or valuing creatures) and accordingly omitted, leaving the
conclusion:
Values are determined in the interests of valuers.
However even
the analytic form of premiss C does not, as we shall see, save the argument.
Much the same applies in the case of premiss A.
The premiss is certainly
not unobjectionable in the usual sense of 'determined';
but there are ways
of repairing it so that the argument still works in a sufficiently damaging
form, and one way goes as follows:—
What is true, analytically, if
sufficiently many valuers are taken into account, is that values are deter
�12.
mined through the value rankings of valuers.
Value rankings cannot however
be cashed in for preference rankings since, as is well-known, preference
rankings and value rankings can diverge:
value and can value what is not preferred.
a valuer can prefer what has less
Let us amend the argument then -
so that we can locate the real cause of damage - by replacing premiss A by
the following premiss:
A^.
Values are determined through the value rankings of (appropriate) valuers.
Correspondingly B will be adjusted to B^ in which 'value' replaces 'preference'.
The really objectionable premiss in the central argument is
neither
premiss A nor premiss C, but premiss B - or, more exactly, where A is repaired,
premiss B^.
Suspicion of premiss B may be aroused by noticing that it plays
an exactly parallel role in the class chauvinism argument to that the critical
premiss
BE.
One's preferences of choices are always determined through self-interest,
plays in familiar arguments for egoism, that whatever course of action one
adopts, it is always really adopted in one's own selfish interests.
The argument for egoism runs along the following, parallel, lines:-
AE.
Individual persons [agents) always act (in freely chosen cases) in the
way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accordance with their preference rankings.
BE.
Individual preference rankings are always determined through ^reflect) self
interest.
Therefore:
There is nonetheless an esoteric, semantical, sense of 'determined' in which
premiss A is demonstrably true, and so a sense in which it is analytically
true that value rankings are semantically determined by the preference rankings
of situations by a class of valuers. The details of these semantical foundations
for values are set out in 131. But while premiss A can be corrected by replacing
'determined' by 'semantically determined' and giving this an appropriate construal,
such a move would do nothing to restore the intended argument:
for it would
either invalidate the argument, through change in the key middle term 'determined',
or, alternatively, if 'determined' is systematically replaced throughout the
argument, drastically alter the intended conclusion D - so that looking at the
interests that humans in fact have would no longer provide a guide to values
(instead the interests of hypothetical valuers with respect to worlds that never
exist or could exist would have to be gathered).
�13.
DE.
Individual persons ^agents] always act in ways determined by self
interest [that reflect their own interests^.
Thereafter follows the slide from in their own interests^ to to their own
advantage, or for their own uses or purposes.
The final conclusion of egoism
again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not only that the egoistic
position is perfectly in order and thoroughly rational but that there are no
alternatives, that there is, or at least ought to be, no other way of acting,
'that men can only choose to do what is in their own interests or that it is
only rational to do this'
([2], p. 140).
Thus human chauvinism, as based on the central argument, stands revealed
as a form of group selfishness, group egoism one might almost say.
Likewise
the criticisms of the Group Selfishness argument, as we shall now call the
central argument, parallel those of egoism, in particular premiss B (B )
succumbs to similar objections to those that defeat premiss BE (BE^).
Group
selfishness is no more acceptable than egoism, since it depends on exactly
the same set of confusions between values and advantages, and slides on such
terms as 'interests', as the arguments on which egoism rests.
Nowell-Smith's
very appealing critique of egoism ([2], p. 140-144) may, by simple paraphrase,
be converted into a critique of group selfishness.
recast B^ and BE"
*"
This is obvious once we
and set them side by side:
BE^. Individual value rankings are determined through (individual) self
interest;
and
B^.
Valuers'
[groups'] value rankings are determined through valuers'
(group) interests [joint interests of groups].
Because, however, one sets up or selects one's own preference or value
rankings, it does not follow that they are set up or selected in one's own
interests;
similarly in group cases, because a group determines its own
rankings, it does not follow that it determines them in its own interests.
Just as BE^ is, prima facie at least, refuted by a range of examples where
�value, and also preference, rankings run counter to self-interest, e.g. cases
of altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by examples where value, and
also overall preference rankings, vary from group interests, e.g. cases of
In the case
group altruism.
of limited groups examples are easy to locate,
e.g. resistance movements, environmental action groups, and so on;
case, however, of the larger human group
in the
are bound to be more controversial
(since B^ unlike BE^ is a live thesis), but are still easy to find, especially
if future humans are discounted, e.g. it is in humans' selfish interests to
have plentiful supplies of this and that, electricity from uranium, oil,
Me were
Sy/Z/ey
whalemeat, fish, etc., right now rather than^which would result from restraint,
but altruistic value rankings would rank the latter
above the former.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish
because pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip
mine the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but environmentalists who advocate
not doing so, in many cases not merely because of future humans, are apparently
acting not just out of their own or human group interests.
But, just as BE^ is not demolished by such counterexamples of apparently
altruistic action, neither is B :
in each case it can be made out that further
selfish interests are involved, e.g., in the case of B , that an agent did
what he did, an altruistic action, because he liked doing it.
As Nowell-Smith
explains in the egoism case, interest is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE^ true at the cost, however, of trivialising
them.
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a further sort
of "interest";
whatever valuers value that does not seem to be in their
interests is said to provide a further interest, either the value itself or
an invented value surrogate; for example^the environmentalist who works to
retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be said to be so acting
because he has an interest in or derives benefit or advantage from just knowing
it exists, just as he would be in the egoist case.
theses can be retained;
By such strategies the
for then a valued item really is in valuers
interests,
in the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously inconvenienced
�15.
by it, i.e. even if it is not in their interests in the customary sense.
',
*
Thus.BE'
like 4^', is preserved by stretching the elastic term 'interests',
in a way that it too readily admits, to include values, or value surrogates,
among interests.
Then however the conclusion of the &roup Selfishness
argument loses its intended force, and becomes the platitude that values
are determined through valuers' values , just as egoism, under the extension
a
which makes us all covert egoists,loses its sting and becomes,platitude.
It can be seen that human chauvinism in this form, like egoism, derives its
plausibility from vacillation in the sense of 'interests', with a resulting
fluctuation between a strong false thesis - the face of^chauvinism usually
presented - and a trivial analytic thesis,between paradox and platitude.-^ To
sum up the dilemma for the argument then:-
when 'interest' is used in its
weaker sense premiss B may be accepted but the argument does not establish
its intended conclusion or in any way support human chauvinism.
intended effect of the argument, in the crude form is this:
values it is enough to look at human advantage:
For the
in determining
nothing else counts.
If the
argument were correct, then one could assess values by checking out the local
(selfish) advantage of humans, or, more generally, the advantage of the base
class somehow assembled.
If, on the other hand,
'interest' is used in its
strong sense, the conclusion would lice^'hce a form of human chauvinism, but
premiss B now fails.
Most philosphers think they know how to discredit the egoist arguments.
It is curious indeed then, that an argument which is regarded as so unsatisfactory
in the individual case - that for egoism - remains unchallenged and is still
considered so convincing in a precisely parallel group case - that for human
chauvinism.
********
The technique of rescuing philosphical theses by natural extensions and
accompanying redefinitions of terms, including the thesis "We're all selfish
really", is delightfully explained in Wisdom [7], chapter 1.
�16.
The Group Selfishness argument is often employed in another way, as the
presentation for a choice between the conclusion D, that value is determined by
or reducible to a matter of human interests, and the denial of premiss A, which
denial is seen as entailing a commitment to a detached,intrinsic or naturalistic
theory of value.
Thus, it may be said either one accepts the conclusion, with
its consequent instrumentalist account of value, or one is committed to an intrinsic
or detached value theory which takes values to be completely independent of valuers,
and no way determined by them.
But, it is assumed, the latter theory is well
known as untenable, and may even be seen as involving mysticism or as irrational
^e.g. by Passmore [9], chapter 7).
Thus it may be concluded, there is no real
coherent alternative to such an instrumental account of value, and hence no real
alternative to human chauvinism.
The form of the argument then, is essentially: *^A
v D, but A,therefore D,
or, if a stronger connection, of intensional disjunction, is intended:
but A, therefore D.
It can be seen that the main premiss, -A v D, has resulted
from the exportation and suppression of premisses B and C of the Group
argument.
^A,
Selfishness
This suppression does nothing to improve the standing of the premisses
although it does have the (possibly advantageous) effect of making it more difficult
to see the fallacious assumptions on which it is based.
For of course the choice
a false one, and for precisely the same reasons that led us
to say that premiss B was false.
To reject the instrumentalist
conclusion D is
by no means to be committed to ^A, or to the view that the valuer's and their
preference
rankings play no role in determining values and that values are a
further set of mysterious independent items in the world somehow perceived by
valuers through a special (even mystical and non—rational) moral sense.
Valuers'
;
*
preference rankings may be admitted to play an important role in evaluation
are still not committed to D unless we assume - what amounts to premiss B
these preference rankings reflect, or can be reduced to, valuers' interests.
* on page 16a
we
that
�16a
Value rankings can be semantically analysed in terms of preference or
interest rankings, as in [3]; but this does not offer a reduction of
values to preferences or interests, as [8] explains.
The semantical
foundations, while conceding nothing to subjectivism or instrumentalism,
make it easy to concede main points of the case (attributed to Dewey)
against detached values, against the view that there are values somehow
out there (in Meinong's aussersein), purely naturalistic values completely
detached from all valuers, or from all preference rankings of valuers.
Put differently, there are no values that do not somehow answer back to
preference rankings of valuers, and so no values that are entirely
detached from valuers and valuational activity such as preference-ranking
of situations.
But the answering back is made explicit and precise by
the semantical analysis, not by any syntactical reduction or translation
of value statements into statements about valuers' preference or interest
rankings; and the valuers of the analysis are, like the situations
introduced, ideal and need in no way exist.
As a result then, valuations
may be independent of the aggregated preference rankings of all actual
humans or, for that matter, of all persons over all time.
Thus too the
semantical analysis makes it easy to navigate a course between the
alternatives of two influential false dichotomies, to the effect that
values are either instrumental or else detached, or that values are either
subjective or else detached.
For though a semantical analysis can be
given, upsetting the detached value thesis, no translation or syntactical
reduction of the sort subjectivism assumes is thereby effected.
�17.
The dichotomy frequently presented between instrumentalist accounts of
value, on the one hand, and detached theories (or what are mistakenly taken
to be the same, intrinsic theories) is, for the same reason, a false one.
Instrumental theories are those which attempt to reduce value to what is
instrumental to^contribute$to a stated goal.
Typically such theories take
the goal to be the furtherance of the interest of a privileged class;
for
example the goal may be taken to be determined in terms of the interests,
concerns, advantage or welfare of the class of humans, or of persons, or of
sentient creatures, depending on the type of chauvinism.
In particular, human
chauvinist theories are, characteristically, instrumentalist theories.
In
contrast,an item is valued intrinsically where it is valued for its own sake,
and not merely as a means to something further;
and an intrinsic value theory
allows that some items are intrinsically valuable.
Intrinsic theories then,
instrumental
contrast with
Z.
theories, and what 'intrinsic' tells us is no more than
that the item taken as intrinsically valuable is not valued merely as a means to
some goal, i.e. is not merely instrumentally valued.
Accordingly detached value
theories, since disjoint from instrumental theories, are a subclass of intrinsic
value theories;
be detached:
and they are a proper subclass since intrinsic values need not
something may be valuable in itself without its value being
detached from all valuing experience.
It is evident, furthermore, that the
identification of intrinsic and detached value theories presupposed in the
argument is no more than a restatement of the false dichotomy -^A v D, or
^A,
The assumption
i.e. non-instrumental, therefore detached^that if preference or value rankings are
involved at all the resulting assignments must be instrumental is either false or
or is variation of the fallacious premiss B which plays a crucial role in the
Group Selfishness and Egoist arguments;
the variation is that if value or
preference rankings are involved they must reflect valuers' interests, therefore
such values are instrumental, because the items valued are valued according as
they reflect valuers interest, therefore according as they are a means to the
end of satisfying the valuers' interest.
It follows
that intrinsic value theories
�18.
may allow for a third way between instrumental and detached theories, because
of the possibility of value rankings (and also preference rankings) which are
not themselves set up in a purely instrumentalist way, that is attributing value
to aiitem only according as it is a means to some goal.
The argument that there is no coherent alternative to instrumentalism does
not however rely just on misrepresenting alternative intrinsic accounts as
logically incoherent by assimilating them to detached accounts.
It also trades
on a contemporary insensitivity to the serious logical and epistemological problems
of instrumental accounts of value, problems which were well known to classical
philosophers (see e.g., Aristotle Metaphysics, 994b9-16)
It does not appear to
be widely realised that the classical arguments apply not just to a few especially
shaky instrumentalist theories which adopt questionable goals but
to instrumentalism
in general, since they assume only quite general features of the instrumentalist
position.
Instrumentalist positions take as valuable (or in the moral case, as creating
moral constraints) just what contributes to a stated end.
which comes to mind is utilitarianism.
An obvious example
However in the more general case we
are concerned with, of instrumentalist forms of human chauvinism, there may be a
set of goalnot just a single goal such as that of maximising net happiness of
humans;
the human chauvinist assumption is that the values (indeed constraints)
are goal-reducible, and that all goals reduce in some way to human goals, or at
least can be assessed in terms of human concerns and interests.
Human chauvinist
positions are not necessarily instrumental, but those that are not (e.g. the
position that just humans and nothing else
are intrinsically valuable) tend to
make the arbitrary chauvinistic nature of their assumptions unwisely explicit -
most successful contempory chauvinisms being covert ones.
Problems for instrumentalism arise (as Aristotle observed) when questions
are asked about the status of the goal itself.
Instrumentalism relies entirely
for its plausibility upon selecting a set of goats which are widely accepted and are, in
�19.
It relies at bottom on an implicit
the theory, implicitly treated as valuable.
valuation which cannot itself be explained in purely instrumental terms. Of course
a value assumption is not eliminated on this fashion:
the general
consensus
it is merely hidden under
that such a goal is appropriate, that such an end is valuable.
But the strategy of successful instrumentalism is to avoid recognition of the fact
that the goal is, and indeed must be, implicitly treated as
valuable, by selecting
a set of goals so much part of the framework of comtemporary thought, so entrenched
and habitual 3s a valued item by humans that the value attached to the goal becomes
virtually invisible, at least to those
the framework.
Thus it is with the
assumption of human chauvinist instrumentalism that goals are exclusively
determinable in terms of human interest.
The basic, convincing
and self-evident
character of this assumption rests on nothing more than the shared beliefs of the
privileged class of humans concerning the paramount and exclusive importance of
their own interests and concerns, on a valuational assumption or goal which is
^'self-evident'" because it is advantageous and is habitual.
The consensus features,
of which instrumentalists make so much, are nothing more than the consensus of the
privileged class about the goal of maintaining
consensus of interests.
their own privilege, i.e. a
This sort of agreement of course shows very little about
the well-grountiness of the position.
Unless the goals set are widely accepted as valuable, the account will be
unconvincing to those who do not
share the goal and even to those who appreciate
that it is possible to reject the goal.
In order for instrumentalism to work
logically however, the goal must be implicitly treated within the theory as valuable,
for otherwise the proposed analysis loses explanatory and justificatory power
and lacks compulsion.
For how can the value of an item be explained and justified
in terms of its contribution to an end not itself considered valuable!
Serious
problems also arise about the nature of value statements under the instrumentalist
analysis unless the goal is treated as valuable.
For if the goals themselves are
not so treated within the theory, but are taken simply as unevaluated facts, then
a valuational statement 'x is valuable' becomes, under the proposed analysis,
�20.
simply the statement that x tends to produce a certain result, to contribute to
certain human states, a statement whose logical status, openness to verification,
allowance for disagreement, and so on, does not substantially differ from that
statement that x tends to producejoxide, to contribute to the rusting of human
products.
Such an account of value statements is open to the same sort of
objections as other naturalistic reductions of value, for example, Mill's account
the desirable in terms of the desired.
of
The special logical and
epistemological character of value statements then, especially with respect to
verification and disagreement,must be supplied in instrumentalism, if it is to
be supplied at all, by the implicit treatment of the goal itself as valuable.
The fact that the goaL of an instrumental account must be taken as itself
valuable, gives rise to two choices.
In the first, the goal is taken as itself
instrumentally valuable, which creates an infinite regress.
For if the end,
reason or assignment for which other items are intrumentally valuable is itself
only instrumentally valuable then there must in turn be some other end, reason or
assignment
in terms of which it is valuable (by definition of instrumental).
A regress is thus begun, and if this regress is not to be viciously infinite, it
must terminate in some end or feature which is taken as valuable just in itself,
that is, with intrinsic values.
On the alternative option the goal is not taken to be instrumentally valuable
but is admitted to be valuable in some other way.
Unless an 'except' clause is
, so that all values are held to be
account
instrumental with the exception of the goal, the
will of course be contextually
added to the original instrumentalist
inconsistent, since it is inconsistent when contextually supplied assumptions are
added.
For these include the assuption that the goal itself is valuable, but not
in the way that the instrumentalist thesis claims is the only way possible.
the goal is taken to be both valuable and not valuable.
If, on the other hand, an'except^ clause is added, this amounts to an
admission that the goal is taken to be non-instrumentally valuable.
Thus the
account may be able to retain consistency, but does so at the expense of
Thus
�21
explicitly admitting a value, that of the goal, which cannot be accounted for in
purely instrumental terms, in short, that the gcdl is taken as intrinsically
valuable.
To sum up, the dilemma for the instrumentalist can be put as follows:
Consider the desirability of the goal of the instrumental theory: it must
implicitly be judged to be desirable, for otherwise nothing could be justified
by reduction to it.
or not?
Ask:
Is this goal also instrumentally desirable (valuable)
If it is, i.e. it is only desirable as a means to a further goal,
then either a regress is initiated or the same issue arises with respect to
the new goal.
But if it is not, then the instrumental theory is again refuted,
since the goal is desirable though not desirable according to the test of the
theory because it is not instrumental to the goal.
Whichever ho rn of the dilemma is taken^ then> the outcome is the same:
the instrumentalist must rely on treating the goal itself as implicitly valuable
in a way not purely instrumental, that is, as intrinsically valuable.
Thus the
instrumentalist is, at bottom, guilty of precisely the same crime of which he
accuses the adherent of a intrinsic account, with the added delinquency of failing
to admit and face up to his basic assumptions.
The logical and epistemological
position of such an instrumental account is certainly no better than that of an
intrinsic account, since there is logically no difference between the recognition
of one intrinsic value (or one set in the case where gcals are multiple) and the
recognition of many of them, ancf^lxtgical and epistemological status of the
instrumentalist's account is no better than that of the goal to which his values
are taken as instrumental.
Since the instrumentalist has implicitly admitted
the legitimacy of an intrinsic value assignment in setting up his account, he
cannot claim any superiority over a more general intrinsic theory which allows for
many intrinsic values, since what is legitimate in the case of one value assignment
must be equally legitimate in the multiple case.
�22,
This abstract dilemma for human chauvinist instrumentalism is illustrated
in a concrete case by Passmore's procedure in [9];
for Passmore (1) wishes to
say that there is no coherent alternative to instrumental values, that an item
is valuable insofar as it serves human interest, and (2) wants to explain the
unique value attributed to humans in terms of their production of valuable
civilised and cultural
But (2) involves the admission of values, that
items.
of civilised items, which cannot be valuable in the way (1) states, and indeed
(2) amounts to the admission of non-instrumental values.
The proposed account is
inconsistent because if intrinsic values are admissible in the case of civilised
items, they cannot be logically ^oherent in the way (1) claims.
The sort of problem faced by Passmore is however not a readily avoidable
one for the instrumentalist;
for if the charge of arbitary and unjustifiable
human chauvinism is to be avoided by those who opt for (1), and humans are not
themselves to be awarded intrinsic values,, thus conceding the logical legitimacy
of intrinsic values generally, and hence the avoidability of human chauvinist
accounts of value, some explanation must be provided for the exclusive value
attributed to humans.
But only explanation capable of justifying this valuation
in a non-arbitray and non-chauvinistic way would have to refer to properties of
humans, and would have to say something like:
'Humans are uniquely valuable because
they alone have valuable properties x,y,z,... or produce valuable items A, B, C...'.
distinguishing
The list of proposed
features already considered on page 8 are usually
those that will be employed here.
But this is to admit intrinsic value for the
properties which explain the exclusive value of humans.
The dilemma
for the human chauvinist is that he must either take the exclusive human value
assumption (the goal) as ultimate—laying him open to the charge of arbitrary
chauvinism and of attributing intrinsic values to humans-or attempt to explain it*
in which case he will again end by concedingly non-instrumental values.
Thus the case for the inevitability of human chauvinism, that alternatives to
it must be based on an incoherent and logically and epistemically defective account
of values, namely a non-instrumental account, has not been established by these
arguments.
&
*
&&&&
**
**&
�23.
Egoism, not group selfishness, is one of the assumptions underlying the next
The leading ideas of the representative
series of abstract defences of chauvinism.
argument we first consider are essentially those of social contract theories.
This
argument takes the following form (the bracketed paramaeters X and Z are filled out
in the representative argument respectively by:
and:
J.
justification of moral principles,
enter into contracts):
The only justification of moral principles [only X] is a contractual one, i.e.
the entry into contracts of agents [Zry].
K.
Agents only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests.
(The
egoist assumption)
L.
Humans [persons] are the only agents that enter into contracts [that Z].
Therefore, by K and L,
M.
Humans [persons] only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests
Therefore, from J and M,
N.
The only justification for moral principles [only X] is the (selfish) interests
of humans [persons].
*
The argument can be varied by different choices of parameters, X and Z.
example, X could be filled out by
replaced by 'community-based'
For
'determination of value judgments', and 'contractual'
(i.e. Z is filled out by 'are community-based' or some
such) yielding in place of J the familiar premiss that the only justification of
value judgments is a community-based one, and leading to a conclusion, analytically
linked to D above, that all value judgments
are determined by human self-interest.
Alternatively just one of X or Z may be so replaced, leaving the other as in the
original
example .
Another variation of the argument that has figured prominently
in the discussion of animal rights fills out X and Z respectively by 'determination
of rights' and 'belong to human society'.
Under this assignment the parametric premiss
The logical transitions in the argument take on more evidently valid form upon
analytic transformation of the premisses, to those now illustrated:J'. All justifications of moral principles are cases of (justified by) the entry
into contracts of agents.
K'. All cases of the entry into contracts are cases of self-interests of agents.
And so on for L' through M'.
�24.
J becomes essentially that commonly adopted (e.g. [4] and [5] again), but already
criticised above, that 'rights are determined solely by reference to human society'.
As the arguments are in each case valid, the issue of the correctness of the
conclusions devolves on that of the correctness of the premisses.
In each case too
the arguments could be made rather more plausible by replacing 'humans' by 'persons'
(and correspondingly 'human society' by 'society of persons', etc.);
for otherwise
premisses such as L and its variations are suspect, since there is nothing, legally or
morally, to prevent consortia, organisations and other non-humans from entering into
contracts (and these items are appropriately counted as persons in the larger legal
sense).
Given that that amendment deals with premiss L, the correctness of the
arguments turns on the correctness of premisses J and K.
But both these premisses are
false, and premiss J imports the very chauvinism that is at issue in the conclusion.
Though
the representative contract argument is only one of several important
variations that can be made on the general parametric argument, it is often regarded
as having special appeal, because the contract model appears to explain the origin of
obligation, and offer a justification for it, in a way that no other model does, and
thus to provide a bulwark against moral, and political, scepticism.
That the
appearance is illusory, because the obligation to honour contracts is assumed at bottom,
is well enough known and not our concern here.
What is of concern is the correctness of
representative premisses J and K.
The egoist assumption K is faulted on the same grounds as egoism itself.
For
agents sometimes enter into contracts that are not in their own interests but are in
the interests of other persons or creatures, or are undertaken on behalf of, for
instance to protect, other items that do not have interests at all, e.g. rivers,
buildings, forests.
The attempt to represent all these undertakings as in human
interests, because done in the "selfish interests" of the agents is the same as in the
egoist arguments, and the resolution of the problem is the same, namely to distinguish
acting, valuing, and so on, clearly from acting in one's own selfish (or in group)
interests.
However even if premiss K were amended to admit that agents may enter into
�25.
contracts on behalf of non-human items, it would still result in a form of human
chauvinism given familiar assumptions, since non—human items will still be unable to
create moral obligations except through a human sponsor or patron, who will, presumably,
be able to choose whether or not to protect them.
Natural items will generate no moral
constraints unless humans freely choose to allow them to do so;
since the obligatory
features of moral obligation thus disappear, no genuine moral obligations can be
created by natural items under such an amended account.
Thus the amended premiss
assumes the question at issue.
Premiss J, the view that moral
obligations are generated solely by contracts
undertaken by moral agents, is then the crucial assumption for this argument for human
chauvinism.
J however has serious difficulties, for there are many recognised moral
principles which apparently cannot be explained as contractually based, at least if
"contract" is to be taken seriously.
There is no actual contract underlying the
principle that one ought not to be cruel to animals, children and others not in a
position to contract.
Adherents of a social contract view of moral obligation are of
course inclined to withhold recognition of those moral principles that cannot be con
tractually based, so that the contract thesis becomes not so much explanatory as pre
scriptive.
But even allowing for this, the thesis has many unacceptable consequences
just concerning humans, and if the notion of contract plays a serious role, it is
difficult to reconcile with the view of all humans a possessing rights.
A crucial feature of contracts is that they are freely undertaken by responsible
parties.
If they can be freely undertaken there must be a choice with respect to them
the choice of not so contracting.
But then we are left
with the conclusion that it is
permissible to treat those who do choose not to contract as mere instruments of those
who do, in the way that the non-human world is presently treated;
these contractual
dropouts, like those outside society, can have no rights and there can be no moral
constraints on behaviour concerning them,whatever their capacity for suffering.
A
similar conclusion emerges if humans who are not morally responsible are considered,
for although we are normally considered to have quite substantial obligations to such
�26.
humans, e.g. babies, young children, those who are considered mentally ill or as
having diminished responsibility, they cannot themselves be free and responsible
parties to a contract, and will, on the social contract view, presumably have to
depend for their rights on others freely choosing to contract on their behalf.
If^this
does not^for some reason^) occur we will be left with a similarly unacceptable con-
elusion as in the case of the contractual dropouts.
Obviously then, moral obligations
do not require morally equal, freehand responsible contracting parties, in the way
the social contract account presupposes.
Worse, the argument would appear, with but
little adaptation, to justify the practices of such groups as death squads, multi
rr
nationals, and the Mafia, it!
If these unacceptable conclusions are to be avoided, all humans will have to be
somehow, in virtue of simply being human, subject to some mysterious, fictional,
social contract which they did not freely choose to enter into, cannot get out of, and
which can never exclude any member of the human species.
So the unacceptable con-
sequences are avoided only if crucial features of the notion of contract such as
freedom and responsibility are dropped, and the notion^and premiss J so seriously
weakened as to become virtually without conditions.
For the argument to work the
residue has to be mere common humanity, and the "contract" little more than the
convention of morally considering just other members of the human species.
convention differs little
however from a restatement of human chauvinism;
Such a
the pro
ferred explanation is really no explanation, for such a convention can neither justify
human chauvinism nor, since different conventions could be arranged, explain why it is
inevitable.
The social contract account of moral obligation is defective because it implies
that moral obligations can really only hold between responsible moral agents, and
attempts to account for all moral obligation as based on contract.
But of course the
account is correct as an account of the origin of some types of moral obligation;
there are moral obligations of a type that can only hold between free and responsible
agents, and others which only apply within a social and political context.
Yet other
types of obligation, such as the obligation not to cause suffering, can arise only with
respect to sentient or preference-having creatures -
who are not necessarily morally
�27.
responsible — and could not significantly arise with respect to a non—sentient item
such as a tree or a rock.
What emerges is a picture of types of moral obligation
as associated with a nest of rings or annular boundary classes, with the innermost
class, consisting of highjyintelligent, social, sentient creatures, having the full range
of moral obligations applicable to them, and outer classes^ such non—sentient items as
rocks having only a much more restricted range of moral obliga
trees and
tions significantly applicable to them.
between the rings.
In some cases there is no sharp division
But there is no single uniform privileged class of items, no one
base class, to which all and only moral principles directly apply, and moreover the
zoological class of humans is not one of the really significant boundary classes.
The
recognition that some types of moral obligation can only apply within the context of
a particular sort of society or through contract does nothing to support the case of
human chauvinism.
The failure of the contract theory nevertheless leaves the issue as to whether
there is some logical or categorial restriction on what can be the object of moral
obligations, which would reinstate human chauvinism or animal chauvinism.
There is
however no such restriction on the object place of the obligation relation to humans
or sentient creatures.
Even if the special locution 'Y has an obligation towards X'
requires that X is at least a preference-having creature, there are other locutions
which are not so restricted, and
one can perfectly well speak of having duties toward
land and of having obligations concerning or with respect to such items as mountains
and rivers, and without necessarily implying that such moral constraints arise only in
an indirect fashion.
Thus neither natural language nor the logic of moral concepts
rules out the possibility of non-sentient items creating direct moral constraints.
There is then, given this point and the annular model, no need to opt for the
position of Leopold [12] as the only alternative to human (or animal) chauvinism, that
is for a position which simply transfers to natural items the full set of rights and
obligations applicable to humans, leading to such non-significance as that rocks have
obligations to mountains.
Distinctions between the moral constraints appropriate to
different types of items can be recognised without leading back to human chauvinism.
The point is an important one since many objections to allowing moral obligations to
�28.
extend beyond the sphere of humans, or in some cases the sphere of sentient creatures,
depend on ignoring such distinctions, on assuming that it is a question of transferring
the full set of rights and obligations appropriate to intelligent social creatures to
such items as trees and rivers - that the alternative to chauvinism is therefore an
irrational and mystical animism concerning nature (cf. Passmore [9], p. 187 ff.).
*****
*
*
The ecological restatement of the strong version of human chauvinism, according
to which items outside the privileged human class have zero intrinsic value, is the
Dominion thesis,
the view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are
available for man's benefit and to serve his interests, and hence that man is entitled
to manipulate the world and its systems as he wants, that is^ in his interests.
The
thesis indeed follows, given fairly uncontroversial, analytic, assumptions, from the
conclusions of the main chauvinistic arguments examined, notably D, that values are
determined through human interests.
The earth and all its non-human contents thus
have no intrinsic value, at best instrumental value, and so can create no direct moral
constraints on human action.
For what has only instrumental value is already written
down, in this framework, as serving human interests.
And since what has no instru
mental value cannot be abused or have its value diminished, it is permissible for
humans to treat it as they will in accord with their interests.
thesis.
Ergo the Dominion
Conversely, if non-human items are available for man's use, interests and
benefits, they can have no value except insofar as they answer his interests.
Other
wise there would be restrictions on his behaviour with respect to them, since not any
sort of behaviour is permissible as regards independently valuable items.
value is determined through man's interests, i.e. D holds.
is strictly equivalent to D.
implies human chauvinism.
Accordingly
Thus the Dominion thesis
It follows that the Dominion thesis, like D, strictly
Conversely, the strong version of human chauvinism strictly
implies D, and so the Dominion thesis, completing the sketch of the equivalence
argument.
Since the positions are equivalent what counts against one also counts
against the others.
In particular, then, the Dominion thesis is no more inevitable
This view encompasses what Passmore [9] has isolated as the Western environmental
ideologies, both the dominant view and the lesser traditions: see [10].
�29.
than, and just as unsatisfactory as, strong human chauvinism.
The upshot is that the dominant ethical systems of our times, those clustered
as the western ethic, and other kindred human chauvinistic systems, are far less
defensible, and less satisfactory, than has been commonly assumed, and lack an
adequate, and non-arbitrary, basis.
Furthermore alternative theories are far less
incoherent than is commonly claimed, especially by philosophers.
are viable alternatives to the Dominion thesis,
Yet although there
the natural world is rapidly being
preempted in favour of human chauvinism - and of what it ideologically underwrites,
the modern economic-industrial superstructure - by the elimination or over-exploitation
of those things that are not considered of sufficient instrumental value for human
beings.
Witness the
of the non-human world, the assaults being made on
tropical rainforests, surviving temperate wildernesses, wild animals, the oceans, to
list only a few of the victims of man's assault on the natural world.
Observe also
the associated measures to bring primitive or recalcitrant peoples into the Western
consumer society and the spread of human chauvinist value systems.
The time is fast
approaching when questions raised by an environmental ethic will cease to involve live
options.
As things stand at present however, the ethical issues generated by the
preemptions - especially given the weakness and inadequacy of the ideological and
value—theoretical basis on which the damaging chauvinistic transformation of the
world is premissed, and the viability of alternative environmental ethics - are not
merely of theoretical interest, but are among the most important and urgent questions
of our times,
perhaps, that
human beings, whose individual or group self-interest
is the source of most environmental problems, have ever asked themselves.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Braidwood
Australia 2622
�References
[1]
R. and V. Routley, 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics', mimeographed,
privately circulated, 1974.
[2]
P.H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, Penguin, London, 1954.
[3]
R. and V. Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', Nous (forthcoming)
[4]
D.G. Ritchie, Natural Rights, Allen and Unwin, London, 1894.
[5]
J. Passmore, 'The treatment of animals', Journal of the History of Ideas, _36
(1975), 195-218.
[6]
T. Regan and P. Singer (editors), Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976.
[7]
J. Wisdom, Other Minds, Blackwell, Oxford, 1952.
[8]
R. Routley, 'The semantical metamorphosis of metaphysics', Australasian Journal
of Philosophy^5A (1976),157.
[9]
[10]
J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
V. Routley, Critical Notice of [9], Australasian Journal of Philosophy 53. (1975)
171-185.
[11]
H.J. McCloskey, 'Rights', Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1965), 115-127.
[12]
A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, with other essays on conservation from Round
River, Ballantine, New York, 1966.
[13]
K. Baier and N. Rescher (editors), Values and the Future, the impact of techno
logical change on American values, The Free Press, New York, 1969.
�
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AGAINST THE INEVITABILITY OF HUMAN CHAUVINISM
In our enlightened times, when most forms of chauvinism have been abandoned
at least in theory by those who consider themselves progressive, western ethics
still appears to retain, at its very heart, a fundamental form of chauvinism,
namely, human chauvinism.
ethical theories
For both popular western thought and most western
assume that both value and morality can ultimately be reduced
to matters of interest or concern to the class of humans.
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is substantially differential,
discriminatory, and inferior treatment (characteristically, but not necessarily,
by members of the privileged class) of items outside the class, for which there
is not sufficient justification.
Human chauvinism, like other varieties of
chauvinism, can take stronger and weaker forms;
an example of the weaker form
is the Greater Value Thesis, the invariable allocation of greater value or
preference, on the basis of species, to humans, while not however entirely
excluding non-humans from moral consideration and claims.
We will be concerned
primarily with strong forms of human chauvinism, which see value and morality as
ultimately concerned entirely with humans, and non-human items as having value
or creating constraints on human action only insofar as these items serve human
interests or purposes.
In recent years, since the rise of the 'environmental consciousness', there
has been increasing, if still tentative, questioning of this exclusive concern
with, or at least heavy bias towards, human interests;
and indeed, at a time
when human beings are rapidly accelerating their impact on the natural world,
the question as to the validity of this basic assumption is not merely an
abstract one, but is of immediate and practical concern in its implications for
This thesis has, among other unacceptable outcomes, the consequence that,
if there is only room in one's boat for one and one must choose between
saving Adolf Hitler and a wombat which has lived a decent and kindly life
and never harmed a living creature, one is morally obligated to choose the
former. That would not be the choice of the authors.
2.
human action.
In reply to this questioning (which appears to originate largely
from people with environmental interests), modern moral philosophers - fulfilling
their now established function of providing a theoretical superstructure to explain
and justify contemporary moral sensibilities,
questioning fundamental
assumptions - tend to argue that the bias towards human interests, which is an
integral part of going ethical theories, is not just another form of class
chauvinism which it is both possible and desirable to eliminate, but rather a
restriction dictated by the logic of evaluative and moral concepts, and that
there is no coherent, possible or viable alternative to the "human chauvinism"
of standard ethical theories.
series of
In this paper we want to consider and reject a
arguments in the theory of value designed to show that this
is so, and thereby to advance the cause of an alternative, non-chauvinistic,
environmental ethic.
The orthodox defence of human chauvinism argues that it is inevitable
that humans should be taken as the exclusive subjects of value and morality.
Humans are uniquely and exclusively qualified for moral consideration and
attributions of value, according to this defence either because the human
species alone does, as a matter of fact, possess properties which are a pre
condition for such ascriptions or because, as a matter of the definition or
the logic or the significance of moral concepts in natural language, such
considerations are restricted, as a matter of logic, to the human species.
In the first case the restriction of morality and value to the human species
will be taken as contingent, in the second necessary.
In either case, if the
argument is correct, the bias in favour of humans in current theories is
inescapable, so that, depending on one's definition of chauvinism, either
human chauvinism itself is inevitable, or human bias is, because justifiable,
not a real chauvinism at all.
We shall consider the logical or definitional
approach first.
According to the definitional approach, moral and evaluative terms are,
as a matter of their definitions, restricted in their application to members
of the human species;
only in a secondary way
at best do such terms find a
3.
wider application, according as evaluated items are instrumental to human
interests.
The thesis is often backed up by the production of definitions
which are so restricted, for example,
'the value of a thing is its capacity
to confer a benefit on someone, to make a favourable difference to his life'
(Baier, in [13], p. 40), where in the intended context 'someone' is obviously
restricted to humans.
The attempt to preserve human chauvinism in an unchallengeable form
through definitions involves the fallacy of taking definitions to be self
validating and unchallengeable, and appears to be based on the confusion of
abbreviative definitions with those involving or presupposing substantive
claims, such as creative definitions, which may be accepted or rejected.
Such
definitions as those above, cannot be merely abbreviative because they attempt
to characterise or explicate already understood terms, such as 'moral' or
'value'.
Worse still, they do so in a way which is not dictated by prevailing
usage - which does not require that moral and value terms be restricted in
range to human:in order that they continue to apply to humans in the ordinary
way.
Alternative definitions which do not so restrict the range of application
may be supplied, they can in fact be found by looking up dictionaries, and
these alternatives quite properly do not close off genuine issues which natural
language itself leaves open.
The fallacy of the definitional move is that of believing that by converting
the substantive evaluative theses of human chauvinism to matters of definition
they become somehow exempt from challenge or need for justification.
This is
comparable to justifying discriminatory membership for a club by referring to
the rules, similarly conceived as self-validating and exempt from question or
justification.
Since a similar move could obviously be employed to limit
membership of the Moral Club to say, white male humans in place of humans, it
is plain that such a definitional argument does far too much, and is capable
of use to produce completely unacceptable conclusions.
But of course substantive theses involved in definitions, like club rules,
are not exempt from challenge and may be arbitrary, undesirable, restrictive,
c/
4.
and in need of justification.
Once this is grasped the definitional move can
be seen as entirely question-begging, since the question of the acceptability
and inevitability of human chauvinism is simply transformed into the question
of the acceptability and inevitability of the definition.
The production of
such human chauvinist definitions has done nothing to advance the case of
human chauvinism, other than to throw a spurious air of unchallangeability and
over the highly challengeable and arbitrary substantive theses
they embody.
The attempt to settle substantive issues 'by definition' is both
philosophically facile and methodologically unsound, and is especially so when
there are clearly alternative definitions which would not settle the issue in
the same way.
What, however, of the substantive claim presupposed by the
definitional move, namely that as a matter of natural language usage, or the
logic of moral and evaluative concepts, the meaning of moral and value terms,
it is logically necessary that direct, non-instrumental, application of such
terms be restricted to the human (a claim made at least in the case of rights
by Ritchie [4], p. 107, and subsequently by Passmore [5] and [9]^,p. 116, 189,
Ay
and,others).
But usually, when it is asserted that non-humans cannot have
rights, obligations and such like, what sort of 'cannot' is involved is
not specified - whether
it is a 'cannot' of logical impossibility, or of
non-significance or absurdity, or something else again (the point is nicely
illustrated by Feinberg's discussion of McCloskey,
McCloskey [11] itself).
in
p. 195 , and by
In any case, however, the thesis appears to be mistaken,
for it rules out as logically impossible or absurd a number of positions and
theses which are very plainly neither and which it may even, in some circumstances,
be important to consider.
For example, it is surely neither impossible nor absurd
to consider moral questions concerning conduct of humans towards other species,
e.g. to a race of sensitive and intelligent extraterrestrial beings, and
similarly moral questions arising from their conduct towards or concerning humans,
indeed science fiction writ .ers do this commonly without producing nonsense or
contradicting themselves.
Not only does the proposed restriction appear quite
5.
mistaken given current usage, but there seems indeed to be something logically
unsound about the attempt to place a logical restriction to a particular species
on such terms, just as there would be in restricting membership of the Moral
Club to people with blue eyes and blond hair who are over 6 feet tall.
The
accident of being a zoological human, defined in terms of various physical
characteristics, cannot be morally relevant.
It is impossible to restrict
moral terms to particular species, when species distinctions are defined in
terms of physical characteristics which are not morally relevant.
More generally, any attempt to derive a logically necessary connection
between humanity itself and the applicability of morality is bound to fail.
For creatures anatomically and zoologically distinct from humans which are
identical with humans in terms of all morally relevant features are logically
possible, upsetting any logical linkage.
tie between humanity
But attempts to establish a logical
and morality through features which all and only humans
possess and which are themselves linked logically to morality, would, of course,
involve a modal fallacy, namely that of substituting a contingent equivalence
within an opaque modal conte t of logical necessity.
In order for such an
argument to be val? d, it would have to be logically necessary that non
humans do not possess such features, not merely a contingent fact that they
do not;
but this assumption must be incorrect for morally relevant
characteristics.
The only proposal which has ac/n/tce of succeeding, then, is the factual one
which makes the selection of just humans for the Moral Club a contingent matter,
the claim being that as a matter of contingent fact all and only humans possess
a certain set of characteristics, which characteristics themselves are logically
tied with qualification for moral consideration and for direct attribution of
value to the possessor.
What this contingent form of human chauvinism has to produce then, in
order to establish its case, is a set of characteristics which satisfy the
following conditions of adequacy:
6.
1.
The set of characteristics must be possessed by at least all properly
functioning humans, since to omit any significant category usually considered
subject to moral consideration, such as infants, young children, primitive
tribesmen etc., and to allow that it was permissible to treat these gro^J^L^
in the way it is considered permissible to treat non-humans, ^s mere instruments,
would certainly be repuguant to modern moral sensibilities, and would offend
common intuitions as to the brotherhood of man, the view that all humans are
possessors of inalienable
rights.
Thus human chauvinism, if it is to produce
a coherent theory which does not unacceptably rule out some groups of humans
must find some set of features common to the most diverse members of humankind,
from Rio Tinto executives to hunter-gatherer tribes of Amazonian Indians,
from those who engage in highly abstract activities such as logic and
mathematics to those who cannot, from the literate and cultured to the
illiterate and uncouth, from the poet and professor to the infant.
This
alone will be no easy task.
2.
In order for human chauvinism to be justified this set of characteristics
must not be possessed by any non-human.
3.
The set of characteristics must not merely be morally relevant,but
sufficient to justify, in a non-circular way, the cut-off of moral consideration
at exactly the right point.
If human chauvinism is to avoid the charge of
arbitrariness and unjustifiability, and demonstrate its inevitability and
the impossibility of alternatives, it must emerge from the characteristicj
why items not having
may be used as mere instruments to serve the interests
of those which do possess
There must be some explanatory logical
connection between the set of characteristics and membership of the Moral
Club.
Chauvinists aie.
fc
stress
distinguishing points between
the privileged class and those outside it - and there is no lack of
characteristics which distinguish humans from non-humans, at least
functioning healthy adult ones.
The point is that these distinctions usually
do not warrant the sort of radically inferior treatment for which they are
7.
proposed as a rationale.
On the basis of the characteristics then the
proposed radical difference in treatment between the privileged and non
privileged class and the purely instrumental treatment of the non-privileged
class, must be warranted, that is, the distinguishing characteristics must
be able to carry the moral superstructure placed upon them.
A large and exceedingly disparate collection of features has been suggested
as distinguishing humans from non-humans and justifying human chauvinism.
But
it turns out that every one of these, on examination, either fails to pick out
the desired privileged class of humans in an unequivchcal fashion, that is, it
applies to some non-humans or excludes some humans who should not be excluded,
or, when it does select the desired class, fails on condition 3, and does not
warrant the exclusive claim to moral consideration of the privileged class.
Many suggested criteria in fact fail on more than one count.
The traditional distinction between humans and the rest in terms of
rationality illustrates the point.
Once the theological doctrines of the
exclusively human soul on which the distinction once rested are abandoned,
it is not so easy to see what is meant by this term.
Indeed it often appears
to function as little more than a self-congratulatory predicate applied
exclusively to humans, with no other clear function at all.
clarifications are sometimes offered.
However various
For example rationality may be said
to be the ability to reason, this being tested by such basically linguistic
performances as the ability to do lo^ic, to prove theorems, to draw conclusions
from arguments and to engage in inductive and deductive linguistic behaviour.
But such stringent and linguistically-loaded criteria will eliminate far
too many members of the human species who cannot perform these tasks.
If,
however, behavioural criteria for rationality are adopted, or the ability to
solve problems and to fit attion to individual goals becomes the test - that
is, practical reasoning is the test - it is obvious that many non-human
admission to
the Moral Club, rather than the ability to perform some other
tasks
or meet some other set of standards, such as orienteering ability,the
ability to mix concrete (the use of concrete being, afte^all, a far more
conspicuous feature of modern human society than the use of reason).
One
senses also in the appeal to such criteria (andespecially to linguistic
criteria) the overvaluation of the things in which the privileged class
typically excells and the undervaluation of the skills - not obviously^ in any
non—circular way inferior - of the non-privileged class, which is such a
typical feature of chauvinism.
We list
some of the suggested characteristics supposedly justifying
human chauvinism, and indicate in brackets after each some of the conditions
they fail:
using tools (fails 1, 2, 3), altering the environment (1, 2, 3),
the ability to communicate (1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn language
(1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn English (1, 3), possession of
consciousness (2, 3), self-consciousness or self-awareness (1, 2?, 3), having
a conscience (1, 2?, 3), having a sense of shame (1, 2?, 3), being aware of
oneself as an agent or initiator (1, 2, 3), having awareness (2, 3), being
aware of one's existence (1, 2?, 3), being aware of the inevitability of
one's own death (1, 2?, 3), being capable of self-deception (1, 3), being
able to ask questions about moral issues such as human chauvinism (1, 3),
having a mental life (2, 3), being able to play games (1, 2, 3), being able
to laugh (1, 3), to laugh at oneself (1, 3), being able to make jokes (1, 3),
having interests (2, 3), having projects (1, 2, 3), being able to assess
some of one's performances as successful or not (1, 2, 3), enjoying freedom
of action (2, 3), being able to vary one's behaviour outside a narrow range
of insttnctu al behaviour (1, 2, 3), belonging to a social community (1, 2, 3),
being morally responsible for one's actions (1), being able to love (1, 2),
being capable of altruism (1, 2), being capable of being a Christian, or
capable of religious faith (1, 3), being able to produce the items of (human)
civilisation grid, culture
*
(1, 3).
* This feature typifies a number of rather circular distinguishing characteristics,
or at least ones which raise serious theob^. tical problems for human chauvinism,
because they attempt to explain the unique value of humans in terms of their
ability to produce items which are taken to be independently valuable, thus
contradicting human chauvinism (see the discussion in [10],/?.;77/,
It appears that none of these criteria meet the conditions of adequacy;
furthermore it seems most unlikely that any other characteristic
or any cowbinlation of the^characteristics does
so.
Thus we conclude that these contingent direct arguments for human
&
chauvinism^not establish its inevitability, and that indeed the position rests
on a shaky base and so f^r lacks a coherent theoretical justification.
Human chauvinism cannot be restored by a detour through the concept of
a person, that is by linking perso/JnoocL with membership of the /*
foral
(lub, and
identifying the class of persons contingently with the class of humans.
For then the same problem as above arises with different terminology
even if the
of person
since,
can be specified in such a way as to justify
the restriction of moral privileges to persons, the class of persons will
then not
conicin the way human chauvinism requires^ with the class
of humans, but will either include a great many non-humans or exclude a good
many humans^morally considered.
Attempts to enlarge the privileged class, for example to persons (broadly
specified), or to sentient or preference having creatures, may avoid many
of the problems of arbitrariness and justification which face the strong
form of human chauvinism, but, as we
shall argue, face a set of problems of
coherence and consistency common to all instrumentalist theories of value and
morality.
*******
There are a number of indirect arguments for human chauvinism based on
features of value and morality.
argument
We turn now to consider these.
One abstract
which is supposed to establish that values are, or must, be
determined through the interests of humans or persons - a central argument
underlying chauvinism - takes the following form:-
10.
A.
Values are determined through the preference rankings of valuers.
(The
no detachable values assumption).
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers' interests.
(The preference reduction thesis).
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
(The species assumption).
Therefore:
D.
Values are determined through human interests [through the interests of
persons].
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human interest,
there is no rational or possible alternative to doing so:
any alternative
is simply incoherent.
Although th{$
argument does not, so far as we are aware, appear anywhere
with its premisses explicitly stated, it does seem to reflect the sorts of
considerations those who claim that there is no rational or coherent alternative
to organising everything in human interests usually have in mind.
Of course
once the premisses are exposed, it is easier to see that this initially
persuasive argument, like others in the area, rests on fallacious assumptions.
y<2^ —
We shall claim that although the argument to conclusion D is formally^given
only some quite conventional assumptions such as that the relation of determin
ation or functionality is appropriately transitive and the principle of
replacement of necessary identicals - not all the premisses should be accepted.
The argument can be treated as the major representative of a family of
similar arguments.
For there are many variations that can be made on the
argument with a view to amending it, tightening it, varying or strengthening
its conclusion, and so on.
Our criticisms of the argument will, for the most
part, transfer to the variations.
qualifies the determining relation;
A first group of variations replaces or
for example, 'determined through' or
'determined by' may be replaced by 'answer back to',
of',
'can be reduced to', or 'are a function of'.
'reflect',
'are a matter
(The latter functional
form makes it plain that 'determined' has to mean 'exactly determined', which
11.
ensures that no extraneous factors enter
into the chauvinistic determination:
mere partial determination would be quite compatible with the rejection of
human chauvinism.)
Alternatively, 'determined' may be modally upgraded to
'have to be determined', in order to reveal the sheer necessity of conclusion
D.
(In this case it is essential that premiss C be of modal strength, and not
merely contingent as it would be if the original form were retained;
other
wise the argument would contain a modal fallacy.).
Another familiar, and appealing, variation we have already bracketed into
the form of the argument given;
class by persons.
namely the replacement of humans as base
This straightaway increases the cogency of premiss C,
which otherwise - while better than, say,
'Valuers are white (North American)
humans' - would at best be contingently true (which is not good enough for the
argument and in fact appears false, since some valuers may not be human;
and
certainly not all humans are valuers), while at worst it is simply a circular
way of reintroducing the logical version of human chauvinism by rest^cting the
class of valuers a priori to humans.
That all valuers are persons may be made
analytic on the sense of 'person' - given a redefinition of 'person' away from
its normal English usage, which philosophical
English appears to almost
tolerate - thus shielding premiss C from criticism.
Other base classes than
persons can replace humans in premiss C, for example animals, thus leading
to the conclusion, of animal chauvinism, that values are determined through
the interests (considerations and concerns) of animals, sentient creatures,
or whatever.
In the end, of course premiss C could be absorbed (as: Valuers
are valuers or valuing creatures) and accordingly omitted, leaving the
conclusion:
Values are determined in the interests of valuers.
However even
the analytic form of premiss C does not, as we shall see, save the argument.
Much the same applies in the case of premiss A.
The premiss is certainly
not unobjectionable in the usual sense of 'determined';
but there are ways
of repairing it so that the argument still works in a sufficiently damaging
form, and one way goes as follows:—
What is true, analytically, if
sufficiently many valuers are taken into account, is that values are deter
12.
mined through the value rankings of valuers.
Value rankings cannot however
be cashed in for preference rankings since, as is well-known, preference
rankings and value rankings can diverge:
value and can value what is not preferred.
a valuer can prefer what has less
Let us amend the argument then -
so that we can locate the real cause of damage - by replacing premiss A by
the following premiss:
A^.
Values are determined through the value rankings of (appropriate) valuers.
Correspondingly B will be adjusted to B^ in which 'value' replaces 'preference'.
The really objectionable premiss in the central argument is
neither
premiss A nor premiss C, but premiss B - or, more exactly, where A is repaired,
premiss B^.
Suspicion of premiss B may be aroused by noticing that it plays
an exactly parallel role in the class chauvinism argument to that the critical
premiss
BE.
One's preferences of choices are always determined through self-interest,
plays in familiar arguments for egoism, that whatever course of action one
adopts, it is always really adopted in one's own selfish interests.
The argument for egoism runs along the following, parallel, lines:-
AE.
Individual persons [agents) always act (in freely chosen cases) in the
way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accordance with their preference rankings.
BE.
Individual preference rankings are always determined through ^reflect) self
interest.
Therefore:
There is nonetheless an esoteric, semantical, sense of 'determined' in which
premiss A is demonstrably true, and so a sense in which it is analytically
true that value rankings are semantically determined by the preference rankings
of situations by a class of valuers. The details of these semantical foundations
for values are set out in 131. But while premiss A can be corrected by replacing
'determined' by 'semantically determined' and giving this an appropriate construal,
such a move would do nothing to restore the intended argument:
for it would
either invalidate the argument, through change in the key middle term 'determined',
or, alternatively, if 'determined' is systematically replaced throughout the
argument, drastically alter the intended conclusion D - so that looking at the
interests that humans in fact have would no longer provide a guide to values
(instead the interests of hypothetical valuers with respect to worlds that never
exist or could exist would have to be gathered).
13.
DE.
Individual persons ^agents] always act in ways determined by self
interest [that reflect their own interests^.
Thereafter follows the slide from in their own interests^ to to their own
advantage, or for their own uses or purposes.
The final conclusion of egoism
again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not only that the egoistic
position is perfectly in order and thoroughly rational but that there are no
alternatives, that there is, or at least ought to be, no other way of acting,
'that men can only choose to do what is in their own interests or that it is
only rational to do this'
([2], p. 140).
Thus human chauvinism, as based on the central argument, stands revealed
as a form of group selfishness, group egoism one might almost say.
Likewise
the criticisms of the Group Selfishness argument, as we shall now call the
central argument, parallel those of egoism, in particular premiss B (B )
succumbs to similar objections to those that defeat premiss BE (BE^).
Group
selfishness is no more acceptable than egoism, since it depends on exactly
the same set of confusions between values and advantages, and slides on such
terms as 'interests', as the arguments on which egoism rests.
Nowell-Smith's
very appealing critique of egoism ([2], p. 140-144) may, by simple paraphrase,
be converted into a critique of group selfishness.
recast B^ and BE"
*"
This is obvious once we
and set them side by side:
BE^. Individual value rankings are determined through (individual) self
interest;
and
B^.
Valuers'
[groups'] value rankings are determined through valuers'
(group) interests [joint interests of groups].
Because, however, one sets up or selects one's own preference or value
rankings, it does not follow that they are set up or selected in one's own
interests;
similarly in group cases, because a group determines its own
rankings, it does not follow that it determines them in its own interests.
Just as BE^ is, prima facie at least, refuted by a range of examples where
value, and also preference, rankings run counter to self-interest, e.g. cases
of altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by examples where value, and
also overall preference rankings, vary from group interests, e.g. cases of
In the case
group altruism.
of limited groups examples are easy to locate,
e.g. resistance movements, environmental action groups, and so on;
case, however, of the larger human group
in the
are bound to be more controversial
(since B^ unlike BE^ is a live thesis), but are still easy to find, especially
if future humans are discounted, e.g. it is in humans' selfish interests to
have plentiful supplies of this and that, electricity from uranium, oil,
Me were
Sy/Z/ey
whalemeat, fish, etc., right now rather than^which would result from restraint,
but altruistic value rankings would rank the latter
above the former.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish
because pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip
mine the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but environmentalists who advocate
not doing so, in many cases not merely because of future humans, are apparently
acting not just out of their own or human group interests.
But, just as BE^ is not demolished by such counterexamples of apparently
altruistic action, neither is B :
in each case it can be made out that further
selfish interests are involved, e.g., in the case of B , that an agent did
what he did, an altruistic action, because he liked doing it.
As Nowell-Smith
explains in the egoism case, interest is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE^ true at the cost, however, of trivialising
them.
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a further sort
of "interest";
whatever valuers value that does not seem to be in their
interests is said to provide a further interest, either the value itself or
an invented value surrogate; for example^the environmentalist who works to
retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be said to be so acting
because he has an interest in or derives benefit or advantage from just knowing
it exists, just as he would be in the egoist case.
theses can be retained;
By such strategies the
for then a valued item really is in valuers
interests,
in the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously inconvenienced
15.
by it, i.e. even if it is not in their interests in the customary sense.
',
*
Thus.BE'
like 4^', is preserved by stretching the elastic term 'interests',
in a way that it too readily admits, to include values, or value surrogates,
among interests.
Then however the conclusion of the &roup Selfishness
argument loses its intended force, and becomes the platitude that values
are determined through valuers' values , just as egoism, under the extension
a
which makes us all covert egoists,loses its sting and becomes,platitude.
It can be seen that human chauvinism in this form, like egoism, derives its
plausibility from vacillation in the sense of 'interests', with a resulting
fluctuation between a strong false thesis - the face of^chauvinism usually
presented - and a trivial analytic thesis,between paradox and platitude.-^ To
sum up the dilemma for the argument then:-
when 'interest' is used in its
weaker sense premiss B may be accepted but the argument does not establish
its intended conclusion or in any way support human chauvinism.
intended effect of the argument, in the crude form is this:
values it is enough to look at human advantage:
For the
in determining
nothing else counts.
If the
argument were correct, then one could assess values by checking out the local
(selfish) advantage of humans, or, more generally, the advantage of the base
class somehow assembled.
If, on the other hand,
'interest' is used in its
strong sense, the conclusion would lice^'hce a form of human chauvinism, but
premiss B now fails.
Most philosphers think they know how to discredit the egoist arguments.
It is curious indeed then, that an argument which is regarded as so unsatisfactory
in the individual case - that for egoism - remains unchallenged and is still
considered so convincing in a precisely parallel group case - that for human
chauvinism.
********
The technique of rescuing philosphical theses by natural extensions and
accompanying redefinitions of terms, including the thesis "We're all selfish
really", is delightfully explained in Wisdom [7], chapter 1.
16.
The Group Selfishness argument is often employed in another way, as the
presentation for a choice between the conclusion D, that value is determined by
or reducible to a matter of human interests, and the denial of premiss A, which
denial is seen as entailing a commitment to a detached,intrinsic or naturalistic
theory of value.
Thus, it may be said either one accepts the conclusion, with
its consequent instrumentalist account of value, or one is committed to an intrinsic
or detached value theory which takes values to be completely independent of valuers,
and no way determined by them.
But, it is assumed, the latter theory is well
known as untenable, and may even be seen as involving mysticism or as irrational
^e.g. by Passmore [9], chapter 7).
Thus it may be concluded, there is no real
coherent alternative to such an instrumental account of value, and hence no real
alternative to human chauvinism.
The form of the argument then, is essentially: *^A
v D, but A,therefore D,
or, if a stronger connection, of intensional disjunction, is intended:
but A, therefore D.
It can be seen that the main premiss, -A v D, has resulted
from the exportation and suppression of premisses B and C of the Group
argument.
^A,
Selfishness
This suppression does nothing to improve the standing of the premisses
although it does have the (possibly advantageous) effect of making it more difficult
to see the fallacious assumptions on which it is based.
For of course the choice
a false one, and for precisely the same reasons that led us
to say that premiss B was false.
To reject the instrumentalist
conclusion D is
by no means to be committed to ^A, or to the view that the valuer's and their
preference
rankings play no role in determining values and that values are a
further set of mysterious independent items in the world somehow perceived by
valuers through a special (even mystical and non—rational) moral sense.
Valuers'
;
*
preference rankings may be admitted to play an important role in evaluation
are still not committed to D unless we assume - what amounts to premiss B
these preference rankings reflect, or can be reduced to, valuers' interests.
* on page 16a
we
that
16a
Value rankings can be semantically analysed in terms of preference or
interest rankings, as in [3]; but this does not offer a reduction of
values to preferences or interests, as [8] explains.
The semantical
foundations, while conceding nothing to subjectivism or instrumentalism,
make it easy to concede main points of the case (attributed to Dewey)
against detached values, against the view that there are values somehow
out there (in Meinong's aussersein), purely naturalistic values completely
detached from all valuers, or from all preference rankings of valuers.
Put differently, there are no values that do not somehow answer back to
preference rankings of valuers, and so no values that are entirely
detached from valuers and valuational activity such as preference-ranking
of situations.
But the answering back is made explicit and precise by
the semantical analysis, not by any syntactical reduction or translation
of value statements into statements about valuers' preference or interest
rankings; and the valuers of the analysis are, like the situations
introduced, ideal and need in no way exist.
As a result then, valuations
may be independent of the aggregated preference rankings of all actual
humans or, for that matter, of all persons over all time.
Thus too the
semantical analysis makes it easy to navigate a course between the
alternatives of two influential false dichotomies, to the effect that
values are either instrumental or else detached, or that values are either
subjective or else detached.
For though a semantical analysis can be
given, upsetting the detached value thesis, no translation or syntactical
reduction of the sort subjectivism assumes is thereby effected.
17.
The dichotomy frequently presented between instrumentalist accounts of
value, on the one hand, and detached theories (or what are mistakenly taken
to be the same, intrinsic theories) is, for the same reason, a false one.
Instrumental theories are those which attempt to reduce value to what is
instrumental to^contribute$to a stated goal.
Typically such theories take
the goal to be the furtherance of the interest of a privileged class;
for
example the goal may be taken to be determined in terms of the interests,
concerns, advantage or welfare of the class of humans, or of persons, or of
sentient creatures, depending on the type of chauvinism.
In particular, human
chauvinist theories are, characteristically, instrumentalist theories.
In
contrast,an item is valued intrinsically where it is valued for its own sake,
and not merely as a means to something further;
and an intrinsic value theory
allows that some items are intrinsically valuable.
Intrinsic theories then,
instrumental
contrast with
Z.
theories, and what 'intrinsic' tells us is no more than
that the item taken as intrinsically valuable is not valued merely as a means to
some goal, i.e. is not merely instrumentally valued.
Accordingly detached value
theories, since disjoint from instrumental theories, are a subclass of intrinsic
value theories;
be detached:
and they are a proper subclass since intrinsic values need not
something may be valuable in itself without its value being
detached from all valuing experience.
It is evident, furthermore, that the
identification of intrinsic and detached value theories presupposed in the
argument is no more than a restatement of the false dichotomy -^A v D, or
^A,
The assumption
i.e. non-instrumental, therefore detached^that if preference or value rankings are
involved at all the resulting assignments must be instrumental is either false or
or is variation of the fallacious premiss B which plays a crucial role in the
Group Selfishness and Egoist arguments;
the variation is that if value or
preference rankings are involved they must reflect valuers' interests, therefore
such values are instrumental, because the items valued are valued according as
they reflect valuers interest, therefore according as they are a means to the
end of satisfying the valuers' interest.
It follows
that intrinsic value theories
18.
may allow for a third way between instrumental and detached theories, because
of the possibility of value rankings (and also preference rankings) which are
not themselves set up in a purely instrumentalist way, that is attributing value
to aiitem only according as it is a means to some goal.
The argument that there is no coherent alternative to instrumentalism does
not however rely just on misrepresenting alternative intrinsic accounts as
logically incoherent by assimilating them to detached accounts.
It also trades
on a contemporary insensitivity to the serious logical and epistemological problems
of instrumental accounts of value, problems which were well known to classical
philosophers (see e.g., Aristotle Metaphysics, 994b9-16)
It does not appear to
be widely realised that the classical arguments apply not just to a few especially
shaky instrumentalist theories which adopt questionable goals but
to instrumentalism
in general, since they assume only quite general features of the instrumentalist
position.
Instrumentalist positions take as valuable (or in the moral case, as creating
moral constraints) just what contributes to a stated end.
which comes to mind is utilitarianism.
An obvious example
However in the more general case we
are concerned with, of instrumentalist forms of human chauvinism, there may be a
set of goalnot just a single goal such as that of maximising net happiness of
humans;
the human chauvinist assumption is that the values (indeed constraints)
are goal-reducible, and that all goals reduce in some way to human goals, or at
least can be assessed in terms of human concerns and interests.
Human chauvinist
positions are not necessarily instrumental, but those that are not (e.g. the
position that just humans and nothing else
are intrinsically valuable) tend to
make the arbitrary chauvinistic nature of their assumptions unwisely explicit -
most successful contempory chauvinisms being covert ones.
Problems for instrumentalism arise (as Aristotle observed) when questions
are asked about the status of the goal itself.
Instrumentalism relies entirely
for its plausibility upon selecting a set of goats which are widely accepted and are, in
19.
It relies at bottom on an implicit
the theory, implicitly treated as valuable.
valuation which cannot itself be explained in purely instrumental terms. Of course
a value assumption is not eliminated on this fashion:
the general
consensus
it is merely hidden under
that such a goal is appropriate, that such an end is valuable.
But the strategy of successful instrumentalism is to avoid recognition of the fact
that the goal is, and indeed must be, implicitly treated as
valuable, by selecting
a set of goals so much part of the framework of comtemporary thought, so entrenched
and habitual 3s a valued item by humans that the value attached to the goal becomes
virtually invisible, at least to those
the framework.
Thus it is with the
assumption of human chauvinist instrumentalism that goals are exclusively
determinable in terms of human interest.
The basic, convincing
and self-evident
character of this assumption rests on nothing more than the shared beliefs of the
privileged class of humans concerning the paramount and exclusive importance of
their own interests and concerns, on a valuational assumption or goal which is
^'self-evident'" because it is advantageous and is habitual.
The consensus features,
of which instrumentalists make so much, are nothing more than the consensus of the
privileged class about the goal of maintaining
consensus of interests.
their own privilege, i.e. a
This sort of agreement of course shows very little about
the well-grountiness of the position.
Unless the goals set are widely accepted as valuable, the account will be
unconvincing to those who do not
share the goal and even to those who appreciate
that it is possible to reject the goal.
In order for instrumentalism to work
logically however, the goal must be implicitly treated within the theory as valuable,
for otherwise the proposed analysis loses explanatory and justificatory power
and lacks compulsion.
For how can the value of an item be explained and justified
in terms of its contribution to an end not itself considered valuable!
Serious
problems also arise about the nature of value statements under the instrumentalist
analysis unless the goal is treated as valuable.
For if the goals themselves are
not so treated within the theory, but are taken simply as unevaluated facts, then
a valuational statement 'x is valuable' becomes, under the proposed analysis,
20.
simply the statement that x tends to produce a certain result, to contribute to
certain human states, a statement whose logical status, openness to verification,
allowance for disagreement, and so on, does not substantially differ from that
statement that x tends to producejoxide, to contribute to the rusting of human
products.
Such an account of value statements is open to the same sort of
objections as other naturalistic reductions of value, for example, Mill's account
the desirable in terms of the desired.
of
The special logical and
epistemological character of value statements then, especially with respect to
verification and disagreement,must be supplied in instrumentalism, if it is to
be supplied at all, by the implicit treatment of the goal itself as valuable.
The fact that the goaL of an instrumental account must be taken as itself
valuable, gives rise to two choices.
In the first, the goal is taken as itself
instrumentally valuable, which creates an infinite regress.
For if the end,
reason or assignment for which other items are intrumentally valuable is itself
only instrumentally valuable then there must in turn be some other end, reason or
assignment
in terms of which it is valuable (by definition of instrumental).
A regress is thus begun, and if this regress is not to be viciously infinite, it
must terminate in some end or feature which is taken as valuable just in itself,
that is, with intrinsic values.
On the alternative option the goal is not taken to be instrumentally valuable
but is admitted to be valuable in some other way.
Unless an 'except' clause is
, so that all values are held to be
account
instrumental with the exception of the goal, the
will of course be contextually
added to the original instrumentalist
inconsistent, since it is inconsistent when contextually supplied assumptions are
added.
For these include the assuption that the goal itself is valuable, but not
in the way that the instrumentalist thesis claims is the only way possible.
the goal is taken to be both valuable and not valuable.
If, on the other hand, an'except^ clause is added, this amounts to an
admission that the goal is taken to be non-instrumentally valuable.
Thus the
account may be able to retain consistency, but does so at the expense of
Thus
21
explicitly admitting a value, that of the goal, which cannot be accounted for in
purely instrumental terms, in short, that the gcdl is taken as intrinsically
valuable.
To sum up, the dilemma for the instrumentalist can be put as follows:
Consider the desirability of the goal of the instrumental theory: it must
implicitly be judged to be desirable, for otherwise nothing could be justified
by reduction to it.
or not?
Ask:
Is this goal also instrumentally desirable (valuable)
If it is, i.e. it is only desirable as a means to a further goal,
then either a regress is initiated or the same issue arises with respect to
the new goal.
But if it is not, then the instrumental theory is again refuted,
since the goal is desirable though not desirable according to the test of the
theory because it is not instrumental to the goal.
Whichever ho rn of the dilemma is taken^ then> the outcome is the same:
the instrumentalist must rely on treating the goal itself as implicitly valuable
in a way not purely instrumental, that is, as intrinsically valuable.
Thus the
instrumentalist is, at bottom, guilty of precisely the same crime of which he
accuses the adherent of a intrinsic account, with the added delinquency of failing
to admit and face up to his basic assumptions.
The logical and epistemological
position of such an instrumental account is certainly no better than that of an
intrinsic account, since there is logically no difference between the recognition
of one intrinsic value (or one set in the case where gcals are multiple) and the
recognition of many of them, ancf^lxtgical and epistemological status of the
instrumentalist's account is no better than that of the goal to which his values
are taken as instrumental.
Since the instrumentalist has implicitly admitted
the legitimacy of an intrinsic value assignment in setting up his account, he
cannot claim any superiority over a more general intrinsic theory which allows for
many intrinsic values, since what is legitimate in the case of one value assignment
must be equally legitimate in the multiple case.
22,
This abstract dilemma for human chauvinist instrumentalism is illustrated
in a concrete case by Passmore's procedure in [9];
for Passmore (1) wishes to
say that there is no coherent alternative to instrumental values, that an item
is valuable insofar as it serves human interest, and (2) wants to explain the
unique value attributed to humans in terms of their production of valuable
civilised and cultural
But (2) involves the admission of values, that
items.
of civilised items, which cannot be valuable in the way (1) states, and indeed
(2) amounts to the admission of non-instrumental values.
The proposed account is
inconsistent because if intrinsic values are admissible in the case of civilised
items, they cannot be logically ^oherent in the way (1) claims.
The sort of problem faced by Passmore is however not a readily avoidable
one for the instrumentalist;
for if the charge of arbitary and unjustifiable
human chauvinism is to be avoided by those who opt for (1), and humans are not
themselves to be awarded intrinsic values,, thus conceding the logical legitimacy
of intrinsic values generally, and hence the avoidability of human chauvinist
accounts of value, some explanation must be provided for the exclusive value
attributed to humans.
But only explanation capable of justifying this valuation
in a non-arbitray and non-chauvinistic way would have to refer to properties of
humans, and would have to say something like:
'Humans are uniquely valuable because
they alone have valuable properties x,y,z,... or produce valuable items A, B, C...'.
distinguishing
The list of proposed
features already considered on page 8 are usually
those that will be employed here.
But this is to admit intrinsic value for the
properties which explain the exclusive value of humans.
The dilemma
for the human chauvinist is that he must either take the exclusive human value
assumption (the goal) as ultimate—laying him open to the charge of arbitrary
chauvinism and of attributing intrinsic values to humans-or attempt to explain it*
in which case he will again end by concedingly non-instrumental values.
Thus the case for the inevitability of human chauvinism, that alternatives to
it must be based on an incoherent and logically and epistemically defective account
of values, namely a non-instrumental account, has not been established by these
arguments.
&
*
&&&&
**
**&
23.
Egoism, not group selfishness, is one of the assumptions underlying the next
The leading ideas of the representative
series of abstract defences of chauvinism.
argument we first consider are essentially those of social contract theories.
This
argument takes the following form (the bracketed paramaeters X and Z are filled out
in the representative argument respectively by:
and:
J.
justification of moral principles,
enter into contracts):
The only justification of moral principles [only X] is a contractual one, i.e.
the entry into contracts of agents [Zry].
K.
Agents only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests.
(The
egoist assumption)
L.
Humans [persons] are the only agents that enter into contracts [that Z].
Therefore, by K and L,
M.
Humans [persons] only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests
Therefore, from J and M,
N.
The only justification for moral principles [only X] is the (selfish) interests
of humans [persons].
*
The argument can be varied by different choices of parameters, X and Z.
example, X could be filled out by
replaced by 'community-based'
For
'determination of value judgments', and 'contractual'
(i.e. Z is filled out by 'are community-based' or some
such) yielding in place of J the familiar premiss that the only justification of
value judgments is a community-based one, and leading to a conclusion, analytically
linked to D above, that all value judgments
are determined by human self-interest.
Alternatively just one of X or Z may be so replaced, leaving the other as in the
original
example .
Another variation of the argument that has figured prominently
in the discussion of animal rights fills out X and Z respectively by 'determination
of rights' and 'belong to human society'.
Under this assignment the parametric premiss
The logical transitions in the argument take on more evidently valid form upon
analytic transformation of the premisses, to those now illustrated:J'. All justifications of moral principles are cases of (justified by) the entry
into contracts of agents.
K'. All cases of the entry into contracts are cases of self-interests of agents.
And so on for L' through M'.
24.
J becomes essentially that commonly adopted (e.g. [4] and [5] again), but already
criticised above, that 'rights are determined solely by reference to human society'.
As the arguments are in each case valid, the issue of the correctness of the
conclusions devolves on that of the correctness of the premisses.
In each case too
the arguments could be made rather more plausible by replacing 'humans' by 'persons'
(and correspondingly 'human society' by 'society of persons', etc.);
for otherwise
premisses such as L and its variations are suspect, since there is nothing, legally or
morally, to prevent consortia, organisations and other non-humans from entering into
contracts (and these items are appropriately counted as persons in the larger legal
sense).
Given that that amendment deals with premiss L, the correctness of the
arguments turns on the correctness of premisses J and K.
But both these premisses are
false, and premiss J imports the very chauvinism that is at issue in the conclusion.
Though
the representative contract argument is only one of several important
variations that can be made on the general parametric argument, it is often regarded
as having special appeal, because the contract model appears to explain the origin of
obligation, and offer a justification for it, in a way that no other model does, and
thus to provide a bulwark against moral, and political, scepticism.
That the
appearance is illusory, because the obligation to honour contracts is assumed at bottom,
is well enough known and not our concern here.
What is of concern is the correctness of
representative premisses J and K.
The egoist assumption K is faulted on the same grounds as egoism itself.
For
agents sometimes enter into contracts that are not in their own interests but are in
the interests of other persons or creatures, or are undertaken on behalf of, for
instance to protect, other items that do not have interests at all, e.g. rivers,
buildings, forests.
The attempt to represent all these undertakings as in human
interests, because done in the "selfish interests" of the agents is the same as in the
egoist arguments, and the resolution of the problem is the same, namely to distinguish
acting, valuing, and so on, clearly from acting in one's own selfish (or in group)
interests.
However even if premiss K were amended to admit that agents may enter into
25.
contracts on behalf of non-human items, it would still result in a form of human
chauvinism given familiar assumptions, since non—human items will still be unable to
create moral obligations except through a human sponsor or patron, who will, presumably,
be able to choose whether or not to protect them.
Natural items will generate no moral
constraints unless humans freely choose to allow them to do so;
since the obligatory
features of moral obligation thus disappear, no genuine moral obligations can be
created by natural items under such an amended account.
Thus the amended premiss
assumes the question at issue.
Premiss J, the view that moral
obligations are generated solely by contracts
undertaken by moral agents, is then the crucial assumption for this argument for human
chauvinism.
J however has serious difficulties, for there are many recognised moral
principles which apparently cannot be explained as contractually based, at least if
"contract" is to be taken seriously.
There is no actual contract underlying the
principle that one ought not to be cruel to animals, children and others not in a
position to contract.
Adherents of a social contract view of moral obligation are of
course inclined to withhold recognition of those moral principles that cannot be con
tractually based, so that the contract thesis becomes not so much explanatory as pre
scriptive.
But even allowing for this, the thesis has many unacceptable consequences
just concerning humans, and if the notion of contract plays a serious role, it is
difficult to reconcile with the view of all humans a possessing rights.
A crucial feature of contracts is that they are freely undertaken by responsible
parties.
If they can be freely undertaken there must be a choice with respect to them
the choice of not so contracting.
But then we are left
with the conclusion that it is
permissible to treat those who do choose not to contract as mere instruments of those
who do, in the way that the non-human world is presently treated;
these contractual
dropouts, like those outside society, can have no rights and there can be no moral
constraints on behaviour concerning them,whatever their capacity for suffering.
A
similar conclusion emerges if humans who are not morally responsible are considered,
for although we are normally considered to have quite substantial obligations to such
26.
humans, e.g. babies, young children, those who are considered mentally ill or as
having diminished responsibility, they cannot themselves be free and responsible
parties to a contract, and will, on the social contract view, presumably have to
depend for their rights on others freely choosing to contract on their behalf.
If^this
does not^for some reason^) occur we will be left with a similarly unacceptable con-
elusion as in the case of the contractual dropouts.
Obviously then, moral obligations
do not require morally equal, freehand responsible contracting parties, in the way
the social contract account presupposes.
Worse, the argument would appear, with but
little adaptation, to justify the practices of such groups as death squads, multi
rr
nationals, and the Mafia, it!
If these unacceptable conclusions are to be avoided, all humans will have to be
somehow, in virtue of simply being human, subject to some mysterious, fictional,
social contract which they did not freely choose to enter into, cannot get out of, and
which can never exclude any member of the human species.
So the unacceptable con-
sequences are avoided only if crucial features of the notion of contract such as
freedom and responsibility are dropped, and the notion^and premiss J so seriously
weakened as to become virtually without conditions.
For the argument to work the
residue has to be mere common humanity, and the "contract" little more than the
convention of morally considering just other members of the human species.
convention differs little
however from a restatement of human chauvinism;
Such a
the pro
ferred explanation is really no explanation, for such a convention can neither justify
human chauvinism nor, since different conventions could be arranged, explain why it is
inevitable.
The social contract account of moral obligation is defective because it implies
that moral obligations can really only hold between responsible moral agents, and
attempts to account for all moral obligation as based on contract.
But of course the
account is correct as an account of the origin of some types of moral obligation;
there are moral obligations of a type that can only hold between free and responsible
agents, and others which only apply within a social and political context.
Yet other
types of obligation, such as the obligation not to cause suffering, can arise only with
respect to sentient or preference-having creatures -
who are not necessarily morally
27.
responsible — and could not significantly arise with respect to a non—sentient item
such as a tree or a rock.
What emerges is a picture of types of moral obligation
as associated with a nest of rings or annular boundary classes, with the innermost
class, consisting of highjyintelligent, social, sentient creatures, having the full range
of moral obligations applicable to them, and outer classes^ such non—sentient items as
rocks having only a much more restricted range of moral obliga
trees and
tions significantly applicable to them.
between the rings.
In some cases there is no sharp division
But there is no single uniform privileged class of items, no one
base class, to which all and only moral principles directly apply, and moreover the
zoological class of humans is not one of the really significant boundary classes.
The
recognition that some types of moral obligation can only apply within the context of
a particular sort of society or through contract does nothing to support the case of
human chauvinism.
The failure of the contract theory nevertheless leaves the issue as to whether
there is some logical or categorial restriction on what can be the object of moral
obligations, which would reinstate human chauvinism or animal chauvinism.
There is
however no such restriction on the object place of the obligation relation to humans
or sentient creatures.
Even if the special locution 'Y has an obligation towards X'
requires that X is at least a preference-having creature, there are other locutions
which are not so restricted, and
one can perfectly well speak of having duties toward
land and of having obligations concerning or with respect to such items as mountains
and rivers, and without necessarily implying that such moral constraints arise only in
an indirect fashion.
Thus neither natural language nor the logic of moral concepts
rules out the possibility of non-sentient items creating direct moral constraints.
There is then, given this point and the annular model, no need to opt for the
position of Leopold [12] as the only alternative to human (or animal) chauvinism, that
is for a position which simply transfers to natural items the full set of rights and
obligations applicable to humans, leading to such non-significance as that rocks have
obligations to mountains.
Distinctions between the moral constraints appropriate to
different types of items can be recognised without leading back to human chauvinism.
The point is an important one since many objections to allowing moral obligations to
28.
extend beyond the sphere of humans, or in some cases the sphere of sentient creatures,
depend on ignoring such distinctions, on assuming that it is a question of transferring
the full set of rights and obligations appropriate to intelligent social creatures to
such items as trees and rivers - that the alternative to chauvinism is therefore an
irrational and mystical animism concerning nature (cf. Passmore [9], p. 187 ff.).
*****
*
*
The ecological restatement of the strong version of human chauvinism, according
to which items outside the privileged human class have zero intrinsic value, is the
Dominion thesis,
the view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are
available for man's benefit and to serve his interests, and hence that man is entitled
to manipulate the world and its systems as he wants, that is^ in his interests.
The
thesis indeed follows, given fairly uncontroversial, analytic, assumptions, from the
conclusions of the main chauvinistic arguments examined, notably D, that values are
determined through human interests.
The earth and all its non-human contents thus
have no intrinsic value, at best instrumental value, and so can create no direct moral
constraints on human action.
For what has only instrumental value is already written
down, in this framework, as serving human interests.
And since what has no instru
mental value cannot be abused or have its value diminished, it is permissible for
humans to treat it as they will in accord with their interests.
thesis.
Ergo the Dominion
Conversely, if non-human items are available for man's use, interests and
benefits, they can have no value except insofar as they answer his interests.
Other
wise there would be restrictions on his behaviour with respect to them, since not any
sort of behaviour is permissible as regards independently valuable items.
value is determined through man's interests, i.e. D holds.
is strictly equivalent to D.
implies human chauvinism.
Accordingly
Thus the Dominion thesis
It follows that the Dominion thesis, like D, strictly
Conversely, the strong version of human chauvinism strictly
implies D, and so the Dominion thesis, completing the sketch of the equivalence
argument.
Since the positions are equivalent what counts against one also counts
against the others.
In particular, then, the Dominion thesis is no more inevitable
This view encompasses what Passmore [9] has isolated as the Western environmental
ideologies, both the dominant view and the lesser traditions: see [10].
29.
than, and just as unsatisfactory as, strong human chauvinism.
The upshot is that the dominant ethical systems of our times, those clustered
as the western ethic, and other kindred human chauvinistic systems, are far less
defensible, and less satisfactory, than has been commonly assumed, and lack an
adequate, and non-arbitrary, basis.
Furthermore alternative theories are far less
incoherent than is commonly claimed, especially by philosophers.
are viable alternatives to the Dominion thesis,
Yet although there
the natural world is rapidly being
preempted in favour of human chauvinism - and of what it ideologically underwrites,
the modern economic-industrial superstructure - by the elimination or over-exploitation
of those things that are not considered of sufficient instrumental value for human
beings.
Witness the
of the non-human world, the assaults being made on
tropical rainforests, surviving temperate wildernesses, wild animals, the oceans, to
list only a few of the victims of man's assault on the natural world.
Observe also
the associated measures to bring primitive or recalcitrant peoples into the Western
consumer society and the spread of human chauvinist value systems.
The time is fast
approaching when questions raised by an environmental ethic will cease to involve live
options.
As things stand at present however, the ethical issues generated by the
preemptions - especially given the weakness and inadequacy of the ideological and
value—theoretical basis on which the damaging chauvinistic transformation of the
world is premissed, and the viability of alternative environmental ethics - are not
merely of theoretical interest, but are among the most important and urgent questions
of our times,
perhaps, that
human beings, whose individual or group self-interest
is the source of most environmental problems, have ever asked themselves.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Braidwood
Australia 2622
References
[1]
R. and V. Routley, 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics', mimeographed,
privately circulated, 1974.
[2]
P.H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, Penguin, London, 1954.
[3]
R. and V. Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', Nous (forthcoming)
[4]
D.G. Ritchie, Natural Rights, Allen and Unwin, London, 1894.
[5]
J. Passmore, 'The treatment of animals', Journal of the History of Ideas, _36
(1975), 195-218.
[6]
T. Regan and P. Singer (editors), Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976.
[7]
J. Wisdom, Other Minds, Blackwell, Oxford, 1952.
[8]
R. Routley, 'The semantical metamorphosis of metaphysics', Australasian Journal
of Philosophy^5A (1976),157.
[9]
[10]
J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
V. Routley, Critical Notice of [9], Australasian Journal of Philosophy 53. (1975)
171-185.
[11]
H.J. McCloskey, 'Rights', Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1965), 115-127.
[12]
A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, with other essays on conservation from Round
River, Ballantine, New York, 1966.
[13]
K. Baier and N. Rescher (editors), Values and the Future, the impact of techno
logical change on American values, The Free Press, New York, 1969.
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Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations and corrections with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1979) 'Against the inevitability of human chauvinism' in Goodpaster KE and Sayre KM (eds), Ethics and the problems of the 21st century, Notre Dame University Press.
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